More Imagination II

Here's the epilogue to this little story which is the educational value of this whole exercise:

Antonio: I apologize for the inconvenience Lucima, I meant no disrespect with the Kate Compton video replication. We didn't expect it to gain any traction as my videos aren't very popular. I saw your beautiful video and tried to replicate it.

I sent the idea over to a model and we loved it. We wanted to give it a shot. I'll take it down if you'd like. I meant no disrespect whatsoever. I'm a really small fish lol and a really big fan of yours.

In my description of the video, I posted that it was inspired by you.

Pleas let me know how you'd like for me to proceed. Keep in mind that right now, I am sending a message to one of my friggin IDOL's in this industry lol

Charles: Thanks for the message! I appreciate you reaching out to me.

Let me speak from an instructor's perspective. If you were my fashion photography workshop student, I would say that my only objection to your version is too similar. If you showed me a rough cut of the video I would have deterred you from making this the final cut. I would have instead asked you to "mix it up a bit". As I mentioned on Facebook, I want you to put your own style into it, put your twist on my original video, surprise me with a twist ending even, but whatever you do make it "your own".

Inspiration is one thing but in order to truly let your talents shine you have to allow yourself to have some creative control over the video. If you tie your video 100% based upon the original, then you are limiting yourself from expressing your abilities to their fullest extents!

If I were you, I would have brainstormed a bunch of different scenarios, endings, and other variations. Maybe I would do the complete opposite and instead of a dark and edgy video, I would do a soft and airy version with very bright lighting and a slower song. Maybe I would use multiple girls and while still adhering to the original structure of the video, I could change the storyline and make it a casting call where the girls showcase their talents. Like this:

L U C I M A | Condition One from Charles LUCIMA on Vimeo.

In this video I needed a storyline for our DSLR fashion video workshop and I borrowed the structure from my Kate Compton video but I changed enough elements to make it unique. Especially with the twist ending. Here's what our brainstorming/concept session sounded like.

My goal is not to have you take down your video. It's yours and I apologize if people have attacked you on social media (which is what I suspect has happened), probably as a result of me posting your video on Facebook. I want you to keep doing what you're doing. I have seen many copies of my video before and most of them have been very poor quality with shooting and editing. You have real talent with video. You learned how to mix 60fps into a 24fps timeline and play around with the movement of time throughout the video. You just have to have more faith in yourself and let your talents shine through your own ideas. There are many opportunities for us all to learn (from each other) and expand the medium of fashion videos.

Who knows, maybe next time you'll inspire me to shoot something!

Cheers!