Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com
A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
Matinee: '8328'
21 April 2018
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 236th in our series of Saturday matinees today: 8328.
And on this momentous occasion we are going to invoke our time-honored right to go a bit off topic with this superb little jewel of a film. You won't be able to watch it just once and you'll be dying to share it with someone, too.
It's only a bit off topic, though. We'll explain.
We close up shop every Friday about 2 p.m. to lean back in the old office chair and go through about 180 videos from various trusted sources looking for our Saturday matinee.
A lot of these are save-the-date, wedding and birthing videos, not to mention more blatant advertising for various professional photographers. We're lucky if we find a dozen videos that genuinely interest us enough to bring to your attention.
And often what we thought would be a good photographic treatment of a subject turns out to be a video.
It's just short of five minutes and covers two lifetimes.
That's made us wonder where exactly you should draw the line between stills and video.
A birthing video, for example, can be agonizing to watch. But a slide show of the same event can be glorious.
You might say the same for most weddings.
So many videos are really like trudging through the snow in house slippers. You want the Cliffs Notes. And a slide show gives you that. The highlights.
Which is why we really do prize a good wedding photographer over a video of the wedding. Unfortunately, many wedding photographers really overdo the whole thing with so many captures their coverage might as well be video.
No, no, we want the thing in a nutshell. Tell a story. Don't beat us to death. We'll cry if you get the shot. Promise.
And then along comes 8328, which is named after the street address where it takes place. It's the perfect video.
The two actors, Guy Thauvette and Alex Dupras, are spectacular. And the script does not include one extra word or skip anything at all. It's just short of five minutes and covers two lifetimes.
The framing of each shot and the editing is perfection. It could not have been done in stills.
Yes, it's in French with subtitles -- but, hey, they're Canadian.
You'll be amused, even delighted, and then surprised. And, at the end, saddened without (somehow) falling into despair. You will shift from identifying with the young one to the old one in the course of those five minutes.
So you'll forgive us for going a bit off topic this week. But for one week, we thought we'd show what only video can do. This.