Do what you want to get paid to do.

Advancing your film career is somewhat a balancing act. Nothing makes you an easier mark for exploitation quite like earnest ambition. Veterans of the industry will always tell you to never do any job for free but when you start selling your services for a living wage, if you haven't shot that exact video ten time before, the market seems to laugh at you. Or worse, the phone just never rings.

Here's the thing the veterans will never tell you. That is, if you let money be your guide you'll end up with clients driving your career.  I don't know about you but I don't want that.  You'll do the same shit over and over again.  Your work will suffer.  You'll loose out on jobs that really excite you.

So you gotta give them a little more than what they pay for.  You probably shouldn't go overboard on every project but if you see potential in a project, don't be afraid to go the extra mile.  They might be paying you $600 to do the job but if you can make it look like they're paying you $1200, you're doing the right thing.  So go ahead and rent the right camera for the job.  Offer to put in a little extra time.  They'll appreciate the effort and it'll pay off in the picture.

Make The Most Of The Opportunity

Clients ask me about business profiles all the time. I've done them for Yelp via SmartShoot and I've done them for friends who have businesses. The process is simple. I show up and film the business for a couple hours and then we shoot an interview.
The best business profiles are always for clients who make an effort to make the best of their opportunity to collaborate with me. I tell clients, much like you might practice for your piano lessons, you have to prepare for your video shoot!

So I have a list of tips for clients.

1) Know what you want to say in a video. This doesn't mean you should prepare a speech and rehearse it.  Honestly, I'd rather you didn't.  One of my favorite client interviews was for Jade Bistro near Tampa. The speaker is the owner's son and I love his interview because he knows exactly what he loves about his mother's cooking. When he says "my Mom makes it, so I know its awesome" I just want to hug him. Best story, ever.

2) Know what you want to show me. Don't just tell me about your business, show it to me. For McMahon and Absolute Home Comfort of Boston, that was pretty easy. I had the guys pretend to work on projects around their own homes. Check out the videos. I'm happy with the results.

3) Break free from the office. Here is a video I shot with Brody Willis. Its okay but not spectacular. Watch the video. Did you notice how the speaker is talking about driving in a car and looking for a gas station or coffee shop? And yet the visuals are stuck at the office, staring at the guy's phone. That's a problem. It might take a little more effort to jump in the car and scout out some locations but that's the difference between an okay video and a great video. Always be prepared to go the extra mile.

4) Get your friends and family involved. For the Image Care Electrolysis video, I asked the practitioners to bring in their friends and family.  One of the "clients" is actually a practitioner.  This option saves you money because you don't have to hire actors. And it avoids awkward client confidentiality issues.

Generally the last thing I tell clients before wrapping up the consultation is my philosophy for compensation. Basically, I don't want to shoot a video unless I know its going to turn out great. I tell them if I'm not proud enough to post the video to my website or show it to potential clients, I'm wasting my time. And I think they appreciate that because it tells them that their business is my business.

The Collaborative Process

Its important to get the client involved in the process.

If you've ever dabbled in the wedding industry, you know that the client has the most clairvoyant concerns after the fact. The same is true for other clients. Your job, as the filmmaker, is to coax those ideas out in the pre-production phase. And keep documentation of your plans so if you run into disagreement later, you have something to refer back to.

You can also multiply your efforts if you work together, which is tricky because they'll tell you they'd prefer to stand on the sidelines and let you do your thing. Small businesses are especially guilty of this. You'll have to convince them to do a little prep before the shoot. Have them bring in a friend or family member to model for you. Ask them to think of some projects they can show you.

Clients might be hesitant to open up to collaboration. After all, they're paying you to do a job. They expect you to come and go like a plumber. I like to tell them I'm like the piano teacher. If they don't put in the time to prepare, I can't guarantee results.

Spring/Summer 2013 Cinematography Reel from Joshua Guerci on Vimeo.

My reel, as humble as it is, would be impossible without the help of my clients. When you get them on board with the collaborative process, they might ask to reschedule. That's okay. It means they're starting to take your services seriously and they want to make the best of an opportunity to work with you.

