by This painting is called ‘The Woman with a Pearl Necklace” by Johannes Vermeer. It appears that this was lit during mid day given the white lighting. The only key light was through the window, with a fill light on her back due to the light bouncing off the white walls. I have made the assumption that the only light source is through the window because everything below her waist is dark. The way the painting is composed makes me feel that the subject is preparing for an important occasion.
The scene I have chosen to analyse is the part where the men were able to relax and have a few beers after Andy has bribed the guards. The time of day looks like sunset, and the subjects are lit directly in the sunlight. I made the observation by looking at the skin tone of the subjects and the horizon. It appears as though this was shot during the last minutes of golden hour and transitioning into blue hour. Seeing the men relaxed with a cold beer in there hand sets a moment of ease. The scene makes you feel relaxed after a had days work in the hot sun. This mood was also complemented by the body language and the interaction between the inmates.
Continuing on with Week one’s lesson on the natural light that surrounds us, we learnt about the different tools that can add or subtract light, but also redirect and change the quality of light. Our first day of the week, we redid the first exercise with more emphasis on the composition of the shot, and also with the addition of white and black boards. On the second day, we introduced artificial lighting using various light sources.
The first task of the week allowed us to manipulate the natural light in the room with the use of black and white boards. We were able to bounce the key light and add fill to subject. However, in reverse, we could use a black board and take away light from the fill by placing the board next to the subject. This type of practice of adding and taking away from the light further demonstrates that we don’t need expensive lighting equipment to gain some sort of control over the lighting. Using such inexpensive equipment allows us to manipulate the natural light through changing the direction or the quality of the light. In effect, this will allow for more freedom to light the subject in different ways for different moods.
On the second day of class during the week we were introduced to a type of lighting that is very common in studios. We Used three sources of light which was a key light, a fill light and a back light. We used a 1k for the key light and a red head for the fill. However, we could not position the red head in a traditional three-point lighting set up. The reason being that the light produced by the red head was over powering the key light. The fill light had to be less intense than the key light, otherwise it would defeat the whole purpose of having a key and fill light, which is to make the subject ‘pop’. In order for us to reduce the intensity of the red head, we bounced the light onto the ceiling and adjusted it until we were happy with the amount of fill on the subject. In this process we realised how hard it was to control the bounce light because it became highly diffused by the ceiling, which scattered the light everywhere. The drawback in this technique was not being able to control the amount of spill.
A typical three-point lighting setup
source: https://birtecinematography.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/3-point-lighting.png
Fresh into the new year we started off the class by a simple observation. We saw something that we never really pay attention to. The observation we made was the current lighting situation in the room, which was natural light that was penetrating through the windows and bouncing off the white walls. Despite the fact that there was no studio type lighting used, there was still some kind of lighting used. Using the available natural light in the room, we had to conduct an interviewing exercise composing for one single shot. Through this experiment we were expected to review and have a think about and understand the lighting and the composition of in the shot.
The view finder was set to black and white. The intent of the exercise was to focus on how the subject was being exposed. Visualising the subject in black and white allowed us to appreciate how the natural light was interacting with the subject and the background. Once our group had composed and framed up for the shot; resulting in a medium close up of the subject who was positioned in the top left third of the frame. In terms of lighting, we positioned the subject a few meters away from a window, which key lit the subject’s left side. The fill on his right side was lit by the scatter in the room caused by the white walls.
The Frame found in the View Finder
The resultant image from the interview
After we reviewed our shot, we felt as if we could do a lot better in composing for the shot. It was assumed that because of our focus on figuring out on how to light the subject, we forgot about how we should position the subject in relation to the background. Overall the exercise was a great to understand the lighting is not limited to professional type studio lighting. The whole world is lit in a certain way, and if we can understand the current lighting situation in a room, we can use it to our advantage to maximise our control of the lighting. We want as much control as we can so that we can achieve a certain desired look.
After taking in the feedback that I received from the class in week nine, I set off to make plans with Ethan to reshoot. This time the main focus for this session was to capture good quality audio and also to ponder more onto his personal life, his brother and his mother in particular. From there I was able to form a baseline for myself to build the documentary using Ethan’s voice over to frame it all up.
The two main issues for the poor audio quality was the recording environment and the recording equipment. For the reshoot, I tackled these problems by moving in a quiet location, which was an isolated park and recorded in my car, where it was almost dead silent. For the audio equipment, I upgraded to my friend’s studio quality microphone,which I hooked up to my laptop. The combination of the location and the better equipment, I was able to achieve better sound quality. From this experience, I really felt the dramatic difference between this shoot and the first. I also appreciated how effective good sound quality had and how it can raise the potential of the documentary.
In terms of the interview, I ran through the first edit of the previous shoot with Ethan. I told him what I like and did not like using the feedback from week nine as a guideline. I asked Ethan to talk more about his brother and mother, and how he felt about them and why they were so important to him and his success.
Once the shoot had finished, I was able to compile the recordings and started to develop my structure:
Introduction >Wrestling > Motivation > Brother > Basketball > Hardships > Mother > Resolution > Final message
As week 12 approached, I showed my tutor the recordings I had and how I was going to structure the documentary. I wanted feedback on the content – what was good and what needed to be left out. I also wanted advice on the way I should shoot the video.
Image Link: http://tvtonight.com.au/2017/08/airdate-heroes-2.html
This image comes from the documentary – Heroes. I really like the way this was shot and I will draw a lot of inspiration from this documentary into my own work, especially the cinematography.
