26.9

In class we continued our pre-production stage of the documentary. Pre-production means all the work to be done (planning) before turning on the camera, before shooting. We mainly focused on working together to produce a letter/email that we will send to the principals or heads of the schools we want to film at. This is really important because before we can really move forward with our plans we need to get permission; this is also a huge part of filming documentaries, as you're filming true events or real life, so you have to respect people's privacy rights.

There's so much work to be done during the pre-production stage of filming any movie, although with a documentary the different aspects of planning are slightly different to a feature film. For example documentaries don't need to go through the casting process of picking actors for specific roles, but they could consider possible interviewees and select the most "suitable" one. We don't need to draw out a storyboard because we're not exactly manipulating each shot, but we can use visual references to give an example of what we're hoping or trying to make it look like. The shot list is extremely important, for almost any type of film. I don't think it would be as detailed as a feature film's shot list because with a feature film each action each movement each spoken word is planned out so the directors would know exactly what each shot should look like.

An interesting thing I learned during class was that location scouting is really important, probably just as important as the actors because the place has to match with the story to make it believable, as well as to establish the mood. Location scouting is actually a real profession, and apparently people get paid lots of money to find good places.

What we still have to do is to make a shot list, get background information on school and students, get permission from the interviewees and set up time/location for interviews and think about making a visual reference (sort of like a storyboard type thing). There's a lot so I think we need to think about picking up the pace to finish the pre-production stage so we can start filming. It's good that we can allocate tasks between the three people so that each person has a responsibility to fulfill to get the whole job done. What we're kind of scared about is what if the principals don't let us come to their school as we feel it's a little awkward, but that would just mess up our whole plan. So fingers crossed!

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." - All About Eve

20.9

In this class we brainstormed about our documentary: the pre-production process/planning. We wanted to film our documentary on the topic of local schools and international schools; differences, similarities and student's own perceptions/thoughts/experiences.

FOCUS QUESTION: What are the similarities between local schools and international schools? (Including school life and after school life e.g. after school activities, homework hours)

We want to to shoot at different schools to compare them with each other. We're comparing school environment and students lifestyles. We would also like to see if we can follow one specific student from each school to film their after school activities, as co-curricular activities such as tutoring or sport teams are a big part of secondary school.

POSSIBLE SCHOOLS TO FILM:
(One person from each school)
HKIS
CIS
St Stephens
Chekiang school
(GSIS)
(FIS)
St. Pauls
Sacred heart

Because we want to film school environment during school hours, maybe film how a class is taught or how a class goes in different schools, we need to ask permission from the school beforehand. We might have to look at changing our focus question slightly in case it would sound offensive to anyone, but when we were brainstorming it was quite challenging for us to do that, so we might need a little more thought put into our question.

List of possible interviewees:
Jamie Yeung
Samantha Cheng
Boris But
Parents of Jamie Yeung
Teachers (yang lao shi)
Kenny Liu
Alison (Jamies friends/contacts)
LMY

We need to find more possible local students to interview or follow because we have many connections in international schools, but not so much in local schools. The documentary would look biased if we focused too much on international schools, and it wouldn't really help with the leading question as we wouldn't have much to compare with.

Possible Questions:
(students)
1. How many after school activities do you do a week?
2. How long do you spend doing homework?
3. Do you have tutors/tutoring centers (for what subjects)?
4. How long are your school hours (start time and end time)?
5. What subjects do you take and what are your favorites?
6. How long are your classes for?
7. How do you get to school, when do you get to school(footage as well)?
8. What time do you go to bed/wake up?
9. Which is your preference?
(teachers/parents)
9. What are your perceptions of local vs international schools?
10. Why did you choose to teach at an international/local school?
11. Why did you choose to send your kids to the school they are attending?
12. Which is your preference?

We didn't want our documentary to be solely based on interviews because that would make it very boring, just listening to people talk. So we tried focusing our interview questions mostly on personal experiences/thoughts, things that we couldn't show using footage that wasn't part of an interview.

What we are going to film (footage):

How different students get to school

Film school life (classes/surroundings/break times)

After school life (activities and transportation)

When we are filming (schedule):

Mid-term break
Weekends
Class time (during school)
Before school
After school

"What we've got here is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke

16.9

Today we officially started on the new, or rather our first, unit: documentaries.

There are three major types of film making: documentary - non-fiction, about true events, depicting 'real' people; narrative - fictional; and experimental - uses only highly stylized images and sound to create a visual landscape, often has no clear story, manipulates reality. I've never heard of something called experimental films before and it seemed very abstract, because it seemed to have little meaning to it other than to create stylized images. It started from the avant-garde movement in Europe during the 1920's. It aimed to push the boundaries of what was considered the normal, or the status quo. I don't think there are much proper or professional experimental films because most of the time when a film is made, a story is told or an opinion is given or a message is given across. People want to make it just a little bit realistic, even if it's a narrative, so that the audience or the viewers can feel more connected to it.

