Assignment 2 | Part A Submission

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The link of the documentary exercise: https://vimeo.com/333693418

Basically, this video is a combination of 5 exercises. I choose a portion from each. This blog is going to describe the purpose of the example and its relation to our final documentary. (some content are similar to the title card in the video)

  1. Expository mode: The city scene
(Figure 1: the screenshot of the city scene, source by Zhen)
  • To enhance the peaceful and enjoyable sense of the farm, we plan to set a contrast at the beginning of the documentary. The contrast is between the farm and the city. To achieve that, we are going to film a few city clips. Thus, this is mainly an exercise for our beginning scene. To construct the tensional sense of the city, I combined different method to reinforce the sense. Firstly, I use voice-over to tell the phenomena named ‘urban-trance’, a situation proves the stress of people living in the city. Secondly, I mixed various sounds to present the busy life of the city, such as the tram bell, traffic light, and fast driving car. Finally, I use very intense background music to strengthen the effect.
  • This practice really inspires me the frame to present for our final documentary.

2. Interview

(Figure 2: the screenshot of the interview, source by Zhen)
  • The interview has always been considered as a significant part of the documentary to me, especially for a documentary about a person. For our final documentary, we are going to meet and interview Jan Saunders, a positive female with rich experience. We want her attitude can be infectious. The interview provides a chance to let the audience learn more about her directly. The exercise of interview offers us a chance to learn the skills of filming an interview, such as the frame size setting, the direction of the sight line, and the method of question-asking. For example, we got a good structure of the frame. However, the sightline is wrong. If the interviewee is on the left side of the frame, he is supposed to look at the right side. Besides, we learned that we should ask open questions to leave more possibility for the interviewee to speak.

3. Observation: A social-media editor

(Figure 3: the screenshot of A day of social-media editors, source by Zhen)
  • Filming a moving person is not easy. For our final documentary, we are going to record the activities between her and her animals. Thus, I did this practice to find the thing that I need to notice for the real shooting. Firstly, the distance between the cameraman and the object is changing. For the big movement of the object, we may choose mid-shot or wide-shot. For the small movement, we can choose the close-up shot. Secondly, the steady issue is annoying. If we don’t have a stabilizer, we may just use the tripod to film rather than walk around.

4. Vox-pop: What is authentic Chinese food?

(Figure 4: the screenshot of the vox-pop of authentic Chinese food, source by Zhen)
  • Vox-pop can provide various perspectives on the issue. The practice we did in the class inspires us to explore people’s attitude to ‘vegan’ and ‘Plant-food’.

5. Split-screen montage

(Figure 5: the screenshot of the spilled-screen montage, source by Zhen)
  • The montage exercise we did in class also gives us some ideas for our final documentary. We want to record our opinion to ‘vegan issue’ before and after we meeting Jan. In other words, we want to show our attitude changing as an example. If she can influence us, she may also influence the audience.

 

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