Well, thinking about it twice...

I was thinking about this note I wrote the other day and well, maybe it is not so true. Sometimes I do feel everything even being behind the camera. I´m thinking about the interviews with Aiden. Yeah, definitely: when it is about people´s intimacy, people´s memories, people´s feelings, the “animal” stops. On those moments, I hide behind the camera so I can “take” what the person is saying. I mean, on normal circumstances, my face would be the one of a shocked, affected person, or maybe I would have tears in my eyes, but when I have the camera I just hide all that emotion by saying to myself “do NOT put the camera down. Keep filming. Do your job.” Actually, maybe being hidden behind the lens allows me to feel more: I am a pretty cold person. I don´t cry, I have trouble showing people what I feel. I block my emotions. Something really compelling comes to me and I close myself like an oyster. But when I am with the camera, I don´t have to do that, I can feel it all: I just make sure my eyes are on the viewfinder, and not on the person. The camera is my shell, but I am actually allowing myself to feel more than what I would under normal circumstances. Aiden, for example: sometimes I´m filming him, and he says something really, really compelling, really strong. I give myself the moment I need and then, when I´m ready, I take my eyes away from the viewfinder and look at him. In normal circumstances, you are always looking at the person, and you don´t have that moment. If you take it, if you look somewhere else, the person feels it. Not here, or not so much. It is just one moment, but a crucial one. Knowing that I have that moment makes me lower the guard and allow myself to connect and feel whatever I´m receiving while filming.




And then there is the other thing: sometimes, you are filming and looking through the viewfinder, and your subject gets the feeling that you are not really looking at him, or not really paying attention. That´s when they give themselves a moment and stop being conscious of the expressions in their faces. And they focus on whatever it is what they are doing, and it´s really intimate, because they think you are concentrated in your camera, so they give themselves a moment alone. What they don´t know is that you are actually getting a close-up of them and capturing all that raw emotion. You win.

This happens with Aiden A LOT.