NG. Can we do a second take?
One of the things that struck me while reading about the visual grammar of motion picture photography is how a videographer should pre-plan his shots and anticipate a potential sequence. What this demands of him or her then is that shots should always contain action in it and they should follow a logical sequence – one that mimicks how our eyes see. This helps to harness the power of motion picture, or video. Also, having a series of long shots and close ups along with a logical sequence also ensures that the audience are able to follow the “event” or action as if they were there themselves – one of the objectives of journalism.
Having being trained as a still photographer, I would have thought that it would be easy for me to transit to shooting video. I found that not to be so. As a still photographer, it is possible to still capture great moments without having to shoot them in a particular sequence. But because video works in a continuous flow, not following the flow of events might mean that the sequence is interrupted, and hence the effect is not achieved.
A matched-sequence shot would work if an action is repetitive – as seen in the video above. If it’s not, is it right journalistically to then get the subject to repeat the action for the camera? Wouldn’t that be staging an event instead? While the reading proposes snap zooming as a solution, I’m still left wondering if it’s ethically right to ask or invoke a subject to repeat an event.
