Chalabre, France from the Chapel on the Hill

Some of you will have gleaned from some of my posts that I am an American living in England with another house in Southern France that we’re renovating.

It now looks like I’ll be spending more time in France than England, mainly because we own the French house lock, stock and barrel. It’s a matter of economy.

Anyway, it got me thinking.

You see, the house is pretty big. When we’re done with the major renovations next summer, we’ll be able to sleep 20 people. Two kitchens, 5 bathrooms across two connected houses (one 17th century, one 14th century) with a private terrace (which is actually within the ruin of a 3rd connected house) on the market square in a historic French town about 1000 years old with a castle on the hill in the foothills of the Pyrenees, steeped in history and in one of France’s best wine regions.

My wife, a sculptor, wants to start some sculpture master classes here, so I wondered if there would be any interest in my starting up a Run and Gun Videography boot camp. It would be based on the book Run and Gun Videography–The Lone Shooter’s Survival Guide, and the idea is that you’d come here for 10 days and we’d do some basic courses and then go off on forays to anyone of a number of fascinating places around here to shoot a video and edit it on FCPX. We can even do multiple video edits as there are always interesting events happening around here throughout the summer (concerts, street parties, etc.) regardless of the various historic or geological destinations that abound. If you use some other NLE, I guess you’d have to bring along a laptop.

You’d have a room and you’d be wined and dined with great food, including the best vegetables you’ve ever had (no Monsano here) and there’d be time for social activities and other fun as well.

I realise that many of you might think that is all wonderful, but sadly out-of-budget, but I also know there are those of you who have either had successful careers or have taken up video as a hobby or second career and the idea of travelling to France for some training and fun is not out-of-the-question.

But if you do come, I promise it will not only be the trip of a lifetime but also extremely valuable in terms of what you will learn and be able to do from here on out as a professional videographer.

I look forward to some comments/feedback on the idea.

Cheers, Joe

The Video Whisperer