Why I Stepped Away From Videography and My Personal Outlook On the Medium
Over the years, my relationship with video production has taken me down many different paths—across countries, through industries, and eventually back to the place where I grew up. Along the way, I experienced moments of excitement and discovery, but also periods of doubt and disillusionment.
This series of reflections is not meant to offer universal answers about video production, nor is it a manual for succeeding in the industry. It is simply my own story—one shaped by personal choices, encounters with new tools and communities, and the questions I couldn’t help but ask about what it means to create.
If you are someone who has ever wrestled with creativity, questioned your own path, or wondered whether the work you’re doing truly matters, then perhaps parts of this account will resonate with you. At the very least, I hope these reflections provide insight into one individual’s journey through the evolving landscape of video—and why, despite all my doubts, my love for the medium has never gone away.
Part 1: Personal Background and the Road to Stepping Away from a Video-Making Career
Before I explain the two key points—why I stepped away from videography and my deeply personal outlook on the medium—I would like to begin by sharing a bit of personal background.
From an early age, I have always loved movies, and that passion led me to study cinema at Los Angeles City College after graduating from high school. After completing the program and returning to Japan, I worked for several video production companies over the span of three years. I then spent another three years as a freelancer, and even after moving on to an entirely different field, I continued producing video content on the side—mainly promotional videos and various visual materials such as brochures and posters.
Put simply, the reason I distanced myself from video production was that I came to feel my own perspective on the medium had reached its limit. Regarding the traditional model of video production—particularly in the realm of small-scale operations—I hold a rather pessimistic view. The industry has become a saturated market with increasingly low barriers to entry. Given that reality, I have no intention of returning to video-making as a full-time profession.
What I share in this article is based on my personal experiences as a videographer, informed by the knowledge and work of those who came before me. It is merely one example among many who have walked a similar path.
Let me first outline my educational and professional background.
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I was born and raised in the southern part of Okinawa’s main island. From a young age, I became fascinated with Hollywood movies. That love for film eventually took me all the way to Los Angeles, where, after graduating from high school, I enrolled in the cinema program at Los Angeles City College. I graduated in 2003, after two years that completely shaped the way I looked at moving images. The courses covered everything—shooting on 8mm and 16mm, film history, screenwriting, cinematography, directing, sound, editing—and even the basics of digital cinema, which was still new to many of us at the time.
In the spring of 2002, while I was at LACC, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones hit theaters. It was the first of the series filmed entirely in digital, and it sparked heated debates among film students about whether digital could ever really rival the look of celluloid. Around the same time, Canon released the XL-1, a video camera with a “Frame/Movie Mode” that gave footage a softer, almost film-like look, in contrast to the harshness of typical interlaced video. (28 Days Later was later shot with the XL-1S, its successor.) I was always more drawn to the language of cinema than television, so I started experimenting with consumer-grade Sony video cameras—setting the shutter speed to 1/30 just to see if I could squeeze a bit more of that cinematic feel out of the footage.
Not long after, Panasonic introduced the AG-DVX100, the first affordable video camera that could shoot at 24 frames per second, just like film. Indie filmmakers quickly embraced it, and to me, it felt like the winds of change were blowing.
Although I had studied film, I found myself more and more interested in documentaries. When I returned to Japan, I had no access to professional gear, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I joined a small production company in Okinawa and found myself spending weekends filming weddings and weekdays doing dubbing work. One project, however, really stuck with me: creating educational videos for schools to pass down Okinawan cultural traditions. I was involved in everything—research, scriptwriting, editing—and it was the first time my film school training felt useful in a hands-on way back home.
Later, I moved to Tokyo and became an assistant director at a production company that specialized in documentaries for a major TV network. Our programs were broadcast weekly in the late-night slot, and the company’s president—a fiercely respected journalist—demanded nothing less than total rigor. Pitch meetings were brutal, and research had one unbreakable rule: don’t use the internet. For a time, I thrived there—shooting on location, handling interviews, and gaining the trust of senior staff because I already knew my way around the equipment.
The toughest job by far was transcribing interviews. It was painstaking, but it forced me to notice the smallest things—expressions, gestures, shifts in tone. Reading between the lines of people’s words gave me an entirely new way of seeing them.
And yet, I eventually came to realize I didn’t have the toughness required to survive as a TV director. So I left Tokyo, took up factory work in rural towns, and quietly began saving money with a simple goal in mind: to one day stand on my own as an independent videographer.
