Media 6 TV Seminar: Week 6

YES. VICTORY!

Finally, the time for our seminar is done – and what a tremendous relief.

Despite a technically shaky set-up with the audio issues in the room, we came up with a solution and worked around the inability to work as we initially planned – running lapels into a mixer, then the mixer through the lecture theatre sound system and into a H4n Zoom recorder. Regardless, we got it done.

The seminar itself was running exceptionally until we were so rudely interrupted by an errant fire alarm, at approximately 4:20pm, cheers.

Needless to say, the team recovered well and we were mostly happy with how the remainder of the seminar – special thanks to our wonderful guests for sharing their knowledge and experiences, I know I definitely took a lot from hearing their words.

Ultimately, the group banded together really well in order to host a seminar that intrigued and informed a room full of people.

I was very happy with my contributions on the day, particularly the intro video for our host, David – a green-screen project that had me tearing out my hair, but that was a great learning experience.

Now to see how the remaining seminars unfold – looking to see what’s in store, particularly for Film and Documentary.

Goodnight.

Film/TV 2: Reflection/Analysis #4

Q1:

The ‘dream’ or ‘fake’ sequence has virtually no sound audible other than the music. Exceptions to this include the puttering of the car as it drives past the camera, birds singing, bells ringing and woosh as she throws her scarf in the air. They have obviously made a very deliberate attempt to draw primary attention to the music and words being sung, and secondary attention to the sounds one associates with the various actions that take place. It is likely that most of the added sounds were not recorded by this film team at all, instead, perhaps being sorced from a 3rd party sound library.

Post-dream sequence, the film takes a realistic step back, lowering the level of the music and instead focusing on the starkly contrasting voice of Rana Husseini. The sound recordists, from the sound of things, would have made a particular effort to eliminate any background noise in this interview, maximising the signal-noise ratio and thus achieving the cleanest possible recording of Rana’s voice. There is still the presence of sounf effects, such as the bells ringing, but they are far less prevalent on the overall soundstage of the clip.

Similarly, the sequence showing Dr. Amal’s interview also takes priority in focusing on the interviewee.

The next sequence involves intercutting between the three subjects as the film sets to disprove many of the claims made in the false book. The focus is on the voices of the subjects primarily, however the music creates rhythm in the clip and takes on a more active role in this sequence. There is also a larger emphasis on the noise of the environment in which the ‘false’ action takes place, things like the sound of the cash register and lighter flicking on are most likely taken from a 3rd party source and layered beneath the interview audio and music to add feel to the clip.

 

Q2:

– New Bin: (Cmd+/) this shortcut will be important as keeping all of your footage tidy within Premiere is important and makes the whole editing process a whole lot easier. Especially because we’ll be shooting multiple subjects/locations over multiple shoots, it’ll be more efficient to seperate all the different bits of footage and group them accordingly.

– Export Media: (Cmd+M) this shortcut will be handy if we’re exporting several different versions of our film – whether they be individual sequences, versions for youtube etc., it will just make the process a little bit shorter.

– Paste Attributes: (Opt+Cmd+V) this shortcut will be most effectively used when in the colour grading stage of production and will save a couple of seconds each time you want to apply a grade to a new clip.

– Snap: (S) this shortcut will be helpful when matching audio cuts to video cuts and will simply give a bit of piece of mind so that we know our cuts are matching up.

Q3:

I really like this clip… In particular the frantic rhythm which is created in the opening few minutes. This feel is prompted by the nature of what’s being filmed (people crossing a busy street), but is truly made by the addition of the music – without the unnerving jazzy track in the background, the people crossing the road might seem very pedestrian and regular.

It looks as though all of the subjects are genuine passersby and were spontaneously filmed from a bit of a vantage point, unbeknownst to the subjects. I also really like the way that the camera deliberately selects and follows certain people on the street, whilst ignoring others.

Q4:

This reading from ‘The Conventions of Sound in Documentary’ was interesting for me to read, as I’ve been put in charge of sound for our documentary on Pentridge.

Although mostly unrelated to our Pentridge documentary, I liked the debate as to whether or not music could be included in observational documentary. To me, a film seems unfinished without music, on the most part, as music has so much to offer a film. It can add so much meaning, depth and audience understanding to a film so easily, as long as it’s selected carefully. I thought it was interesting to read that a documentary cannot truly be ‘observational’ unless the music is diegetic – which seems reasonable, but also counter-intuitive to me. Sometimes, it might not be ideal to have music playing whilst trying to film for a documentary – especially if there is dialogue involved. I was mostly just surprised that the definition of an observational documentary required all sound, including music to be diegetic.

I was also drawn to the section on location sound and the fact that edits between scenes could be described as a cacophony, because of the natural differences between sound in different locations and the relatively uncontrolled nature of these changes. Reading that the audience had to make decisions as to whether or not certain sounds are ‘important’ in many documentaries was interesting, as this directly relates to one of the interviews we conducted for our film whereby the nearby traffic is audible, but not distracting from the interview subject.

Film/TV 2: Analysis and Reflection #3

Question 1:

http://vimeo.com/102615654

I found this exercise to be hugely interesting. Because we were unaware that we’d be piecing together the audio recordings and video recordings, we captured really raw and essentially meaningless, disconnected material. However, after a bit of weighing up, I was able to extract some form of very mild narrative from the material and cut it together in a way that didn’t seem completely irrelevant. I was initially a bit concerned over the relationship between the visuals, so decided to apply a black and white effect to the clips, adding a bit of uniformity between them, and helping to tie the whole exercise together.

All in all, the quality of the recordings was decent. If anything, I’d say the levels in the audio could’ve been monitored and adjusted more scrupulously, but the video footage was what we set out to achieve. By layering the audio and video together, there was an interesting relation that took hold and the initial discomfort I felt about the exercise disappeared. What I learnt from this exercise would be to monitor the audio levels more closely, to think more carefully about where the mic is pointed and perhaps to be adventurous with the filming of abstract material on the camera.

Question 2:

For this question, I chose to look at the wk 4 section of the ‘Rabiger, M. Directing the documentary’ reading.

  • I was drawn to the point about recognising dramatic units whilst filming documentary. Rabiger makes the argument that it is important to look for a ‘change in consciousness’ (or beat), in your participant, recognise it, then respond to the change and capture it on film. Rabiger states that this is where the skill in documentary filmmaking comes into its own and when truly great, dramatic tension is created.
  • The point on exposition of facts throughout the documentary raised by Rabiger was also compelling. I think the reason many of my previous films mightn’t have had the strongest narratives is because I didn’t consider the knowledge of the audience carefully enough. I had understood its’ importance, but never really paid much attention to the fact. The idea of using a list of all the facts that the audience will need to know in order to understand the film and bringing them out through the participants is something I’d definitely like to consider more carefully in the film project this semester.

Film/TV 2: Reflection No. 2

1. ‘End of the Line’ was a really captivating film. I was pleasantly surprised with the documentary after having not been sold on the treatment and Paul’s first introduction of it.

Whilst it is relatively difficult to recall any distinct editing decisions that contributed to the success of the film, the music selection left a great impression on me. Using that creepy, eerie music in conjunction with the ‘haunting’ shots of Broken Hill was really powerful and helped to create a feeling of unease that I imagine was intended by the filmmakers.

The narrative of the documentary, from memory, was pretty strong and there was a definite progression throughout the duration of the film, as the true nature of Broken Hill and its’ occupants became clearer.

The subjects of the film were brilliantly selected and it really helped to develop the unfolding of the film as each individual out ‘Broken Hill’d’ the last, essentially building up the documentary and resulting in a powerful impression of the location being left on the audience.

That’s about all I can remember…

2. Chosen Reading: Documentary Story Telling, Curran Bernard, S.

– Finding the story: It was interesting to read about ‘finding the story’ of a documentary as proposed by Curran, as I had experienced this phenomenon in Broadcast Media in 2013. ‘Finding the story’ refers to the makers of a film finding new meaning, purpose, or narrative direction for their film either during the production or even the post production stages of filmmaking.

– Passion: I also found Bernard Curran’s summary of what it means to be passionate about a film subject to be hugely captivating. Curran states that discouragement, boredom, frustration and confusion can all be minimised if a filmmaker finds a subject that they’re interested, excited and passionate about. I completely agree and see how the application of such theory will be beneficial in the future.