Blogs:

Week 1

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/03/10/food-on-film-blog-post-1/

Week 2

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/03/17/food-on-film-week-2-blog-post/

Week 3

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/03/26/food-on-film-week-3-blog-post/

Week 4

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-4/

Week 5

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-5/

Week 6

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-6/

Week 7

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-7/

Week 8

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-8/

Week 9

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-ob-film-blog-post-9/

Week 10

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-10/

Week 11

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-11/

Week 12

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/chenlu-yang/2019/06/07/food-on-film-blog-post-12/

Final projects 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=17p436wYN98AjkdxJ_CJ7LtHFqX4c-9wD

It is challenging for me to study documentaries because I have not got any experience of this genre of films, hence everything I have learnt in this semester are fresh and interesting to me. I have mentioned in my previous blogs about that I would like to study about the basic modes and shooting techniques of documentary films, and also to get more experience of filming throughout this semester. After the works we have done, I think I have almost mastered and achieved the original objectives for myself. Our group used two different ways and styles to make the films which are both explainable documentaries for our two final projects. One of them is relatively formal interview with having the interviewee sitting down and have a little chat with us, and the other one about animal caring with the interviewee walking and showing us around the farm while we randomly ask her questions, hence to make the atmosphere this piece of film looks more relaxing and real. On the other hand, We used jump cut on both films to create a easiness feeling to the audience.

Through studying of the semester in this studio as well as our experience of filming , I got to understand about the concept of the topic of foods. Our topic is to initiate people to focus on animals protection, and try to persuade people to reducing farm animal killing, which make me to reconsider about my personal food taste and habits, too. From presentations of other groups’ project and the school exhibition with showing all of the trailers, we have got more knowledges on the topic of foods, especially to controlling eating and connections between homesick and food preference. We all did a good job in this studio in the semester.

This week we showed the rough cut of our two projects to our teacher. Although we have done a good job on the whole, as the whole food doco structure has been shown, there are some part still should improve.

First of all, regarding the clipping of the interviewees’ speech, there is too much repetition, especially for the same words, and we do not cut out well. In addition, the talk time takes up more time in the film, and there is no time for the audience to rest. The voice of the interviewee is played from the beginning to the end, which makes the structure of the documentary relatively tedium, which will make everyone feel boring. In addition, it is also a problem of editing. Sometimes the appearance of b-roll does not explain the content of the interviewee’s speech better. For example, when a interviewee says “vegetarian”, the picture is of a pet cat in a farm, which makes the picture uncoordinated. Also, b-roll can be a bit repetitive, with the same animals, such as chickens, appearing too many times. Finally, there are problems with the sound, especially the first doco, called farm animal protection. There are many problems with the sound, mainly because we are not proficient in the use of equipment when recording, so the sound effect is not very well.

In future clips, we will pay more attention to the handling of the details of doco, not just to pursue the visual pictures, we need to cut out the useless pictures and carefully cut back the interview voice of repeat, but also to pay attention to the integrity of the voice of repeat. In addition, for the sound processing of ‘farm animal protection’, we need to carry out noise reduction or other modifications to make the sound less inferior. Moreover, we should pay attention to the overall structure of doco, and not just explain to the audience blindly through the interviewee, we need to give the audience a rest time, so that the doco as a whole will not be so boring. We need to continue to make efforts to make the final work look more perfect.

We already shot all footage for two projects last week. I think we got enough footage, whether it was main shot or b roll.

There are many footage we shot. For example, we tried to use aircraft to shoot the panorama of farm, but the result was not ideal because we did not have enough experience in using this equipment. We also photographed animals in the farm, such as cows, sheep, pigs, etc., which are the animals we usually eat. In this way, we can focus on the theme of these two doco, animal protection. Since we want to advocate people to reduce the killing of farm animals, our doco has some educational elements, so we choose to film the interaction between child and animals. At the time of shooting that day, there were some students doing experience in the farm, and we filmed the interaction between students and cows, as well as the parents watching the animals with child. We wanted to make the audience pay attention to the cultivation of their child to protect animals. We shot other shots, including b rolls such as the restaurant in the farm, the staff room, and the farm environment. All the above b rolls can be well interwoven into our two docos.

