Saturday, June 4, 2011

Igorot videos

Slow motion... Fade... Cheesy... Music videos... Movies about religious life and good morals...
These are some of the common comments we hear about Igorot videos (I hope I didn't say it negatively).

Note: (Well, I'm an Igorot myself and being in video industry for almost 4 years now (or even 6 if I include the days when we were sutdents), you can't blame me if I wanted to write something about Igorot videos. It might be that you will not agree with some of the things that I will say here and I understand and respect that. However, I just wanna say my opinions and my own observations about Igorot videos. Again, I don't mean to fight or hurt anyone. I ever I do, well I'm sorry but that's not my intention really.)

I'll try my best not to be biased here but I admit I can't help it in some point. Well that's normal if you don't agree with some of my opinions since we are totally different persons with different minds.

I remember the time when I was applying for the position of Video Editor before at ABS-CBN (that was last 2008). The sample I submitted was an Igorot music video I made. At first they did not say anything about it. Bu when I was already working there for a while, they made that video sample of mine a bit of a "laughing stuff". After editing a lot and learned a lot in video editing, I tried to look back to that sample music video I made and I realized it's really funny now. I didn't know it was funny before.

My point here is not to say that Igorot videos are funny. It's just sad to say however that many of our "kakailyans" (not all anyway) thought that video production can just be done by anyone as long as they have a video camera and computer to edit the video and cast of characters to act. They failed to realize that video production is a field that is needed to be learned and not anyone who wants to do it can just do it as he or she please. Of course I'm not saying that only those who learned video production can shoot videos (if it's just for our personal video, like for our family and/or friends, anyone can do it of course). What I'm saying is that it is better for those who wanted to make music videos and movies to learn the skills in this field before making one and selling one. It's just like a doctor needs to study medicine before he or she can work in a hospital.

I'm not actually belittling those fellow Igorots who are making shall we say "amateur" videos. I understand that  they were not given the chance to learn the principles in video production resulting in not so good outputs (I admit I had a lot of amateur works also before). In fact it's really not the professionalism sometimes. Anyway it's just for local audiences so I think few mistakes are just fine so long as the viewers enjoy them. My only concern here is that these videos are posted online and it is shown in the whole world, therefore, in my opinion, they must still be quality.

What I also don't like about the attitude of some of our fellow Igorot video makers is that they are so proud of what they are doing as if they are the only ones who know how to do those things. They even hide what they call "secret" ways of doing things they know that for me is somewhat funny. Almost all of those secrets I heard are things I learned since then but I was always happy to share them to others. I met a lot of really professionals and they are always happy to share what they know. What a shame that some of those fellows are so proud to hide what they call secret that almost every video makers know!

My real aim here is not to criticize Igorot videos. I'm just glad that I was given the opportunity to learn more in this field so I wanted to share some soon. Not just to Igorots who might be interested in this field but to anyone who might come across my lessons soon.

Aside from that, here is a product I wanted to showcase:

http://vimeo.com/16418002

No comments:

Post a Comment