32 posts tagged “film making”

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.

Last weekend (August 8-10), version two of the Monmouth Film Collective participated in the Portland, Oregon 48 Hour Film Project. We successfully finished our film and got it in on time (the event ran from 7:00 on Friday to 7:30 on Sunday; we got the film delivered by 7:00).

Our genre was historical fiction, and the Portland elements were:

• Character: Jake or Jane Gravenstein, wellness practioner.
• Line of dialogue: “Okay, I think I got it straight.”
• Prop: jumper cables.

This year's experience was immediately different from last year's in that the genre we drew was both more intimidating and more constraining. Fantasy, the genre we drew in 2007, is nothing but artistic license. Historical fiction comes with more limits, and more of a burden in terms of “getting it right.”

We decided on a 1930s, Great Depression story involving a family, three kids and a dad, looking for a place to stay and falling into the web of a maybe crazy, maybe craven “inventor” claiming to have a magical “healing machine”. I jumped on the idea because I immediately envisioned the family walking along a dusty railway. The writers did much more with the idea, obviously. It was also relatively easier to imagine at least roughly being able to approximate the look and feel of the period.

Naturally, the weather did not really cooperate. It rained over night, and was alternately sunny and cloudy all day on Saturday. Getting the “dust bowl” look and feel was not going to happen, but fortunately it being August, there was a lot of gold and brown in the landscape in any event. In other respects, the constantly changing light was a challenge for the photography, but I think we were able to work around it sufficiently to give us a consistent look when we needed it.

I remember being pretty happy with last year's film. I wouldn't say I was unhappy with this year's, which we titled “The Decision”, but it is more uneven, and there are more things I wish I had done a little different, particularly in editing. Our genre and our story was, ultimately, more ambitious this year. So, whereas last year, the low rent approach that is almost necessitated by the strictures of the event really worked, this year it became a source of frustration. On the other hand, the best moments in the new film are better than those from last year's.

This has nothing to do with the fine work of cast and crew. Our team was a mix of old and new faces, and we worked together well. I think that work is well-represented in the final film. I just can't help feeling that the end work is less than the talents and ambitions of the team.

This year's Monmouth Film Collective was, in addition to myself: Maren Bradley Anderson, David Berrier, Tristan Berrier, Rachel Bridgewater, Anne-Marie Deitering, David Doellinger, Ben Grimes, Jordan Hofer, Jason Kirtland, Bill Madden, Jesse Madden, Mark Madland, Orion Metzner, Chris Olsenius, Emily Plec, Charley Waller, and Rosanne Waller.

Watch last year's film, “DreemRz, Inc.”
See photos from this year.
This year's film coming soon. (It's now here).

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.

As I posted to the production blog, the interviews for the main part of the documentary began yesterday. Before getting those interviews underway, I set up a Google Group for the crew to facilitate communication and provide a central place for asking questions, working out problems, etc. It is also a way for the crew members to introduce themselves to each other. I'm actually not sure if I'll ever have everyone together on one shoot. Fortunately, one of the advantages of digital technology is its relative simplicity. On Friday, I was able to get the two crew members I was working with, Tanya and Danny, set up for sound and monitoring without any real difficulty. As I've mentioned before, I'm essentially acting as my own DP on this project, but as time goes by, I hope to have at least one other person that I can trust to set up shots and work the camera. In addition to using Google Groups for the production, I've also set up a tape log in a Google Docs spreadsheet, which should make it easier for everyone to complete those assignments and have the documented updated in real time instead of having to track so many different versions of it (I was a little surprised to see that Google Groups and Google Docs are not seamlessly integrated with each other, which means that I can't share documents directly with the group via the group page). Other than all of the driving to Portland this stage of the production will entail, I'm looking forward to the remaining interviews, and to getting more of the crew working together.

After pushing my production schedule for 24-Hour Comic Day and Stumptown, I was able to move back into research mode. More particularly, I've been sending out a survey to Portland-based comics creators, and their allies in publishing, libraries, and retail, to get an initial sense of why so many in this community have decided to make the city their home. Now, it's time to sit down with the results and plan the first part of the shoot, which will primarily involve scheduling interviews (another purpose of the survey was to net potential subjects).

I am torn between different ways of approaching the next stage of production. I am drawn both to taking an intensive approach, where we focus on three to four subjects and "their" city, and an extensive one, where we build the documentary around many voices. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or resources to effectively try both angles at once. What I think I might do is identify a few potentially interesting subjects from the surveys, schedule interviews with them, and see what I have. How well those interviews go may hint at whether we should to return to those subjects, or some combination of those I initially talk to and one or two new people, or if we should start building up a pool of interviews to draw on in editing. There are, of course, gradations between these two extreme alternatives, but I think the doc will substantially follow one or the other path.

