12/15/2025
Always build in time to get beauty shots.
On one of the most visually-stunning assignments you could ever hope for, Will Frampton spent a week in April of 2007, filming in the grand open spaces of Utah and Colorado. The assignment was to interview a pair of artists, as part of a series of feature pieces for his then-TV station, the CBS affiliate in Columbia, SC.
What should have been a 7-hour drive from to western turned into a 10-hour journey, stopping at vista points to get beauty shots that were just too good to pass up. Those beauty shots became a key part of the editing process, later.
Things have changed since then. There were no stock video libraries like we have now. In 2007, every shot you wanted to get, you had to go get it, or hope it existed somewhere in your TV station’s tape library.
Still, heading into 2026, the practice of getting meaningful, relevant, original video of the places you go and the people you see is as relevant as ever.
How will you give a “sense of place” to your productions? How will you get unique video of people, to help your piece look different from everything else out there?
There’s the scheduling for interviews and immediate b-roll capture – then, there’s the time you leave for the “beauty” shots. The special, unique images that people maybe aren’t expecting, those visuals that give a sense of place, and time.
Whenever we schedule for a piece, we try – if at all possible – to leave time for the beauty shots. In an era when more and more video comes from stock libraries, or even AI generation, these organic beauty shots are the pieces of video that help a production truly stand out, and stand the test of time.
