This weekend I spent my Sunday shooting two interviews with participants.

Since I was all over the place on Sunday, there were a lot of things that I found myself rushing with the camera work. For the first interview Nenad, I wanted to try going handheld with all the shots but I don’t think that turned out too well because the shots were really shaky. Then for Vivan I used the tripod, but I was a bit bored of the static shots of her. For both participants I did try to change up the background, though I’m not sure how well that would work – it might be jarring now that I think about it. Of course, this is just what I feel now – everything always looks vastly different in post so I won’t know until I start post-production.

As I don’t really film documentary-type videos, I was very nervous being the interviewer. By nature, I’m not much of a conversation starter so I definitely felt some pressure to continue on the conversation when the participant ran out of things to say. At the same time, I tried to make sure not to put words in their mouth and wanted them to just say whatever came to mind. On top of interviewing, I was also on camera so I guess it was a kind of strange situation having the participants look off into the distance at no one.

It was quite surprising, though, that I found myself really immersed in the role of “documentarist”. I would hold back casual conversation when setting up just because I wanted to capture everything, and even their natural movements like fixing their clothes, hair, or glasses, I tried to capture that without their awareness.

As for the “montagey” footage – I got some close ups of their clothes, hair, face as well as some posters, drawings, and textures around RMIT that I thought might match what they both had to say. For the walking sequences, I got some shots of the both walking from the front and back, and for Vivan I got some of also walking down the stairs. Interestingly enough, Nenad is actually going to be training for catwalking in the future so it might be fun to see the before and after.

In regards to how I’m going to edit the footage, at this point I’m not really sure because I got much more interview footage compared to montagey footage. I think I will try doing a super short 1-1.5 min montage sequence and another cut of all the interesting things they had to say and just ignore that they’re jumping all over the frame.

So this is where “montage” suddenly came into picture for me..

By chance I came upon some short films by segaji video on vimeo, a film studio from Korea. They’ve done some documentaries as well as shoots for fashion magazines and brands like nylon and keds. I really like their style of production because although there is a consistent vibe to each of their videos, there is also an unexpected element to each of them. A watch a few videos and I think I know what they’re about, but then I watch another one and I think “how do they do that?”. How is it possible to maintain a common vibe, yet still surprise audiences? Actually, my desire to do a montage-type documentary stems from their short documentaries. It may because they always work with artists as their subjects, but there is something inherently artsy, stylistic, and most of all, genuine about their work. When they film non-English speaking artists, although I don’t understand the language, I think it actually helps me to study the visuals and shots more so because I’m less focussed on the dialogue.

Also, I recently discovered the film “Hero”. The cinematography was done by Christopher Doyle, who I knew did Chungking Express and In the Mood For Love, but I’m not the type of person to follow everything from a certain director, or cinematographer so this discovery for me was kind of mind-blowing. The reason for this is I never knew I had seen the film “Hero” until it was screened to me in our cinema course. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t remember things unless they leave a strong impression on me. Well I remember as a child that I watched a film and it left a really strong impression of me – but not the whole film, not the dialogue, not even the narrative – just two scenes, and I only remembered one image from both scenes. I went to the screening and it was towards the end of the film where those scenes were shown. So I just thought to myself “I finally found where those impressions were from!!”. (To be honest, there were many things I didn’t like about the film, but that’s another thing). A few weeks later, as a result of my lurking youtube, I watched a compilation of works by Doyle, and I saw the scene from Hero in it! So long story short, I established my liking for Doyle, and next time should probably research more thoroughly into the films that I enjoy.

In any case, I watch a few short documentaries of his and he goes through how he searched for locations, available lighting, and “his world”. Really, he just has some insight and mastery that I can only ever dream of attaining. If you compare the sets and locations he uses “before” and “after”, the transformation is just woah. In Chungking Express, there was a montage-y sequence of the apartment getting revamped by the female protagonist. In the film it looks so scenic and picturesque, but the actual apartment is really ordinary. It’s just really normal. I don’t know how else to put it. His use of lighting, the camera movement, angles, exposure, use of shadows and silhouettes, made the set more sophisticated than it was in reality.

For my montage, an ambitious and distant goal of  mine, I don’t know how I’m going to approach. I’m speculating that it’s going to end in either of two ways – I will try and utilise a set that’s already “interesting” or I will find an “ordinary” space and kind of emulate the style of segaji and Doyle. Where I’m at now, I don’t think I will be able to create a montage from just my own imagination, I don’t have that kind of intuition.

Links:

Where to begin..

In everyone’s proposal today, everyone seemed to have a pretty concrete idea of what their project was going to be about content-wise and even how they would achieve that technically. My project is probably the most ambiguous as I really don’t know what I’m going to do until after I’ve had a chat with the participants (which I will be doing at the end of the week – week 8b), so it does make me a little anxious. Also many people had tests and experiments already, so I realise that the research part of my project pales in comparison. I really didn’t do much to prepare for this besides watching some videos so I will need to look for some more inspiration. I’m not sure which presentation I should talk about since all of them were inventive, but I noticed that a lot of people decided to focus on just one thing like – sound, lighting, location, a script which is probably wise given the time we’ve got.