I should also add that with production picking up, this blog will likely become more active again (I also have this to look to forward this summer).

This past weekend Anne-Marie and I went to work on the comics documentary. We shot footage of 24-Hour Comic Day at Cosmic Monkey Comics in northeast Portland. We came away with three hours of tape, including about one and a half hour of time-lapse footage from over night. You can read more about the weekend, including links to an archived live blog of the event, on my production blog for the film.

Because I don't really have a crew or group of collaborators lined up yet, I've had to act as my own director of photography, which is not something I like to do, but which I recognize is a good thing. It makes me a better director, and expands my skill set. Over the weekend, in particular, I got some more practical experience with the Fig Rig, including seeing how easy it is to work when fully hooked up for sound (the answer: quite easy). Anne-Marie and I talked about trying to coordinate me on the camera and her with the mic while moving with the rig, but we decided there wasn't good enough reason, especially since we may have ended up looking like fools!

The week or so before, like many an independent filmmaker these days, I agonized over frame rates and aspect ratios. My deliberations over frame rates are partially available in comments to this post on Susan Ee's blog. In the end, I decided to shoot in the DVX 100a's “24p Advanced mode.” The reason is partially aesthetic, I do like the softer more organic look and feel of progressive video better than I do interlaced, at least for “film” projects. Is 24p “better” than 30p? No. Yes. Depends.

In a truly digital world, I'd probably choose 30p. It simplifies shooting and editing, while retaining much of the analog aesthetic of 24p. However, it is the remote possibility of wide-ish theatrical distribution that tipped the balance to 24p Advanced. From just about everything I've read, the biggest downside to choosing 30p is that it is virtually impossible to get a decent transfer to film with such footage, and, indeed, most shops don't even offer it as an option.

Of course, interval recording is not possible in 24p on the DVX100a, only in 30p or 60i. I shot the time-lapse footage in 30p. Hmmm. As I write that, maybe 60i would have been the better choice, but I wanted to minimize the disparity in appearance between the regular shots and the interval recording.

I did play with warming up 60i as the primary shooting mode, but applying “Cine” settings in that mode tended to just produce muddy looking video. And that brought me back around to 24p as the only way to preserve the transfer-to-film possibility.

Theatrical presentation is also a primary reason for thinking about aspect ratio. For better or worse, my camera's native 4:3 signifies “TV” or “video” not “cinema” or “film.” Unlike the 24p choice, I have my own reasons for wanting a widescreen look for this project.

The film is fundamentally about the city of Portland, and cities are cinematic, either in look, e.g., skylines, or in subject, e.g., the young and hip. Furthermore, as comics and movies are increasingly integrated, it seems like a natural choice.

The question is how to get the widescreen look.

I have two in-camera options: “squeeze” mode and letterboxing. Squeeze mode essentially stretches the 4:3 image into a 16:9 image. Letterboxing adds black bars to the top and bottom of the image.

There are two issues with squeeze mode. One is a loss of resolution (as I understand it, at the center of the image, resolution remains high, but as you move away from the center, the stretching results in lower resolution). The other is the LCD monitor on the camera lacks a widescreen setting, so the image you see while shooting is distorted. An appropriate external monitor can fix this, but I find that cumbersome on documentaries.

With letterboxing you sacrifice pixels for the black bars. In addition, the bars become part of the image on the tape. Effects and filters added in editing and post-production will apply to those bars as well as to the rest of the recorded image.

What I am trying to do is shoot in 4:3, but “protect” for widescreen, that is, letterboxing in post-production. Essentially this is the same as what happens in camera, except that you retain full use of your CCDs for recording “real” information. In addition, the masking you apply in post-production is independent of your recorded footage, which means that transitions, etc. will only apply to what's between the letterboxing.

The trick here is leaving enough room at the top and bottom of each shot to accommodate the masking. However, I will be able to reposition the image when needed, another reason to shoot a “full” image rather than using the in-camera letterboxing.

Like shooting in 24p, shooting in 4:3 will make for easier “blow up” or “up rezing” to film or HD.

One thing I've learned from trying to research these questions is that there are no hard and fast answers. For every person who cautions against, say, squeeze mode due to the loss of resolution there is another who will tell you about the project they just worked on where this was no big deal, even after a transfer to film or HD. My choices are fundamentally conservative in the sense of wanting to conserve options for different formats for distribution and presentation styles.

