Week 9
In week 9, we did the preparation of our group presentations, continued development of our content, and script writing. We had originally planned to organize our documentary around the history of the Capitol, but after speaking with Adrian on Wednesday, we understood that, while we were headed in the right direction, we also needed to focus on the prompt’s “death of cinema” section, which we had missed in our first attempt. However, the sudden switch of our original idea which makes me, and Chloe feel clueless and stuck; luckily Laran came across and mentioned an article titled “10 Tips for Writing a Documentary Script”, where Natasha Ferguson suggested that “include an audiovisual hook demanding the audience’s attention.” The opening of a script should explain what the viewer will see in the clip and what you hope the viewer will take away from it. The main goal is to capture the viewer’s attention so that they will be focused on the documentary for the duration of the film. we started to rethink and reconstruct the beginning for a documentary. However, we still did a lot of thinking after Wednesday.
We got a lot of helpful comments after the Friday pitch, which was great for our concept. I updated the interview questions following the class in light of the feedback we got. I changed this part to make the question more focused and relevant to our topic because “Death of Cinema” is a very general one, and the interviewee might not be able to respond to it in a short amount of time. to produce content for the documentary that is more effective. Meanwhile, we decided to scheduled a time to do our interview with staff from Capitol and hope for their responding.
Week 10
In week 10, we conducted interviews with Darren and Marc, the two teachers employed at the capitol (who also signed the release form), in week 10. Through their stories, we were able to gain a better grasp of the reasons behind the Capitol’s longer lifespan than other theaters, such as Forum Theatre and Regent Cinema on Collins Street; as well as the Capitol’s influence on society, the state of cinema in the future, and changes that have occurred there over time. We were able to sense not only their affection for the capital but also its historical development as they discussed their opinions on these matters and personal experiences. Our interview was conducted with two cameras at different angles; this allowed us to edit different angles together in case one became too monotonous and bored the audience. The interviewees gave very helpful and efficient answers, which further enhanced the academic quality of the interview. We also encountered some issues during the interview, such as background noise, so we borrowed a microphone from equipment office in building 9 beforehand and placed it on the interviewee’s collar to ensure a better sound collection. The overall process of the interview in conclusion were very successful and we have received handful of background information about Capitol. Meanwhile we decided to make our documentary a longer one and try to minimalize the 30 mins interview material into 7-10 minutes.
Because Friday is a public holiday, class on Wednesday afternoon was the only time during the week that our group could work together. We went over what we still needed to finish at the end of the session, so we know what jobs needed to be done when we were separated. We came across the decision that I will be working on the voiceover parts of the documentary, Chloe and Samantha will be working on simple editing when they get back to home and Laran did some further research on. We agreed to meet after school to record and edit the video in Building 9 editing booth.
Week 11
Based on the previous work, we began the next few parts of the edit in week 11. And we had a editing session in Building 9 as we planned. In order to have better sound quality for our documentary voiceover, I borrowed a microphone beforehand and recorded our script we had in week 10. Despite a few issues with the recording equipment, since it is my first time ever used such professional equipment, I had some struggle time with it which were resolved after some investigation and exploring. However, there were still few clips were lost, and thanks my teammates for giving me time to do recorded a replacement later in the day so that we could add the missing recordings to the first section to complete our opening.
We also spent time editing the video at another meetup that took place over the weekend. We were much more skilled and efficient at editing today than we were on Wednesday, though there were still a lot of small details that required some time. We plan to show Adrian the first draft of the video in class on Wednesday and solicit his feedback. Hopefully, we will have it finished by the end of the week. “Compare The Capitol to other cinemas” is the next section we have came across. we discussed some historical information and facts about the Regent Theatre in this section. And did some further research with couple old theatre. As we found that all theatres in Melbourne have experienced numerous additions and modifications, much like the Capitol, but their architectural design and purpose are different. The Regent Theatre is more opulent, while the Capitol is more of a retro-technological hybrid of modern technology. In addition to movie screenings, the capital also hosts series of events such as film festivals, concert, conferences and talk shows. The Regent Theatre presents fashion shows and ballet performances instead of showing movies for purposes. To illustrate the changes in history, we used a lot of historical photos in this section.
RMIT (2019) The Capitol reclaims its place as a Melbourne cultural icon, RMIT University website, accessed 8 October 2023. https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2019/jun/the-capitol-relaunched.
Week 12
I was missing for week 12 as I had some family emergency, so I must back to China during this difficult time. However, I managed to get contacted with my group members and catch up with our documentary working process. My group members told me that they showed the rough cut to Adrian on Wednesday in class, and received a lot of helpful suggestions to improve our work which is good. And they planned for another editing session on Thursday. Another problem that the rest of group members came across was the soundtrack. We needed to find a new soundtrack, adjust the audio level consistently, and just add a brief overview of the Regent Theatre and its location, add images and video based on the interviews and the video, and feature a lower third of the interviewees to introduce their roles to the audience. Because of my absence on all of the sessions and I have to get information based on what my group members discussed in group chat. I understand that Laran and Chloe were in charge of locating material and sources for the documentary, while Samantha was in charge of further editing. I feel very appreciative with all my group members for giving me understanding and quick responding on emergency. Meanwhile, I managed to get some time to refurnished some of the information of our folio.
After Samantha finished editing and refurbishing on our documentary, we all had a look on the final cut several times as a group to ensure our film was flawless. I gave some advice on turning up few volumes on background soundtrack for better presenting effects and creates that kind of documentary feel. Nevertheless, the final cut are perfect and we all happy and excited for the exhibition next week (finger crossed for my group mates).
Week 13
In week 13, when I stuck in family incidents, a good news from my group mates, the projection of documentary are going extremely smooth and successful. However, I still heard some issues came along the way.
First of all, before the exhibition, Laran had to move the video to a USB to make sure it would play correctly and smoothly because they discovered that it was extremely laggy when they played it on the laptop last Friday when they went to Capitol to test the projector. Despite me and Samantha did not participate much in the preparation stage for exhibition, but we highly participated online in our group chat, we offered some suggestions for Chloe and Laran for better projecting, for example, Samantha who was responding for editing at early stage helped with transferring our final cut to the USB from Premiere Pro, I have been help with the final version of our group production folio. I was also supposed to do the final presentation for our group production, however, because of my absence, Laran took the responsibility for the final presentation of our documentary which I feel very appreciative of. We cannot make it without anyone’s effort.
I truly felt appreciated not only for my group members, but also the whole studio for delivering such high quality and thoughtful idea about ‘Phantom Cinema’ in general. I acknowledge handful of concepts and ideas about Cinema in detail and I believe that this learning experience will better cement my future study in Cinema. I also learned how to use a lot of different kinds of equipment from camera to microphone, these equipment that I have never used before. I also learned how to better communicate with my group members, especially when you have emergency comes up, inform them as earlier as possible to avoid any missing work. I think I also need to improve on my editing skills, as I am not very skilful on Premiere Pro, especially when we were doing editing sessions; I cannot help with anything although I really kin to help. Therefore next time, I will make sure that I have better both software and hardware skills, so I can better help with my group members in future co-operation tasks.