Documentary Reflection

                  For this documentary project, my group members and I created a short film about The Shoe Game. This is a community of people who buy and sell the latest, most rare shoes, most of which are Jordans and Nikes. This was always an interesting thing to me as I’ve seen kids at school who wear a different pair of shoes every day and have collections worth thousands of dollars. I still find it very interesting although the amount of drama within our school shoe game was less than I first expected. This however, did not affect the quality of our film. I don’t think we could go too much further with our topic but I don’t regret choosing it. I thought having the freedom to choose our own topic was vital, otherwise I don't think we would have been as interested and this would have made the final result not as strong.

                  Throughout the process of making this film, I discovered that documentary filmmaking is much different than other forms of film. I found it to be much more difficult than creating a film where there are actors or just something experimental. In other types of films, lines can be changed and you are delivering something from your own imagination and can be creative, while with documentaries you must stick to the truth and not stretch facts to make the film more interesting. I also learned about editing a documentary and all the possible ways to format it. This allowed me to get more creative with how to edit it.

One of the most challenging aspects of the process was planning how the final result would look. Once you have all of your footage, information and even script for a voice over, it can be very difficult to see what the final product will look like. You may have a plan but it will always change until there is a stable rough cut on the computer. One of the ways I overcame this was to edit our interviews and parts that I knew would fit, and then recorded voice-overs. As soon as the voice-overs are added in, it becomes much easier to put in other b-roll. I under estimated how challenging this process would be but I found it very rewarding in the end.

                  If I were to do this again, I would probably focus less on what the final product would look like and plan out what information would go into the film first. I also would not write a script until all of our interviews were done because I found that what the kids had to say compared to what they did say had a huge affect on how the film turned out. Besides these few things I think we made a pretty strong documentary for our first attempt.

                  I think that it went generally smoothly for this first year. I thought that it was good to show us examples of other short documentaries but maybe you could also give more general ideas of how to structure the film. Also I think there could have been a bit more individual guidance throughout the process. Instead of going over some things with the whole class you could have weekly meetings with each group to go through what they need to work on and what’s going well. Overall what we needed was simply work time, which you did give us and truly helped. At first I was slightly stressed and felt rushed but once you gave us a bunch of full classes to work I was able to overcome some challenges and that’s what allowed us to finish.

                  Overall I think this project went smoothly and we were able to come out with a fairly solid documentary that I think captures The Shoe Game quite well. The deadline extensions helped a lot and without them we would have rushed and that would have affected the final product. I think showing some of our films to next year’s class would help them greatly. At least from our group’s point of view I thought this documentary project was a success. 

Moonlit Photography

 
    On my typical bus ride to school I noticed the moon was still out. The reason, I noticed it almost immediately was because it was nearly full and very bright. I seemed to stare at it for the remainder of the bus ride and decided that I would photograph it that weekend.
    Saturday night I went out with a friend and took some photos of the moon and attempted to make a time lapse of clouds flying by the moon. I ended up taking almost 1,300 photos and spent hours uploading and moving these photos into a video. This was a test and really taught me a lot about making time lapses. As you could see in my Colors of Fall video I have made a lime lapse before; however, that was not done in the most professional way. For that clip I simply set my camera in the window and recorded video for about 15 minutes and sped it up. To make this moon time lapse, I used the more professional technique of using a remote and taking continuous pictures for a long period of time. I was probably taking photos for about 10 or 15 minutes and ended up taking almost 1,300 photos.
   During post processing I discovered how long it can take to put these films together and how it can go wrong. For me, I used iMovie which complicated things. Once I managed to get every image into the program, iMovie automatically puts a "Ken Burns" effect on every photo so I needed to fix that. Also iMovie does not let you make the pictures show up for less than .1 seconds. Because of this I needed to move the fastest version into a QuickTime file, then put it back into iMovie and speed it up even more. This sacrificed some picture quality and also made it slightly shaky. Now I know more about what to do next time I make a time lapse. Here is my video and one of my the most interesting time lapses I've seen.

