Looking Inward By Examining My Growth Over The Last 15 Years

So I just went through my first 5 years of filming. It was very humbling to see my earliest video where I knew absolutely nothing about Cinematography.

I was just trying to capture those precious moments for my little brother.

It was also cool to see how recording basketball games helped me learn how to follow the action, even though it was a couple years later that I would learn how to keep the action in the frame. I noticed that that following of the action was carried with me in everything I did then a year later from 2010 to 2011 I began doing music in addition to sports and I kept that same framing and following the action. Funny thing is, I had no idea what I was doing at the time but my very first music video in 2011 was a oner, that tracked backwards framing one artista then the artist switches with another artist without the backwards tracking dropping or pausing landing on a finally reveal of the entire team. I remember that day, my original idea was to do it from inside but it wasn't working sonwe had to make a pívot on the spot and all i has was a Sony a65 with a lot Lens and no spotter. One shot kill. Then I noticed in a freestyle video that I was style framing centering the actioning but i was searching now for angeles, i didn't understand what Inwasndoing or why but I had this feeling that staying static the whole time was boring me so I moved the camera and landed ok some more interesting but not textbook frames. Then I started studying and I noticed this big time on my 3rd music video. There was a black background which was a garage I painted frame by frame in Photoshop lit by one overhead light, on the intro shot that light is swinging back and forth and then we cut into a circling shot of these two mobsters plotting a takeover, as I circle the outside of them sitting at this table they smoke a cigar blowing the smoke out into the distance, it's far from perfect but it's very impressive for my skills level at that point in time. I remember one of the most challenging shots was a low angle shot of the two of them approaching their vehicle to execute the heist and I held my camera mounted to a monopod outside a car window in the rain upside down on a monopod and has the car back up to get the tracking in motion. Then I had some interior shots of the car driving with them, a performance shot on the rear view mirror and then my favorite shot of them all, I got out of the car, all handheld so the camera was all over the place, I sneak up to a pizza delivery car and enter the car and show the delivery man at the front door, he spots me, I snatch two large pizza boxes out the back seat and run like hell back to he car before he catches me, o shut the door the pizza man slams on the window and we speed off, the camera turns to the back window as we see the pizza man chasing after us. It was amazing. I love that shot. Fast forward some more, I do another music video and this time I noticed that this is when I first discover my current handheld motion, because up to that point everything I had done I had tried to have this prestine stillness, which it never was because I had to hold the camera on the palm of my hand while I manually focused in every video. But in this video in the second half of it, I become freer and the camera tries to depict the high energy, it was a magical feeling to witness that Energy pass through my Lens from.the motion I created in my.body to the music mixed with the performsnce and the imperfecto focus. So I do another video and this video i remember was planned well and the original plan was not working sndnthis group had 5 artists all on one song so we decided to go in the alley and I do another oner that Is hidden by editing this Time and done completely in this drunken, sporadic motion that goes from the one artista.wallong out from.behind a garage into the alley over to another artist.who pretends to be hungover and barfs in a trash can up to am artist ok the roof of a garage that.jumps.fown midverse continúes rapping over to the fourth artist with a break that matches thos echo in the verse up to the street light back down to the artist that now is carrying a back over to the last artist.seated in a car to the finale where he carries the bag over to the truck where all the artist are.gathered over a body in a trunk. It was wild but it worked and people loved it. It's my second most viewed video at 9k views. Then something magical happened. I shoot another music video and by this time I'm probably 2-4 years in, I've shot more basketball tournaments and a wedding or two. In this music video, I come up with a home invasion idea that starts off with the main character tied up, bloodied and unconscious. I capture these shots of him, his hands tied up, his legs tied up, then he comes to and the camera cuts to his out of focus POV as the killer in the video, one of the artist approaches and covers his face with plastic, the angles, the acting, the motion is now a mixture of the smoothness I also arrived for mixed with this emotion led motion and it feels so intense that the producer tells me that we have to add a warning label because it feels that real! Then the performance shots are to this day my favorites. There's this drifting, jumping, out of focus, energy in the frames that make this person feel so menacing which is so fitting and cut in tween all of this is the home invasion. Hands down one of my best videos. So I notice after this video leading into 2016 that this motion, this free floating camera is now apart of me, I like it, I desire it to find a way to fit, to be make itself appropriate by discovering the energy in from of the lens. It's in weddings now, more controlled by I can see when I'm searching, luckily at the same time I was learning camera, I had already been learning editing from making a highlight video out of my best first video in 2010. So I know how to work with my footage and my edits enhance what I had already but in camera. Its a beautiful combination I possess. I even noticed that in one video for an r&b artist, albeit, not great I still understand a little bit about lighting as that had been my first time having lights and even gels. But I had almost created a Rembrandt lighting and I had a backlight as a rim. It wasn't anywhere near perfect but I understood. I still have 9 years more to look through but it has been very cool to see how my style has instinctively evolved and how, very few times, magic struck and I create a scene or in the case of the heist video, a dam near perfect visual.