The Power of Video; Instructions on how to use it safely

This morning January 9, at about 9:00 am, I walked into the McDonalds at 119 N Wabash. I encountered a young man of about 23. He was eating and emotionally agitated and crying as he ate, he was complaining because he did not get something with his food. And asking people for help. He suddenly knocked a chair over.

I cautiously walked over to him and asked him what was wrong? I asked him to talk to me. He tried. He had clearly, broken down. He was mentally ill, agitated and I knew by now the police had been called.

He was incoherent, he did not get what he wanted, he needed money. I asked him how I can help. He wanted two dollars. I asked him to sit down and not be disruptive and I and I would help him. I wanted to get him out of the restaurant before the police came and they dragged him off to jail. This is the fate of the mentally ill who have a crisis in public.

I got my oatmeal and brought him my change. He had calmed down. I wanted to talk to him and walk him out of the McDonald’s before the police came. I told him he had to calm down to please hurry eating and I would walk him out.

We continued to talk, two women officers came in. I explained to them, he got a bit excited, but he was ok now. I was just about to walk him out. He was fine now.

One of the officers seemed to accept that. The other officer asked for his I.D. at that point I knew, I had lost. He stood up and he was looking for his ID. Just then, two male officers walked in. A salt and pepper team. Pepper took one look at the kid and said “We're just locking him up". Salt grabbed his wrist and he resisted, saying he had done nothing.

He had knocked over a chair and acted belligerently, and that is prompted the manager to call the police. What he had done was indicative of a mental health crisis. And legal policy is clear regarding mentally ill persons subject to police emergency detention as stated below:

"(a) Authority for the police to take mentally ill and mentally retarded persons into custody in emergency situations should be statutorily defined and limited to the following two classes of persons:

(i) those whose conduct represents a danger to themselves or others; and,
(ii) those who appear so gravely disabled as to be unable to provide themselves with the basic necessities of life.”

My man clearly had exhibited (a)-(i). But I had him calmed down. He was complying to the requests of the women officers, but the testosterone arrived, then amped it up. I was more than a little pissed. But I only talk to the kid to try to calm him down. I knew the more he struggled the more justification the police had to maximize their efforts to restrain him.

Given the present climate, and because of how quick Officer Pepper was to decide to arrest this young man I started shooting his arrest with my phone. Why, because it is necessary that the police know they are under surveillance just and their conduct is be scrutinized by the public. Justice is a partnership.

I try to adhere to an clear code of personal conduct. No declaration of my rights. No verbal engagement with the officer about how they are doing their job. When you do, it is the road to disorderly conduct and a justifiable arrest.

Stand back, do not make any contact with officers. If they move back toward you, move to another position. It they try to obstruct you with anything, move to another position.

Senate Bill 1342 passed the Senate unanimously in April and the House on a 106-7 vote Dec. 3, 2014. It was sent to Quinn on Monday, Dec 9, 2014.

It allows you to record law enforcement officers on duty because it establishes that, in the words of the ACLU, “on-duty police officers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their conversations in public places.”

What the new law doesn't let you do is secretly audio or video record interactions in which one of the parties has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Talking directly to the officer regarding him doing his duty would have to be contested. DON’T

Do not reply or react to any actions such as blocking the camera, engage in no conversation. Keep your distance and continue filming.

After a number of minutes, they took the young man outside. He was setting himself up for a beatdown and actually kicked Officer Pepper, who ordered his arrest. The police restrained him in the snow on the ground outside McDonalds.

I did not follow because there are cameras in McDonalds, And I wanted those on me. I continued shooting through the window, cautious of not making Skip Gate’s mistake of following the police outside onto the street. Inside there was a crowd, cameras, property to damage that might require liability. They did not mess with me inside did not mean I was necessarily following the out the door. I did eventually go out, careful to not make eye contact or be baited into a conversation.

and this is why I am now shooting video...

Telling life stories with video, instead of Stills. June 19th.

Sony A7s shooting 4K in really, really, low light

crazy low-light capability… a must-have in every photo-video journalist's bag… and it's crazy small too!  They may have spliced the DNA from the eyes of an owl with the light wells on the sensor. 12 MPs on a full-frame sensor. CRAZY!

video setup for a Debut Shoot

A Debut (or Debutante Party), is a Filipino tradition for celebrating a girl's/woman's 18th birthday. Venues and degree of extravagance will vary but one thing is certain: it's a happy occasion with lots of opportunities for shooting video.
For this Debut this past weekend, the venue is the same venue as another Debut party a month earlier. This venue is a converted industrial warehouse, with either sodium arc lamps, or fluorescent tubes, 25 feet  overhead, with no facility for modulation. So it's either full-on, or darkness. Remember, this is a warehouse.
So for this event, the overhead lights are turned off, and the only source of light is a row of spotlights trained on the head table, and the candles on the tables. The resulting high contrast is a  guaranteed video killer. BUT, the shoot must go on.
Below is my setup for this video.

Main cam, a Sony HXR-NX30 with a Sennheiser lav mike, with the transmitter  on a light stand a foot away from a speaker box. The shotgun mike on the main cam has proven itself to, on its own, capture sounds well. This cam is on & off a dolly as needed.

B-cam, a Sony a57 with a Samyang 14f2.8 (21mm with crop factor). Beachtek preamp, RodePro Mic. On a tripod, stationary on one spot for minutes at a time.

Videos to come (and lessons learned) ...

Frame Grabs: if this is 1080HD, I wonder what 4k holds?

 cropped, 3.8"x2.13" 300dpi

full-frame, 6.4"x3.6" 300dpi

Sony a99, 1080 60p

Bob Nicolas and his wedding videos

Not unlike most wedding videographers, I browse through other videographers' works, hoping to be inspired and learn a few things that may be applied to my style of shooting: one camera DSLR, photojournalistic style. I came across Manila-based Bob Nicolas' vimeo site; I am bowled over by the consistency of high quality in his massive output. 

Doubtless, his way of working is different from mine: multi-camera with a crane, dollies and steadicams, much higher budgets and fees. And yet, I admire his point-of-view: the angles, the close-ups, and the smooth seamless editing (audio-video syncs, the choice of music). 

But most important of all, it is evident in the expressions of his subjects that he does his filming in a most unobtrusive manner. This is a quality that I admire most in a Stills photographer (and which I try to apply in every shoot I do) but which I have always thought was near impossible to apply when shooting video, with its inherent and attendant need to shoot a story line, as opposed to capturing moments. This is even more of a feat to achieved in Philippine culture where being discreet is expected (as opposed to the in-your-face-shooting, whatever-it-takes culture in Toronto/Canada).

I love his work and it is something to emulate. As they say in my Cebuano: pwerte kaayong pachadaa!

Chernobyl Revisited

An awe-inspiring example of fusion imagery (combining Stills and Video) to inform, to teach, and to inspire the world on the human condition. In this video, the Stills seem to move and the Video clips seem suspended in time. There's a sense of urgency for the story to be told but it's done in a languid pace, as if to say,  it's already happened so what's the rush; the  fatalistic tone to the story comes with faith in renewal.

Video courtesy of the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Half-Lives: The Chernobyl Workers Now from VQR on Vimeo.