As an intern at Sparksight, the first project I was assigned was to create a behind the scenes video to take a look into the creative process of the Haymaker composite photo that was shot earlier this year. For those who don’t know, a composite photo is layering one moment, over another moment, as if they took place at the same time. For example, within any one frame of a photo, there are subjects in the foreground and the background that occupy space. The idea is the same for composite photos, except these subjects are broken up and their photos are taken at different times but, the illusion that they have their photos taken at the same time is what makes this different from a regular photo. This was the final product of the photo shoot:
The challenging part in creating a behind the scenes video, is going through hours of footage in search of the narrative these particular videos have. I went through the interviews, and found some moments that I thought would work. As we went through drafts of the piece, some moments just didn’t feel right anymore, so we searched for other parts that strengthened the overall narrative as well.
The trickiest part of any behind the scenes video or highlight reel is pacing the segments, and having a sense that this video is headed somewhere. For pacing, I’ve always considered music to be very important because there’s a tempo. As soon as that tempo is set from the beginning, we have an idea as an audience member what kind of ride we’re going on. Once our pace is set, a breakdown of what went into the piece needs to be established. So, I decided early on, I needed to introduce our three principle characters in the beginning in order for the audience to have idea that these people might show up again later on. George serves as the introductory interview in order to establish what this project was about, and how it was created on location at Haymaker. Drew serves as the post production guru, and Ricky’s objective opinion, in line with Drew’s closing statement, sums up what Sparksight was achieving with this piece.
As an intern, it’s interesting coming into a place where I can have creative freedom on a project and completely take it in the direction that fits within the overall aesthetic of Sparksight. At first, I was taken back a bit that I had that much freedom from the beginning, rather than trying to fit a mold. I appreciated that because I’m currently a film student at the University of Texas at Austin, and I’m constantly thinking about motifs, structure, style, narrative, etc. This piece allowed me to hone in on those skills, cut down on moments that didn’t need to be so prominent, and allowed our characters to shine. Take a look at the finished product!
