Partnerships Can Make You a Better Filmmaker

By it’s very nature filming or photographing nature and wildlife is a solo endeavor. There can only be one eye looking through the viewfinder and oftentimes it’s difficult enough for a single filmmaker to get close to wildlife.

I don’t know about you but when I have an idea in my head, there’s no one else that can duplicate that idea like I see it.

The words I use to narrate a film, the music that I think fit the mood of the film all have to fit as close as possible to how I see the finished film in my mind.

I’ve had other writers try to write posts for this blog and no one writes in the style that I write. I’ve had composers score short films for me but their music doesn’t quite give me the feeling that I had hoped for.

You’ve heard the term “Jack of all trades, master of none”. It’s true to a certain extent. Very few people can do all aspects of creating a nature and wildlife film from scratch well.  You pretty much will be better in one area than you are the others. For me, I feel that area is doing the filming.  There are people that are better at capturing the audio, writing, editing, composing than I could ever dream to be but it’s hard to find someone that syncs 100% with your vision.

So What to Do

One thing that really helped me in several different ways was working in a partnership on projects.

I was hired by some good friends of mine that have an Emmy nominated production company to be the Director of Photography for a docudrama they were doing on the Lane Seminary debates.

They wanted me to film it because the story takes place before there was electricity and they wanted the film to look like everything was filmed in natural light. The said that I was the best natural light filmmaker they knew. I said, you must not know very many filmmakers. 🙂

We went back and forth. They kept saying we want you to film this and I kept saying I film spittle bugs, not people. Somehow, they convinced me to sign on to shoot their film “Sons & Daughters of Thunder”.

The thing about working for someone else and filming people instead of nature took me WAY out of my comfort zone.  I didn’t know squat about lighting and I hadn’t really worked on my sets with actors and a crew.

At first, it was terrifying. Everyone looked to me when it came to setting lights and instead of filming a coneflower that had roots firmly in the ground, I had to keep focus on actors that moved through the scene. We started filming in December and I was sweating like it was the middle of July!

Slowly, things starting to click. We hit our rhythm, and as hard as it was to believe, we were having fun.

Through this partnership, I learned a few things. I can shoot someone else’s vision. I had to learn how Kelly, the director like things framed up and once I did , composition was pretty much automatic. I could see what he would want as the actors were taking their positions.

I learned that I can work out of my comfort zone. That has helped me with filming nature. I’m not afraid anymore of working with a flower blowing in the wind of deer running through the woods. I can now move my camera and add another dimension to my nature filmmaking.

I discovered that it is really fun working with people that are passionate about filmmaking. No matter how much your friends or significant other support you, they’re not going to get excited about a new fluid head or a Rhino Evo carbon fiber slider like other filmmakers are.

Although when it comes to my own projects, I’m still not ready to let go of the reigns, I’ve learned that partnerships can be a lot of fun and create growth opportunities as well.

Working with my friends on Thunder, created an opportunity for me to use my filmmaking skills on another project for them. They’ve been hired to do a project that hasn’t been made public yet but because we worked so well together on their other film and they know my nature and wildlife film work, I’ve been tapped to shoot this one for them as well.

So don’t be afraid of working with others on a project, you will learn a lot about working with others as well as learning a lot about what you are capable of.

And as always, shoot the ordinary and make it extraordinary!