In the afternoon of the same day, we interviewed two staff members, they said a lot of professional opinions about animal protection, showed us around their day’s work, and we filmed some of their working conditions. This makes our doco look more form-like.

As for footage, my favorite is that we are following a staff. I think this kind of footage is easier to watch and more appealing to the audience. In addition, both of our b rolls have the theme of focus, but we also have some bad shots, for example, when we were following our interviewee, we had the shooting of helping through, and many of the shots were repeated, which we need to cut in the later editing. Due to the limited shooting space, we could not finish footage shooting, so we planned to find some supplementary footage online with Kim’s permission.

In the reading part of the ninth week, the article mainly talks about two points. The first point is the development of editing style, and the second point is the design of sound. The author use many examples to describe the matters which need attention in the editing of documentaries, some of examples I think are helpful to our group’s editing.

Generally speaking, it is difficult to edit the bad parts of shooting. First, it is necessary to identify what is the bad part, such as camera movement or the movement of people in the videos, which may affect the final film. As a documentary, it is better to shoot it many times and cut out the good parts from it, but we must pay attention to make less mistakes when we are editing. Good coherence should be maintained. For example, when the interviewees put on gloves or pick up tools, we should not delete the clips when they do this, so as to maintain the continuity of video and not make the audience feel strange. And pay attention to the coherence of the story when editing, telling it part by part. The music part needs to match the story of the documentary and the voice of the interviewees to choose an appropriate background music is also an important point in the documentary.

Our group prepared some questions before the interview, and planned the structure of video, so that we would not suddenly forget what we wanted to ask during the interview, and the planned structure could also help the smooth progress of the following editing.

This week, our group finished shooting the documentary. This documentary is mainly about animal protection. We chose a farm as the shooting site and took two staff members as interviewees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHoCNAzMwU0&t=45s

Sound is very important in movies, especially in documentaries, where sound can help images better explain the intention of the producer and immerse the audience in the atmosphere of the movie. For example, when we are watching ghost films, the sound is the most scary. The appearance of sound can make people take pictures as reality and enhance their feelings. For example, when character breathe in a cold and quiet place and bring a scarf, if the sound coming up on the movie, the audience will feel real, and the credibility and immersion of the movie or doco will increase.

The food doco I chose is still ugly delicious, because I like this doco, both in the editing and the overall style of the documentary is very eye-catching. first， about the main voiceover, there follow the principles of realism, the host and other people’s voices recorded on the camera, I mean the sound is recorded along with the image , the camera and characters have the interact, this way the audience can be more trusted on the doco film. Also like this clip from ugly delicious, there has a trick between some characters, it was the trick of appearing to duplicate reality. 

For other sound, like background music, this documentary still performs very well. When they are conducting conversation, there is still an ambient sound behind it. I think that in this type of doco, noise is necessary because the doco looks like more realistic. For example, when they are talking on the table, there is a sound of tableware collision behind, there is a barbecue sound like “zizi” when the screen is switched to the kitchen, there is still a steamer sound, this effect makes the film more realistic and more vivid to clarify the purpose of the documentary.. In addition, this doco chose this mode because the producer wants to create a relaxed atmosphere, to make the audience more integrated, and to meet the theme of street food.

In the sound application of our group’s final project, we will also pay attention to the use of sound in doco to create a unified effect.

We have finished the pitch of our final project this week. Although we have done a lot of research on our theme animal protection, and we have determined the shooting location and time, we still ignore the specific shooting details of our doco. So our pitch was not perfect. Through watching the presentations of other groups, we went back to discuss the specific shooting details, including the Angle of shooting the interviewee, what kind of b roll we needed, and the specific questions we wanted to interview, and also roughly analyzed the structure we needed to shoot. The specific template of shooting in my word is in the following table.

