WEEK 6.

My initial role within the documentary group was a part of the poster development team. The first couple of meetings we had we started to brainstorm ideas, and then using Facebook we continuously kept in touch with what we were doing. Myself and the other members of the poster team, Axel and Ajeet, decided that we would all create a version of the poster and show the group the next week.

The poster that I came up with was –

DRAFT

I knew we were going to use more appropriate text for the title so I just used a font that I liked at the time.

During this week as well I asked Richard Lowenstein if he could talk at our seminar. I intern at his production company so I see him every week and could keep communication with him easily. This proved to be a bit of a detriment to Tom who was in liaison with the other quests, as even though Tom would email Richard, he would respond to me or not at all. Meaning that I had to relay information to Tom and ensure that he was in fact coming.

Week 7.

After the presenting of our posters to each other I was really happy with any of the designs. My personal preference was a more cartoony version, which would allow for consistency and non breaking of copyright laws. Ajeet did a quick little sketch of a cartoon and I absolutely loved it and encouraged him to draw the poster if he could. It turned out to be a good idea as I think the final poster looked really good.

Week 8.

I corresponded with Ajeet on the poster design and the design of the quests bio posters that we were to hang up on the day. Honestly, Ajeet did all the physical drawing and illustrating but I helped him a little with the design and ideas.

On the actual day of the seminar, I helped set up in the mad rush as did everyone else. Getting equipment from the techs and keeping in contact with Richard to ensure he knew where he was going.

My goals 

I think I succeeded in reaching the goals I set for myself at the start of the semester. All in all I wanted to make a documentary that was entertaining and that I was proud of, and I think our group was successful in that. I am proud of our documentary making process, starting from the beginning and knowing absolutely nothing and no one who participates in LARP. Taking a very active role in the organisational and liaising side of the process I am happy with what we were able to do and the content that we ended up with.

I said that I wanted to test myself in a leadership role and even though there was never an official announcement, I did take that that role as it my idea originally and thats just how the group arranged ourselves. I think this was a good challenge and I think I did a good job organisational and creatively.

Even though I still am not completely familiar with the equipment, I definitely have a better hold on how to use both the camera and mixer. Most of the time this was left up to another member of the group but there were many times that I set up and used the equipment myself and think I am competent enough at it.

Nearly every shot of our final film had some sort of colour correction done to it. We had a lot of shots that were grainy due to a variety of things as well as colour correcting to a more cinematic aesthetic.
Original shot.

Mid-tones more blue, emphasises the shadow and makes the shot darker. Reduced output levels to darken and made highlights pinker to change colour on the face.

Fixed mid-tones to more orange, makes the image slightly brighter and more cinematic. Lowered the output and made the shadows more blue to make it a bit darker.

Original shot.

Bought down the output levels and made the highlights greener, this made the image darker. Shadows are a darker blue, contrasting the light blue mid-tones. Visually it looks more appealing and ominous.

Raised the input levels to create more depth in the shadows. Midtones and highlights were made more green to make it look more vibrant, also highlights the red in the shot.

Original shot.

This image appears cooler than the original by making the master a deep red for warmth in the mid-ground and green in the midtones to emphasise the grass in the foreground. More yellow/pink in the highlights makes the image look brighter. 

Bought the brightness to -5.7 and contrast to -0.2. We made the shadows warmer, midtones greener and highlights pinker, resulting in a warmer and somewhat sharper looking shot.

My initial observation of this clip is the use of a long focal length which has the effect of flattening the image, the cameraman is far away from the subjects and has zoomed in making size and distance hard to distinguish. It is hard to grasp perspective, the cars moving across the screen completely swallow whatever else was in the frame and act as distorted motion blurs that at times help hide edits between shots. A lot of emphasis is on form and motion. The zoom allows  for a wide depth of field within the frame, this allows the audience to focus on an intimate close up of a face yet still leaves a sense of distance and unobstrusive observation.

The clip almost feels like a montage or slide show of the inhabitants of Paris, with smooth edits between 2-4 second clips of various people. I think the intention is to allow a sense of what Paris is like through its various inhabitants. There are times of clever editing, for example succeeding the shots of women leg is a shot of a man looking back which makes it look like he was looking at the ladies but probably was not actually.

A point that keeps being emphasised and of which is of utmost importance when making and viewing documentaries is the fact that a documentary is a manipulated version of reality. A dcumentary is not a survelliance camera in a supermarket, as the reading points out, but a constructed and influenced and contrived film or work that regardles of whether the filmmaker has an agenda is in fact their view on that reality. All elements that must be deciding upon during the filmmaking process inclusing mise-en-scene, lighting, focal length etc are all manipulations on the reality they are trying to capture.

