Crossing the line between Photography and Filmmaking

Back in 2008, I was living in Argentina, graduating after 3 years of studying photography, and this is when the 5D mark II was launched to the market… a camera that can shoot videos? No big deal I thought. Besides, I’m a photographer; I don’t need that feature... It’s been a long road since that day.

That camera created a massive revolution in the filmmaking industry because of its amazing quality of video.  And within four years, a serious war had started between companies, developing new products and gadgets relating to this new generation of HDSLR cameras.  Cinematographer’s students all around the world jumped on these cameras and started to make all sorts of movies. In the old days, you had to go to a film school, pay a big amount of money and rent expensive filmmaking equipment if you wanted to make a movie. That’s not the case anymore.

In 2009 I was already in Sydney when I met Leo, a friend who showed me for the first time what a time lapse was. One day we just went to the top of a hill, put a camera on a tripod and started shooting hundreds of photos. After that, he just put everything on his computer, edited very quickly, put a song of Eddie Vedder in the background and saved it as a movie. Wow! The result blowed my mind, and changed my entire vision. 

After that I noticed in a very clear way, that the line separating photography and filmmaking was getting thinner and thinner every year. Especially in these days, when people just want to access information faster and in the easiest way. People just got lazy in the way they consume information. If you have an article to read, and a video that explains the same thing, you would probably pick the video.

Filmmaking is a fascinating and completely different world. Photography is more like a solo type of profession. You just grab your camera whenever you want and shoot. Filmmaking is all about collaboration. In photography you are always looking for the “Decisive moment” that Cartier-Bresson's taught us. It’s all about that single and unique moment. The filmmaking is all about motion. And composition is only one of many layers. Create a good story, add sound, and edit in the right way and you can drive an entire audience into a magic journey.

I still love photography and always will. I love capturing that single moment, think and decide what to show and what to leave out of the frame. I love the fact that it is a something I can just do by myself… but… I can’t deny I’m really starting to fall for filmmaking. We live in exciting times, we can access everything we need to make a movie and tell a story. Your biggest audience is just one click away, so you don’t need a film festival to judge your movie if you don’t want to. But make no mistake; you still have to study thousands of things to do it properly. I know I will never watch a movie like when I was a kid anymore, now I see only camera movements, lighting, angles, I pay attention to the sound, music, rhythm, dialogs, color grading etc… because I know they are there for one specific reason. It’s just beautiful.

Mauricio

On the top is a behind the scenes of Ab Aeterno, that I captured through February when the brand was launched