Monday night's class was unique in the fact that this was maybe the first lecture we had regarding film history. We covered the history of documentaries starting with the Lumiere Brothers in 1904. Other documentarians that we discussed were: Robert Flaherty, Dziga Vertov, Leni Riefenstahl, The Maysles Brothers, Fred Wiseman, Barbara Kopple, Ken Burns, Michale Moore, Ross McElwee, & Mark Kitchell. Along with specific filmmakers we also covered Direct Cinema vs Cinema Verite, Post Modern Docs, and Reality TV. Being a huge movie nerd I enjoyed this lecture quite a bit. I could easily sit and discuss film for hours. Post lecture we watched Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line and followed that with a discussion of the film. Another first for us.
Intro to Doc. Filmmaking was covered on Tuesday of this week. We covered both audio and video and where to place your subject and should they look at camera or off camera etc. Also covered was B-Roll. B-roll is defined as supplemental or alternate footage inter cut with the main shot in an interview or a documentary. A-roll consists of your subject talking and B-roll is video or the subject that your interviewee is discussing, to put it simply.
The Documentary Treatment was our next discussion on Tuesday night. This is similar to writing a screenplay for a fictional movie. It is your outline of what you wish to cover . Your treatment, style, and intended audience. We have to prepare and turn a treatment in for approval in this project. This is the guidelines for our documentary:
-Portrait or a family member or friend.
-One 10-hour shooting day.
-Interview one person and shoot no more than a 60-minute tape.
-Include B-roll.
-Can be on location or at school.
-Length= 5-7 minutes.
Wednesday the 18th was a writing/development lab devoted to preparation of our doc. treatment.
Thursday brought us some fresh blood! A new instructor was introduced to us. His name is Darcell Walker and he spent a few hours with us covering audio. This was only our second in-depth audio lecture and it was incredibly informative and helpful. Darcel has a ton of experience in sound and is still currently working in the field. We spent a lot of time with learning lavaliers and portable sound mixers. Post lecture we took the camera and sound kits and recorded three scenes in three different locations while using both boom mics and lavs and adjusted for room sounds. It was a great exercise and showed us that we could capture great audio.
The last lecture of the week was the Documentary Camera on Saturday. This was a rather intense day where we covered an array of items including: lenses (wide-angle, polarizing filters, promist filters), jib-arms, fig-rigs, and the slider. It's always a blast to get your hands on new "toys" that we will have at our disposal. I especially liked the fig-rig. This is is steering wheel-shaped camera mount which is named after it creator, director Mike Figgis. It is a handheld camera stabilizer that allows the operator a lot more freedom in moving the camera around the set. Stephen led this lecture and once again ran us through some much needed 3-point lighting exercises.
Lots of ground covered this week...
2 comments:
You lost me at "wicked cool."
I think you should go into a womens prison with a camera and soap off the rope.
What? Not really your thing?
Caged Heat!
Post a Comment