Today me and my group had a pitch presentation about the documentary film we are going to make. I’m working on this project with Samuel and Camilla. We are making a 4 min documentary on the iconic American donut Kitchen van located at Queen Victoria market. This van has been there since 1950. In this documentary we are going to explore the history and legacy of this business and also their plans for future.

After doing a bit of research we found out the original business owner has passed away, and the business has been running by remaining family members. We got in contact with Belinda the grand daughter of the original owner Arnold, and told her about our project, she was a kind lady and agreed to us making a documentary about their business.

We started to work on our questions for the interview. At the start me and Samuel were struggling to come up with questions, we asked Rohan for help. He suggested we do a mock up interview and design the question in a way that would get us the expected answer, without offending the interviewee or making them uncomfortable. This practice helped us come up with questions for our interview, another awesome lesson.

Today we were learning about interview questions techniques, Rohan was explaining how we should ask questions in an interview to get the answers we want. It was very interesting for me, because in the past I have been struggling with getting answers to my questions during an interview, they would either reply with a short reply that doesn’t answer the question or sometimes go over the topic to the point they  lose the main topic. I think these techniques are a must for a documentary film maker.

What I learned in today’s class:
It is important to make interviewee feel comfortable at every stage of filming.
we should be clear about what we want to achieve by making a documentary film, for example, raising awareness about a disease.
It is important to edit thoughtfully and carefully so we don’t misrepresent a person or a business.

In the end of class we had the chance to choose a topic to make a short documentary about, I chose the American Donut Kitchen for the simple reason of Donuts involved, who doesn’t like donuts right?

After finishing today’s class, I’m stressing about the upcoming assignment #PB2 , even though I have read the book, I struggle with words, I have written about 75% of it but I can’t think of anything else and it’s due in 2 days, I have watched a few different Documentaries so maybe I can change to one that I’m more comfortable to write about.

I decided to continue on with what I started  first which was  on a documentary called  “Ladies first:Saudi Arabia’s first female candidates”, which explores the story of women who are registering to vote for the first time and the first female candidates who are running in national election. The journalist uses this opportunity to explore women’s place in Saudi Arabia and uncovers some bitter truth, for example in Saudi Arabia a woman can’t open a bank account without her husband permission and they are banned from driving cars.

After reading Tim Cresswell’s book twice and re watching the documentary, I had alot to say about this movie, and I wasn’t struggling with words anymore. Reading cresswell’s book gave me the ability to look at film from different point of view and observe the depth of the movie which was something new to me, I was watching the documentary with professional manner, with an open mind, observing every detail, and character.

 

Today Our teacher Rohan explained the basics of using a camera in a professional manner. He started with a power point presentation, which included information on white balance, ISO, aperture etc.
Even though I learned these information years ago,  I enjoyed the presentation, It was very neat, well explained, and it was very easy to understand. Any camera dummy could record a professional shot after this presentation. I wish my previous teacher explained white balance and ISO like Rohan.

After the presentation we  practiced what we have learned on SONY cameras, except a few everyone was using the camera like a pro, (holding a white paper to set the white balance :O).

Overall it was an amazing class and it was freshening to refresh some of the basic knowledge of camera, I hope the class goes this well through the semester.

 

Tim Cresswell’s Place an Introduction explores the meaning of the word “Place”, he looks at it from different points of view.

When we say place, the first thing that comes to our mind is a physical place like home, school and etc, but Cresswell argues that a place can be virtual, it can be art, it can be a national icon. He redefines the word “Place”, for example art can contribute to a place, a protest in a place can make a place iconic and historic and the new place which is virtual world which is a parallel world of our society, where we “can fall in love, perform concert and fall in love. ”

Reading Cresswell’s Place an Introduction gave me a better understanding of Place, and what it means in different place and time.

 

With attending the first term in the Digital Director Class, I was able to benefit from a variety of new things from the class, as well as refresh my memory on things that I already knew, just needed a reminder about. This movie campaign has helped me to know my skills better. It has taught me new skills I will take with me to my future courses. I have learned  how the movie campaign process is and I have gained a lot of  cinematography skills shooting the the episodes throughout the campaign.

Even though I did have a few difficulty at the start with the campaign I did enjoy it and the activities we had. I think this campaign was for the most part organised. I have already used the new skills to for the movie campaign for digital director class. My responsibilities were to shoot all of the content for the campaign (Camera Man) in collaboration with the director and to ensure to produce video and image content that meets the expectations of the writers and the whole campaign. I was shooting according to the scripts and storyboards provided by the writing team and with the help of Technical A.d Aravindha and the director Nethaniel.

I’ve never thought of myself as a cameraman for a movie campaign and be in charge of cinematography for the entire episodes of the movie campaign, but because the class used group thinking in more than one occasion, I found that I am a good cinematographer, I communicate my ideas to the group while trying to balance the ideas of others so the group can come to an agreed upon decision. Obviously this can benefit me in the career I decide to go into, because the ability to take control of cinematography and still remain diplomatic with colleagues is a valuable asset to have. The highlights of the campaign for me would probably be the creative portion. I enjoy expressing myself through moving images more so than I do in any other medium, so it was fun to be able to take my thoughts and creativity and turn them into a video content.

I did enjoy classroom discussions because There was a wonderful instructor, Mark Poole.As for self expectations,nothing really comes to mind. I hope I will be a little bit more open and optimistic about things. And if not, then I hope to at least be able to handle such an optimistic class course. I know last term I could become so cynical after what I could only call an idealistic session that I’d be in a horrible mood for the rest of the day, which was both physically and mentally exhausting. But I’m still going to ask why, and challenge ideas brought up in discussions, and I hope that is enough.I have learned things, while I’ve been here and I hope to continue learning, I love constantly adding what I have learned to my  knowledge and skill database , just in case I ever go on Jeopardy.

An example of Online video service would be instagram which is a photo/video sharing service. Instagram is very popular around the globe, first when Instagram established at 2010, the service was only to share photos, but the later on when it gained popularity they added video sharing feature which has been limited to from 3-5 seconds in rectangle mode.

https://instagram.com/p/1LIUPxhvGG/?taken-by=richforever

Online video is watching films, TV shows on the internet, however there is so many thing in defining online video, Online video is a new way of broadcasting media which internet makes it possible. Online video has no censorship and has global audeince.

Online video is a great platform for advertising, and has proved that, One of the good thing about online video is that has easy access, basically you can watch online videos any where anytime by using your smart phone, laptop as long as you have internet connection.