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We looked inside some of the posts by ameliasdler-blog and here's what we found interesting.
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Stage 2 Evaluation
In this stage I have acquired many skills which have helped me create better videos that fit the certain brief set for each task. Some of the skills include how to work sound equipment, as before this stage I had never touched a piece of sound equipment. Whereas now I understand what the difference is between certain sennheiser microphones that are available to me from the store. As well as this we briefly touched upon lights in the light workshop, however I am yet to use and lights as the cinematographer generally controls the lights within a project. For my final major project I believe I want to look at lights and how they can affect a shot type. Some more skills I have developed in this project is how to be organised both digitally and physically on set and when editing so that no clips are lost, as well as risk assessments and how to make a story board.
What I have enjoyed the most from this stage is how much more I have learnt about editing on premiere pro, this has helped me to learn some more of the shortcuts to make editing quicker. Also I have enjoyed setting up the equipment due to having detailed notes on what the equipment needs to be set at to get the best quality. For the sound it should be at the highest bit rate to get a large file which can be manipulated on premiere by all the sound effects. Also I have always enjoyed the visualisation part of the process and creating story boards, despite not being the best at drawing I believe that the images I produce are an accurate description of what I want the shot to look like before setting it up on the day. Also I have tried out different things this stage such as in the experimental stage I tried to incorporate some animation techniques into the visuals. This is due to the fact I would really like to use some visual effects in my videos that can help to enhance the visual composition.
In this stage there are some things that I have either had trouble with or could have been improved so that stage 2 could have helped me along the creative process faster. Personally I have trouble sometimes when expressing my ideas, as sometimes it is hard for me to say what I truly want. So when working in a group that have opposing ideas it is hard to voice a different way of doing something that could have a better impact to the film being produced. The documentary project was very directed at one person when it could have been open up to different interpretation which I wanted to take it a different way such as looking at nature or something that interests me more. Some skills I would like to learn are some more on premiere and after effects as well as how to create a sound track or how to create a soundscape that fits with the video.
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Final Evaluation
I believe this project has met the assignment brief as we were asked to create a portrait of a person, and we have documented my Grandma on questions about her life as well as some of the skills gathered from life experiences. The finished piece of work then gives us a more rounded view about this person rather than just the photographs I took of her.
Some of the strengths about creating this project is how well we planned it beforehand, so we knew what we were doing as soon as we got to her house. By getting all the equipment we wanted and booked it in advance meant that we could practice with it all for the mini project so that we knew what to do better for the 3 minute long documentary. Other places I believe we worked well in was the variety of cutaways we had as had both videos of her working on her craft as well as images from her photo books.
Where we could have improved is using two cameras that where of the same make so that the white balance was the same, as well as having the close up shot being more predominant as it is better in composition, focus and concentrates the audience to view her more. Also I could have looked up more about the 416 to try and get better sound with it as there was this fuzz sound which I couldn't get rid off so we used the tie clip mic instead which was clearer.
By asking to do sound in this project it has pushed me to understand how the equipment works and in what environments, as for documentary you would need to use a directional microphone so only picking up what the person is saying. Also it has helped me understand what you need to create in the soundscape, as to top off a documentary you need too have a soundtrack that correctly shows the right tone of the piece.
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Post Production
FINAL EXPORTS
Assembly
01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_h4k5Epijc&list=PLFNO7PeE2XagOXfUQ3rS4VQSi0G3Rsoun&index=13&t=100s
02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agMHBBkp_i8&list=PLFNO7PeE2XagOXfUQ3rS4VQSi0G3Rsoun&index=14
Rough
01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShTRsLiNgSM&list=PLFNO7PeE2XagOXfUQ3rS4VQSi0G3Rsoun&index=15
Fine
01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCWj3CcUio
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Documentary Planning
For this we were asked to create a 3 minute long documentary piece based on a person, as well as creating three portraits in the style of photography or any other medium of artwork.
From this brief I thought it would be a good idea to look at the ideas of a facebook page called Needles and Pins with Grace Neutral as she looks into the world of tattoos and the culture that is attached to it. She uses her ideologies and tries to understand other people by asking open ended questions to gain a deeper understanding of the culture, also she has already researched into who she is going to see and so knows how to prolong an interview and get a wider response from the interviewee.