Leaving Cambridge

Two years ago, I was buying my first professional camera. The Sony NEX-VG10. It's not really a professional camera but it's a step up from the Hi8 cassette camcorder I got when I was in high school.

My greatest work was The Tommy Dean Show. In many ways, its still my greatest work. Its the only thing that makes me feel anything.

I've developed on my skills. Looking over my sloppy Occupy Boston work, the inconclusive outtakes from Storm Surge and onward through my misguided attempt at behind the scenes fashion shoot, I see spirit. But unrefined.

Fast forward. I've started doing a lot of videos for Yelp. I think I've shot too many of these and my eye is getting stale. But below is my favorite.

Emilia's Creation from Joshua Guerci on Vimeo.

Fusing discipline with passion is the next step.

Rani + Christelle

I edited this video for Silver Pix. The easiest part of editing this video was picking out the music. I knew right away I wanted something vintage cool and yet appropriate for a traditional couple. A little piano music by Bill Evans followed by some soulful Louis Armstrong bit. And I finished the whole thing off with Blossom Dearie. These songs are timeless and will be as beautiful thirty years from now as they are today.


Rani + Christelle Wedding Highlights Film from SilverPixStudios on Vimeo.

Home Remodeling

I got this project through Smart Shoot. They're sort of a referral service.  You apply to have an account with them and when jobs come up that they think you qualify for, they post them to a call board where you just click to claim them.  Not a bad way for a filmmaker starting out to get experience working with clients and finishing projects on a tight deadline.

This was a challenging video.  With a chef or a hair dresser, you can see what they do in an afternoon.  Things are a bit more involved with construction and home-remodeling services.  Their process can easily span over several weeks or months.  And because the assignment required me to wrap shooting in just a couple hours, I had to sit down with the client and get a little creative.

The client decided to focus on the small things to imply a bigger picture.  So I filmed them grabbing a saw blade, fixing an electrical panel, fixing the furnace in the basement and cutting lumber in the drive way.  And we performed the interview in the sun room next to a stack of ladders.  I'm not sure if the video conveys the entire scope of what these guys are capable of, but I am proud of how the individual shots came out.

The electrical panel scene posed particular challenges.  The room was small and dark.  I could boost the gain to achieve an exposed image, but I would sacrifice what little color the basement scene had to offer.  Also, the bare wood walls didn't offer much to keep the image very interesting.  Very flat and boring.  In bringing in a small work light and opening the door, we were able to save the shot

We had some similar issues with the furnace scene.  Just outside of frame is the work light.  You can see the guy's elbow in the background, holding the light.  I might have asked him to get out of the shot but his presence doesn't bother me.  He adds a little shape and interest to the background.

Freegans: Creative Living Outside of Capitalism

I have no idea who these Trash Lab guys are but I love this little spot about freegans. This taps into the reason why I love video. It gives people an opportunity to spend time with something they wouldn't otherwise consider. And best of all, its an experience that you are able to craft for them. You paint something together with light and sound. Freeganism is something that crosses political boundaries. Typically associated with socialist tenancies and the far left, freeganism is about identifying that something is wrong with the world as it is presented to us. I think freeganism is fascinating because its about creating a world for yourself that excludes that part of society that might be sick. It cuts off the cancerous part with absolute conviction. I like that idea.

Stopped And Frisked

Cops and corruption. I snagged this short from The Nation. Great story. Simple message. Whose job is it to police the police?

Film by Ross Tuttle and Erin Schneider.

Fashion Editorial

Fashion editorial videos are all about the closeups. As a cinematographer, I look for subtle expressive movements to capture and later edit into the final piece. Like a little tugging with the hand or a slight adjustment in the hip.

I had a lot of fun shooting this video for COUP Boston. If I had to do it again, I think I would be a little more assertive with the creative team about my needs to make the video. Frequently, I shoot with a very passive attitude. If I get it, that's great. If I don't, C'est la vie! But with a little added communication, I could have transformed this video from a good video into a great video.

Think of it as... cost per wear!

Video is expensive.  As a freelance filmmaker, I frequently task myself with tactfully educating my client as to the real cost of making video.  For example, the professional audio gear is not an upgrade.  It's like seat belts.  You need that.