My Video:


Another Great Time lapse (Not mine):

DIY Steadicam

    As my interest in video grows I have been in search of new equipment to use to make my films even better. One piece of gear that I had heard of is called a Steadicam (Name of a company that many people have copied). These are basically mounts that you attach your camera to, that off sets the weight of your camera and gives shot a very smooth look even when you are walking or even running. They come in all shapes and sizes and can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. I thought to myself that I would never be able to afford one and I had heard of other people making their own so I thought I'd give it a shot. I went on youtube and came across a few tutorials but ended up going with one specific design because it seemed to be the simplest to construct. The next day I picked up the supplies from the hardware store and got to work.

Here is the video tutorial that I used:

    It ended up being trickier to build than I expected because of the exact measurements for the mount. If you make this be careful to think through the lengths of screws and the thickness of the wooden block unlike me. Along the way I made a few changes to the design. Instead of using weights at the bottom, I taped a hammer and to give the camera extra support I used rubberbands to strap it down. Even If it did take me quite a while to build, I feel that the outcome was worth it and it will be a useful piece of equipment. Also the fact that I am only spending a few dollars instead of hundreds doesn't hurt.

    Here is a quick video of my frist tests. Keep in mind that this is my first time using something like this and all of the shots are handheld:

Pictures of my version:

Capture The Fall Film

    For our most recent assignment we were to capture our interpretation of fall as best we could in a one minute film. When I think of fall, the first thing that comes to mind is color so that is what I went out to capture. Here is my attempt at capturing the fall:

(Watch in HD)

   To make this film I used a Canon 7D with a tripod and edited the film in iMovie. I used a variation of shots to capture the colors and overall theme of fall. First I used a time-lapse, which is a long film of a setting sped up to show change at a high speed. For me that was capturing the changes in light and clouds. I did this by setting the camera by the window and recording for over ten minutes. I then took long chunks of the clip and sped them up by 2000%. I also incorporated lens whacking, which I showed how to do in a previous post. Besides these techniques I mostly used rack focuses and boosted the saturation in most clips to make the colors of fall stand out. In addition to capturing colors I showed the theme of Halloween because I feel that it is a very important part of fall as well. 

P.S. The coughing sound is not me. All sounds are part of the music file.

More filming and photography techniques coming soon...

Cinematography Technique: Lens Whacking

    Today I was watching some youtube videos on cinematography techniques and came across one called "lens whacking." This is when you film with your lens detached from the camera and move the lens back and forth causing a blur and lighting affect. I thought this was an interesting idea and I had seen this look in movies before so I decide to take my camera into the yard and try it out on my own.
   With the little knowledge about the technique I have, I thought it went okay. I found that moving the lens in certain directions created different affects. Trying this actually lead to me better understanding how a lens works. The one thing I did have a little issue with was keeping it steady. Even when I wasn't moving the camera, the movement of the lens caused it to be shaky at times, although I could fix this in postprocessing. Also depending on the way I moved the lens the shot would be covered slightly by the side of the lens. You can see that happening in the last two shots of the short film I made, showing my attempt at lens whacking. One other slight issue I had was getting the focus I wanted but that will come with practice. I plan to use this technique more often and make more films like this one, showing  new techniques that I have learned about cinematography and photography.

Watch in HD if you can...

Nationals NLDS Game 4: Emotions Captured

         Recently my primary interests outside of school have been photography and baseball, so I immediately knew that I was going to document the Nationals playoffs through photography and film;  however, this was before I knew it would be such an incredible experience. 
         When I entered the stadium this Thursday for game 4 of the NLDS with camera in hand, I had a goal of capturing the emotions of the crowd and not the game itself. This is the first time the Nationals have made the playoffs in their not so long existence and they needed a win to stay alive, so naturally the crowd was dedicated to watching every pitch hit the catcher's mitt. 
        Instead of trying to take not so interesting shots of the players, I focused on the audience. Whether it would be a depressing or thrilling game, it was important for me to show that in my photos and video. I often used the technique of only focussing the lens on one fan, with the field in the background, instead of attempting to capture it all with one shot. This created a more dramatic effect and conveyed more feeling. 
        I am confident that I summed up the emotions and intensity of the game quite well, while capturing the greatest moment in Nationals baseball history on video. When Jayson Werth hit the walk off homerun in the bottom off the ninth, I and everyone else in the stadium went into hysteria. The only difference between me and everyone else, was that I had the moment caught on tape. I hope you enjoy seeing the game of baseball from a different perspective as I did tonight.