Hand Crafted, the Cowichan Knitter
What I personally like about this is that the documentary doesn’t start by showing the subject and instead shows her craft before we see the subject. I believe this draws us in, in particular the first shot where she grabs the tape from the foreground and takes in into the shot. From this I believe we should try and entice the audience with a shot that’s similar as it should draw the audience in. In the sound department they have her dialogue as well as the soundtrack which helps keep the audience draw in and engaged with the documentary. They have also used Foley sounds of her knitting which I feel helped to make the documentary more realistic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAXtH0fVxI
Visualisation
Floor plans
Equipment booked
For sound
- Sennheiser Wireless Lapel Microphone
- Tascam
- Fostex/Sennheiser MKH-416
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Getting to know the subject
We had an interview with Shelia after filming the mini documentary to get to know her a bit more and research what to ask her in the 3 minute long documentary.
Notes gathered from interview
From this interview we found out a lot more about her life and her craft of sewing, this has helped us create some questions for the interview and where we want to direct it. As she has some wonderful photos about her daughter’s wedding which we believe would be really good to include within the documentary. Also we have found out some more about her craft such as her sewing and spinning from this we got some ideas for cutaways such her sewing on the machine.
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Task - mini project
Part of the brief says that, “You are also tasked with a mini-project (to be completed in your documentary groups) to document a ‘task’ – some activity, process, or operation.”
On Instagram, I found some little clips from fashion designers which show them creating a garment which are shorts such as 90 seconds. These shorts use a variety of close up shots and wide shots and have no dialogue means that you focus on the garment. Generally, these clips don’t show the person creating the garment to give them some mystery, also the Foley sound also helps to make it appear more realistic.
Part of the TV show Question of Sport they have a section which has a celebrity and they hide their face until the very end. Then after they have guessed they reveal the person, with these we really liked it and thought we could use it in our 90seconds task.
Another video we looked at was a dior video showing them create a dress step by step
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAXtH0fVxI
From this we chose the subject of my nan and we asked her to create a patch for her patchwork, we then documented the separate parts of the process.
Behind the scenes
Screengrabs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jX7hZrFnM&index=7&list=PLFNO7PeE2XagOXfUQ3rS4VQSi0G3Rsoun&t=7s
From this project I believe we worked well as a team and planned the day well with lots of rest breaks, also I believe that the final piece of work fulfils its part of the brief. It has also helped me develop my sound practice and has helped me choose the 416 over the 66 for the sound in the actual documentary.
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Sound Practice
In our groups for documentary we had to choose our roles, as I have never done any sound before for any projects I thought it would be a good idea to give it a go. But as I haven’t used much of the equipment before I thought I had better try out some different sennheisers to see how they sound differently and which ones work better in different situations. To start I thought I should only book out directional microphones as we will be mainly recording a person speaking.
Sennheiser 418
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kCQkBKbbns&list=PLFNO7PeE2XagOXfUQ3rS4VQSi0G3Rsoun&index=12
For this sound recording I accidently booked out a stereo microphone instead of a mono, despite it recording nicely I was trying to collect folley sound with it and didn’t work to well as all I got was a lot of muffled sound. I also varied the distance from subject and found that for different sounds you have to be different distances however you shouldn’t be too close or too far away or else it distorts the sounds.
Sennheiser 416
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9YBePZKSnk&list=PLFNO7PeE2XagOXfUQ3rS4VQSi0G3Rsoun&index=14
For this stereo sound kit I believe that the degree of sharpness it gives is a lot higher than the 66 however as it is bigger than it might put people off wanting to talk. Also I found that the cable was really long and got in my way so with tie clips I wound up the cables so they were out of my way when filming.
Sennheiser 66
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HtaeFvB_Q4&list=PLFNO7PeE2XagOXfUQ3rS4VQSi0G3Rsoun&index=11
With the 66 sound kit it is a lot more compact and gives the same as the 416 just has a little more background noise and the zone of detection picks up a bit more I found. However with more practice I feel the 66 could rival the 416 as it is smaller and might not be quite so intimating.
Overall I found that I would prefer to use the 66 at a test when talking to the subject to see whether it works well, if not then use the 416 as it will give a sharper recording when set to the highest bit recording.