Until the end of semester; we only have 4-5 weeks which sounds like a lot but I know it’s not. Especially since I’m going to have to meet up with so many participants – and if they don’t go as well as I expect I will have to meet up with even more. In any case, I’ll do my best not to freak out. Honestly speaking, I am more nervous than excited for my project. What happens if it turns out to be just boring interview footage? Judging by the pattern of my behaviour, I’m always nervous during pre-production – the part I hate the most, semi-excited but also flustered when things go wrong or I mental breakdown during production, and then finally during post-production I feel annoyed when I realise my footage wasn’t that good, not in focus, underexposed or overexposed, something is missing, or it just doesn’t make for a good edit. Then I visit it again after a few days or a week when I’m over my annoyances and frustration, and then I’m excited about it and start analysing it and learning from the mistakes I’ve made. No doubt the editing process is, for me, the most enlightening one regardless of how heavily the project is based on this step.

For the rest of the semester, I would like to work on documentary things in a loose fashion. Ideally, I would like to create a documentary/montage type of video with some snippets of the participant, places they like, but I would also like to add some footage of places that I associate with whatever they are talking about. So although the participant is going to be heavily involved in the content, I’m also going to be interpreting what they say visually.

In the next week or two I would like to meet up with participants from the starnow callout, and just get to know them. Our meeting will be filmed, so all the footage that I take on the day will contribute to my reflections and research.

On the day, I will just talk to them and get to know them. I do have some questions prepared like: Are you involved in any studies or work right now? What’s your best friends name? How would they describe you? What’s a recent thought you had, or a thought that keeps coming back to you? How does a normal week in your life play out? What was your childhood like?

I will also get them to do some tasks – I’d get them to write, walk, read, adjust their clothes, sit etc well as any unique mannerisms or habits they have.

After meeting with all the participants, I will choose one (or even two if I think I can pull it off) of the participants who I felt were interesting and made me curious about them. I would probably ask them some more specific questions about what kind of production style they like (lighting, colour, background music), and do some pre-planning with them before we start shooting for the montage.

In the montage, narration will make up most of the dialogue, with some shots of the participant talking, “other” footage will make up the rest of the montage. The “other” footage may consist of different spots and locations the participant frequents. Also, their fashion/style would be a strong visual indicator of their personality, so I would ask them to wear something that they think really defines them, and get some detail shots of that.

From this project, I’d like to improve on my directing, casting, editing, cinematography, and location/set-hunting skills. Also, as I’m going to be meeting and working with strangers, I hope that I can improve my social and communicating skills. It’s not an everyday thing to meet up with a stranger and interrogate them about their deep thoughts on life so it’s probably going to feel uncomfortable for both parties. I just hope that my project is convincing enough that they won’t decide to pull out at the last minute.

What I would like to investigate/do:

– film a documentary, ‘montage’ style/structure

– process: will be ‘doc’ style, investigating the subject, getting them to talk about themselves in a personal manner – but doesn’t have to be about personal, it could be a recent thought that they had, or situation that they encountered, something substantial. so really all I’m gonna do is have a long getting-to-know-them chat and work out things from there

– then I will reflect upon our conversation – jot down some points I might like them to go through in a deeper sense that I think is suitable for me to create something with

– there will definitely be ‘narration’ involved, maybe some sit-down interview sequences

– the bulk of the footage for the montage will be determined after we have set a topic (or whatever idea) for the participator to talk about

– largely their content + my interpretation of that

– the participator will be deeply involved in this, I will also get them to send to me some videos, films, documentaries that they like and I will also show them some inspirations

– pretty documentary process, yet the outcome will not be as documentary I hope

Some footage ideas:

– things they mention, eg. if they are talking about nature, some footage of nature

– places they like/frequent, their interaction – how they ‘hang’ there

– their fashion, get them to wear something that they think really defines them, have close ups of details of clothing

– maybe even get some footage in the car

– lighting/weather they like eg. if they like rain – raindrops, or water drops, if they like warm weather – sun, shadows, breeze, spring – bright flowers, colours?

– what kind of person they are? messy? neat? – get them to fold their clothes neatly, make bed

– morning person? night owl? dusk/dawn? drawing curtains, catching sunset

– handwriting

– magazines they like to read, pages/snippets

– past works -> archival style

Some technical things to try out:

– playing with exposure, focus, zoom

– speeding/slowing/repeating actions or shots

– transitions? effects?

When I first listen to a song, sometimes it takes a while before I can decide whether I like it or not. Sometimes it happens that the songs I like on the first listen will not endure as much as a song that takes me a while to get into.

Inevitably, there comes a point when you’ve heard a song enough times to say you’ve heard it enough. After several listens of a song, even a song a like, I will become less curious about it since I’ve gotten used to the melody, beats, voices, and whatnot. It’s not that I’m sick of it (just yet) but it’s not as interesting anymore. When that happens I always do this. I scroll down my playlist and I go to select the song, but before I press play I think to myself that I’m going to focus on this particular aspect of the song – the drums, the guitar, the vocals, the bass, whatever. Then while I listen to the song, I will listen to, say, the drums (kind of) separately from the rest of the instruments. However it doesn’t always go as planned. At times, I’ll forget that I wanted to listen to a particular element and listen to the song as a whole. When that happens, as soon as I remember, I re-select the song and listen to it again.

