Shooting Nothing
Recently, I did one particular shoot for a corporate client. I was hired through a recommendation of my shooting abilities. The job was simple - I was to go into an empty office space and film it.
Sound? No. Subjects? No. Anything in particular? Just film the empty space.
There are certain jobs that cause me to pause and appreciate the irony and absurdity of life. I had invested the equivalent of a new home into my education and spent the last 15-something years honing my creative abilities...and after everything is said and done, I'm still playing with a camera in an empty room.
And yet, I have to admit, there is a method to the madness of shooting emptiness. How can I make an empty room be visually interesting? The fundamentals of depth, shadow, light, color, movement, and shapes are all in play. What time of day does the sun spill into the space? What kind of angles can I play with? What will movement look like? The client obviously wants to get a sense of light and space, so how can I best achieve that?
With my ego shushed, I found myself having a lot of fun exploring the space with the lens. Squeezing behind walls and pillars to expand or compress depth. Panning left and right, titling up and down, to reveal pools of light and curtains of shadow. I spent about an hour shooting every which angle and crevasse before I felt satisfied that I got 30-45 seconds of empty space.
The client said I nailed it. The footage was a hit.