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Documentary Theory
Ethics of Documentary
If the film maker becomes actively involved in the manipulation it alters how the audience see the documentary and may perceive the documentary to be flawed. Such as the ethics of the Jesus Camp Documentary which shows how the faith can be shown in different cultures, in America the camp is run for children and may be seen as being brainwashed to believe the facts that are presented with them. The directors Ewing and Grady strive to be unbiased so they sit there with the cameras and they film exactly what is happening. So, the subjects can’t complain on how they are portrayed as they are the only people who have acted as they have. This form of documentary making makes it believable and doesn’t show one opinion. It is all based upon what is the literal truth and what is the essential truth, how documentary film makers construct the identity shown to the audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy_u4U7-cn8&t=11s
Representation of Truth
Truth in documentaries can be engineered due to the idea of the Kuleshov effect, which is how images pieced together can create meaning. So if the documentary is constructed under one mind set then it can flow to one side and might not show the literal truth just an elaborated version of the essential truth. If a documentary
Difference between rhetorical and categorical.
Documentaries generally have an underlying message or argument depending on where they start the idea. With this a documentary can attempt to persuade you of something such as wrongly convicted criminal and provides you with evidence and interviews to back this up. This is generally seen as a rhetorical documentary, whereas categorical tries to inform the audience of something they may not have already known.
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Bill Nichols' 6 Modes of Documentary Categorization
He believes that documentary can be categorized so that it shows different types of documentaries can be classed under these categories.
Poetic
This style changes conventions and instead of using continuity to create a structure. To interest the audience the style rearranges the footage so that the tone and rhythm carries the pace of the film Such as Samsara which uses clips totally unrelated and puts them together to create the pace of the film and to carry the ideas and the globalisation of the world’s issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkEILshUyU
Expository
This form of documentary addresses the audience directly, generally with a sonorous male voice as the voice over which help to communicate its message which is generally trying to persuade the audience a fact. This form of rhetorical documentary uses the sound as the main base and uses the images just to supplement the audio. This can be on the topics of news reports, science and nature documentaries such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOrHnctozrY
Participatory
This allows the subjects to participate such as answering questions or talking with the filmmaker.
Nichols describes this style as the filmmaker has to come away from the side lines and become a social actor (in some ways) rather than a voice over.Errol Morris’s film The Thin Blue Line use first person accounts of what they believed about the social justice of Randall Dale Adams who was wrongly accused of a crime he didn’t commit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL5A4D0G4g
Observation
Attempt to show the truth with the minimum amount of intervention, they construct or find a subject and have the cameras record what happen. This spontaneous film making was sparked by the mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment. By making the film this way it would aim for immediacy and intimacy into ordinary life situations.
Observational film – Salesman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O4B7KcKeSg
Reflexive
This is not about the relationship between the subject and the film maker rather the film maker and the audience. As other types of documentaries plainly view the action whereas reflexive try to draw attention to how they are constructed. By evolving around the ideas of how is this subject represented by documentary films they make us question the authenticity of documentary such as Man with a Movie Camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97Pa0ICpn8
Performative
This form of Documentary emphasizes the relation between the past and the present and what truly is the truth in a situation. It prefers a more personal take over the objective lens, as they stress the subjective emotional response to the world. They may include dramatization to help reiterate the point and message of the subject which may not be understood.
Tongues united - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNj5KjHAilA
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John Grierson
This director of the Drifters in 1929 came to term documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ which shows that it is a portrayal of realism but creatively. In the piece of work Drifters, he pieces together a certain set of images and from this we gather information from what the work lives were like in the 1920s of fishermen and harbour people. This in turn proves some of the Kuleshov effect where the interaction between two sequential shots derives more meaning than one sole one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZpd4oV4ucU
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What are Similarities and Differences between a Documentary and a Portrait
Similarities
- Gain an understanding about a person
- A visual representation of a person
- They both are always created in the past
Differences
- Documentary gives an impression from the film maker’s perspective in some biased pieces of works
- A portrait shows the audience what is truly there as it captures what is there especially in a photograph as it shows an accurate representation of who they are.
- Documentaries don’t always use people as the subject such as Plant Earth
A documentary can be a more immediate form for communicating a message about a person as they can help shape the person’s identity by showing them from different angles as well as understanding how they speak. By having a live image, it can help piece together the non – verbal communication that every person has, such as hand movements and facial expressions. Also, a documentary can use other footage such as another person who can give another interpretation of the subject as well as pieces of archive footage and photographs.
