Overall I am happy with what I’ve learned this semester. The main thing I feel now is that I didn’t feel as inspired to make the documentary as when I started it, whether that came from the time constraint, the challenges involved, or the idea itself I’m not entirely sure. From the outset the idea was meant to be experimental and a little left of centre, so the chance to play around with ideas was definitely enjoyable. I think if I were to take something from this project it would be that I’ve learned how important pre-production is, particularly in terms of themes and visual direction. We had a good idea of these things, but I think we weren’t immersed in them enough to end up with a fully cohesive final product.

During the process though I’ve had plenty of ideas for other documentaries, lots of short ones that I’ll put together in my own time with some ideas I didn’t get to fully follow up on in this project.

Still 1, Original

Here is the first still, of the upper half of a window on the Northern facade of Flinders Street station.

First I simply put a black and white filter on the clip. Like a lot of the clips in the documentary, it is a still one, and the purpose of the black and white is to draw attention away from the iconic colour of the facade to encourage focus on the shapes and lines of the image.

The second grade increased the saturation a bit, and mainly altered the lighting effects. Bolder, darker shadows help accentuate the lines, particularly the joins in the stucco, as well as the curves of the curly bits above the windows. The colour is preserved a slightly intensified to keep the iconic feel of the facade.

The intensity of the colour in this third grade was intentionally a bit over the top, just to see what effect it had. The red and the yellow stand out, but more interestingly, the green of the window frame becomes more prominent. Greens on the structure are usually connoted by the dome, but rarely other parts of the structure as the yellows and reds usually dominate, as they still do in this still.

Still 2, Original

This first grade, like the lighting grade in the first still, was a simpler one of making the shadows deeper and more pronounced, and while the saturation is increased I focused on bumping up the green in particular using the colour corrector to try and accentuate the patina of the dome.

Like the saturation increase in Still 1, this still was a bit silly but had some interesting effects. Unlike the yellow and the red of the facade, the blues and greens of this shot are brought out, and it acts as a refreshing contrast to the otherwise warmer colours of the other shots.

I liked some of the points in Jeffrey Ruoff’s essay on sound in Documentary. Even in the opening paragraphs he points out that location sound “makes discrimination between sounds difficult, if not impossible.” This is something I’m interested in experimenting with in the documentary I’m helping make this semester, and rather than relying on location sound I’m interested in building soundscapes that speak more to the thematic concerns than the visuals. So far, no location sound has been used at all. This works primarily because our documentary is one that is more concerned with the abstract.

The section on music also seemed very relevant to this. He explains how music “comments on the action, providing an editorial perspective for interpreting the images.” Music is a very powerful tool, especially when it comes to documentary and images that we can more readily identify with as real. Of course the copyright concerns can complicate things, but the option to network with independent musicians and producers is a fun option as it gives you a chance to explore music communities too.

We’re going to be using a friend’s track in our documentary, which saves any copyright issues, and has allowed us to learn more about local music producers which is far more interesting than simply paying for a copyrighted song.

This clip made me think immediately of Man with a Movie Camera. I noticed some recurring shots, such as the man handing out tickets to people. The editing seems fairly random, as is the footage which looks like it was shot on the fly. It’s interesting that people don’t seem to care as much about the camera despite looking directly at it, as people today would be wary of a camera filming them.

Like Man with a Movie Camera it seems to be getting at the rhythm of city life, or life on a particularly busy street. I think the camera was used with such abandon to depict the street as it felt, without much structure or direction, and with attention that darts around as much as the people do. The editing helps achieve this too, by cutting with no concern for continuity or spatial awareness.

The Ripple Delete option using Shift + Delete is very helpful when putting together a rough cut to remove chunks of footage without having to move proceeding footage around as it pulls everything in front of it backward to cover the area deleted.

I’ve found the use of the Arrow Keys andShift + Arrow Keys very helpful when fine tuning the positioning of a video clip or image in the preview monitor.

Control or Command + N is handy when a new sequence is needed quickly, usually if I want to experiment with an effect of clip layout without risking the original sequence.

Control or Command + U is helpful for saving edited clips in the timeline as separate clips to be used later on, as a way to save stages of edits in that particular part of a clip rather than hunting down for effects or part of a clip later.