Part 2: The Rise of New Tools and the Global Shift in Filmmaking Culture
While working in factories across Japan, I stumbled upon the video-sharing platform Vimeo, and it opened up an entirely new world for me. In the late 2000s, digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras sparked what felt like a revolution in the industry. With their large image sensors and interchangeable lenses, they suddenly gave independent creators access to the shallow depth of field and “cinematic” look that had once belonged almost exclusively to film.
On Vimeo, an international community of creators began showcasing DSLR-shot work, trading tips, and exchanging insights. It quickly became a gathering place for indie filmmakers from around the world.
Personally, I didn’t go the DSLR route. Instead, I picked up Panasonic’s DMC-GH1, a digital mirrorless camera, and even modified its firmware to push its video capabilities further. Communities online—especially on Vimeo—were instrumental in helping users like me enhance stability and performance through firmware hacks.
(Some of you who were on Vimeo back then might remember the buzz surrounding the “Letus35” adapter, which let you attach SLR lenses to camcorders—this was before DSLRs even had video recording. For those of us excited about cinematic possibilities, that little device felt like a glimpse of the future.)
Around the same time, the Magic Bullet Looks plugin made its way into filmmakers’ toolkits. Suddenly you could transform the entire mood of a video with just a few clicks, applying stylized color grades that previously would have taken much more time and expertise.
Together, these tools—DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, and post-production plugins—ignited a wave of experimentation within small creative collectives overseas. But in Japan, I noticed the momentum was slower to catch on. Many production companies, whether large or small, seemed entrenched in the traditions of television, and that legacy likely delayed the adoption of new approaches.
There was also, I think, a cultural perception at play: professional work done on small, consumer-grade cameras wasn’t always taken seriously. The idea that you could create something meaningful with such compact gear hadn’t yet fully taken root in Japan.
Part 3: Returning to Okinawa and Beginning a Freelance Career
Once I had saved enough to strike out on my own as a videographer, I returned to my hometown in Okinawa. It didn’t take long to realize that, as an adult, I barely knew my own local culture or even the landscape I had grown up around. To change that, I started driving around the island with a camera in hand, recording whatever caught my eye and uploading the footage to YouTube and Vimeo.
Not long after, I joined a local web content production company. My main responsibilities there weren’t directly related to video, but I was given the chance to pitch and produce original video series on the side. When I eventually left the company, it was on good terms, and even after going freelance they supported me by referring projects—work that would have been difficult to take on as an individual without a company name behind me.
The fact that I was able to land work so quickly as a freelancer had less to do with formal credentials and more to do with the content I had already been posting online. My YouTube and Vimeo uploads, along with a personal blog where I wrote about video-related trivia, essentially served as my portfolio. At that point, I didn’t even have an official website or a registered business—but I had started freelancing at just the right time.
Back then, there were almost no individuals in Okinawa using DSLR cameras for video in a “cinematic” style. As far as I knew, there was only one other person doing anything similar, and that uniqueness worked in my favor.
In my freelance work, I did almost no active marketing or sales outreach. I kept my client base limited to corporations, organizations, and small business owners. At one point, a bridal video company offered me regular work, but I turned it down. Weekend shoots followed by weekday edits would have left me no room to pursue my own creative interests. Instead, I focused on filming unfamiliar places, experimenting with editing, and sharing the results online. It was around this time that I first became deeply invested in time-lapse videography.
By the time I finally started building a homepage to showcase my work, I already had an extensive library of sample videos─making the process of putting together the website surprisingly easy.
Part 4: Early Success as a Freelancer and Production Philosophy
Within just six months of going freelance, I landed a year-long, large-scale project from the corporate sales division of a major national company. For someone still in their first year of freelancing, it felt like a huge milestone. Looking back, I think that if I had been more proactive about promoting myself, I probably could have used that achievement to attract even more clients. But at the time, I was still operating without a registered business. That meant I had to rely on my former company and others to handle the paperwork for invoicing, which made it tricky to promote my work openly.
My freelance career in video production lasted about three years. During that time, I worked on tourism-related projects, received offers with surprisingly large budgets from companies outside the prefecture, and every once in a while, took on jobs that came through personal connections. I had a simple policy of not working with general consumer clients. Still, I occasionally made exceptions for people I already knew on a professional level—though only under certain conditions.
I also lent support to fellow creators, sometimes even renting out my gear, though I never asked for help in return. My preferred way of working was through deep, collaborative relationships with clients. We would build something together, almost in the same spirit as making a short film with friends back in college. Those kinds of projects ended up becoming some of the most memorable and irreplaceable experiences in my career.
Financially, freelance life treated me better than any of my previous salaried jobs. But money was never the driving force for me. I didn’t have kids or personal responsibilities that demanded stability, so I was free to take creative risks and focus purely on the work itself. In many ways, it was an ideal period: no strings attached, no obligations─just the freedom to create.