I have begun work on a documentary that will look at comics culture in Portland, Oregon. Officially, I'm in pre-production, pulling together a crew, doing preliminary research, etc., but in reality the shoot will begin next weekend. My schedule has been forced by the Stumptown Comics Fest moving from September to April, a move which inadvertently drew my attention to 24-Hour Comic Day at Cosmic Monkey Comics in NE Portland, an event that takes place April 5-6. So, since I'm starting ahead of schedule anyway, I figured why not add that to the list.

You can learn more about the documentary at the "official" production blog I've set up on TypePad. I'll continue to blog more informally about the film here on Vox.

I have been quietly putting together another version of the Willamette Valley Film Collective to participate in the 2008 International Documentary Challenge. This will be the third time I've done this. With some urging from Anne-Marie, I was thinking about not organizing an entry this year, but then David Doellinger, a WVFC veteran, expressed his enthusiasm for giving it another go, and that's all it took to tip me in the other direction.

One difference between this year and the previous two is that I am limiting my own involvement to producer and editor, rather than taking on those roles plus that of director and co-photographer as well. Partly, this is out of curiosity. Almost from the beginning of my venture into filmmaking, I've wanted to experience the process from the perspective of a photographer or editor independent of also acting as director. Partly, this is due to feeling overworked and over stressed due to added responsibilities on campus this year. And partly it is because I want to give other participants the experience of taking on other roles. David will be directing this year. His wife, Erin Marr, will be one of, or the, primary photographers (her likely co-photographer is William Bragg, who was DP for the Monmouth Film Collective in last summer's 48 Hour Film Project).

My original vision for these experiences was for the "collective" part of the team name to be a driving force for what we did, but what I discovered in the first year is that people aren't actually comfortable with that. Not everyone wants to work the camera or make decisions, etc. Maybe this is due to feeling intimidated by the equipment or lack of confidence. I don't know, but I did learn a valuable lesson about the differences between collaborative and collectivist work. People don't have to be "equal" to be valued or satisfied by their participation in a project like this. And the truth is the second year when I took more of a traditional directorial role was a better experience, and led to a better film, than the previous year when I had a more, well, communist vision of the process, something which just created tension from unresolved expectations of everyone wanting to take a turn on the camera and so on.

Read about last year's event (the post about 2006 is no longer online).

I am still here. Regrettably, I've not been able to do much in film/video production the past few months, and, hence, content has been limited. I have, however, started up a new TypePad blog (still under construction) and one of my initial posts is, essentially, an extended pointer to David Byrne's Wired article on production and distribution options for musicians. My blog post applies Byrne's advice and analysis to film and filmmaking.

Yesterday's musings/confessional about awards and recognition and the 48 Hour Film Project got me thinking about why I've moved into making film and video.

The simple answer is that it was fairly organic for me to move from teaching, researching, and writing about film to working with the form. Talking and writing about issues like the space of the frame or the significance of different kinds of edits made made me want to put those discussions into practice if for other reason than I thought it would make me a better teacher, scholar, and critic. What I've found is that I am more comfortable, and derive more pleasure from, working with film and video than I am with traditional academic texts (at least for now; and I'm not meaning to imply that I have given up writing articles, etc., because I haven't. Indeed, the more obviously academic video projects I'm working require supplementation with essays, source lists, etc. Similarly, my presentation at last year's Association of Pacific Coast Geographers meeting in Eugene, Oregon focused on theoretical issues related to the use of moving images in geographic research).

I've also discovered that I very much enjoy working on scripted projects. Such work is harder to fit into my professional identity as a geographer, but the truth is when I teach film, I mostly focus on popular features and not experimental or documentary work. Again, this isn't an either/or choice, but a case of both/and. I get satisfaction and learn from both scripted narrative films and "fully crewed" documentaries and those projects where I just grab my camera and start shooting.

If I had an ideal in my mind for my filmmaking future it would be to cultivate a community of people locally in the mid-Willamette Valley that mirrors, in miniature, what the better part of the Canadian music scene looks like: fluid collectives of creative people working alone and in different combinations. This year's 48 Hour Film Project was a big step in that direction in that the timing compelled me to reach outside of what has become the regular group to get a team together. The project was also encouraging for how many Western Oregon students were on the team, both for what that seems to imply about the future of film studies and Western and what it suggests about the possibilities for an active student culture at the school. Maybe in the future there will be whole teams of WOU students entering events like the 48 Hour Film Project and the International Documentary Challenge. More personally, I would love to work as a photographer or editor (or whatever) on a project being directed and produced by someone else.

In the meantime, I find myself weighing the possibilities of tackling a feature-length narrative. We'll see.