Documentaries
Throughout the course of my career I have found myself doing Documentaries anywhere from a documentary on a church to a famous celebrity. Documentaries were and still are my passion because it allows the cinematographer to capture the individuals story or even a certain object's story whether its in a street in Cuba or a street in Beverly Hills everyones story is unique and some even have stories that can win awards if done correctly. Documentaries are typically and generally about a person, place or thing a "noun". This person, place, or thing is typically described and has a story to go a long with it. That story has to be brought out through the imagery used in the video which is one of my most favorite parts because of the risk in it. The risk of it being a hit or miss in which the entire video could come out looking good from the shoot or a complete disaster without a beginning.

The Adventure of being a Cinematographer

Throughout the adventure of being a cinematographer a characteristic most don't ever recognize is the versatility the actual photographer has. A cinematographer is a just a photographer who captures an image. When I first started to learn cameras they were a completely new object that I had come encounter of and I found myself just like video games as a child getting completely hooked on it. When I first started I started by taking simple photographs on my travels and evolving from the basics of photography. A Cinematographer is only a title given to those who have mastered shooting what they can imagine through the vision of their camera.

Television: The Documentary of Our Older Generation

Television was a documentary about the generation before our current one, the people who experienced technology come out of no where such as the television. These are their experiences from differently parts of the world. I have select people I could find at the time ranging from a person ,'Jethro', from a Alaska, another from the midwest, and lastly two from a more modern area on the west coast. These people all had a chance to experience television during its prime years and through its changes. These are their experiences a long with some fascinating memories.

The reasoning behind doing this documentary was generally because I became fascinated at the time to create something of history for myself. Some of these people are actually not around anymore or have passed on to their next step. So having the opportunity to record them was an honor.

RAQFILMS and How it began

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202859056337725&l=8fbec9203e

  Freshly out of high school I myself, Raymond, sought after new type of task. In High School I was an Athlete, playing sports ranging from Soccer to Cross Country. Towards the end of my Senior year in high school I started investing more time in myself in which I realized that I had been using these softwares such as after effects and sony vegas for almost 5 years now at the time and I was really good at it that I had knocked out a project for a non profit organization similar to Goodwill. 

RAQFilms formed after high school when I took the chance at taking the artistic career field in which I had a passion for over soccer at the time. RAQ films was created after the fact that established my first major style of shooting. I used a lot of Rack Focus in the beginning of my scenes. Using three initials from my name I had come up with RAQ in which a definition is still being established, but has its foundations centered and established.

In the beginning it was about the effects and cinematography and still continues to be that way today towards the Entertainment field of doing video such as Music Videos and Dance Videos. 

C NEZZ - Benjamins

C Nezz - Benjamins was one of my first professional music videos. This video took very little to a lot of work to produce. You might ask, did he just say very little? to a lot of work? The video itself we decided to do it on a boring day and a friend had asked if we could do a video for him. So we had decided that we could do it that day if we paid us. Paying us a good sum, we went out and chose a spot within the first few minutes. Bringing nothing but a tripod and 5d MKIII the video was shot in an hour and left for editing.

The artist was himself was so excited to see it that he had come over during editing, which is one thing I myself have always hated. Looking at it he loved it, which gave us a confidence boost in which we would go on to finish this music video in a whole new style than what we had done before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kUCTMLIaxY

Constantly Staying Busy.

An artist is his/her own critic, meaning that you will judge your own work harder than anyone else. I myself conduct a lot of work and always find myself criticizing it the most while everyone else loves it. One of my more recent pieces of work was this little mini film I had done with my business partner William Gonzalez. It consisted of just an older modern look of a tourist walking down the street towards an alleyway where the fight scene takes place. In this scene I wanted to show gruesome striking as well as a very gruesome but unique piece of work. Like every other short I do in my spare time, I like to just go out to locations I know of or new areas I have been dieing to shoot in and just simply come up with an idea and shoot. This one being one of those that we had rushed and had done in a last minute shoot after all other ideas failed. We always learn from our shoots especially this one and continually get better at having to come up with something last minute.

Raqfilms The Beginning

 

 During my time as an Artist and as a person in general evolving RAQFilms from it just being the initials of my name to something people recognize I had the time to evaluate a lot of things and projects. Projects including events, Films, Commercials, Music Videos, etc... Through that experience I had the chance to really establish what I want in this career field. Where I began to get my inspiration from was from the Vegas Night Clubs and the Night life Scene, I was always fascinated by it even though its not exactly what everyone expects. I started out with the Rave scene in which I had met my business partner and he had introduced me into this life style. He showed me the safest and realest way to evolve as a Camera Operator. He guided me as I was young and helped me grow as an individual. The life helped me experiment with cameras and learn them to the fullest under low light environments. Truly in the end my foundation came of RAQFilms was from the contribution of my colleague and the night life I was exposed to in Vegas.