I always think what is the biggest difference between documentary and fiction film. Maybe “Life Caught Unawares” can seem as one answer of it. “ Life caught unawares,” means to record life when surprised, and perhaps provoked, by the presence of a camera. To be more specific, it is emphasized the part that exploit the various possibilities about life details, which people did not see, rather than just record the moment of life. As the exercises we did in those two weeks, we documented all things in this natural and real way.

Actually, documentary is a cinematic representation of society, costume, politic and so on. There are numerous ways or modes to show this representation to viewers. For instance, some directors prefer showing this world in a straight way in their documentary. Dziga Vertov is one director who proposed the straight way firstly in 1920s. He use camera to capture the unaware actions of people in this world. Generally, He is a father of the film truth. Film truth is depends on one concept, which is called ‘Kino-Eye’. As Hincks（2007）mentioned “ the Kino-eye group, following its renunciation of the film studio, of actors, sets, and the script, fought for a decisive cleaning up of film-language, for its complete separation of cinema from theater and literature.” The director who strong persist the Kino-eye do not consider part of the cast, set, or script, on the contrary, they will pay more attention to the camera. They must use the power of camera to the utmost, because after Vertov and his comrades attempted to film in various methods, they finally find that camera be more comprehensive than human’s eye. This is really different from the drama. Because, in the drama production, we are extremely focus on the script, and cast.

Vertov in further promoted this concept in his Kino-Prada (Film truth) series. This series was newsreels, which not only capture fragments of actuality, but also organize it together through the concrete way. He believed through the way that camera with its varied lenses, ability to slow motion, shot-counter shot editing, stop motion, time-lapse and fast-motion could presented a perfect and reliable organization about deeper truth, which can not be seen with the naked eye. As the symbolic film of Film truth The Man with a Movie Camera shown, this series focused on the everyday experiences. In this film, the director Vertov shows the montage of urban Russian life, and the work or play status of ordinary people in this city. There are not any script and sets. On the contrary, the director perfectly spliced numerous individual visual elements together. Those individual visual elements based on the agility of camera. The director has to keep pace with fleeting life, because the millions of people do their own things in different places in their own time. In this Film, Vertov become accustomed to this situation, he manages his camera go to lots of places, such as the school, bank, club and clinic and so on. In the meantime, through the perfect organization the chaos of life gradually being clearer and easier to be recognized too. This perfect organization consisted by different cinematic skills, due to those skills, viewers are able to see the film truth, which they are ignored by their naked eyes in daily life. On the other hand, this truth not the life as it is, but also what the things shown by the montage. So, in our documentary production, except to record the unaware action, we also need to use edit skills to find deep truth of life.

Reference

Hicks, J. Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film, 2007.

In Thursday class, we learned lots of basic camera skills in very specific way, such as the usage of tripod, filter, white balance, focus and so on. Because of last semester studio, so I am familiar with those silks. But I think that is a good chance for me to enhance it. Honestly, after a holiday, I forgot a little bit, such as the usage of color bar. But after this class, I deeply remember those skills of camera operation.

We did one small exercise in class, which is one shot for 50 second. This is really different with drama exercise. We have document one real event or place in one position, no panning, no tilting, and no zoom in or out in recording process. As Robin said don’t be lazy, we have clearly observe the situation, and choose a perfect position, rather than just rely on the automatic way. To some extent, this exercise helps us more close to what we want to document. We capture the real things rather than design it. It is pretty difficult. For example, the sitting of white balance is hard to adjust, because the exposure cannot be one hundred percent correct in every second. The reason is that the weather is changing. In one shot, the exposure might change from the correct one to the dark one because of the change of lighting. For this problem, I think because documentary focus on the “real recording”, so we cannot shot again and again, so the change of exposure must exist. The important thing is we should keep it in a reasonable range.

In Friday class, we learned new audio gear. I think it is pretty easy to use. In the class exercise, we use this gear to record sound to describe a place. In my perspective, the key of this exercise is that we need to find symbolic sound of the place. Anyway, I think the fist week we did a good start, I really expect the next week study.

In the last semester studio, I had learned knowledge of camera coverage in a specific way through a series of scenes filming. Those exercises assist me in closing camera. However, in last semester we mainly focus on the area of drama rather than documentary. And in this semester, documentary seems as the significant role. To be honestly, I prefer drama than documentary, I do not have inspiration or perfect idea of documentary filming. According to my understanding, the studio film3 will through a series of reading, watching, planning, shooting and editing exercises to help student get a comprehensive understanding on documentary. So I guess I will face a big challenge in the whole semester.

In this semester, I hope I can find a balance between drama and documentary. Also, I have to keep considering how to make a documentary be interesting and attractive? how to apply the methodologies of drama production to documentary making? Furthermore, I think I do not totally use camera，audio and other filming gears in a perfect way, so recognize and perfectly utilize the properties of different gear is significant for me. It is so good if we can learn more gears as soon as possible in this semester. Such as lighting, audio, dolly and so on.

In addition, the significance of software in filmmaking is massive. Through the series of exercises I hope I will promote the usage skills of the software, such as PR, AE and so on. I do not have knowledge about After Effect, I really want learn it in the rest time.It looks like I meet a big challenge in this semester, but I believe that if I put my passion, I will conquer it.