I enjoyed the exercise we did in class where we were divided up in groups and had to make a timeline of the least to most offensive things a filmmaker could do. It was interesting to go around to the different groups to see the different variations between order of offenses and to find out why they placed each offense where they did. Basically when it comes down to it, it depends. Everyone has probably had different experiences with all of the offenses, which would cause one person to put “returning equipment late” higher up on the list than others.

There were two wrongdoings that particularly caught my eye. The first was “making a movie and not inviting people to the screening.” I think that this just depends on the circumstances. When people make films at Lafayette that will be screening, I do not think that it is offensive if someone who is in the film is not invited. Of course they should be invited, but I feel as if most students would not care if they were in a film and were not invited. (I am just speaking personally, maybe there are a handful of people who would care) On the other hand, if a filmmaker is creating a huge motion picture and an actor is not invited to the screening, this would be a lot more offensive. There are lots of planners for events like these, and if a person planning this sort of event forgets or even unintentionally does not invite an actor/actress, it would cause a huge scene. Going back to film screenings at Lafayette, maybe a student simply forgot to invite their subjects; this would not happen with a wide-reaching film.

The second that caught my eye was the offense that said “depicting females as dumb and helpless.” All of the people who said that this was a horrible thing to do were also the people who consume this sort of media themselves. In almost every comedy, the female character is depicted in this way, and the same with a lot of older Disney films. If we are the ones who think that its horrible to show this sort of sexism, then why do we consume tv/movies that show just that?

In short, we are aware some of these offenses are wrong, yet we chose to do them anyway.

IMG_2499.mp4

This is my Instagram video, focusing on the segment in Documentary Storytelling talking about shots. A shot is a single take on an image, that may have camera movement or may be static. With my Instagram video, I try to emphasize on having many different shots and angles to get my point across with the soda.

While doing the framing assignment, a main focus of mine was comparing what a particular subject looked like when the frame was close to it versus when it was farther away. It was weird imitating the actions of what an iPhone camera would do but with a self-made frame. There was no “automatic zoom” and it felt like using an old camera even though it was only a little piece of cardboard I created. I remember we did this same assignment in our making media class, and I experienced the same things the second time around as I did the first time. I carried out the assignment in the library and people were staring at me and wondering what I was doing walking around looking through a cardboard frame. It is crazy how no one takes a second look at you when you are walking around with your phone in front of your face framing things to take a good picture but when using a legitimate frame, everyone wonders what in the world you are doing. This assignment made me feel as people probably did years ago before fancy cameras were invented.

I would describe myself as a smartphone documentarian. You can almost always find me taking a picture or video on my phone, so much so that I bought that iPhone 7 Plus just for the camera quality. I love to take pictures of people more-so than objects. I enjoy capturing the best of people and their emotions in the pictures that I take, something that cannot be captured in a still object. Don’t get me wrong, if I pass something cool I will document it to remember it, but I enjoy having people as my subjects. Now that cameras are so accessible on phones, I think everyone with a phone could consider themselves an avid documentarian. Whether it be on a professional camera, or my iPhone 7 Plus, I document little moments that speak to me.

The first documentary we made together as a class last night was an enjoyable, entertaining, and nightmare of a process all at the same time. Our group started out brainstorming on ideas we wanted to discuss and we all quickly decided that we wanted to cover the topic of the differences in our schools. We all took turns interviewing, being camera man, and of course being interviewed. I feel as if we all got a good beginner understanding of what was to come in this course. It is a lot harder to receive good answers from interview questions than you might think. The best answers that we received while interviewing were ones that we got when straying away from the question asked. Always keep the camera rolling because you don’t know what you are going to get.

When it was time to assemble our video into a finalized product, we all tried to work as fast as we could, coming up with agreements on how we wanted our layout to be so it would not look like it was put together in 40 minutes (which it was). After all of our hard work was finally completed, we ran into a problem which caused all of our work to be deleted. We had to think fast and only had around 10 minutes to edit our film the second time around. Although it wasn’t as good as the first time we edited, I’m proud of my groups ability to think on our toes and get our work done in an efficient manner.

I am excited for what else is to come from the class.