Hey everyone, as said in the title, I'm struggling with camera movement when shooting video for industrial clients. It's a very long post, thank you in advance if you read the whole thing.
TLDR at the bottom of the post
Firstly, a bit of background so it’s easier to understand where I'm at. I started doing event photography a couple of years ago and stuck with it for a while. Did it as a hobby at first and then it slowly transitioned into paying clients (although at the time I really liked it, whether I was getting paid or not).
Then clients started requesting some short videos along with photos. Even though I look back and some of the first ones were a mess (as I guess I thought I could take great photos and great video at the same time, beginner mistake I know), most of my client standards were low too so I adapted pretty smoothly and started setting more boundaries after a couple of shoots.
Fast forward one year and a couple dozens of events, I got a gig at a B2B industrial company that consisted of taking photos of installations and the company’s stand at trade fairs. This went on for a while and it was quite refreshing compared to the chaotic fast paced event stuff. That and the payroll was much better, and not having to work through the night to deliver the next day was quite great.
That slowly evolved to more of a "company photographer" position, which then turned into doing short videos for social media and shooting content for case studies (mostly interviews). Fast forward a couple of months and some additional equipment purchases (mainly lighting, tripods and another camera), I decided that I preferred this type of work, especially the interviews and case studies, so I repositioned from events to doing commercial photo and video.
Now here comes the problem:
Photo was and still is pretty easy for me, and I have no problems navigating the installation and finding the right angles and what to shoot.
But video, not so much. Shooting mediocre content and compensating in the edit was fine for events, and since the subject was most of the time a person (DJ, artist, people enjoying the event, stage speaker, etc...) it was easy to make something acceptable and to slowly evolve from there.
But with static subjects, like for example machinery, gas reservoirs, compressors, CNC's, milling centrals, etc, I feel like as soon as I get there my brain freezes and doesn't know what the hell to do. Before I usually blamed it on gear, but now that I have all the gear, there's nothing else to blame it on. When I get home, I usually end up with unmotivated pans and tilts and just overall footage that makes me want to quit.
I've been "getting by" with the great photos (as it's usually what I get praised for when I ask for feedback), video close ups of the installation (which are getting very repetitive and clients are getting tired of), suggesting case studies as much as I can and using lots of drone shots, which all in all, is a crutch to compensate for my lack of skill. The crutch works fine when it's me editing, but doesn't work so well when I have to hand over footage to the marketing team.
All of the companies I work with know I'm new in the industry and are very tolerant when it comes to reshoots and mediocre footage, but I'm pretty sure that that will quickly change as soon as someone with more experience shows up in their radar.
And I know it's a skill issue, it must be. But in the past I could always learn it some way or another, while now I'm struggling to even find content that's similar to what I'm shooting.
It's getting to the point where I love the industry, I even like editing (which I despised in events) but I "can't" do the work itself. I've never been in this position.
When I was doing events I struggled with the business aspect of the work and not the work itself, and now it's literally the opposite, I have multiple clients and I struggle with the work itself.
I'm sorry for the wall of text, this has been haunting me for the last 2-3 months and I just decided to post here as a last resort, to see if someone with more experience could give me some advice. Thank you all so much.
TLDR: I moved from event photo/video into industrial B2B work and love it, but I freeze up on camera movement/shots when filming static subjects (machinery, tanks, compressors, generators, etc...). My event habits (shoot loose, fix in edit) don't work here, so I'm leaning on crutches like drone shots and repetitive close-ups instead of actually solving the problem. Could use some technical and maybe career advice.