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Matinee: Making A Living
11 February 2017
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 174th in our series of Saturday matinees today: a double feature of 'A Circus Act' and 'The Photographer,' each of which demonstrate ways to make a living with your camera.
We don't know about you but we found ourselves short a laugh or two this week.
Lucky for us, Circus Guide Entertainment Agency, an agency specializing in circus performers (among others) came to the rescue.
They call what they do "corporate entertainment solutions" but they operate from Ukraine and Australia so there's no telling where any particular performer works. We took a look at a few of the videos posted on the agency's site only to discover language was not a barrier to the humor, nor much of a clue either.
And it isn't in our video, which the agency describes as a mime act.
It begins with a photographer of slight build carrying a tripod and huge box, which turns out to be his camera, onto the stage. He sets up in front of a family sitting in the front row, poses them and gets behind his cloth, miming a count of one and two and ... well, no, wait.
There are a number of problems. Posing. Costume. But our photographer has solutions for all of them.
The camera seems to take the shot all by itself (and when it fires it sounds remarkably like a starter's gun). Development is instant and gives a new twist to the term "chimping."
The video quality is not great. It's overexposed. Auto exposure tries to make the dark background visible and thereby burns out the spotlit performer. But let that be a lesson to you should you ever find yourself in a darkened theater with a camera.
Still, it made us laugh. And, as in the best comedy, it made us think, too. The thought we had was, "Hey, maybe we could make a buck doing that."
But then we'd have to move to Ukraine (the mouse to Russia's cat) or Australia (where it was 117 degrees yesterday). International travel seems like a bad idea these days, generally.
And our second feature today, a Renault commercial, suggests sticking it out may be the better business opportunity. At least for a photographer:
We're not sure which track would be more profitable. But for a moment at least, we're going to explore our options.
That should be funny, too.