- Our crew were trying our best and generally satisfied with corporation of this piece of short documentary film assignment work. I would like to say that our strength is the perfectly collaboration within the crew member, we were all passionate, creative, and the most importantly, every of us could solve the problem with flexible ways efficiently during either the pre-production, filming or the post-production process, which means all crew member were contributing and communicated well. Hence I believe we had few good shots which are creative and interesting. We spent a whole afternoon on just capturing the B-roll materials, We tried to use various cinematographic techniques such as focus changing, panning, tilting, zoom in and out. We used mid shots for the basic interviewing image, extreme close-up shots on the interviewee’s eyes when she talks deeply and emotional or introduce her own touching story, and intermix close-up shot on her body language when is reasonable and relevant to what she was talking about during the interview filming. Also we set key light and back light with fill light of red filter, which had made a nice atmosphere which fit her job as a tattoo artist very well. Besides, we had tried our best while editing to overcome difficulties due to our weaknesses of this film. We did everything we could including fixing the low quality sound of the interviewee, covering with suitable background musics, and adaptable cutting techniques as well. Therefore the weakness of this documentary would be sound recording, we did not pre-test the sound kit equipment due to we were unaware that one of the cable was missing, hence we could not use it and then recorded the sound with input of the shotgun mic placed on the camera itself, which had reduced our quality of sound. On the other hand, we did not have an alternative filming location since we were shooting in the interviewee’s own tattoo studio. Which caused the issue of we could not have more cameras to film from different angles during the interview because lack of the space. Also concept is what I would like to improve as well, I realized that the content should be more specific and emphasized.
2. What I would like to emphasize is that identity and belonging are important for human beings, however people are always judging things inappropriately just due to the differences from group to group of people. Nowadays, tattooing has becoming more and more acceptable and discrimination of unreasonable negative ideas towards tattoo lovers is reducing. Hence I hope to explore about this specific group of people and enable the audience to know more about tattoo by making this short documentary film with interviewing a tattoo artist. Besides, the interviewee herself could show the audience culture shock among different countries as an international student. Therefore, in order to persuade people, I would like to try to put more concepts on talking about the topic and make more contents and arguments instead of talking too much on the background story of the interviewee.
3. As a group, we worked very well together for this video production. In the process of our work, everyone contributed fairly to complete this project. We respected and encouraged each other to make sure of the effectiveness of the work. We planed and discussed our ideas together, and listen to each other’s ideas. We also communicated very well although we’ve got different opinions sometimes. And we have coordinated with each other very well in time management, everyone has contributed the most to this work. This cooperation not only allowed us to produce excellent work together but also realized the importance of cooperation. in short, we all enjoyed the fun during the whole process of learning and making this production.
4. I have watched the works of other groups, and I think there are many advantages for us to learn from. But my favorite is one called exploring ministry. When they interview interviewees, first of all, the picture is very clear, the position of the camera is also in accordance with the principle of the nine-grid, and the light is set very well, bright but not dazzling, making people look very comfortable. Second, they were very successful at recording sound, I didn’t catch the obvious noise.
Another group’s work is called the story of Joshua. One of my favorite shots is when dancer dances in the picture. First of all, the cameraman USES the looking up lens to reflect the personality of the interviewee. Secondly, the black and white color can also present the personality and conform to the theme and music category of the whole documentary. Different from the previous group, their picture sense is not very clear, but it is this hazy sense that gives the audience a cool attitude. But one problem is that the sound is not handled perfectly and the background sounds are a bit noisy.
5. Throughout the study of real to a real studio, I have accumulated many valuable shooting experiences, such as imitating others’ shooting styles hence to make my own work more creatively. Also, we learned how to focus on one topic and start to shoot, to see what’s the overall impact for the topic. All of these methods had a positive impact on my last assignment. In addition, through my previous study in ‘ sonic materialistic’ studio, I realized that sound is also an important part of the success of the work. As we all know, sound plays a very important role in work. So in the process of filming, we paid more attention on recording the detailed sounds, such as the buzzing sound of needles touching the skin during the tattooing process. In addition, we added not only one background music, but also gradual volume and partial silence to make the camera and sound more harmonious. In general, the sound of the video interviews, the sound of details, and the blend of background sound all reached a great fusion state. Therefore, I think our work is relatively successful.
All in all, we really had a great time with the studio Real to real and I will try my best to improve my skills for further filming productions.