This has been especially difficult for me as it has truly stumped me. It was helpful watching the portraits in class as it was pretty reflective in noting what worked and what didn’t… Some transitions work, other don’t, it’s the same story with sound. So this got kind of the ball rolling as I researched a bit further into the matter at hand… I was thinking of someone easily accessible, someone who is interesting; but also light-hearted…And the thought finally came to me as I connected the portraiture lecture, I had attended the week before, where the question posed was: ‘What is a Portrait?’.

Debate had fumed over what was a portrait and what wasn’t. Does the subject have to be human? Does the subject have to be a living thing at all?

And it was in that discussion… that I had the thought. Why not do my dog? He’s adorable, he’s funny… and he sees the world in a completely different way than human do… and well he’s a dog? That’s hilarious.

 

The only problem I’ve found (in editing the footage) is that he moves around a lot, dogs tend to move a lot- especially in parks- so it’s difficult to get the right shot duration. Whilst this is annoying, it’s still manageable in post, but it’ll just take a little while.

 

Touching further on the research, there were some really experimental techniques in there, some interesting use of a sound and transitions. It’s hard to accomplish a degree of experimentation in documentary as they’re usually quite straight and narrow- being explanatory in nature.

I’m thinking of using some experimental camera techniques, attempting to express the way a dog sees the world differently, possibly some cool editing techniques that mix sound and video.