Working as a professional director and cinematographer over the past eight years has allowed me the opportunity to shoot in more than 25 countries and I am so grateful for the many wonderful experiences this career as a videographer has given me. One of the highlights was a short documentary I shot in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco about a small community of Berber rug weavers.
Setting up a timelapse on the road to Tazenakht, Morocco
Still from the final timelapse footage
The people, the landscape, the textures and the light are all so beautiful in the region that one can pretty much point a camera anywhere and get something decent. This was good news for me as I was operating as a one-man film crew on this project and we had limited time in the locations so we had to make the most of every minute to make sure we got what we needed. That said, I always want to try to be the best cinematographer I can so it was a case of finding the right balance between meeting the schedule demands but also being happy with the images we were getting.
Berber women at work
Weaving Studio
As you can see from the phone shots above, there was very little pre-production or set design required as the locations already had so much character.
My main focus was on controlling the light as the rooms often had white walls and the light had little shape to it, so the challenge was to find ways to create contrast in the image while keeping the equipment out of the frame. We used a lot of flags, spare black cloth and doors to cut and shape the light where possible as well as adding to it at times to supplement the light that was coming in through the windows. Below are some images from the final film that were shot in the above locations.
The women at the rug cooperative where we were shooting were amazingly hospitable and really natural on camera. They seemed to have an intuitive understanding of the time it takes to do filmmaking well and perhaps this patience is, in part, derived from their meticulous weaving practices that take so much time and care.
Above: we often jammed the slider into whatever support we could find to avoid the obstruction of cumbersome tripods. Below: Some of the resulting stills from the above set-up that ended up in the final documentary.
We also shot some drone footage to give another aspect to the film and give a sense of the true power of the awe-inspiring landscape. It was a bit hairy at times when the wind picked up but thankfully we were able to get the drone to safety in time and the footage added a lot of production value to the final film.
One of the things I love about being an independent videographer is the variety of work you find yourself doing, one day you are working as a cameraman in Seoul and another you will be flying a drone through the peaks of the Atlas mountains.
I would love to return to Morocco at some point and shoot more there as it really is a wonderful place. The weather plus the architecture even had me thinking about trying to buy some real estate there as it could be a great place to live.
Scouting locations on a rooftop in Essaouira. Everywhere we went, as soon as people heard we were making a film about rugs they would kindly invite us into their places and encourage us to shoot and/or buy one of their products.
Shooting a timelapse of shadows moving across the architecture.
This documentary was kindly made possible by Revival. The final film can be seen below: