18 posts tagged “documentaries”

All of the tapes have now been logged and I have resumed reviewing and downloading. So far I am doing these tasks in quick succession instead of reviewing the remaining tape and then going back through to download clips. More mic bobbles; also looking at footage in a location where sound recording was a challenge due to environmental noise. I hope to be editing before the end of this month.

Yesterday, I reached the breaking point mentioned in the previous diary. Hopefully, I will have more tape by the end of this week.

The interviews I watched in this last round included one from a highly practiced subject. A subject who is used to being interviewed can be helpful because they are easy to get talking and are often quite articulate.  On the other hand, they may also have a standard set of answers they give to questions which may or may not be quite what you're looking for, and it may take some extra work to move them off of those responses. This isn't necessarily different from less practiced interviewees, who often need other kinds of prompting, but it does present an unique challenge.

Mic bobbling was at a minimum on these most recent tapes.

Only one interview today, another example of a conversation that comes across better on tape and after reflection than it did in person. However, it is also another interview with probably limited utility for the final film. Much less mic bobbling on this tape than the last two.

I am approaching a possible breaking point in my review. My remaining interviews are largely, in whole or in part, on tapes I don't have in hand, but on ones in the queue for logging. Hopefully, some or all will be ready to go by the end of this week.

I also have two "big picture" type interviews that I am planning on viewing after looking at the rest, but may change that order if the last of the logging takes too long.

Watched the first really good interview that I probably won't be using much of in the final film. There are a few subjects I spoke with who will end up not quite fitting into the big picture as well as others. I am considering ultimately releasing all, or at least a substantial chunk, of my raw footage online for others to view and play with. That's one way to ensure that the stuff on "the cutting room floor" doesn't end up simply forgotten and unused.

Noticed more mic bobbling, and seemingly more intrusive this time.

Having to defer some tapes as I wait for companion cassettes to be logged. I will likely be taking the next few days off from tape review. Generally, I am torn between wanting to power through the material and taking a more measured approach to ensure that my judgment stays clear. So far I have taken a measured approach looking at two to three interviews a day. With pauses for note taking, a thirty to forty minute interview has been taking about an hour to review.

Today, I encountered the first interview so far that is marred by one of the sound people moving the mic around; bip, bip, bip, bip. Fortunately, this isn't constant and I should be able to cut around the bobbles. I also hit one of the two tapes where the video mode had been shifted accidentally in the bag and went unnoticed until after several minutes had been recorded. At the time, I chose to play out the tape in the incorrect mode, but switched to the proper mode when a new tape was started. That may not have been the best choice. It might have been better to record the whole interview in the wrong mode and then conformed it all later. I won't really know what the effect of this choice will be until I get into editing proper. Finally, on the flaws and mistakes front, I learned that one of the people who worked on the tape logs managed to record over about two minutes of one of the interviews. I don't think I lost anything
valuable, but it was a shock. Am glad that this particular person did not get a chance to do work on the logs in an extensive way.

I've also noticed that my in-person perceptions of the interviews are not always born out on screen. I have found subjects that seemed kind of flat during recording coming across much better on playback. The differences are not dramatic, but enough to be encouraging. Less common is for a dyamic in-person interview to be turned flat in review. This is also encouraging, obviously.

One of the hardest things about this process is listening to my own voice on tape-after-tape.

I started reviewing my interview footage yesterday and I have a few early thoughts on what I've watched.

• Subjects who like to talk are good. You have listen to much more than you will need, but you're also more likely to get good material (I also have to say that some of the less relevant discussion I've heard in these first few tapes is as much a product of the questions I asked as it is a product of subject answers).
• More than before, even, I wish I had had a DP to work with. I undoubtedly would have done more set-ups with individual subjects, and would have ended up catching some little things that slipped by last summer, lack the reflections off of the glasses of one of my better interviews. Having written that, the video generally looks good. Rich, vibrant colors and clear images.
• Sound quality is excellent. Buying a field mixer before the shoot was obviously a good investment, as was the sound workshop I attended at the Northwest Film Center and this little tool.

With the school year done, I can turn my attention to film projects, starting with my documentary of comic book creators in Portland, Oregon. This also means that this blog will be sparked back to life. I will be posting more of my personal thoughts, frustrations, reflections on the documentary here, leaving the more "official" communications to the doc blog. There will also be other projects to write about as the summer continues.

My filmmaking activities have been curtailed by the day-to-day at the university, but last Friday, 13 February, I screened a short film, "24-Hour Comics Day at Cosmic Monkey", as part of the Oregon 150 commemoration at Western. The short was produced from footage shot for my larger documentary project on the comic book scene in Portland, Oregon (USA). I've inserted the YouTube version below, but better viewing can be found on my lo-fi cinema page at blip.tv.

As I've alluded to in other posts on the comics documentary, I've cobbled together a crew for the summer from students, recent grads, and Anne-Marie. Mostly, this has been to help with interviews; while you can be a one person crew working with digital media, it isn't the best way to work, at least not for me. However, I've also been asking folks to help with logging tape, an essential, but tedious job.

Logging tape entails providing useful descriptions for every shot on a tape, usually including information like time code, angle, and subject. Getting this done is helpful for a number of reasons. Once you have a tape logged, subsequent viewings can be devoted to evaluating quality and content. A log lets you see at a glance what's on a tape. It makes it possible to fish out specific kinds of footage without having to actually watch an entire tape. It can guide the creation of a batch list for downloading footage. I'm sure that there are people who work without logging their tape, but I can't imagine not doing it, especially not on a project where you're going to be working with hours and hours of material (I generally don't create a tape log for events like this weekend's 48 Hour Film Project, but that's a time issue, and we usually don't have much more than an hour of tape to work with in any event).

I've been asking members of the crew to log tapes, and with some mixed success. Not surprisingly, no one is eager to do this job, but most have been game when asked directly. The main limiter I've discovered is that most don't have access to miniDV cameras, and certainly not to miniDV decks. All but one person has informed me that they only have access to hard drive-based cameras, or everyone they know just uses the video function on their digital still cameras. One person told me that he's never had a miniDV machine, only hard drive based ones.

I have wide control and access to a couple of camcorders from the university, but not enough to keep everyone working simultaneously. I guess that miniDV became outmoded at the consumer level without me really noticing.

I've written previously about how budgetary limits have compelled me to be my own director of photography on the comics documentary. This is not an entirely bad thing, it forces me to do work that makes me a better filmmaker, but last week I got a sharp reminder as to why it's preferable to work with a photographer.

My camera, a Panasonic DVX100a, has a set of "scene files" which allows you to use and save different combinations of settings for color, detail, frame rate, etc. I think I've been reliable about checking that the scene file setting is correct before we begin shooting. However, last Friday, for various reasons, things were moving slow and we were behind schedule, and clearly checking the scene file dial simply slipped my mind. When I changed tapes during one of the interviews, I noticed that the dial had moved, which will happen sometimes when I put the camera back in its bag (hence, the need to check). Unfortunately, we weren't in a location that set off any alarm bells about how the image looked on the LCD screen - muted colors, no real dark areas, s stable camera and subject - and it wasn't until I actually saw the dial that I realized what had happened.

I haven't looked at the tape yet, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to smooth out or finesse the differences in footage during editing and post-production without too much trouble. Fortunately, even though I haven't tested this yet, my understanding is that Final Cut Pro makes it relatively easy to work with different kinds of video (here, I'm looking at needing to work with 24PA and 60i). In retrospect, I probably should have kept the "wrong" scene file for the rest of the interview, but my first impulse was to change it back to where it should have been and that's what I did. This will make it easier to integrate the second half with the rest of my footage, but poses a new challenge of how to reconcile the look within the interview.

The lesson here for me is that one of the practical reasons for working with a photographer is that that person will have nothing to worry about except the camera, making it less likely that something like this will happen. But, to tweak a cliche about teaching, you have to work with the production you have, not the one you wish you had.