Many of you might know that lately I’ve been dabbling in videography and the whole complex jungle that comes along with it. I’ve been reading, learning, and refining my photography skills for many years now and while video shares some common traits, there are several brand new concepts to learn and practice. I’ve shot a handful of videos so far for personal purposes and friends but I want to start extending myself outward regarding this medium.

Business promotional videos are a trend that is seeing a massive increase in popularity. As the internet becomes more rich and accessible, companies are beginning to see the value of having a professionally made, promotional video about themselves to show their potential clients. I’m really wanting to jump into this market.

This post will introduce you to one of my first promo videos I’ve created. This video was for photographer/friend, Christine Moody of Trimood Photography. She specializes in children and creative model photography.

The video was shot over the course of several days consisting of an in-studio session involving a beautiful model and many creative setups, an indoor/outdoor children session featuring 2 lovely little boys and their one week old little sister, and finally an outdoor interview of Christine herself.

As with most jobs, there were several challenges that we had to overcome; shy children, difficult video lighting in-studio, and probably most of all, audio quality issues. It’s tough when you shoot an interview really close to Boeing and you can hear them testing the 787 Dreamliner engines. This was also the first video that I was able to get some real use out of my Blackbird camera stabilizer from Camera Motion Research. Anyone who’s ever used a stabilizer knows that it takes TIME to learn how to effectively use them and I feel I was able to get some very usable footage for how short a time I’d owned it when this was shot.

Even with the challenges and issues, they were all solved and we ended up with great footage. From there it was into Final Cut Pro X for editing. Editing lasted quite awhile as I am still learning the finer details of the program as well as the best practices for editing and storytelling. I also tweaked things about a million times trying to make it as best I could being this was one of my first “client” videos.

Below is the video and while I know you film makers and videographers out there will find plenty that might be wrong, I’d still love to hear from you in the comments what you thought of it; good or bad. Although, if you’re commenting on the bad, I’d love to know specifically to be able to work on it.

Thank you.