My Rants

Videography in Brunei - My Thoughts

Sunday, October 01, 2006

I'd like to share my view on the art of videography in Brunei from my perspective of experiencing it so far since I've picked it up in May of this year. If you've had a look at the stuff I've shot and edited, let me let you know that video shoots and ESPECIALLY video editing is ALOT of work.. not HARD work but ALOT of work.. especially when you're a perfectionist and you want EVERY single detail in your video to be exactly how you want it (trust me its like chasing after Vision 54 in golf - birdie every hole, theorectically achievable but practically impossible)

First and foremost, you need to shoot your material, and that depends what type of shoot you're doing. I've so far done mostly scenic doco style ones (but did do one pre-planned one, i.e. the candle lit shots). During the shoot you have to think about the shots you want, e.g. rack focusing to give the shot more ooooomph, and cut aways to fill in the story of your shoot. The shoot is only half the work, in fact maybe only 40% of it, cos the editing is when your shots come alive.

The edit can take a hell of a long time, depending on the look you want. You'll need to do color corrections (notice how my videos are all a little bleached or off colour?). then all the shots have to be cut into a timeline with your choice of music to fit the mood..

To cut the story short, what does this add up to? Hell of alot of work.. and I mean ALOT. On a 60 minute wedding video for example, you're looking at maybe 40 hours of work - yep it's almost a full time job. Not easy if you have another full time job. And did I mention its hell of alot of work? ....

And the market for videography in Brunei? ranges from bad to poor.. how much do you think your creativity is worth PLUS 40 hours of work? don't just think about 40 hours of work put into the video.. think about the opportunity cost I have to bear to take 40 hours of my time away from my own personal life AND that of my family.. convert that into a financial figure and 9/10 individuals will say... 'You're f*cking crazy for charging that much.. ' no one's going to pay you.. and truth be told no one has and probably no one will but unfortunately time is money and anything less is a cop out. It'll practically be selling my family time away for peanuts... and as the saying goes 'You pay peanuts, you get monkeys'

Now I'm not going to toot my own horn and say my videos are AMAZING.. they're not cos I know of other people's work that ARE amazing and I am continuously learning from them.. but having said that, videography in Brunei isn't up there in terms of global standards (just see RTB and their soaps .. CRINGE!) So far I've seen in Brunei, videographers who:

1) don't clean their lens when they shoot so all the shots have a dirty smudge
2) use lousy tapes that causes drop outs so they lose good shots and during doco style weddings, you DO NOT want that.
3)shots out of focus and looks all soft
4) shots not properly white balanced so shots look a funky purple
5) final video output is not deinterlaced making your wedding video looked like a video quilt, ugly as hell and basically ruins your wedding vids
6)charging extra for VCD and DVD format when infact they're just the same part of the compression process - it's ripping people off who are not aware of the differences (or similarities)
7)cheesy transitions in videos that belongs in the 80s - if that's the look you're going for, great, otherwise.. stay clear

In any case videography AND editing in Brunei has a long way to go.. I watch Astro adverts in awe as they're usually so well done (check out the Celcom ads with the story line).. incidentally my uni housemate is now a director with his own production house in Malaysia and he does alot of the Astro ads and he's the one who started me off on video editing. At the end of the day, like anything in Business, everything is driven by consumers. As long as consumers are only willing to pay peanuts for their videos, they'll get what they pay for. The Arts is highly underappreciated in Brunei, ask any photographers on how much they earn per shoot and they'll say its lousy money compared to their regional counterparts. So until consumers actually say 'Look, I'd like my wedding videos to look professionally shot and edited and am willing to pay you good money for the quality', nothing will change. I'm not holding my breath either cos Bruneian consumers, from my experience, are lousy at paying good money for services..

My 2 cents worth on this topic... (see what I mean)

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 01, 2006 at 8:15 pm. There are . If you want, you can leave your own response by clicking here. You may also send this post to a friend of yours via email, or bookmark it for yourself by using icons below;