GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND DO GREAT THINGS – WEEK 8

Week 8 has seen us experimenting with different B-Roll exercises. One in particular where we went out in groups with a DSLR camera and aimed to shoot things that could potentially be seen as atmospheric or ambient and used in documentaries as overlay footage. On top of this b-roll has to be something that can be seen as a ‘visual metaphor’ and without this, documentaries would be very bland. I went out with Asha, Bliss and Ruby to see what kind of footage we could gather. It was a really rainy day which was kind of perfect in terms of shooting atmospheric footage. We got some shots of rippling water in puddles, close ups of rain drops on leaves, out of focus shots of people walking in the distance etc.

 

GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND DO GREAT THINGS – WEEK 7

This week we had another guest speaker come in to talk to us, an RMIT graduate named Amiel Courtin-Wilson. He was super interesting to listen to and shed light on what being in the documentary industry is really like and the amount of work that goes into simply making one film. He said he spent ten years on one doco! He showed us the trailers to a few of his documentaries and it was just so impressive to see how his perseverance paid off. He also said that when he was studying screenwriting at RMIT, he never really considered making documentaries at first and now that’s what he does for a living. It’s cool how inspiration for new things can hit at any point in life.

Here’s the trailer for one of his films ‘Hail’

GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND DO GREAT THINGS- WEEK 6

On Tuesday this week we viewed a few examples of of how to go about getting the best answers from your subjects whilst interviewing them. This is obviously an important part of documentary making and actually quite an acquired skill even though it may seem easy at first. I’ve still got a long way to go before I acquire this skill I think. I sometimes find interviewing quite daunting even though the spotlight isn’t on me. Im just overly wary of making my subject feel uncomfortable or overstepping boundaries etc. In saying that, we did actually discuss the ethics of interviewing our subjects as there is a line that can be crossed if you’re not careful.

In class on Thursday, we had a guest, Julio, come and give us an intensive camera-tech lesson. He taught us how to set up the camera, check the white balance, use a boom mic and adjust the aperture settings. It was extremely helpful and cool to be using a different camera to the usual DSLR.

 

 

 

GO OUT INTO THE WOLRD AND DO GREAT THINGS – WEEK 5

This week we had to present our first assessment task for our studio which was to make a video essay. I wasn’t entirely sure what a video essay was so I was a little confused in the week leading up to this one. As it turns out, a video essay is essentially a just a film that incorporates all your ideas and concepts and combines them with accompanying footage, text and imagery. It’s essentially a trailer for the film you’re going to make. We made these video essays to demonstrate the direction we’re heading with our documentaries. Everyone’s essays films were really outstanding, making me wish I’d tried a bit harder with mine. I feel really unmotivated about my documentary topic this week, especially seeing all the different concepts everyone else in our class has come up with. My essay film didn’t really do a great job of conveying my ideas.