We looked at two documentaries; Bowling for Columbine, directed by Michael Moore and No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese. Bowling for Columbine is about the 1999 Columbine shooting, and it poses the leading question of how and why did this event happen. No Direction Home is a biopic about musician Bob Dylan, and I think the leading question of this film would be "What was his impact on 20th century American pop music and pop culture?". Bowling for Columbine was praised for talking about an issue that was slighted by the mainstream media at the time. I think what Marilyn Manson said in the interview in the documentary, about how instead of talking about gun control and violence in our country, instead of focusing on how the President is sending bombs overseas, we should focus on these boys, this kind of relates to that idea.

I think it's really nice how we are constantly learning new things and gaining new insights to things we had thought about one way before, and now think about it another way, from another perspective. I used to think documentaries weren't as interesting as narrative films, because well, who doesn't love fictional storytelling? I think that by really understanding how documentaries work, learning about them, watching documentaries and sort of analyzing them, there's a whole new world to them. Although documentaries depict real events and 'real' people, there are still many careful considerations gone into the editing and compilation of the clips, as it is still a film meant for the viewers. Just like in No Direction Home, when the first section of the opening part transitions into the second, it's very abrupt. It's a sudden transition from dark to light, a noisy environment to a silent one, from a hand-held camera like quality to a still image. That was done deliberately, possibly to convey innocence, purity, starting fresh or "going back to the beginning of the story" in a sense, because the film is showing clips of the past.

"You can't handle the truth!" - A Few Good Men

8.9

In this class we watched all of our films and talked about what was good and what needed improving. There were a few things that were important that we needed to know. In a long shot we have to show the full body, including feet. It's not a proper long shot if it only goes up to the knees or a 3/4 length. Those shots aren't good because they're neither nor, they're in between. We needed to make sure the camera was focused when shooting, and also to adjust the camera height when doing close ups of people to suit their heights. We are allowed to cheat the geography, to suit our shots, because the audience isn't there, they only know what we show them. It was important that we didn't break the fourth wall - look at the camera when acting, because that is interacting with the audience and it becomes distracting.

I learned about the observational and subjective nature of the camera, how sometimes directors can choose to make it cold and passive and just there, or to have an opinion on/about the scene.

The really important thing we had to remember was the 180 degree rule. Breaking that is called crossing the line, which some directors choose to do to create a certain effect but generally it's not a good idea because it changes people's conception of things in the film. I hadn't really thought much about the rule while we were filming so I wasn't sure if we had broken the rule in our film but I'm glad we didn't, as I learned it last year, so I should know.

Another important thing we needed to remember was the continuity of acting and also the continuity of the background. I learned that because you can cheat the geography to your advantage, you can shoot the scene from same place even when changing the angle, because the audience doesn't know any better. We should do this because we need to keep the continuity of the background so there won't be any sudden changes in lighting or color when we switch the angles, especially if in a real film when they shoot on different days, the weather conditions might be different so it could be really obvious that the scenes don't line up. It's extremely important to stay in character for exactly the same reason. So as I said before, I have a renewed appreciation for actors and directors, to be able to recreate certain scenes exactly as shot before on different days and to get into the same emotional state every single time. That takes quite a lot of dedication.

"Houston, we have a problem." - Apollo 13

Film Poster

Experimented with two different styles. I really like both of them because the first one has good imagery and the black is powerful, and the second one conveys the message and gives indications as to what the film is about. I liked the effects of the small photographs in the second one as well.

6.9

Today we finished the last part of our challenge shoot: editing and exporting. It wasn't anything fancy, we weren't able to do a lot of extra things to add "flair" to our film, but we edited our clips in a way that everything fit together quite nicely and we completed what we were supposed to. I had used Final Cut Pro last year so I knew sort of how to use the program, but I did learn something new today. I learned that we should always cut out the part we want from our footage to put into the timeline first, instead of putting the entire clip onto the timeline. That way it's much more organized and clean, and I realized it also saves a lot of time. It's easy to do this when you only have one clip, maybe it won't be as easy when you have several and you need to keep going through back and forth to get the little sections you want. We should also always remember to keep things in sequence whenever it's being put onto the timeline. It's always a great hassle to try and put things in order when you just dump everything onto the timeline. Now I know better! :)

I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished. There was one part in our film where we took the same shot from two different angles, of Bridgitte saying her line. We decided to cut both of those sections in half so that the first part of her saying her line was shot in an over the shoulder shot, her back facing the camera, and the next part cut straight into a medium close up of her finishing the line. We edited it so that those two parts flowed straight into each other very smoothly and that was really nice. The last thing we did was to put in the title. We wanted something creative, and Robert came up with this idea of "BAR Productions" because that was the combination of the first letters of each of our names. We got the idea to put that in from the movies where in the beginning they show the production company's name, "presents...". I thought that was a pretty interesting twist to our simple short film.

"Elementary, my dear Watson." - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes