Brewing the perfect cup of coffee
What do you do when your wife leaves you home alone for a weekend to visit her parents back in the motherland? Make videos, of course!
As an 80s kid raised on “cigarettes and coffee for breakfast” infused Greece, I developed a love for coffee. I drink coffee in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. In case you wonder, no, it doesn’t affect my sleeping cycles. In fact, I sometimes have a double espresso at midnight after a hefty dinner.
As a coffee lover and an aspiring cinematographer who constantly looks for ways to improve his skills, filming and epic (???) Broll sequence while brewing fresh coffee in an empty house, was a no-brainer. Worst case scenario, I’d be left with a freshly brewed, delicious, cup of coffee to jump-start my weekend.
What I underestimated, however, was the time it takes to set up the gear, move furniture around to get the most out of London’s limited winter daylight, find the right angles and frames, make the coffee and film myself doing so. By the end, the coffee was cold without any aroma left, and pretty much undrinkable.
My creative process included listing beforehand all scenes and clips I wanted to include, in an effort to streamline the workload and get the best result. However, most of the scenes I had planned required a second person either operating the camera when I was in the frame, or making the coffee altogether. This resulted in a 2-hour long coffee brewing activity.
Needless to say, I had to improvise. I cut a few corners and scenes in the process and focused on what would work best during the editing process, with a cup of Nespresso this time. Hope you like the outcome. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Till next time…
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