A portrait can be more timeless as it stays static and doesn’t move and can’t change unless it is painted over it. However, a documentary can use dramatizations from pieces of time which help to give it more depth. Portraits which are physically made over time have to survive through the historical events such as through wars and being burnt.
They both have the potential to tell the truth but it depends on what it classes as the truth. As both forms of work are both an interpretation of one person from another view point. But the essential truth in both can get clouded depending on how accurate they want the person to be represented. Such as in a documentary dramatization isn’t showing exactly what happened but a person’s interpretation.
Staging of both of them can vary depending on what scenario they are being captured, as Hockney’s work the person that he paints or photographs are asked to sit down and look a specific way so that Hockney can get the specific drawing or painting that he wants. However, if someone goes out and sits at a railway station and just takes some sketches of people there it is much more candid and is naturally observed. The same can be applied to documentaries as some are really staged they need lights and put in front of a specific background this form of staging can help to show them in a specific way however not in the true way that they work. Whereas observation documentary which is unobtrusive shows more of what is truly there such as big brother, where the cameras are set up and the action just takes place in front of those cameras and can be viewed at all times.
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What is Documentary Practice - Documentaries
Taxi - Jafar Panahi (2015)
This film is a different take on a documentary as it is mixture of documentary and fiction as some of the action has been orchestrated and then the action afterwards is just natural reactions to the scenario they are. So Taxi is a feature length film which depicts Panahi as a pretending to be a share taxi – this is a mode of transport where the car has to be filled up with people and can stop anywhere for the passengers. What the film really shows is how he courses around the streets of Tahran and shows the different people and the situations they are in.
As it isn’t quite a true documentary we ask the question does it really show the truth about the city and the people. Despite the characters changing quite often and showing the true locations of the city it still does show some aspects of realism. Tahran believed that some of the films made by Panahi were propaganda against the government so were arrested for a short while along with his family and then his films were banned for 20 years. However, he still made films during this ban but he had to shoot it under extreme secrecy so that’s why in one shot he told the passengers that it is an anti-theft device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIRPcMYm-wE
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What is Documentary Practice - Documentaries
Stories We Tell - Sarah Polley (2012)
This film was directed by Sarah Polley and it looks at the relationship between Polley’s parents and what extra martial activities went on and how it affected the family and friends. However, the essential truth that is covered is that she struggles with her identity as it is so late in her life that she discovers who her father really is and that she has heard gossip that pointed the finger at someone else when it was really someone else. However, the documentary also starts by painting a picture on her mum and creates a portrait of her mum. This helps to form her own identity and a self-portrait of her own memories which is supported by the multiple sources of information. Despite this we are never told who is who only their names so we have to figure out how each person is related to each other, as well as this the documentary never properly finishes. As you would have thought that when she found out who her dad really was it should have been rounded up there but Polley decided that more information needed to be included in the documentary.
Personally, I found that his documentary didn’t try to persuade us of anything but attempted to inform us while also making us question what is it really telling us. So, I believe that it is more categorical in nature. In the process many times we see her actually creating the film so behind the scenes and then the subject then asked Sarah a question these become part of the participatory documentary where the subject is participating with a documentary. Some other genres that it is part of is the reflexive as it tries to understand what the audience want – the need to know who the father is – and then tries to expand on that relationship. As well as that the performative documentary style is also used where they stage some of the scenes with the mum in. This makes us question is what we have seen true but as it is shown at the end, throughout the documentary sometimes you get lost in what it is true and what is false.
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What is Documentary Practice - Film makers
Louis Theroux
He is a British Documentary filmmaker who approaches all his subjects with an unbiased opinion and helps to give an insight into other topics that people generally hold some stigma against some marginalised subcultures. Theroux presents himself in a naïve fashion when asking the subject a question to gain some insight into their lives. His unbiased questioning technique means that cultures which are seen in one light can be show from a different angle. This is due to the subject trusting him more when he presents himself this way which allows the audience to view the clearest picture about the documentary as possible.
He varies his techniques from naïve questions which allow the subject to answer in any way they please at their own time etc. Then the alternative way to put the questions forwards is to be very direct and personalise the question so that the interviewee feels uncomfortably put on the spot. He has a talent where he finds the weaknesses of the interviewee and he can prod at it until they open up. Such as in his Law and Order in Philadelphia series where he talks to drug dealers as can be seen in this clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NBVQB-Srpw
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