Vacation Video

There is no time i think about video more than when i'm on vacation. There is a constant battle between documenting every cool moment, and just putting the camcorder away and having a "pure experiece" without the need to shoot it all the time. When my kids took me on a zip line tour of the Fijian jungle yesterday, it was all i could do not to video the whole thing. I didn't, and was glad to be fully present for the thrills. Interestingly, a pair of honeymooning couples were also with us, and one of the men had a highdef camcorder with him, shooting constantly. He had it strapped to his wrist for lots of the swings through the canopy. I'm dying to see his footage, actually. Some will be great, i'm sure. Most will be completely impossible to watch. I feel he's going to have a lot of video from this vacation, and if he doesn't edit it -- which i'd bet he won't -- it's going to be rarely enjoyed.

Vacations are the perfect time to think about video sketches: instead of shooting lots of video, or bits of every moment, try just picking one or two events to shoot "properly" (with some coverage, an establishing shot, and some cut-aways...) and leave the rest to still photos or, just unshot. Make a sketch from the event you covered, and enjoy it often. You won't be sorry.