What I valued most, though, was the perspective I gained by working with so many different clients. Their ideas and approaches broadened my own view of what video production could be. Even years after I closed down my freelance business, some of those former clients still referred opportunities to me. A few even reached out almost a decade later about potential collaborations.
And yet, despite their encouragement, I never found myself able to return to video production.
Part 5: Why I Stepped Away from Video Production
So then—why did I decide to step away from video production?
The answer, in the simplest terms, is that I began to harbor doubts. There were many, but if I had to distill them into a single, guiding question, it would be this:
“Does this project truly need to be a video?”
Even as I felt deep gratitude toward every client who placed their trust in me, that question lingered at the back of my mind. Over time, it grew heavier. I started to feel a limit in my perspective on video as a medium—not only in the challenge of finding creative expressions unique to video, but also in the creeping suspicion that, even if I delivered exactly what was asked, perhaps all I had done was fulfill tasks. I wondered if I was acting more as a worker executing assignments than as a creator making a meaningful contribution.
Around 2013, I also began to sense a shift. The excitement surrounding platforms like Vimeo, once so alive with every new release of cameras and tools, seemed to be fading. The energy of discovery had cooled. Even as new generations of gear hit the market, the spark no longer felt the same.
And all the while, technology itself was advancing quickly. High-quality video could now be produced by almost anyone with an eye for aesthetics and access to affordable tools. The gap between professional creators and the general public was closing fast.
To be fair, I had once benefited from this very trend. When I started freelancing, I set myself apart precisely by doing things that production companies had yet to adopt. So I don’t say this in complaint. If anything, I recognize that the same environment which later troubled me had earlier worked to my advantage.
As a reference, I’d like to include a previously published blog post of mine in its original form.
When the Means Become the End in Video Production
Originally Written by Me (Norifumi Kudeken) in 2014/03/27
Production Value is a term used in the film and video industry.
Strictly speaking, it refers to the quality of production, but in most cases, it’s used to mean the sense that money was spent or the attention to detail in low-budget film productions.
Even if the term “production value” isn’t explicitly used in the video production industry, creators—whether consciously or unconsciously—tend to incorporate that concept into the final product.
Of course, even a film with a large budget can turn out to be a flop, but when a project looks cheap from the start, its evaluation tends to drop.
That’s why improving production value becomes such an important challenge.
(Casting currently popular actors, using new equipment for filming, adding effects in editing, etc.)
Producers and creators go to great lengths to boost production value, but the audience doesn’t necessarily focus on that itself.
Only people in the industry or video enthusiasts are likely to think, “Wow, they managed to make this with that budget?”
Thanks to advancements in technology that allow visually impressive results even with limited budgets, the range of production levels has become more diverse in today’s video industry.
Still, the one thing creators care most about is:
“How can we maximize quality, even on a limited budget?”
When that’s achieved in a commissioned video project, the client is extremely pleased. And the production team feels they’ve done a great job too.
So again─repeating myself here─
Producers and creators go to great lengths to boost production value, but the audience doesn’t necessarily focus on that itself.
Only people in the industry or video enthusiasts are likely to think, “Wow, they managed to make this with that budget?”
But why are videos necessary in the first place?
At its core, a video is simply a means or method to achieve a specific purpose.
If you lose sight of that, you end up with the means becoming the end.
[Postscript: March 27, 2017]
The above was written three years ago, and depending on how you read it, it might come off as somewhat critical. My intention from the start, however, was simply to present one possible perspective.
That said, as an additional note:
If there is something that transcends the concepts of means and ends─
then perhaps that’s what we should be pursuing.
The article above was written toward the end of the long-term project I mentioned earlier. In a 2017 update—three years after the original post—I added a note saying that I still believe this: if there’s something you genuinely want to do, you should take the first step, regardless of what initially motivates you.
Looking back now, I can see that even just one year into working independently, I had already begun to feel uncertain. Reading that old post today, there are passages I can hardly make sense of myself. Still, one thing remains undeniable: choosing to specialize in video production requires walking a long and often difficult road. (Of course, the same can be said of any profession.)
I did continue to receive inquiries about planning projects in the following year, but eventually, I ended those conversations by politely declining.
And there is one thing I can say with certainty:
Even if I hadn’t officially shut down my business, I probably would have quit anyway─because of my own stubborn attachment to the very idea of video.
It was at this point that I grew more concerned with the philosophical question of “What is visual media?” than with any actual, real-world projects. I even began reaching out to others, offering to create videos for them without compensation, purely for the sake of creative exploration.
