Unedited Footage: A Grain of Salt

More and more I've been getting requests for unedited video footage from clients. It use to be that photographers and videographers rarely showed anyone their unedited footage for a number of reasons.

• The magic is in the editing.  Footage just looks better after it's been edited.
• We might experiment when shooting.  That results in a lot of throw-away footage.
• We might start recording before we dial in our settings or establish our framing, knowing that we can trim that off later.  That kind of stuff isn't supposed to see the light of day.
• And the list continues...

Now, I'm not the kind of videographer that will turn away a client rather than let them see the footage without any makeup on, but as long as the client understands that a lot of work goes into post production, I'll share it.

One of those things that goes into post production is color.  Now, in a perfect world a cinematographer might use white cards to balance the color in camera, but with location changes, the sun changing throughout the day, and crazy DJ lights in the dark, a lot of times we have to take a wild guess when we adjust our camera settings, and just plan on fixing it later.

Above is a video I shot of my dog, Cassette.  I did it fast, because she doesn't sit still very long.  I focused on her eyes and started rolling.  I didn't check my aperture, my ISO, my shutter speed, or my color temperature.  It was set to whatever I was filming last.  I just started rolling, not to waste a second, because any moment she might move.  Like I said, she doesn't sit still that long.  
This isn't unlike many kinds of spontaneous situations at an event.  Let's say I walk into the reception hall from outside and I come upon a memory in the making.  All of the settings from outside are going to be different from what they would need to be inside.  But rather than miss that moment, I shoot it with full intentions of fixing it later.  When you see that unedited footage, you might think "This looks bad!  Johnny must not know what he's doing."  But au contraire, I knew exactly what I was doing: Catching something before it was gone and knowing full well what I was able to adjust in post later.

So do I want you to see all the unedited footage?  Sure.  Just be understanding.  ;-)