Unless you work as a news cameraman, there is no such thing as one-man-band video production. It’s simple. Video production is team work, where every aspect has it’s own specialization. One guy handling all the process in production is unrealistic or a scam. Unless this one-man-band has gone through directing courses, camera handing courses, DOP courses, make-up courses, editing courses, organizing courses and special effects courses and he can duplicate himself to all those needs on sets, he is NOT video production.

Almost everyday I see videos made by one-man-band, of which some are good and a lot are so bad as typical news reporting cover footage (or worse). Those “good” are mostly fan-made, because the initial idea isn’t to satisfy client, but to make something interesting in your knowledge reach when you have too much time. I’ve never done any good fan-made video, because I don’t have so much time to play around. I rather invest time in stock shots and train my skill. Everything I do is think commercially, how can I sell my knowledge to do my part in video production for a planned professional video.

Being a part of video production is where I do everything about camera movement, framing, right settings and all technical stuff around camera to work as it has to. Only doing this takes a lot of muscle power to achieve perfect shoots. At the same time director of photography must be looking at the lights, compositions and other aspects that make picture stunning. At the same time director is directing the actors play and is careful at every move, expression and saying of actors to achieve a genuine act. Make-up artist is careful about the skin, haircut and dress on actors being perfect on camera. Organizer is looking through timings how fast everything must go through the production, or day goes by in instant. He also prepares everything that is needed on stage, that actors came at right time and that everyone is happy.

And even if project doesn’t contain actors as main message deliverers, there still have to be someone directing the whole video. Message must be planned via pre-production part for any video and message must be seen to viewers. Just shooting some random shoots is nothing else but news reportage. If you add some lights, it’s still a beautiful news reportage. And we all know what happens to news reportage. You see it once, forget it in few seconds.

Can one-man-band achieve such higher level of video production? Or is it just another news reporting style one-man-band scamming clients? Video can be cheap, but only if you get satisfied with news reporting style products. And throwing away few hundred of dollars just like that.

But on the other hand, thank God for such low budget productions with one-man-band news reportage style. After clients get scammed, they appreciate professionals work more. They lost few bucks once, but latter they know where to invest bigger budgets.

Stay sharp!

Regards
Juvan