Alongside that, I also experimented with cinemagraphs─animated GIFs that blur the line between stillness and motion. (Something that, nowadays, you can easily make on a smartphone.)
So, can professional creators truly not resist the tide of advancing technology?
I would argue the opposite.
Because in the end, technology is only a tool. What matters—what has always mattered—is how we choose to use it.
As another reference, here is a blog post I wrote a year later, again presented in its original form.
Originally Written by Norifumi Kudeken in 2015/03/18
A moving image is always confined─spatially enclosed by a frame.
Whether it appears on a television screen, the silver screen of a theater, or within the projected bounds of a hologram, the image lives within borders.
Even the device on which you are now reading this has its own frame.
What lies beyond that frame on your side is something I cannot see.
Yet, if you are there, and if you are reading this, then you know that I am here.
A curious thing, indeed.
Not
“I think, therefore I am,”
but perhaps,
“You are, therefore I am.”
The world in which the subject resides, and the world of the observer─these are not the same.
Neither can see beyond the boundaries of the other.
And yet, it is precisely because those boundaries exist that the two may be faintly connected.
Just as every living being carries within it a world of its own, so too do films and moving images give rise to many such worlds.
Might we not say that for every film ever made on this Earth, there exists a parallel world─intangible, unreachable, and yet deeply felt?
Perhaps, in truth, all things are already connected.
But we, as human beings, sometimes need a sign─a spark─
A shape rendered in language, in sound, in light─
To remind us of that hidden thread which binds us all.
This is merely one reflection on the nature of the moving image.
Six months after publishing that entry, I officially closed my business. By then, I had become so absorbed in my own philosophical questions that I no longer had the sense of curiosity that once drove me. In a creative landscape that had come to feel flat and uniform, I simply couldn’t find inspiration anymore. The passion that had carried me into freelancing had faded, and eventually, I slipped into a kind of self-loathing. At one point, I even stopped taking my camera out altogether.
To summarize, these were the main reasons I stepped away from video production:
Self-doubt in my ability to pursue truly original expression through the medium of video
Loss of the curiosity that once fueled me, and the decline of my creative passion
A lack of will to continue working in video, despite an unwillingness to compromise ← [New]
Even if I were offered a position at a production company paying several times what I once earned, I know I would turn it down.
Why?
Because I still love visual media.
It was love that pushed me to go freelance in the first place—I didn’t want to settle, or compromise. But that same love has often led me to overthink every choice, until eventually I found myself caught in a recurring cycle of doubt.
So yes, let’s add that third point:
“A lack of will to continue working in video, despite an unwillingness to compromise.”
Part 6: Journey through the evolving landscape of visual media
As I mentioned at the beginning, my outlook on the video production industry is somewhat pessimistic—at least if we continue relying on traditional models of production.
Looking back on that brief, vibrant period when Vimeo was thriving, I often wonder what became of the creators who were active then. From what I can tell, even those who are still in the industry seem to be working under much tougher conditions today.
That said, the value of video itself is unlikely to fade.
The online world is overflowing with content─far more than any one person could ever consume in a lifetime. And yet, I still find myself drawn to videos and programs that open the door to new worlds or offer useful knowledge and insight. The medium remains a powerful tool for discovery.
Perhaps the way forward isn’t in restricting ourselves to video production alone, but in combining it with other kinds of expertise to create new forms of synergy. Each of us may carry unique qualities or latent talents that we haven’t yet recognized.
Take, for example, the story of the Oakland Athletics in the 1990s. Faced with financial struggles and declining performance, the team’s young general manager embraced sabermetrics─a data-driven approach to baseball strategy—and used it to transform the team into a competitive force. Michael Lewis’s Moneyball captured this story, and in it, there’s an important lesson: while fielding and batting techniques can be taught, plate discipline—the ability to recognize which pitches to swing at—is a natural gift. It’s one of the most undervalued, yet most crucial, skills.
I believe the same holds true for creative work. Success isn’t only about talent, or luck─it’s about authentic passion. If you truly love creating, and you keep at it with genuine intent, meaningful encounters will follow. They may come as collaborations, thoughtful feedback, or even the quiet moment when your work unexpectedly resonates with someone. Somewhere, unseen, someone may be looking for exactly what you’ve made.
It’s not just a matter of luck or chance. In this ever-changing world, there will always be someone searching—like a Major League scout looking for hidden potential.
As for me, I’ve always been drawn to visual expression. And as I look ahead, I plan to explore new directions─particularly the possibilities of generative AI. If, one day, I feel that a certain idea is best expressed through video once again, then that is exactly what I will do.
——— Norifumi Kudeken
