KJ was a great guest to have on Monday. She started in my women in film class, where she made a big impression on how she can connect personal stories to documentary film. I thought it was interesting how she turned our own personal stories around and helped us to understand how documentary is made through how we all have our own stories to tell. She asked us all to answer one question, and through that question told us about listening, understanding, and communication. Also, she touched on the importance of building relationships and intimacy of interviewing and capturing stories.

Her film Cameraperson was interesting to me. I was confused about the storyline at the beginning, but was intrigued with how she developed a new way of documenting. I loved her authenticity with the film as well because I didn’t have to question how much thought she put into it. It made me understand the idea that documentary isn’t always made on the pre-filming table and that the story unfolds at the editing portion of the film. I loved how she made herself known in the film, pulling out weeds, sneezing and even talking. I think too many times, documentarians want a polished and perfect film, when documentary is supposed to be the raw and live action that we want opposed to narrative cinema. It gave me encouragement to know that everything doesn’t have to be spick and span and that I can actually give the documentary that ‘real’ feeling, as documentaries are supposed to do.

I found a few similarities in some of the Lehigh valley documentary ideas. I found some dealing with food, art, and expansion. I found the most interesting ones to be the ideas on art, seeing as though I want to continue documentary filmmaking on more artistic coverage, since it’s becoming a larger thing around the world. I also liked the idea about the food coverage, seeing how it plays a big role in scarcity some places but also how it can reconnect a fallen community. I am most interested in music and understanding why music has become so prevalent in getting across messages, and why it’s similar backgrounds to stories told in music. Since I wanted to cover something similar for my upcoming capstone, I think it would be cool to be able to uncover the music scene in Bethlehem as one person mentioned in their draft title “The arts Valley”.

For our bad interview sound, Ricky & I decided to interfere with how well we could hear him. I stood distance apart from him, making it difficult to hear him at an adequate volume. We also decided to show how other noises in the background, or accidentally touching the mic can mess with the sound as well.

Our sound of the human world was made from a concert of live singing that happened on September 15th.

Our sound of the non human world was captured on campus near our dormitory, it was the sound of crickets at night time.

Our sound of the man made world was a microwave.

In my video I hoped to explore the aspect of Sheila’s book where she discussed being able to inform and also attract the audience. While I find sound design interesting and in the process of learning how to become a designer, I was tasked with being able to appeal to the audience (class) as a whole and trying to capture the parts of his teaching that would keep the audience entertained.

In terms of how the class went, I enjoyed the exercise and being able to collaborate across campuses. I think it’s important to have activities like that because we’re all trying to become more comfortable, but we’re also all on different levels in terms of our experience within production. I liked how some people were good at one thing and others good at the next. I think it helps allow people to be more comfort in speaking up and also, building one another skills because we’re all learning from each other. I am also more of a hands-on person so being able to go out and shoot as much as possible always helps me in continuing to build my craft up. It was great to be able to help people when they didn’t know how to edit or didn’t know how to work the camera. I also was able to get help in some editing techniques so I thought the exercise was great. It also opened the floor for more conversation in such a big production course, more people will begin to talk to each other.

When doing the framing assignment, I decided to use a smaller size frame, similar to 4:3. I wanted to see how framing the world around me would be different if the size of the frame was to be smaller. I found that when looking out into a larger part of the scenery around me, that it was easy to see a lot of things in front of my face. For example, looking at the quad I was able to fit a lot of things into the small frame that I had. In turn, when doing more of a close up shot, it was difficult to put even one thing into the frame, seeing as though it took up majority of the frame. I tried, in turn, to use things like rule of thirds, and different angles to see how changing it would allow more room to fit more things. From that assignment, I was able to see how easy it is to get more detail oriented shots with a smaller frame. It also makes you think more about what you want in the frame because you don’t have a lot of room to play around with.

I am a film and media and theater double major. I see the world through the way we shape it. In that context, I am a person who believes that the world is what we make it. When we decide to get up and create the world through the lens we see it in, we mirror how everything looks through those decisions. When we follow the societal norm of gender roles, and the ‘American dream’ we lose sight of our lives and how we want it to be. For me being a film student, I have the world in my hands to manipulate and transform it into whatever I want. In theater and film, we are creators and enactors. We put our vision into play and become the leaders of our own destined world which appeals to me more than anything in life. In approaching issues or topics, I think about how I can flip it to become something that tells the story I want to lead. I find it most interesting when anything I encounter can be made into my own personal story. I try to use my own personal life story to help come up with ideas to bring my vision to life, and use different methods of filming, in terms of visual and sound, to help enhance how the story can be explained to others who may or may not have similar experiences or understanding of my film. I’m interested in films that depict the lives of people that share similar experiences as me. I like to see stories about minorities and how they overcome a collective struggle, or examining more into why they do something that is a part of their culture. It’s nice to see how they string together films to help explain a cultural understanding to people of the ‘outside’ ethnicity. If I could tell a story in the Lehigh valley area, I would either explore the differences of the minority area of Easton and the downtown area, or into Bethlehem exploring musikfest and how it generates a cultural experience for all types of people living in that area.

As a documentarian, I’m an entertainer of real life events. I document fun and live events that are used as memories for later to look back on. It doesn’t happen a lot, but mostly when I’m around friends in a big group or out at events like a concert. I think it’s important to have things to look back on years later and see how we’ve grown and the experiences that helped build friendships or moments that will last in our hearts forever. Building a collection of memories serve as a reminder of the things that create good things in your life around positive vibes and builds a collection of all things that are outside of the normal life you live. It’s an escape from the regular routine schedule that you are used to and give you the chance to have a greater experience to remember. In turn, I will never document something bad that happens in my life because in the moment of turmoil it is a reminder of something that I don’t want to happen in my life anymore or to look back on and know that it wasn’t good times. Most people who use their phones or cameras, will use the multimedia they have and record family gatherings or moments where there are more smiles than anything else.