My submission to the 2014 Project Greenlight competition. The Talent of Observation is a allegorical style pitch for a feature screenplay I'm developing currently titled 'Universal Youth'. It's a story about a young female photographer who follows her authentic path through a life-changing trip in Asia with a group of expatriate street photographers.
Being a avid photographer for about 15 years, I feel like I'm now just starting to get really good at it. The area of photography that interests me the most is street photography because it can be real, authentic, compelling, striking, political, visually interesting, and is the best fashion show all at the same time. It's also phenomenally hard to do and is quite possibly the hardest type of photography. Primarily because it's not staged and is all about capturing a moment which can not be authentically repeated. So getting good at street photography requires observation and an ability to know what's about to happen through heightened awareness. As I mentioned in a daily inspiration on Steve Huff's site, my ultimate goal is to create compelling street photography with a cinematic flavoring. What's so wonderful about doing so is those years of training have been completely applicable to becoming a better cinematographer as well. So extending that into being a storyteller, what better way to combine a love of the art form with writing a story of a first narrative feature centered around street photographers. Creating characters and using those street photography themes to further dissect observation of our culture and society.
The piece is divided into two sections. Action, being the subject matter, and reaction being the street photographers. All the people being photographed are not actors, most of whom don't know they're being photographed. They were shot with my street videography just like I shoot my street photography. Having turned into a now international street photographer for hobby, all the "action" footage was shot not with crew but while on holiday with my wife in Hong Kong, Tokyo, & Seoul. With additional "reaction" shots being done as pick ups with actors in Los Angeles and Vancouver.