Here’s my Project Brief 3! It’s finally finished.
Note: To view the video, you will need to put in the password: Maddiandkoenig (case sensitive). This is as per Maddi’s wishes to not be all over the internet and strictly stay within the university and any portfolio I put together as much as I can 🙂
‘Maddi & Koenig’ by Emily Spindler-Carruthers
From Hobart to Melbourne, Maddi and Koenig have been on plenty of adventures together. Their most interesting adventure? Starting and running Koenig’s instagram account, and the booming success of her photos of the Jack Russell among his followers. Maddie discusses the fun journey and important message about the amazing individuals that rescue dogs can be, and how without a dog, life can be pretty dull.
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Overall, this project brief was somewhat difficult. Perhaps the hardest part was finding a subject, which took a good week and a half, and then fitting them in to film before the film was due. Due to Maddi and myself being busy at different times, we settled on a day that left me with only 5 days to edit and put together the film in its entirety, which to my surprise actually came to fruition. I’m not 100% happy with the film and feel it could use with a little more refining, especially in regard to audio quality. Both times filming the microphone either malfunctioned or the background noise became overpowering, so I feel pretty happy with the fact that I have any audio to use at all. The visual quality I’m quite happy with, after struggling with the Sony Camera we were tasked with using I finally managed to get it to work. Some shots have been taken on my Nikon as well, depending on loan availability of the Sony camera. If I had to recreate this exact portrait, I would aim to get a wider variety of shots. Even though I had location permissions for a large space and lots of varied spaces, I was conscious of time restrictions as well as not inconveniencing Maddi too much by taking up a lot of time. This led to very few shots of Maddi herself, and rather more of Koenig, though this wasn’t a major issue as I felt the portrait of Maddi was so closely intertwined with her dog. Without a very clear storyboard as I would usually create (I scrapped making one as it no longer became a requirement of the project – which I now realise was a mistake) I didn’t have a concrete vision of what I would need to film to have enough footage to work with, with enough diversity visually. The found footage came to my aid in this manner, filling in the gaps where I didn’t have enough different shots to place, but I feel like I relied a bit too much on the footage at times as shots lingered on. It was difficult to find relative footage with the correct licensing, but what I did manage to find I was pleased with. I feel like I managed to get a good variety of footage, from old archived cartoons to more modern day documentary shots. Overall, I’m pleased with the ‘narrative’ or controlling idea of the video and feel it is to some degree more original than my past works might seem, but feel like technically it isn’t as good as I would have liked. Though, narrative-wise, I would in future aim to create more ‘tension’ so as to have a climax to the story, rather than it being more flat in ‘drama’ throughout. In future I would find a subject to interview a lot earlier so I’d have more chance to film different shots and have more leeway for any malfunctions or errors, and create a storyboard.
