What is B-Roll?

One of the most used industry terms not used outside the video industry is 'b-roll', what is it? Glad you asked! 

B-roll is basically any footage that is not an interview or someone talking to the camera. While the 'B' might seem to conotate something of secondary importance, b-roll is actually the creative and eye-catching part of a video, and is what makes a video interesting to look at!

It's also something used to create transitions between scenes and hide 'jump cuts' in editing.

b-roll can be a million things, from timelapses to steady-cam shots, product shots, etc., but the common thread is moving images that help tell the story. 

blue

On the road from Dallas to Austin, about 4 years ago.

Adventures with Essam: Part 1

Old Times. Spring 2012 Corpus Christi,TX

This was when Essam and I were shooting stock footage for Getty Images. This night we filmed around the refineries in Corpus, the security guards kept questioning us, but eventually we made friends with one, and he gave us a ride back to our car when it started raining.

November 2010, Austin,TX

Mueller Sunrise & Sunset

I finally used my ladder to get onto the roof of my house, here are two samples from my first timelapse up there! I plan to often leave my camera on my roof to capture the epic Texas sky whilst I slave away editing video.

What sort of story am I in?

"The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot. We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is not satisfied with a merely psychological explanation of our lives. It doesn’t do justice to our conviction that we are on some kind of journey or quest, that there must be some deeper meaning to our lives than whether we feel good about ourselves. Only people who have lost the sense of adventure, mystery, and romance worry about their self-esteem. And at that point what they need is not a good therapist, but a good story. Or more precisely, the central question for us should not be, “What personality dynamics explain my behavior?” but rather, “What sort of story am I in?” -William Kilpatrick

Place & Setting in The Former Hero

Annie Dillard on Writing (and Video Editing)

I've been listening to Annie Dillard's A Writer's Life while I swim laps in my neighborhood (Mueller) pool, I came to the above passage half way through my swim, I like how it translates from writing to video editing, so I've reproduced the passage, changing 'page' to 'timeline' and 'write' to 'edit':

“Who will teach you to edit video?

The timeline, the timeline, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the timeline, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the timeline, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the timeline in the purity of its possibilities; the timeline of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength: that timeline will teach you to edit.”

— Annie Dillard

our lovely sound girl

new business card

Light

“Light is at the beginning of cinema, of course. It’s fundamental—because cinema is created with light, and it’s still best seen projected in dark rooms, where it’s the only source of light. But light is also at the beginning of everything. Most creation myths start with darkness, and then the real beginning comes with light—which means the creation of forms. Which leads to distinguishing one thing from another, and ourselves from the rest of the world. Recognizing patterns, similarities, differences, naming things—interpreting the world. Metaphors—seeing one thing ‘in light of’ something else. Becoming ‘enlightened.’ Light is at the core of who we are and how we understand ourselves.” - Martin Scorcese

Sailing on Aransas Bay

"We have been called to participate in the world’s creation from the very beginning. Making music. Baking cakes. Sewing curtains. These things mean something greater: that we have been known from the very start. Our eye color, our hairline, our jawline, the shape of our big toe, the tone of our voice. These things have been designed from the very beginning. What kind of music we listen to. The sort of skirt that looks good. The baseball cap, the tennis shoe, the orange bandana. We have been made to find these things for ourselves and take them in as ours, like adopted children: habits, hobbies, idiosyncrasies, gestures, moods, tastes, tendencies, worries. They have been put in us for good measure."

-Sufjan Stevens