I think films of genre as ‘Our Daily Bread’ are artificial which could use the shots to illustrate all directors’ ideas hence give the audience opportunities to have their own imagination and feelings towards the films rather than telling the story with sounds of characters’ words in them, which could also create an relatively intense viewing experience for the viewers. Because the viewing experience is of an intense, often very quiet sequence of moving images showing workers and specialized machinery involved in food production in Europe.

Firstly, the producer chose to interview locals instead of professionals in order to imply the idea of government publishes policies and hence influence people very much sharply. It is difficult to make this kinds of documentaries since contradictory positions during whole producing process should be considered seriously due to the it is not in the form of participation. Rhythmic organization of time with optical means needs to be adapted for having the images rhythmically in documentaries. In films and especially documentaries, photography is the most powerful factor to leads the audience and persuade them with all the directors’ ideas or intentions. Hence to make them more likely to believe the story is real rather than fiction considering of sense of authority of documentary films.

Although this is not the common way of filming documentaries, it is the most effective and objective method to illustrate about the truth. All of the shots without any movement enable the viewers to get known with and discover deeply by themselves. I would actually like to choose this mode to challenge myself for illustrating an objective reality or observational documentaries I have another opportunity to make a documentary next time. The difficult part is to build my own art system and rhythm of filming in order to make a significant effect of filming. However, since we are doing interview for this piece of documentary as our final project this semester, we do not have many chance to make changes and to adapt various modes of producing documentaries.

Through my previous interview experience and interview practice I had in class, I think both the interviewer and the interviewee are very important, one needs patient guidance and the other needs to express their own thoughts well.

Before the interview, I prefer to give my prepared interview questions to the interviewee before the interview get started. Although this would make the interviewee behave like an actor, but it would reduce interviewer’s nervousness during the interview. In addition, before the interview get started, I would also ask them where do they want to do the interview. I think the environment will effect how well they perform in the interview. at the beginning of interview, a little conversation with interviewer would help them out from awkwardness.

Other questions about the device, a video camera is obviously not enough, unless we do a simple vox pop, if we want to do a formal interview, we will need at least two, a fixed camera captures the interviewee, another camera capture the details of the interviewee, such as he dressed today, body language, facial expressions, make the interviewee in the film more stereo. We should use the Professional radio equipment to receive sound, so as not to cause noise. If it is in the form of vox pop, zoom recorder can be used, which will be more convenient for recording sound.

In general, the interview is a process that requires an in-depth communication between the interviewer and the interviewee, so as to achieve the best interview effect, and the group also needs to cooperate, so as to achieve the best effect.

The final work we are going to shoot is a micro documentary, so its structure will be different from the feature-length documentary I have been exposed to before. There are many limitations in developing characters and storylines. But the article also tells us that the purpose of micro documentaries is propaganda, and we need to make sure that the form and ideas of micro documentaries are concise and at the main point.

The first one is issue-oriented, the focus of this structure is on the main question, and it use academic knowledge to solve this problem. Then, specific characters are required to demonstrate solutions. In my opinion, although this structure has a clear purpose, the main question needs to be a meaningful question, otherwise the whole documentary will be over. In addition, I think if participants propose questions and then give a demonstration of how to solve the problems, it will be like a series speaker and give the audience the most intuitive experience.

Secondly it call special story, if the purpose of this micro-documentary is to tell the audience a specific story or something produced, the main character will tell the story or something in a concise way, and the producer will guide the main character’s story with questions and show the story through the shot footage. I think the best example is the documentary presented by Kim in class, which tells about a woman who likes everything of strawberry, which deserves my reflection

The third category I’m interested in is impression, it doesn’t have a specific protagonist or tell a story in a traditional way, and producer can observe some specific time by stitching images. This is structure is which I am most interested in. For me, this form is abstract, with a better sense of picture and it has more room for producer to play.

These frameworks can effectively help me to build an attractive micro documentary. What my team members and I need to do is to find the target audience and clear the purpose of the documentary, also find the most suitable way to select or sort the documentary.