vimeo.com/244099193

https://vimeo.com/242668890

The webisode formatting of the F Word was a wonderful departure most documentary films. It felt as fun and intimate as a reality TV type show, but, due to the nature of the issues covered and how the couple is, it felt much more like cinema veritas. The F Word struck this balance through a number of formal elements. For instance, the intimate close up framing of Kristin and Nicole snuggling made us feel like we were right there in the room with them. What’s effective here is getting both faces in frame, as well as their hands holding each other. One of the first things that you might notice about the F Word is that its graphics are FULL of color. They seem like a visual dynamic collage of magazine clippings, which for me definitely reminds me of childhood. This seems particularly fitting for a web series about having a child. Their graphics are varied and effective at evoking certain emotions; the show uses a chalk board and chalk graphic to communicate information about what a home-study is. This is an effective way to make what would normally be the task of voice over into another varied visual aid that brings me back to childhood. I was really impressed by how many different graphics there were, and the effect that each had on the tone of a scene. The shimmering iPhone frame is totally unusual; it also serves to give a sense of veracity to the shot in a playful way.

The F- Word also introduces variety in the framing of the shots of their characters. These range from cinematic shots in the woods among tall trees. The frame, which is static, is obviously purposefully composed. The characters themselves are also obviously posing. In these shots, the objects in the frame are all along the lines of thirds, more or less, which immediately draws the eye to them. This indicates a departure from the cinema veritas approach that other shots employ. Shots of the two parents having a conversation gives the impression that there isn’t a camera in the room. Instead, the viewer is simply transported into an intimate moment in someone else’s living room. Similarly, the conversation feels intimate too, and the reactions between the parents is genuine enough that it can be easy to forget that there is a camera and then a screen separating me from the story of these humans. Yet, there are direct references to the camera at the very beginning of the series, when they meet other foster families, among others. This varied approach of cinema veritas type shots, graphics, the webisode formatting, and direct references to Kristin and Nicole’s relationship with the camera create a unique documentary blend for the modern viewer.

You need a tripod when you pan and tilt around the colorful art work at the beginning. Even if you have good shots without a tripod it is hard not to be distracted by the subtle camera shake. Also you need to be careful about your focus in the future, for many shots especially like the nameplate on the wall the lack of focus doesn’t seem to add any aesthetic value. The shots of the paintings were awesome. I loved the close framing on the paintings. These shots really conveyed a sense of intimacy, and you were able to really capture the colors, textures, etc of different paintings with effective exposure! In addition, the reflections of other paintings and people walking by was an interesting, abstract way to show that the art gallery was alive and full of action. The zoom on the newspaper article was ineffective because of camera shake; as a general rule, any significant amount of zoom needs to be paired with a tripod, as camera shake becomes more pronounced when a zoom is utilized.

The story seems to be a focus on art, although where you’re going beyond that is unclear. I don’t think thats a problem though, I can see there is some emphasis on certain spaces, as we visited the same settings throughout your video. In this respect, the B-Roll video does a great job of setting you guys up for success when you can overlay interviews over your shots. I though the music and transitions were effective as well. In the future, I would try to use a tripod whenever possible. So many shots will look more clean and professional if you eliminate camera shake. Personally, I try to stay away from dynamic zooms because they are hard to pull off with our level of camera experience. Your pans and tilts though were solid for the most part, and they definitely made your shots feel more alive and dynamic. I would also like more shots that are similar to your pottery shots. The earthy aesthetics of these shots worked well in tandem with the anonymous and intimate hands shaping the clay.

Kenzie, Luke, & Laura

I shot two interviews at the beginning of this week. Unfortunately, my audio levels on one of them were quite off. The sound quality is low because I had the db levels up too high. When shooting interviews, audio is everything. My mistake while I was shooting is extremely frustrating. I noticed that the levels were spiking as I shot my interview, but I couldn’t figure out how to quickly adjust them on the camera. My subject only had a limited amount of time to interview with me, so I felt a tremendous pressure to not interrupt the interview while I fiddled with the sound settings on the camera. Before my interview, I tested the sound by myself, and for whatever reason the levels seemed fine to me. The bad news is this is a tough lesson to learn because I basically wasted an entire interview; but the good news is that I won’t ever make this mistake again. In addition, I was able to fix the levels for my second interview, so I actually don’t think this will effect my final product at all. Since I’ll need to cut my interview down to a couple minutes, it wouldn’t make sense to use two subjects anyway. Overall, I got quite lucky with my interviews I think. It certainly helped that I planned multiple interviews far in advance of our deadline, but in the future, especially for longer projects, shooting useless interview footage is a giant waste of time and resources.