From the production of the short film Nicky.

Its not unusual for a client to come back and say "well, it doesn't have to be that good."

In response to that, I'd like to borrow a piece of sales wisdom from the clothing retail industry.  Like in clothing, video frequently must address pricing concerns with the customer who thinks they can save a couple bucks through lowered expectations. 

I want to save people the mistake of making a poor decision that they will regret in two weeks when they don't get the views they were expecting.  This goes beyond production values and has more to do with developing a story or narrative that will retain an audience long enough to receive your message.

Don't think of it in terms of cost per video.  Think of it in terms of cost per views.  If you can double your views simply by incrementing your budget, your cost per view will go down.  You'll get more traction out of that video content.  You'll look back on the entire process having a better feeling about the whole thing.

Capturing The Story

John Gooding came knocking on my door around 7am.  I had crawled out of bed around 5am to film the morning train come into the station but I had gone back to bed so I was lying half awake, half in my sleeping bag.

"You guys want to go out in the boat today?" John asked.

"Lets do it," I told him.

"I'll be back in 20 minutes after I put gas in the tank."

So I lingered for another 10 minutes, drank some water and got my camera gear ready to go.

The three of us - Ben, John and I - were out in the water within half an hour.  Ben is the associate producer acting as sound engineer.  I'm the cinematographer.  John is our subject.  He was a hero during the response to Katrina and today, he continues to shine a light on the environmental fall out following the deepwater horizon oil spill.

It was a bit crowded on the little outboard whaler boat and water was splashing in over the hull.  I locked my camera gear away in the Pelican case and lamented all the moments I could not capture on video.

"If you want, we can go up river," John offered.  "We don't have to go out to Cat Island today."

I pulled the camera back out when we got to Cat Island.  Birds were diving into the water and eating fish.  Even 50 feet out, we had to be careful about beaching the boat so we couldn't get in very close.  The kit lens on my NEX-VG10 goes out to 200mm but the constant tilt and roll of the boat limited my ability to capture the story unfolding in front of me.

Temperature of 85 degrees.  Mild humidity.  We couldn't have picked a better day to go out to the island.

I put the polarizer and UV filters on and did my best to keep up.  As we pulled the boat on shore, John jumped out to look for tar logs.  He'd run out ahead of us pretty far and I wore myself out trying to stay ahead of him.

In response to the oil spill, BP dumped millions of gallons of neurotic dispersant to mitigate the disaster.  According to BP, the problem is all fixed.  According to others, like John Gooding, the oil is still out there and continues to wash ashore in the form of tar logs.  Little globs of tar and sand - roughly the size of a 40oz can of malt liquor.

John was picking everything up and smelling it.  Little black logs.  Most of the time it was charred organic material like burned logs.  Sometimes it was a tar log.  We also found a hunk of brown sticky rubbery god-knows-what.

Right as we were getting ready to leave for home, we saw storm clouds brewing on the horizon.  Specifically, storm clouds blocking our path back to the mainland.  We decided it was better to wait out the storm on land than to meet it in open water so we stayed put.

We watched as waterspouts dip down from the sky.  Fortunately, the lightening broke or we would have been more anxious about sitting in the path of the storm.  And as it approached, we could see the storm front as physical as a locomotive, barreling down on us.  I filmed for as long as I felt comfortable and then I put the camera back into the case.

Birds went crazy.  Bugs went nuts.  Our sunny day was quickly obscured by the clouds rolling in.  The wind picked up and tossed pellets of rain and saltwater into our eyes.  And I didn't get any of it on film.

After the storm passed we noticed the tide was beginning to change and that our boat was now high in the sand.  So there was that to deal with.  Racing against time, we got to pushing the boat back to the water.  We were soaked up through the soles of our shoes and as the sun came back out the wind dried our shirts and left chunks of sand on our skin and in our hair.

It pains me as a documentary filmmaker to sit back and let these experiences happen to me - especially the emotionally intense moments  - but perhaps it is important to let some of these moments go.  With my eyes free from the frames of the picture, I am able to see the bigger story.

That is, how people meet the challenges life presents to them if that be literal storms or the metaphorical storms of the human condition.

The next day, as John worked on his boat engines, the story manifested itself to me again.  He was trouble shooting an engine that wouldn't start.  He said when engines sit for a long time, the gasoline turns to varnish and blocks the fuel from igniting properly.  The puzzle was in finding the buildup and flushing it out.

With him today, John brought his daughter and his Slavic son-in-law to hand him screws and generally learn everything he knows about boat maintenance.

"Its useless.  This engine is not going to start," John's son-in-law declared.
Well, five minutes later he had it started.  And I captured the moment.  Where other people are quick to give up, John Gooding stays with his problems until he sees that they are fixed.  Its an admirable trait.  And its an incredible feeling, as a cinematographer, to find that trait that really defines a person and to capture it in pictures.  Its incredibly rewarding.

Mark Linkous Documentary

Sparklehorse is one of my all time favorite bands. I love the surreal lyrics and tiny intimate sounds that radiate from the music. This is a deeply personal documentary about the man behind the music. I'd like to see a hi-fi version of it somewhere.

From Tommy To Tornados

I am exhausted but I am still awake. My camera and computer gear is sprawled out across a dining room table. A dim lamp sits in the corner. Listening to My Bloody Valentine. I'm processing raw video files. We are mid-production on Storm Surge. A documentary film about communities rebuilding after natural disaster.

This is my first meaningful documentary film since my first effort, Tommy Dean & Friends.

I'm wondering how we're going to piece this film together. I'm wondering how this new project fits in with my personal development as a filmmaker. And I'm totally anxious about where this going to take me into the future.

The Tommy Dean film were somewhat high concept films. They were about Tommy Dean, the singer songwriter. As a character driven meditation on a theme, the narrative was free to jump back and forth and spiral out of control. Each scene revealed a new aspect of Tommy's world and the film held your interest for as long as you were interested in that special world I had to share with you.

Storm Surge is a different kind of film because we have important information we want to convey. First, we have the stories of survival. Personal testimonies of surviving natural disaster. Then we have the social and economical issue of disaster preparedness. We look at what people to do protect their families. And third, we have a call to action, inviting individuals to get involved with their communities in building something new.

Survival, resiliency and recovery.

I'm starting to wonder in what ways is Storm Surge also a high concept film. Is it about storms or is it about communities? Its about how storms shape communities. Storms can take the form of the literal natural disaster: a hurricane or tornado. Or in a more broad sense, a storm can be a man made disaster: oil spills. And in the most abstract sense, we can interpret storms as the clash of communities themselves: industry, capitalism, politics, religion, whatever, ect... everything breathing in and out and communing with the creative and destructive powers that be.

And like the Tommy Dean film, music is going to be the glue that keeps it together. More than that, music is the TARDIS that enables the narrative to jump from emergency responders to social media mavens to political figures to survivors.

This film is going to be a total psychic blast. A spiritual journey. And a tome to the human spirit. All that happy stuff.

Two Films I'm Pumped About

These two films are meditations on Detroit, the economic problems that face Detroit and the people who continue to live there.

The first, Street Fighting Man seems to be the most character based story of the two. It follows three characters in their struggle to rebuild the community they once loved.

Detropia is a personal project from the acclaimed filmmakers behind Jesus Camp. If this film is anything like Jesus Camp, I expect to see a fresh and surreal look at a subject that is at the front of American politics.

Hard Drives and Internet

I'm on the road right now. In Joplin, MO and talking to people about the community rebuilding efforts since the tornado that came through the town last year. It's been a total consciousness shifting experience. One big thing that I wish we had more of was hard drive space and internet connection. I am shooting an easy 30GB every day. Maybe half of my footage is backed up in two places and half of it is sitting precariously on only one hard drive. Following conventional wisdom of file storage, I don't have any footage yet. This drive could fail at any time and I would be fucked. Not an unlikely scenario for a dude who is currently camping in a tent.

