The Adventures of Mike's Camera- the blog of Michael Hudson Photography
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professional video
Over the last five or six years, video has become a major part of what I do. I shot my first commercial video back in 2009 with a Canon 5D2, one of the first cameras to put professional videography in the hands of anyone who could afford a D-SLR. Since those early days, I’ve upped my game and now usually shoot a two (or sometimes three) camera setup with a Canon Cinema camera and an R5 or R3. I love to tell stories through video.
Back in the 1990's and early 2000's, when I still did weddings, there was no better lab in the country to send my film to than Burrell Color in northern Indiana. For years, there was a regular flow of film and prints back and forth between my office and their lab. So it was pretty cool yesterday to shoot a video interview of the lab's founder and owner, Don Burrell, in his home for another long-time client of mine. For years his smiling face was ever present at the front of every catalog the lab sent me and it was nice to see that he was just as friendly a guy as he always appeared to be. He even showed us his beautiful home and indoor pool. I told him he'd done pretty well, and he thanked me for giving him my business all those years. Then he even told me to look around– and that I had helped him build that big, beautiful home. You're welcome, Don.
This summer has been packed with various assignments, and I’ve done a fair bit of traveling for work, both in and around Illinois, as well as in Michigan, Indiana, and Minnesota. But in June, the third largest grocery store chain in the country, ALDI, contacted me to talk about shooting some video for their website. And it turns out the site they chose to do all the shooting at was my local ALDI, just five minutes up the road.
The job called for shooting several scenarios throughout the store, highlighting different aspects that make ALDI unique: their 25¢ grocery cart deposit, some of their special product lines, and several of their money saving programs that keep their prices lower than the competition, like having shoppers pack their own bags.
My assistant, Tim, doing his duty…
We squeezed a lot into the five hour shoot, starting at 6:30am when there were no customers around, using models as shoppers. Later, it was a challenge to not have recognizable “real” shoppers in the shot, though they pasted signs all over to let them know it was a possibility. We shot in 4K resolution, to output later to 1080p, and the clips will be used on an updated version of their website in the near future.
