Horse Videography: The Making of Decade-iversary

In this article we are going to discuss a client personal project that Gouda LLC was hired to complete. We're going to talk about what the client wanted, what extras we incorporated, and some of the challenges we overcame during this project.

The Proposal

The client for this project is a Tampa native, who has had her horse, Red, for 10 years. Growing up with Red, he has been a very important part of her life, and she has many memories made with Red. From racing, jumping, and just cruising through life, Red has been there through it all. Because of this, upon coming up on the ten-year anniversary of having Red, my client wanted to do something special to commemorate their time together. Hence, the conception of the "Decade-iversary".

The premise for the Decade-iversary is to create a film that showcases and celebrates the love and emotion between a woman and her horse. The client wanted to include emotional shots, some action shots, and some cinematic B-roll. A cinematic approach and feel to the film was desired, along with a combination of ground-based and aerial shots.

In addition to the cinematic short film, there would also be a photo session accompanying the shoot. In this photo session, we would take some photos of Red and my client riding together, looking at each other, and recreating poses from years ago. These photos would be included in the short film towards the end, as well as sent to the client separately.

The client mentioned that there was some land for Red to run around at, in addition to the barn at which he stays. The shoot would occur over a period of two days. While one day would be long enough to capture all of the content for the day, it was decided that a two-day period would be utilized to give Red a break. Filming during the Florida day is a strenuous activity, and, in order to stay safe for all of us involved, we would filmed over the course of two days.

The Location

The shoot was to take place at a couple of locations, all by the city of Keystone, Florida. This is more of a rural town, where farmland, farm animals, and Florida's countryside is more prominent. One of the locations was the barn where Red is kept at. Another location we had planned was the open land where horses are ridden, where there is plenty of space for Red to run around at and the client to ride him. All of the scenes are shot outdoors, which provided the difficulties of shooting in the heat, and of shooting in harsh lighting. Despite these difficulties, however, we were able to make use of the location to decrease the harsh shadows, or utilize them for creative effect. Because the location was in rural farmland, there weren't any concerns regarding airspace. This meant that I would be able to fly my drone virtually anywhere within line of sight.

The Vision

There are many small components to cinematography and filmmaking that make each film great. It is not a large intangible item, such as to say "a good film". Rather, it is the mastery of individual smaller parts that create a piece that makes people say "wow". In the case of this short film, there were several components that needed to be crafted in a specific way to achieve the vibe we were going for.

First of all, we wanted to set a solid establishing shot. After an establishing shot to give context of the setting and environment of the video, some emotional sequences were put used to set the tone/vibe of the video. Following the brief bit of emotional connection, we wanted to include some action scenes. Using the timing of the audio, we were able to transition smoothly to some action shots, and end it off with the montage of photos coming up on the screen.

This whole process gives the audience a smooth ride from start to middle to end for the minute and a half duration of this video.

What are your thoughts? What would you have done differently? Watch the video here and let us know!