We've been tossing around the idea of picking up a wireless modem. We would like to either upload our archived footage to the cloud or shoot the footage directly to our editors using bit-torrent.
We've been spending a lot of time at Starbucks.  I've been making the mistake of asking about natural beef at sports bars.   I've been struggling to drink enough water.  And I think I've seen more variety of bugs on this trip than I have in my entire life.  More on that later.

Jesus is so prevalent in all corners of life here.  There was a bible reading from The Book Of Job at the high school.  A middle school principal shared with us her experience in witnessing the hand of god comforting people through these hard times.  Many people recount stories about white butterflies or angels in black suits literally guiding people to safety.  To these people, the personal relationship with Christ is not an abstract or intellectual thing.  Its real.  They feel it almost on a primal level.  More on that later.

Shooting Live Bands

The Now & Forevers are an exceptionally watchable band, especially for a wedding band whose purpose is not so much to look pretty as sit back and create an ambiance for comfortable mingling. I had a lot of fun filming them and I would like to film them again.

Conspicuously missing from this video is the mingling. If I were to film them again, I would like to film them at an outdoor lawn party or some sort of well lit event where I can film people gettin' jiggy to their sweet jams.



Off the top of my head, I can think of three things that can help a live band video.

Picking an interesting location is probably the easiest thing you can do. It doesn't have to be a rooftop but that isn't a bad idea. A a jet hanger or cluttered film studio are some other ideas that work.

Finding a good on camera audience is another good option. I did this with my buddy Brody Willis for our Battle Of The Buskers videos. This is probably my favorite kind of live band video because it shows that music doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Lastly, you can find a band that just has a talent for sharing their love for music. Many otherwise amazing artists don't have this quality. The visual presentation of the music is generally an after thought. Materialistically so for indie bands. My favorite example is Tommy Dean.

Shooting live bands can be fun. A long time ago, I shot some stuff with KEXP. They do some great stuff with the tiny studio space they have so check it out.

The White Background

This is my first time working on my own as Gaffer. I've lit for scenarios like this before but always with an experienced Director of Photography looking over my shoulder, telling me what works and what doesn't.

And of course, I didn't have all the tools in my tool kit that I would like. No frosties or gels to soften the light. No flags or silks, either. No waveform monitors or histograms. Not even a light meter.



The result is a strange graduated background. And the skin tones are a bit warmer than I would like.

The narrative came together very nicely. Its a great mix of voices. And I like how the little light in everybody's eyes makes them look like they're on the verge of tears. I think I successful captured the honesty and earnestness of these women. So I'm pretty happy with that bit.

As soon as I get a chance, I'd like to find out the ISO rating of my camera. Then I'd like to get a light meter. I don't do a whole lot of interview scenarios where I would need lights and everything but I want to be ready for when that job comes in.

Emma Panda at Z-Rant

I tried some new things with editing here. In my previous bartender profile videos, I tried my best to maintain some continuity to convey the story of crafting a single cocktail. for this video, I tried to see just how little continuity I could maintain while still producing a video that felt natural. The result is a bit bouncy and flirty.



Do you think it worked?

Whitney Pallend at Cuchi Cuchi

Whitney Pallend at Cuchi Cuchi from Joshua Guerci on Vimeo.

From now on, I'm going to swallow my pride and use auto focus in these tight situations where I am having trouble focusing. In these low light scenes, I have to open up all the way to get a descent exposure and often sacrifice some depth of field. It makes it hard to focus, escpecially when running off the flip out screen and not the eye piece.

I use the Sony NEX-VG10. I am not afraid to push the gain all the way up because the noise doesn't bother me so much. The important thing is to tell a story and I believe this video gives us a good feeling for Whitney's personality.

I could have gone for a little bit more ambiance shots.

Editing Video for Rocco

I want to share some work I am doing for a client. I am editing these informational videos as part of a campaign to boost Rocco's SEO on his website. I hope it works.



I Photoshopped the logo in the beginning. The client's original file is much smaller with a white background. I lightened the colors and ran some filters to smooth the pixels over. This is also my first real effort with lower thirds graphics.

As a filmmaker, I must learn to embrace these opportunities. They teach me to be more methodical in my work. Lord knows I could use some help in that department.