I used to make videos for a living. If no one wanted a video, I never made one. I worked on a wide variety of video for a wide variety of clients. I made the video but it didn't belong to me. It belonged to my client. I made the video on their behalf
No matter what my role on the video, writer or editor or camera or all of the above, I was making this video for someone else. I had to please them. Using my skill to give them a video that met their needs. And making the video within their budget and their timeline. For some that would be stifling creatively but it was not for me. I liked the deadlines, I liked the restrictions, I enjoyed the challenge of being creative while meeting that bottom line
I don't make videos as my principle means of income any more. But I still make videos. Commercially, I look for videos that are interesting and different and for clients with whom I can strike some kind of rapport
I've also been making non commercial "amateur" videos for fun. But even then, I've sought motivation elsewhere, entering film festivals with a theme or a brief as they are often called. And often with really tight deadlines. Yeh, that's my pathology.
Most of those videos have been music video format, no dialogue, no acting, none of this pesky actors or those cumbersome scripts
But I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something I've never before done and I wanted to do something a little more complex than shooting footage and marrying it to music
I came up with the idea of a documentary based around the fan (comics, sic fi, anime etc) that I attend here in the city. Two years ago I spend four days at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto, shooting my brains out. The doc I had planned was not going to happen for reasons too prosaic to go into here. But I had all that footage
Well, I could still do something different. And I've done that. A video I've never before done. Something a bit more than music video style. Interviews, footage, script narration, titles .. ta da
It's not a documentary, really and it's not a promotional vid, god knows I've done enough of those. I guess you could call it a commentary. For the first time I got to write a script in my voice .. yeh, I know, that's a risk. But that's what doing new things is all about
I'm not really sure what this thing is or to whom it would appeal but all of the content is original so it qualifies to be entered into film festivals, something else I wanted to do
So, you've been warned. Here is Fan Love Love Fans
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