On Film Making

A month from now, October 14th, will be the yearly fundraiser for Community Housing Network. I’ve been providing media assistance for this event for many years, taking client photos and creating videos. What’s most interesting about this gig are all the personal stories I hear when interviewing those helped by the organization. Some were homeless. Some are handicapped. Some are the emotional family of handicapped individuals. Others are recovering from mental illness. Just showing up with a camera tells these people that I’m interested in them, and most just open up and tell me all about their lives. I always have to coax them to talk about what’s going to be relevant to the project at hand, but between those discussions I always hear some strange or interesting stories. For example, one guy that worked at an airport  offered details about why you never stand in front of a jet plane engine and what impacts can do to the human body. You never know what you’re going to learn.

If you’ve watched book trailers (video commercials for a book) on-line, there’s a good chance you saw a slide-show of stock photos and text. Sometimes the images are panned or change size. Canned music typically plays. I’m always surprised, and thrilled, when a book trailer actually holds my attention, because it’s so rare. That’s why I thought doing short films as book trailers would be an interesting exploration.