I wonder if this sort of thing could be applied in cinema. For example, if there is a particular dialogue that I’m hellbent on, I would like to slowly drown out all the other noise and music there is until it’s just the characters voice.

Montages are unexpectedly hard to edit. It may be because I did not have a concrete plan of how I wanted the edit to look while filming but I found the editing to be really difficult.

The thing is with scenes or segments of a film or documentary, there is some sort of motivation behind which shot follow what – for continuity purposes shot A should be followed by shot B, or to move a story along this scene should follow that scene. But for a montage, I guess the motivation is a bit less obvious or maybe even non-existent. Or maybe the motivation isn’t in the meaning of a shot but rather the pure visual composition of it.

In any case, it’s something I’m not used to since I’ve always thought to myself that each succession of shots should be motivated by some sort of meaning and purpose that is carefully thought out – not just because it looks ‘good’.

So in conclusion, I find montage easier to write and shoot, but much more difficult to edit (because I’m not used to it).

Moments are just moments. They need no definite beginning, middle, or end. They may not fit into the mould of ‘drama’ or ‘documentary’.

Yesterday I had a chat with Robin, and it was then I began to put the pieces together. During this studio, there has been a lot of talk about blending drama and documentary, however I didn’t feel like our classes or exercises had really tackled this idea yet. For me, the classes/exercises were more about learning the technology and practicing using the gear (which is really helpful since I’m pretty clueless for someone who has used the same equipment before); I felt the theory part of the studio was missing. But now I can see how the things we’ve done the past couple of weeks related to the concept of blending drama and documentary.

When Paul told us to write about something, I thought: “What story am I supposed to tell? I have no interesting stories”. After procrastinating for some time, I just decided to write about some random moment I had back when I was moving houses during year 11. To be honest, I’m not sure if this actually happened. My memory is horrible. But since this scenario came to my mind, it must have at least a bit of validity as I don’t remember things that don’t leave an impression on me. At the very least, the thoughts are real.

In any case, if I were to develop this idea into a scene, would that scene be considered a documentary or drama? If I’m writing a script and getting an actor to act out this experience, it seems like it would be a drama. However taking into account that it is loosely based off my experience, it seems like it could be considered a documentary as well. Maybe the issue lies in the context of this scene. If it’s in a drama which is largely fictional, it’s probably leaning towards drama however the moment captured in the scene doesn’t necessarily accelerate or develop like a narrative at all. The method in which the moment is captured is also unlike a documentary as everything is staged, and the ‘experiencer’ of the moment is not even sure whether it really happened or not. So the question is: is it the content (truthfulness or validity) or processes involved (was it staged, was there prior research done?) that makes a film fall into either category.

For my little moment that I wrote about, I wouldn’t feel comfortable assigning it either label. Perhaps I’ll just stick to referring to it as a ‘moment’. Really, anything could be considered a drama and anything could be considered a documentary. It’s only when there are certain rules set into the definition of these terms that we can rule things out as being either or none of them. I guess it depends on your perspective. Aaaaand I’m back to the same old conclusion… as always: it depends. Seriously, I don’t even know why I attempt to come to a conclusion anymore.

This week we began to “work individually”.

We developed a concept, process, some content, that we wanted to work on and filmed it in groups. I decided to film a moment that regularly occurs in films as well as in real life – a person just passing time. As I mentioned in the earlier post, the real intention of this scene was to capture it in a stylised, kind of artsy way. In my head, I’d imagine a montage of a person passing time in different environments, however I only ended up filming in two different locations so I’m not too sure how it will turn out and whether it will work or not. I think this time I was a bit too ambitious with I wanted out of a 30 minute class exercise, and with such a stylised montage in mind it may have been better to do at least a bit of concrete planning.

Now that I’ve shot it, I can think of so many more ways to make it interesting. I could have tilted the camera, pulled focus, get some stills and locked shots… if only I had thought/remembered these options during the shoot… Anyways, looking forward to editing the footage on Monday.

Some things:

– maybe it’ll be better to find some music which suits the mood first

– changing speed of action, elliptical editing, transitions, repetition, are all options not just cut and paste

In drama, I find that there is not much space for awkwardness. And by that I mean real awkwardness, not acted awkwardness. A meeting of two people in an awkward setting. Maybe an individual who is a bit of a weirdo asking for company. The awkward moment when you stare at a door, and suddenly comes out of it, making eye contact with you. Do you say hi? Look away and pretend nothing happened? I think that its a quirky ‘mood’ that can be explored in Film 3. And more often than not, these awkward moments probably occur when the camera’s are not rolling.

A good way to capture this would probably be to use a candid camera technique. I believe I have a real talent to make others feel uncomfortable around me because I’m an awkward person by nature: doesn’t matter who I’m with. A good friend, family member, co-worker, sales assistant, stranger, teacher – the list goes on! I think I would make a good subject for this doco/drama thing.