Videography: Giving Life To Your Imagination

Visual arts have always been of keen interest to me. The idea of sharing own thoughts through graphics and showing others how I see the world is what fascinates me the most. And, with the innovation of new techniques and advanced equipments, it has become easier to do so. After studying Photography in my Bachelors, a whole new world opened up for me. I could share my perspective with others and become able to portray the world the way I see it into my photographs. However, only photos were not enough. Something was still missing and it hasn't been long enough since I realized that I need to make these photos come to life. Then I stepped into another dimension called videography.

Videography is the art of making films or videos. But it's not as simple as it sounds. Although the new rigs and gears may have made it easier to make better videos, operating them efficiently sure is hard. And besides, in Nepal, it's quite hard to find the desired equipment. Even if we happen to find it, it would be so expensive that all our enthusiasm for making a great video would evaporate into the air within seconds. Despite these hardships, today we could see different production houses from Nepal like Fuzz Factory and Jazz Productions making videos of quite a high standard. I myself admire their work and want to make such videos too. To my luck, Jazz Productions organized a DSLR video workshop for dummies like me, tutored by the co-founder, Aneel Neupane himself. And I joined in.

The workshop was designed to teach the ins and outs of video production, even if the participants had little to no experience with it and to help create videos that would help them stand out from the crowd. The 10 days long crash-course lasted from 21st May to 30th May 2017. On the first day, we were familiarized with some of the previous works of Jazz Production. Personally, I liked the music video of ‘Disfigured’ performed by ‘Kings Among Men’ and that of ‘Night is an Ocean’ performed by an international artist ‘Winter Aid’.

In the initial days, Mr. Neupane talked about the basics of photography and taught how to master the manual mode of a DLSR camera. Truthfully speaking, I felt like I have spent money to hear things I already know and was quite disappointed. During the latter days, he discussed on the basic settings for shooting videos and about different gears like Steadicam, slider, tripod, and other stuff that would help us produce smooth footages. I had done some research about these things beforehand so I still thought I learned nothing new.

The first week just went by. On the 8th day, the participants were paired up and given the assignment to shoot some clips and present a video at the end of the workshop. On this very day, I realized that it's not about what you know but what matters is how you put those things you know into execution. While shooting, I recalled what Mr. Neupane had talked about in the class; about how composition affects the shot, about what shutter speed to set while using which frame rate, how to use the tripod. At the end of the day, we came out with some pretty good shots and we were able to make a quite decent short film.

This course was really helpful and every penny I spent on it was worth it. Not only did it teach me a lesson in videography but also a lesson in life too. It made me realize that we may know a lot of stuff but we don't consider the things we're overlooking. Knowing a lot is great but what's even greater is knowing how to apply what you know and when to apply. I am really thankful to Jazz Productions for organizing this workshop and hope they will keep doing this in the upcoming days too. Also, I would like to encourage others to join such workshops because it is one great chance to learn something new.

PEACE!!

Prithivi Bikram Shrestha

Masters of Arts in English Literature

Tribhuvan University

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