Met a friend for dinner, and old mentor who has become a dear friend, and the discussion, after the usual formalities turned to recent works, in this case photography and film-making. I updated him on my experience after having visited the Sphere in Las Vegas, which I documented on the podcast in Episodes 20 and 21.
And he had some great advice. We spent a bit of time discussing beginner photography equipment (or which more in the new year), and then shifted to film.
I know it’s hard to tell by all the images I have on the blog, but I’m a pretty visual thinker, and often have an image or film clip in my mind of what I’m trying to tell.
The challenge (for me at least) is to coax that out of what I see in the real world. AI-assisted art tools can help, somewhat, if you’re comfortable with the “prompt engineering” that goes behind creating the images you want. There are some significant drawbacks, however, including the sourcing of the training data, and the power that is used to run these algorithms.
The other option is to make it yourself.
That old adage of “if you don’t see what you want in the world, then you need to make it” (or “be the change you want to see”).
But that can be a whole other set of challenges. Gear, learning to use the tools, time, energy, travel, tools for editing, and the time to do it, and a whole host more.
But it is do-able. Thousands do it every day on the online video platforms.
And in this case, the goal of what I want to see is a documentary film.
So let’s document that process, and see what we can create.
