Making of the video

Equipment:

• Camera: Olympus VG120 pocket camera
• Software: PowerDirector 10

This video shows how to effectively use a combination of stills and videos to make a story in video. The 3-minute video is made up of 14 stills and 3 video takes.

I start the story by showing the surrounding. A vegetable garden lies between my dad's apartment block and the market. Lucky him. The produce sold at the market cannot be any fresher! And with zero carbon footprint!

The 8 stills at the beginning were not necessarily taken in the sequence shown. I did not plan this video clip in advance. I simply wanted to photograph my dad in his surroundings. It will be very boring indeed to show only close shots of him. The real work is done on the computer with the editing software. The stills are of 5-second duration with overlaping fades in between.

Those stills are followed by a 12-second video of the subject walking along the path with a little comforting support. This blends with a 9-second video of subject negotiating his way up a couple of steps and between parked cars at the end of the pathway. It shows the challenges an 86 year-old Alzeimers sufferer faces in situations we don't even think twice about.

We then cut to a 1-minute 3-second video in the doctor's surgery. With child-like innocence, he was not quite sure what was being done though his doctor is familiar to him. Wiwik quickly comes to comfort him, encouraging him to bear the pain of the injection when he began objecting to the pain.

Next is a still (by Wiwik) taken in the surgery waiting room which I feel captures the lonliness of a person quite lost in his world. A bright, highly energised man now docile and totally dependent on others. Lucky he has wonderful Wiwik.

A sequence of 4 stills of 6-second duration each follows. In the first frame he is enquiring about some item followed by the next 3 with a panning effect to lead the viewer to what he and Wiwik were watching – the lady cutting up a chicken. I chose to use the choppy switch between the photos to increase the effect of movement in the stills.

I end the scene suddenly to black to give emphasis to the next shot (a real favourite of mine), a self-portrait by Wiwik – a truly warm shot of the two of them enhanced by the camera shake!