On Friday I had the opportunity of presenting the work I have done so far on my documentary. The days leading up to the presentation, I was only able to record interview footage and edit it the day after. Essentially what I presented in class was an edited roll of the interview footage where I attempted to clean up the audio, cut parts that I felt unnecessary and put some non-copyrighted music over it. What I wanted to achieve out of the presentation was constructive feedback on the story of the documentary in regards to flow, clarity and content. Technical feedback was also welcome and suggestions for b-roll footage. Overall the video was about seven minutes long.
Screenshot of my Work in Progress video
After presenting the video I was given plenty of good feedback so that I could use for my final product.
The comments were:
After hearing these comments I now had a better idea of what I needed to do next to improve the quality of the video. Audio was subpar and definitely needed to be worked on.
source: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/pitching-mayerson.jpg
This week I compiled my thoughts and ideas to create my own pitch to present at the end of the week. Up until now doing this exercise really helped me give a better idea of the direction that I am going for in my own documentary.
Finally reaching the end of the week it was a great opportunity to see everyone’s pitches and the feed back that was given to the assessors. The feed back was very interesting and a lot to learn from. A consistent problem from the majority of the pitches was not the idea but how it was going to be presented and structured in the final video.
Initially in the structure of my documentary, I was going to start with Ethan’s basketball career and transition into wrestling. However, the feedback that I was given, the assessor told me I should start with purely wrestling and then slowly bleed into basketball. In doing so it changes the dynamic of the story and makes it far more interesting than what I originally had.
This is the link to my Pitch Presentation:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eEoPYcEMPxDAOmMCadsIFbuq6GW9LuFKrIxzK8vMt4o
This week has been planning and organising for shooting on my final project for the subject. I think the most important and often overlooked is just to make some kind of start. Since the documentary heavily relies on the subject’s voice over, it has to be my main priority and needs to be done otherwise the documentary goes no where. In preparation for the interview with Ethan, I have compiled a short list of questions that would be good to build the foundation and structure of the story:
How has your career in wrestling progressed so far?
What challenges do you face in wrestling?
What do you hope to achieve from all of this hard work and dedication to training?
How have you been able to accomplish so much skill in a short period of time?
Why have you coined yourself as ‘The Half Man Half Machine’
Do you think your transition from pro basketball has helped you immensely in learning the moves?
Why have you made this transition?
Where shall we see you in the future?
I tried to make these questions as open as possible so it leads to more potential sub questions and depth to the story. Hopefully there will be plenty of content to work with so that I can develop an interesting story for the documentary. Further research will be required to make the interview better.
I found this tutorial on interviewing very interesting and informative:
source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9FKKU5ROFI
This week I had the opportunity to help document youth unemployment for a youth centre in the western suburbs. Just a little background into this project: the documentary aims to give people perspective from the current youth on the challenges in employment sector today. Through multiple interviews we hope to send out the message to the masses to eliminate the stigma that young people today are lazy and refuse to find jobs. There was plenty to learn from this experience in regards to camera work and interviewing.
In terms of how the interview footage looked, it was framed in this similar fashion.
We followed the rules of thirds and made the background as minimalistic as possible. Overall we attempted to achieve a basic aesthetic look so that we could focus on the subject and his or her message.
In regards to the interviewing process, we had a list of default questions, but for the majority of the interviewees we did whole heap more of adaptive questions. This process required a lot of on the spot thinking and careful listening.
In the four weeks of documentary studies, compounded with prior knowledge, I decided apply what I have learnt so far in the one documentary style video. The video that I have made reflects on the life of a university student at RMIT, who currently does documentary studies. Taking inspiration from mockumentaries such as ‘Summer Heights High’ and ‘The Office’, I wanted to take a similar approach to my video. However instead of being fictional, the subject and the event are real. I am only taking the mood and the structure of these mockumentaries as the ‘look’ of the video. From the multiple styles of documentaries, such as the questioning style in vox pop, that we learnt in class, I have also adapted them into my video.
In terms of the cinematography side of the video, I wanted to get up close and personal to the subject. I used my fellow class mate Tristan as the subject. Since I know Tristan quite a bit now, I knew that making the shoot less formal would make him more comfortable and open to expressing himself more. In terms of framing, I got Tristan to lie down and took a mid-shot of him for the interview.
Considering that the final video will just have Tristan’s voice, I had to phrase my questions in the way that would give the audience some context to Tristan’s responses. Before the take I told and reminded Tristan to answer the question with context. Through verbal demonstration and direction, I gave him an example of a correct and incorrect response to the question:
“Did you draw a lot of inspiration from the film Blackfish?”
The correct response is:
“A documentary that inspired me to form my own was called Blackfish”
Instead of:
“Yes, I do think that documentary inspired me to form my own”
Furthermore, I also requested for him to explore the question. In doing so, I had my information to work with so that I could highlight key elements in his response and, if appropriate, manipulate my remaining list of questions to fit the context of his responses to give better flow and direction of the overall narrative of the interview.
On the technical side of things, I used my phone and a Zoom microphone that I borrowed. I was not too focused on getting the best equipment for the job. I felt that actually doing the project and applying new knowledge was what mattered the most. Good equipment was something I can worry later for my final assignment.
After the interview, I went over the audio recording and recorded some b-roll footage that was reflective of the content. There was a part of Tristan’s responses that was related to his fascination of documentaries that explore weird and quirky things. Using random footage of Tristan outside of RMIT, I did I cut of him where he was searching for things and acting funny.
Overall This was a great exercise of applying what we have learnt into practice. I feel like this is a step forward in the right direction to develop my final documentary video for the subject.
Link to video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-y-uX03favVNF9XZS1uOThjd00