Mark Mroz

“A Girl and Her Garden” // Video Portrait

In a “Video Portrait” I capture the essence of who someone is and set it to music that would be in that person’s life soundtrack.

In this case I have the lovely Laura: she’s a native Texan, loves records, country, growing things, and has a knack for nostalgia. This film tells the story of who she is. Enjoy.
—
If you care about the geeky film stuff, keep reading.
—
I wanted to make a short film that showcases not only my style of cinematography and editing, but also the equipment I use. 

This was shot using a Canon HV40 with a Jag35Pro 35mm lens adaptor, and a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens. 

I love shooting with a prime lens. There’s something to be said about composition and perspective when you don’t have the ability to zoom in and out on your subject.

This was a challenging project because I didn’t know what music I would use or how I would tell the story… no storyboards or scripting. I just shot it with the intent of building my story in the edit. It took me 2 days to find the right song and once I started the edit I knew I didn’t have enough footage, which meant revisiting the shoot. Fortunately I was working with one patient (and beautiful) woman.

The color balance between the two days of footage was completely different, but I was able to mostly correct that. I also added some overall grading, but not too heavily.

Overall I am very well pleased with how this turned out.

—

Song: “Gypsy Rose” by Ben Kweller.

Share on Facebook

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 PM and is filed under 35mm adaptors, HDV camera, blog, director of photography, video portrait and tagged with 35mm adaptors, 50mm, DoF, f1.8, garden, HD, HDV camera, HV40, Jag35Pro, montage, music, outdoor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.