In the interview with Haslell Wexler, the point about the filmmaker envisaging how a shot will work and forseeing what needs to be shot in order for this to happen and overtly manipulating the shot in order to do so made me think about my documentary. At various steps along the way of producing our documentary we have been sharing examples of what we want the finished product to look like and because of this we have asked our interview subjects to do certain things or say certain things on camera. We also at times have asked people to act things out in front of us.

Ctrl-Alt-V – Paste Attributes.

This shortcut will come in handy when we are working on stylistic elements like tone, filter, colour correction and grain reduction. This way we can paste the attributes that we have changed on one clip directly to another, meaning if the clips are similar aesthetically we don’t have to change them all individually.

Shift-5 – Effect controls.

We will be using effect controls a lot during our edit so I think a shortcut to that panel will be handy.

= – Zoom in.

Instead of dragging the cursor along the bottom of the timeline constantly, a shortcut to zoom in and out quickly will be invaluable. You constantly need to zoom in and out to find and arrange clips and to slice and trim them.

S – Snap.

Sometimes you need to snap so the clips match up directly behind the one before and without snapping you have to zoom all the way in or free handedly place the clip there and its not the most precise way of doing things.

There are numerous types of sound in this clip of Forbidden Lies (2007), as the clip transitions from a make-believe flashback-esque sequence to real world montage. To highlight the fantastical nature at the beginning of the clip, music is layered with bird chirping that is much too loud to sound natural. This sound effect could have beens sourced from a free sound effect website or by recording a bird with a sound recorder. The twist visual effect is accompanied with music and chimes that could have also been soucrced from an online archive. The rest of the flash-back scene has foley sounds including car noises, wind and a thump when the scarf hits the ground. This could have been recorded in a studio. These sounds seem unnatural as well as they are louder and more abrasive as they would be in real life.

The rest of the clip primarily uses diagetic sounds that are synced with their visuals and usually blend into the next shot by running over the top or layered with other diagetic sounds from that next shot. Sound effects are also used here to support the dialogue, for example the sound of a camera shutter and a rattle snake.

A point that stood out from the reading is that of the ‘drama documentary’, a documentary that is treated dramatically. This excited me as I thought about my documentary I am to make this semester and thought, as my documentary is dealing with a subject that is already so dramatic (Larping) it could be an interesting idea to play with this idea. We could use the adapted convention of real people acting out medieval reconstructions, or we could film all of our subjects in character before, during and after the game and simply film their fantasy game like its a real event. After watching a game last week I saw that they walk around in character so we would be filming true events.  I was also talking to a friend last night who is making a documentary about her auntie who is a hoarder and schizophrenic. The auntie is too paranoid to have anything that identifies her on screen so we were saying that she could reenact her entire documentary with another actress in place of her auntie.

The example of the Aileen Wuornos story and the various positions on the spectrum between fictional and documentary that a film can be placed. It’s something that everyone has seen before but is interesting when pointed out. The fictionalised docudramas like Monster must annouce the ‘true’ basis of their story where documentaries of the same subject rely on the audience preconceptions of it being true. The ‘truth’ of the subject lies somewhere inbetween these stories.

Abstract Exercise. 

What this exercise highlights is the thin line between abstract and cheesy, between being able to make a coherent, textured edit or something that resembles a tacky 80’s film clip. Unfortunately, mine resembles more of the latter. I tried to keep my layering of visual simple because of this reason, layering for the sake of layering is how you get an amateur looking result. I tried to form some kind of narrative, or at least coherency, with the juxtaposition of the audio and visual. The audio goes starts with a cityscape that blends into a layering of water and birds that, along with the visuals, kind of resemble a dream-like segment, and then finish off with a more realistic mix of audio and visual again.

Having good quality sound and video was incredibly important. In such a simple exercise where simplicity is key, having good quality recordings make editing a well polished sounding and looking piece much easier.

Howard Rheingold. Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Print. (Chapter- Chapter Four: ‘Social-digital know-how: The arts and sciences of Collective Intelligence’, pp 147-187.)\

Web’s collective intelligence,

use communication media to organize collective action

mass collaboration is about doing your own business more effectively

collective business of self-preservation

the most effective asset we have is how to solve problems collaboratively

virtual communities, like contracts and constitutions, are technologies of cooperation

social dilemmas – are the conflicts between self-interest and collective action that all creatures face in daily life

  – lack of trust in the potential cooperation of others

mutual benefit -> common purpose means the move from self interest to common goals

groups can move from networking to coordination to cooperation, by building trust, communicating and explicitly seeking a common purpose.

“WOW is the new golf”

        – the collaborative mind-set

A networked- rather than hierarchical command and control structure.

Add value to information you find – help others transform it into knowledge by adding context – share not only what you find but also what you think of it.

The participatory skill of curation and some of the collaborative skills of virtual community are fundamental to collective intelligence.