Now I just have to decide how to weave together a coherent and moving story from the many minutes of interview footage that I have of the Public Safety director.

vimeo.com/240592763

Our B-Roll so far is an abstraction of how life as an opioid user, or as a family member of an opioid user, resembles the up and downs of a roller coaster.

Hopefully if you haven’t gotten a chance to check out the interview from Professor Smith’s email, this blog post can highlight some of the noteworthy points from my read through. Here’s the link for reference: https://webmail.lafayette.edu/service/home/~/?auth=co&loc=en_US&id=18334&part=3

This article frames interviews with a simple broad stroke: “human identity is not fixed, but something constantly negotiated through interaction with others.” Many of the article’s non-technical points were to help interviews set their interviewees at ease, and extract the most relevant, honest information. We have our interviewees on camera for a closed window of time. In that small period, their human identity is quite dynamic; however they choose to present themselves, or how we edit their responses, will in many ways define their humanity to our viewer. There are obvious burdens of responsible representation on film makers here, but I thought this point was an excellent way to frame the article.

In addition, this article made multiple references to Errol Morris who makes The Thin Blue Line, and it was extremely helpful to read this text and watch the docu-drama in tandem. Although I didn’t notice this immediately after watching Morris’s film, he does many inventive things with his framing. Most of his shots are statically framed, in that we don’t see numerous angles and zooms of the same interviewee. In other films, there might be three levels of zoomed shots, and a couple different angles. Having all of these different variations allows film makers to cut more dynamically in the editing room, giving distinct visual variation as pieces of the interview are woven together. Morris uses graphics though, such as newspaper clippings, to cut back and forth between different parts of the interview. This inventive approach makes the documentary seem more real because the role mark of choppy camera editing is less apparent.

Here are some noteworthy thoughts on interviews:

1.) Keep things general when you explain the project to your interviewee. This will help you remain honest with your pitch if the story changes.

2.) If you’re conducting a research/scouting interview of some sort, try to ask people to save a significant sounding thought for when you have a camera on them. Asking them to repeat themselves runs the risk of having a removed, emotionless, and unauthentic response to your initial question.

3.) Interviewing people on the street. ie the documentary we just saw about the Hasidic communities in Brooklyn, which had a segment of people saying ignorant things. The approach here is to ask the same questions to each individual. Make sure your interviewer stands on different sides of the camera, so you can cut the in rhythmic/diverse way.

4.) When interviewing it is critical to keep the conversation as natural as possible, as this will often help your subjects open up and feel comfortable. One excellent way to do this is to user non verbal facial expressions to give your interviewee feedback. Nod your head in amazement when they say something wild. Give them signs that you are following their story emotionally, and silently encourage them to keep talking.

5.) On axis interview: position the interviewers head directly below the lens of the camera, so that your interviewee is essentially looking into the camera when they have a conversation with the interviewer. The article says on axis interviews “place the audience in direct relationship with the interviewee.” This seems especially important to me considering the article starts with a statement about the dynamic nature of human identity. What better way to shape a human identity in your film, then to position your interviewee to have a direct and personal relationship with the audience.

6.) A really creative solution to the jarring nature of jump cuts and cut aways is to tell multiple story tangents in parallel. This achieves the effect of giving your shots visual variation, but it also allows you to pick the most significant portions of the interviewee (as we would always do). Yet, the need for jump cuts is eliminated because we can simply cut back and forth between people.

7.) When asking questions, if you hit a wall with someone, but sense there is an emotional charge behind a certain topic then ask them to tell a story. When done well, stories actively engage both the interviewee and the audience. The interviewee should use the active voice, and it will also be a more interesting way of ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’.

