I’ve been doing less video lately, because I’ve been conscious for awhile that I want to go in a different direction. I’d gotten really good at the quick vlog.. and I wanted to make something that went behind that. I wanted to document the things I see and people I know in a way that is interesting to me, without losing the raw quality of the video I film constantly.

I wanted to push my editing and story telling skills, and I wanted to make something simply because I want to make it. Alot of my creative outlets in the past several years have been motivated to some degree by making money. Its not that I didn’t take pride in my ability to rattle off a quick video of whatever I saw in almost real-time. I just wanted to work on mastering something else.  When I am free of the idea of trying to profit in anyway off of something I make.. I had to think for awhile about what I truly wanted to do, just for fun.

The video theory I came up with is something I call “casual film-making”. I’m not going for a really polished look, nothing too slick.. and I really don’t want to acquire and use more “professional” equipment. I don’t want to manipulate the meaning of what is being said with creative editing. (Watch reality TV and notice how often the camera moves away from the speaker and uses “atmosphere” sound to cover cuts in and out.) I want to do good enough editing, and decent enough shooting that the viewer isn’t bothered by shaky cam or poor quality. I somehow want to capture the feeling of just filming what I see, watching what is happening, listening to conversation.

I’m not there yet. But here is the first video made towards that goal – a behind-the-scenes with the band GiftHorse. The video is also up on their Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/user/WeAreGiftHorse – they also have their official music video and some other things up there, so check it out…