Why video?

I arrived home on Friday after being away for a month, and along with the pile of mail I found the OCA Digital Film Production course pack.

Generally I've avoided photography, because as a painter it's too easy to slip into bad habits and take a snap instead of the much harder work of drawing. I've tried to explain to people how drawing from life is different to photography but it's no use, I can't put it into words. It's just a different medium expressing different things.

Rembrandt, Jan Six's Bridge

I do have a very basic camera but I'm not serious about photography. The occasional "serious" pictures I attempt are utterly different to anything I would draw or paint. Other than that I use it mainly for taking pictures of my drawings and paintings, and more recently, logbook and sketchbook pages for uploading to Flickr.

So that's photography, in the main it's not for me, though I love looking at other people's photos and I follow certain photographers with great interest.

Video is different again. Now you have the added and different elements of time and sound. To me there's something very exciting about it. It's also become a lot more accessible in the last year or so, as video cameras have improved and got cheaper and especially with the editing capabilities of the Mac. It reminds me of those exciting days when desktop publishing was suddenly within reach of everyone. I'm sure the PC is fine too, but if I find it cumbersome for word processing I dread to think what editing a video would be like.

So here goes on the OCA Digital Film Production course. I'm not actually intending to make films, a few well-constructed ten-minute videos will be fine to go on with. I've had a project in mind since before signing up and I'm devouring the course book with that in mind.