H44,
I know more about life and work than film, so here is the real underlying reason why you failed.
You had zero hustle in your game. You are probably a millennial if I had to guess. Even if I am wrong on that front, I'm not wrong that you had no hustle. Every generation has lazy people in it.
This is your first real job (as far as we know). Why didn't you do everything in your power to knock this one out of the park? You should have worked twice as long and three times as hard on this project than anyone expected in their most unreasonable expectations of you.
I see no reason why a time lapse wasn't included on this. Borrow a second camera for time lapse. (Even a two hour time lapse is something). Use your phone. Borrow someone else's phone. Get someone to help you. My $250 Panasonic point and shoot can do time lapse. Get a used GoPro, find a f#($!@ g second camera!!! Hustle!!!
Show up on the weekend. People work on weekends all the time. Saturday and Sunday. You say you were given two hours a day???? Bullshit. Stay longer, come early, stay late. Come out there three times a day. Get the sunrise over the project. Every shot is high noon. Get up early man! Hustle!!!
You say you can't get up close? Bullshit. You didn't try. Ask people if you can film them. If someone says no, ask someone else. I worked in construction. You can get up close. You can zoom. You didn't even try! Hustle!!!
Your next job depended on this job. How can you not know that? You were given an opportunity to show the world that you can do this and you barely even tried. Hustle!!!
There was no plan, there was no effort beyond showing up and shooting a few shots, there was no extra time or effort put in to it. I have nieces and nephews and this is how they act. Do the bare minimum to get by and go home and play or drink.
I can see it in your final product. You didn't even review this before putting it out. You didn't go over it and try to see what is wrong, try to make it better. There was absolutely no effort put into making this the best product you are capable of.
You threw a bunch of clips on a plate and served it to us and asked us to put it together for you. Jeez, the ending showed just how much you don't care.
If you want to work as an independent anything, you have to put in 12 hour days, 6 days a week. You have to hustle. When you hit a roadblock, do not allow it to become your excuse as to why plan X didn't work out. Try another route. Hustle!!!
You are not cut out for any self employed position with the half assed excuse ridden answers you give us to every question.
Learn the art of hustling and working hard and you can make up for deficiencies in other parts of your work.
Okay thanks. The client is also my boss in my day job. He would send me out for two hours or less a day, and then he wanted me to go back to working my regular job, since I work for him. So he literally only gave me two hours or less a day. I couldn't just put off my regular day job, and work 12 hours a day on this unless he wanted me to, which he didn't. There are times I would show up to get more shots, and he would tell me no, and put me to work in the office. Since he is my boss I have to do what he says, don't I?
I didn't think of the time lapse, in this type of project and style, but will considerate next time, and learn more about doing one. I don't like leaving my camera out there though, when I have to work on another job, though, and who knows what would happen to it.
If the boss was willing to have me come in for 12 hours a day, to get all this footage, then I would have. But he only allowed 2 per day at most. So if I need more hustle, and the client says I can only be there at this time from this time, and that's it, then what? He had the final say. If they did work weekends, I didn't know about it, and the boss told me two hours day, monday to thursday, that's all I get.
As for a time lapse, I just wanted to give the client what he asked for, and he never discussed a time lapse in the plan. He wanted before and afters, but I did tell him at the time that a time lapse was not possible, or so I didn't think it was, with only being able to do it for 2 hours a day. He said that's fine. So since he said it was fine, I took at as fine for him.
You say if I want to work independent on anything I have to put in 12 hours days, six days a week. But what about my regular day job. I still need to make money and pay bills in the mean time. So what can I do to work that many hours, when I have a job and I cannot make enough money off of filmmaking alone? If I told him no, I won't do my regular job, and I'm going to shoot more footage instead, I would work risk getting fired. I am not blaming him or anything, on having two hours a day, but he does have the power to fire me, not just from the video gig, but from my regular job as a whole.
As for getting in closer, they told me I couldn't but I guess next time, I will just not listen and do it anyway
. Now that I see the time lapse video and it turns out I can do it on my camera, I can consider it for future projects. However, since I have a day job, how can I leave a camera in one place for a whole day, without it being stolen or broken, by someone? That's my fear, as I am not stupid enough to do that.
As for throwing random shots together in the editing, what can I do better in the editing, of this project? I edited the footage in the order of the changes made to the building so is there anything I can do to make it feel in order, and not random?
And yes, I suppose I could have gotten the sunrise over the project. I didn't really occur to me to do a sunrise. That's good advice for next time, thanks.