The thin blue line is a documentary free of voice over. One of the most noteworthy parts of this documentary was the way scenes were reenacted, and the way graphics were included to communicate information to the viewer. Using these two visual mediums to communicate information, which is traditionally done through omniscient sounding voice over, gave the film an added aspect of objectivity. In a digital area in which dubious sources should always be considered, I thought the first hand perspectives from the interviews were effective at creating a convincing sense of reality. Similarly, the newspaper excerpts used eye catching fragments of words to creatively string together ideas. Rather than giving us the standard sentence format, there is more cognitive work required, and therefore reward, by asking viewers to contextually piece together words like “work all day”. Combining these newspaper graphics as B-Roll, as interview audio played over it, lended an added sense of legitimacy to the veracity of the statements made by first hand witnesses. Furthermore, it allowed the film to casually highlight a single part of a witnesses statement in real time. This unobtrusive tactic maintained the guise of objective reality, while also functioning as the guiding voice over that is necessary to help viewers piece together the complex story and case. In addition, it helped the content of the interviews be as exciting as possible; newspaper graphics were also used to communicate simple but significant information like the dates events took place. Overall, the combination of newspaper graphics and first person interviews ensured that a sense of legitimacy permeates throughout the film. In addition, it also gave The Thin Blue line a unique aesthetic style, especially with its crime scene reenactments. More than anything, they seemed to toe a line between the cinematic appeal of film, while also maintaining the objective reality. The goriest details, like blood on the ground, was saved for the visual medium of crime scene photographs, which is one of the main ways Errol Morris was able to pull of the dynamic objective reality effect in a film riddled with reenactments.

Surveillance is a such a modern issue. The ethical considerations are, compared to other classic philosophical questions, almost completely new to us. Never before has technology existed to such a degree that the inhabitants of a city feel that everything they do is seen and recorded. Given the topic of this film, I find KJ’s long shots and use of deep focus to be extremely fitting. They suggest the view point of the U.S. government, giving us a perspective into how the intelligence community might see Kabul. In addition, many of her shots are high angles, which achieves the following effects: firstly, it makes her subjects look diminutive. KJ might be commenting on how the US government views the citizens of Kabul. They literally look down on these people from their high altitude blimp. Ignoring basic human rights of privacy and decency in favor of a hard nosed stance on the prevention of global terrorism.

The intent of this blimp is juxtaposed with the everyday sights of Kabul. KJ chooses to include carnival rides and children in her frames; these humanize a foreign land to a western audience, and they also shed light on how ridiculous it is to conduct 24/7 surveillance on an entire city. It is hard not to think about how many useless recordings must exists of children minding their own business, busy playing and enjoying life. KJ includes other juxtapositions as well though, often framing the “eye in the sky” with other common airborne objects. Children play with a kite that flutters around the blimp, which floats many miles away; even birds are framed right next to the blimp, furthering the notion that the blimp is recording everything regardless of its importance to national security.

Later, in the video we see a similar blimp floating in Maryland. KJ’s text reveals that a military spokesperson stated that there are no cameras on board. Yet, an after action report recommends that the blimp be kept up to keep enemies of the state on their toes even if the camera systems are broken. These statements stand in opposition. Are there cameras on board or not? Are Americans being spied on without our consent or knowledge? In the end, KJ doesn’t answer these questions. Yet, the take away point for me is how powerful juxtaposition can be. Her framing of the blimp against so many different environments, objects, and people suggest the different relations that each thing has to the blimp. KJ’s use of a camera to record everything makes me wonder what is worth recording, how should it be recorded, and who gave permission to be recorded. There is a unique statement being made by someone who records and captures images for a living concerning the omniscient recording of humans, a city, and life in general.

I used to be a computer science major. After switching to FAMS, I have always questioned my decision to leave the diverse and promising CS job market that would await me after college. After seeing KJ, I can honestly say I will never ask myself that question again. She is easily one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. Her story from the Visual workshop about moving to Africa after college with essentially no plans was incredible. I have told myself that I am going to take a similarly brave and ambitious path, but to learn what these risks yielded, shaping her into the incredible film maker she is today, gives me hope for my future. After watching Cameraperson, it quickly became my favorite film. From the most broad perspective, her vignette structure sets the stage for a unique cinematic journey. From the very start of the film, KJ sought to establish her own humanity as she prepared to take the viewer an a journey that examined humanity through love and suffering. Sneezing and pulling grass away from the frame was KJ’s way of introducing herself to her audience. From there, we quickly became immersed in her world and memoir. It is easy to understand the therapeutic component that motived her to make this movie. The stories she has seen and heard are tremendously heavy, filled with the absolute worst side of humanity. The way she managed to convey true evil, by shooting the humanity and individuality of the victims of genocide, while also true love, by sharing her family, is simply mind blowing. To me, Cameraperson is not simply KJ’s memoir, but a physical example of how powerful film is. This film is not just about her life, but instead life in general. It is a call to arms for me-to dare to be as great as KJ is-leaves me reeling with the possibilities of documentary film.