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You Ask Well first it's important that you have a working knowledge of and feel comfortable working with bees. Then you need the bees. You really need to keep in touch with the weatherman because bees don't like to work in the rain or cold. Now the bees are usually pretty easy going but like most actors they can get a little rowdy at times. When that happens you just stop what your shooting and let them go back to their dressing rooms for a while and calm down. Kind of like a time out for the bees. You need to find a video company who is willing to work with bees or at least talk to you and listen to what you have planned and what you have to say about how easy bees are to work with. The first four or five companies that I tried screamed when they heard the word BEES and told me to have a nice day but they didn't want to shoot videos of bees. When attempting to do videos about bees, you really have to sell the idea that bees are docile and easy to work with and that takes some doing in most cases. A couple of bottles of free honey, candles, hand cream, and lip balm made from your hive products usually helps a little bit. Once I found someone who took the time to listen, we spent many hours drinking coffee, discussing what I wanted to show, drinking coffee, how I wanted to show it, drinking more coffee, and what point I wanted to get across. The guys were good really about that (especially the drinking coffee part) and had some great suggestions that helped make the video a success. They knew a lot about the video business but absolutely nothing about bees other than they sting, but on the other had I knew nothing about the video business either so now I had to put them through Beekeeping 101 and teach the videographer and the director the basics about bees so they would be able to look at, see, and shoot what I was attempting to show and explain and they had to put me through Videography 101 so I knew where and how to stand and how to show the camera what I wanted it to see. I think the guys believed about 10% of what I told them, but 10% is better than nothing, although they still wouldn't get close enough to a hive to put an X on the ground where I was supposed to stand. I guess now would be an appropriate time to introduce the guys that work on the video crew.
The picture with the two guys on the left of it are the fellows from the company that shoot my videos Tel-Cas Video Productions. The camera man (in white) is Rick Foti who has over 20 yrs experience in film and video. He has worked for NBC and Disney. Now along with this company he manages our local government broadcasting station and is in charge of all the video that the county I live in produces. The guy in the blue shirt is Al Camoin. He's the director and co-owner of the video business with Rick. Al has well over 40 years with NBC and has 8 Emmy Awards displayed in his living room. When we first started neither of these guys knew anything about bees but they were great on the video end. Now that we've done six videos together they have learned enough about bees that I can't get away with anything anymore. Both these guys are the greatest and we have all become good friends, and Al's wife Lee makes really good coffee. I never realized what a director did until I started making these videos. He's the one who doesn't want anything to do with the bees and stands way back watching the filming on a monitor screaming at everyone. Throughout all of our video shoots one thing I noticed is that Al who is always yelling orders, never yelled at the bees. Hmmmm! OK now that you know everyone we'll get back to the video making process. The next thing done was to work on a story board which is like the blueprint to the video with drawings, charts, and text. It tells the story of the video from beginning to end. The first story board filled up an entire wall in the office and took about a month to complete. The more videos we did the more compact and easier the story boards got. There are a lot of changes made to a storyboard during it life time, but when it's done you can almost see what the video will look like when completed. Since our first video (An Introduction To Beekeeping) was designed for the beginning beekeeper and was a video about an entire beekeeping season it was a big one. In order to fit in all the information we wanted to show and the story board was eventually broken up into five segments which is how the video is shown. We wanted to show the whole season from building equipment to harvesting honey it took an entire year to shoot the video. We had hours and hours of raw footage, re-shoots and almost as many hours of what we now call BLOOPERS. Believe me when I say that the Blooper shows on broadcast TV have nothing on us. Each segment was shot and/or re-shot and then edited and re-edited until we felt it was exactly the way we wanted it not only from a beekeeping standpoint, but also from the standpoint of video aesthetics. It was then laid down on a master video tape. There were a lot of hours that went into editing and had it not been for Rick and Al's knowledge of video and editing I think this first video would have been a disaster in the making. Since that first 1994 video, we have made six more and thanks to Rick and Al I've gotten a little more accustom to the world of video and I think they have gotten a little more used to bees. Al's first shoot with the bees had him sitting in a closed up car in the middle of an orange grove about 75 feet away from the hives watching the shoot on a six inch monitor fed by video and audio cables from Rick's camera. It took us about a half an hour to get Rick suited up. We put him in bee suit with gloves and a veil and taped him all up so he felt comfortable that the bees wouldn't attack and carry him away. By the end of all the shooting for An Introduction To Beekeeping Al was out of the car and Rick was down to just coveralls with no gloves or veil. Rick got stung once and Al escaped with no injuries at all. I think the only reason Al got out of the car was because we couldn't hear him yelling from there and Directors like to yell. By the end of our sixth video together (Back To The Basics Of Inspections) both Al and Rick were becoming somewhat accomplished in the art of beekeeping and I was still trying to figure out where to stand. As you can see from the photo above which was taken on the last shoot of Back to the Basics they have both become comfortable working with bees. Al has even gotten close enough to take some still pictures of Rick as he was shooting and Rick has gotten close enough to shoot some shots into the entrance of the hives. They even got close enough to finally show me where to stand although I never did get my X put down on the ground. |
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What's
Involved in Making a Beekeeping Video 
