Here is the link of my idea of a film:http://www.mediafactory.org.au/ali-bucha/2015/08/06/story-build-up-idea/

So for this project, we had to take a picture or record sound for a possible location of our film. Since my idea revolves around a single person and mostly it’s in his surroundings, so it would be inside a house, Primary location is the room. Room really doesn’t matter how it is, but the door should lead to long alley and thus I have such location where I live. Here is the picture of it

While writing the idea, in the end I mentioned devil appearing, so this location suits for the situation, Aesthetically it would portray perhaps another dimension and thus the character not realising his appearance. Practically it is easily achievable, the artificial lighting would only require for the appearance of the devil and the main subject can be in silhouette.

The second confrontation has to be in a open space and should have a blue tone to it, so I choose a backyard of my house. Here is the picture:

I think this would be perfect place to shoot the confrontation scene, aesthetically by having greenery and using a blue tone in post process would give a chilling feeling for the viewer. Practically speaking, it is again achievable as there is no such noise nearby, a cloudy weather would be idle in this situation but even if it’s a sunny weather, evening time would work well too.

Being in this studio and experiencing Ex3 along with other equipments, I asked myself, is it worth it? I mean this piece of equipment is worth around Aud 10,000 and price increases with the additional of other equipments like sound mixer, tripod, and sound recorders. I looked over my DSLR Nikon D600 attached to it is a 24-70mm 2.8F lens and tested its video capabilities. It pretty much matches the quality of video with Ex3 and at some instances has lower noise level than Ex3, due to the fact Ex3 has a smaller sensor size (1/2″) than D600’s which is a full frame sensor (35mm). Don’t get me wrong, but DSLR does have its advantages, for example, it offers full HD recording option, having a sensor size much bigger than a camcorder, provides a great quality of image. Secondly you can be versatile with different lens in the market from fish eye lenses to extreme telephoto lens. Thirdly, DSLR has better depth of field control, you can create a narrow area in focus and a wide area in sharp quality as often seen the films and lastly like i mentioned before, it does offer amazing image quality in low light situations where these camcorders fall back hard.

That being said, by flipping the other side of the coin, you will see that everything that shines is not gold. DSLR does have its disadvantages as well. The first being the focus issue, it becomes difficult to get a precise focus by using the DSLR live LCD screen, whereas the camcorder allows us to zoom to our subject and get the exact focus which we want. Secondly, DSLR has lack of controls, for example DSLR doesn’t have peaking and zebra functions (until recently Panasonic GH4 launched these functionality), these functions are necessary to get the right focus and highlight areas of the frame and along with that DSLR does not output great sound quality unless you plug in an external microphone and with the mixer (industry practises this way so doesn’t matter much). It also excludes the ability to manually adjust audio levels (channel setting included) and built in density filters as well. Lastly, it offers limited recording at a time in between 12-30 minutes (which is plenty if you are shooting for a film or documentary) and it’s not comfortable for making movies because a DSLR is designed for taking pictures and not video making.

Even though keeping in mind the disadvantages of a DSLR, it’s not a matter of worry now a days since the inception of Magic Lantern software (Canon users only) as it offers all the audio and video controls it needs for today’s professional use. So to conclude and it is my personal opinion, being a student, budget will always be my concern and I will always prefer DSLR due to its portability and as technology is improving, so will the features and requirements of filmmaking in DSLR. With DSLR usage in feature films like ‘Like Crazy’ 2011 won Grand Jury prize at Sundance Film Festival and in popular season ‘Dexter’ season 7, Nikon D800 was used, the camera operator was so impressed with the image quality that they decided to use the compressed H.264 in built of camera,“… we really couldn’t see much difference. But our jaws really hit the floor when we brought up the compressed D800 footage,” Fletcher adds. “Right then the decision was made with the post supervisor Megan Walsh that if we shoot with this camera, there is no need to shoot uncompressed. That means the file size goes from 4GB to 600 MB. That’s just the factory setup, too.” So I’m sure that with improvements coming along, DSLR will one day, be the choice of filmmakers choice of equipment. That being said, in the end, the equipment doesn’t matter, the product in the end does.

References:

1,http://www.imdb.com/list/ls059550382/

2,http://news.doddleme.com/equipment/nikon-quietly-getting-some-love-in-hollywood/

After going through Camera and sound equipments, I thought we were pretty much done with the work and probably go and learn something else like practice and try something new with the equipment, but to my surprise, as I entered the classroom, I saw a new grey colored box with the camera equipment. I knew that moment we will be introduced to a new equipment. So here it is, A sound mixer. I felt like I was holding an alien, there were so many controls on it that I didn’t know where to begin with. But as always, Robin is there to guide us. It took a bit of time to understand the control mechanism and we managed to hear the sound from the the mic to the camera and the sound mixer.

One key discovery I made regarding sound recording, as I’m usually frustrated into getting a good sound for my projects, is the channel settings of the audio, by using the mixer and setting the switch to 1K which puts out 0DB in the recording, by having separate channels in recording, it is much easier to manipulate with sound in editing. By setting one channel to -12db and other on -20db, we are sure that we will get quality sound and use either channel for the requirement in the project.

One good thing about the mixer is that the camera operator doesn’t have to worry about changing the sound recording and can continue on with the work without hassle, I do know that it’s an advantage, however I don’t see a point in using a mixer if the level of sound adjustment can be done in the camera by setting it to certain level and quality sound from it, It’s just an extra equipment to carry. In documentary filmmaking where you have less creative control and wouldn’t worry about that much, but if you are making it a fiction film, then yes I do see a point of using the sound mixer to create a cinematic experience.

Hilary Harris, first time I heard of her name. After seeing her work, I found out that her work is really incredible, her work gives a  nostalgia feeling, pure abstract work, at first I did question myself what does this mean, the shots and everything, although it looked appealing, dream like, but narration was not present but it didn’t matter cause the presentation was so beautiful that each shot was carrying a meaning and the next shot was adding connotative meanings to it.

I felt motivated that this particular kind of abstract filming is achievable and I can do it, if not easily. So today Robin gave us an exercise inspired by the attempts of Hilary Harris, so each group had to shoot at least 6 clips of 30 seconds so that it is usable in the final edit to make it a 1-2 minute abstract film. The shots we did were the following, basketball area, trees, grills, footsteps, dark clouds and close ups of eyes. I think regarding the theme that comes into my end is loneliness as per what my mind has edited it for now, but you never know things and meanings can change when you flip around in the editing software.

Another pro tip we received today was regarding recording audio from the EX3 camera. After using Zoom recorder, I found EX3 option much feasible, as it has more or less the same controls for managing the audio and carrying an extra equipment is not needed, but that being said, what if we require just the sound of a particular thing and not the video, so it would be convenient just to record sound and minus the video.

Now that I have the clips, lets see what kind of artifact comes out of edit.

So in today’s’ class we jumped to edit suites from the second hour after going through a small class exercise of story writing. I never thought of myself as a writer, I usually found it boring going through the process of writing a story, I mean I could just narrate it in my mind and would never bother to write it down as it seemed ‘easy’ for me to film it by just having the story in mind.

But today was different, when Robin have us a sheet of how to get an idea, it changed my perception towards story writing, I mean I thought it usually meant to have a start, mid and finishing of the story, but it’s not like that, it can start from any anywhere and any location but what matters the most is that would it be feasible to be screened at a cinema screen? I thought about the element of revenge would be great, Robin added to it that it would be even great if the audience would think of it as a revenge film after the film ends and bunch of people having a cup of coffee discussing that film was actually about revenge. That being said, I had a new perspective at looking of story writing.

The rest of day we spent on looking Adobe Premier Pro, however, I do have some experience in Final Cut Pro X and I was afraid of jumping ships to another software but it is pretty much the same thing, some pro tips I got were to create separate bins and sequences as it makes it more systematic and not messy. Alright, now lets see what pops next.

A man in his early 20’s has nightmares of a devil seeking to take his soul. He doesn’t know who he is and why is it after him. Later he starts seeing him in day time while cooking, studying or just doing random stuff. He finally loses his mind and calls out to confront him. The devil approaches him and they both have exchange of dialogues/dual.

In the end the man losses his will to take on the devil and as it appears the devil is about to finish him off, The man wakes up from his sleep and is relieved that it was just a dream, its only when devil appears from the corner and laughs out devilishly while the man is not aware of his presence.

It’s just an idea, but lets see where it can lead to.

So in the friday’s class, we were divided into two groups and had to shoot and record sound someone doing a task with expertise and then shoot someone else who is not skilled at it. This exercise required us to use the Sony EX3, Zoom H4 and the clapper board efficiently. So my group consisted of Zhang, Constance, Nurfarina, Mona and Lisha. We couldn’t decide what should we film and took a bit of time, we had a brainstorm session and in the end we finalised that I would dance (have some expertise or at least I know I’m somehow good at doing it) and Mona would reenact my steps later on.

At the back of building 9 alleyway, we decided to shoot there. After adjusting the exposure and white balance the shooting began. I did the Gangnam style steps, some quick leg movement and then moving along showing some cool moves (well not really). Mona then reenacted my moves, the whole scenario was funny as obviously she didn’t know how to dance and we had a good laugh in the end of filming, but that doesn’t mean everything goes smoothly. We realised in the end that we hadn’t recorded any sounds for this exercise. All of the group members were of the view to record from a smartphone by playing any song to fit with the edit when we will do it next week and I was of the view that it wouldn’t be right cause it would affect the quality of the work and the purpose of the project was to record the activity going along (well that’s what I thought we were supposed to do). Anyhow we managed to record the ambiance and some tap sounds and gave the recordings to Robin.

I think with this exercise, we could have done better if proper communication happened within the group, and we could have effectively used all of the equipment together at the same time, I think we overlooked the exercise requirement and when the time of realisation came, it was too late to reshoot it. But I did enjoy this exercise and will be careful not to repeat the mistakes happened that day.