Over the easter break I took home an Sony ex3 camera as I was heading to Eden and wanting to film some stuff at my friend’s house. One thing I noticed is that the camera is bloody huge. GIANT. Unfortunately despite my best efforts I couldn’t figure out how to get the damn thing on its tripod. Ah well So I decided to utilise its little shoulder pad and do a bit of handheld footage around the house. I wasn’t really sure what to film so I just walked aimlessly around the house with the camera touching things and getting point of view shots and going in rooms. The house itself has a lot of interesting colours, textures and objects. When I finally watched the footage I shot I noticed that in looking through the view finder whilst filming, I hadn’t realised how low the camera actually was, defintely below standard eye level.

It made me think about the show I had watched the previous night the great, The Amazing Race. I had to wonder how people a on those reality shows such as The Amazing Race manage to run around with a camera, keep people in frame, focused, exposed properly and the rest of maintaining a technically good shot whilst running around and keeping up with contestants. I mean surely they can’t stop contestants in the middle of the race because they didn’t have a shot in focus or whatever. My curiosity got the better of me and read an article about their cameramen in the Huffington post, ‘Everything You Wanted To Know About How They Make ‘The Amazing Race’, which stated that each contestant is assigned a cameraman  (who must be within 20 feet of contestants at all times) and a sound technician for the duration of the race. Kudos to them for being amazing (pun intended).

Now, back to the footage I shot around the house. I really wasn’t expecting much when I chucked the footage into premiere, but the film just looked so damn nice (probably because of the quality of the camera) but even the colour palette of the house just looked really nice on film. I had footage of myself intially testing the camera, zooming and random focusing on my friend who was casually doing her uni work, and the footage of her reminded me of  something you would see in a documentary say about a trouble teenage girl or something. I find that people in the natural ‘habitat’ whatever you want to call it ‘natural being’ and action looks so innocent, raw and real on film as opposing to acting out things for the purpose of a shot. I think that is why documentaries can be so captivating as they often have footage of ‘real’ people doing ‘real’ things. I would love to film a group of my friends just bopping around doing there own thing for a couple of days and fishing through the footage to find some great rare shots that you wouldn’t be able to set up (or have to take 10 shots to achieve the same effect). Obviously there are issues with privacy and what not when filming people without their knowledge, but I know my friends/people I know would be happy to let me use the footage if I tell them afterwards. In editing the footage I also tinted the footage pink to give a nostalgic, youthful vibe and overlayed a lot of the footage on top of each other. I loved how the floral pattern on the curtains looked on film and would definitely like to film more flowers/plants/flora in the future. I then paired the footage with some soothing, soft and royalty-free music to complete the footage. I think that the first couple of shots with the close up of my friend looked the best and has definitely given me inspiration for future filming ideas.