27.10

Today we used most of the time to capture all the footage we took during mid-term onto Final Cut Pro. During class time we also did more filming; we filmed an interview with Isabelle, who's coming back from boarding school in England to visit. We thought it would be interesting to get an interview with her because her school uses an English system like we do, but the two systems are different. GCSE and IB/MYP are both English systems but they offer different approaches to learning. From that you can also see a contrast between systems internationally, as with the American system it's pretty much the same in schools everywhere. Other groups also took this time to do some interviews with the people in our class, so the time was used very effectively.

We're still going through the process of making the documentary. I can kind of understand why people say a documentary is born in the editing room because today gave us a chance to look back on our footage while capturing, and see what was missing, what was good/bad about what we've got and how we should go about shooting the rest of the footage we need. It's like reflecting, while actually looking at the hard evidence. Although, we got into a bit of trouble when capturing the footage. What happened was that the group who used the tape before us, they filmed with 16 bit sound and we filmed with 12 bit sound. The two sound settings don't work together so we kept seeing a "wrong tape format" appear on the camera screen. That worried us but we realized that as the tape kept playing it would all be fine; we just had to fast forward the parts where our footage and theirs overlapped. That meant we lost some of our footage, but we were open-minded about the situation and we figured we could use other parts instead to make up for it. We realized that these things happen and we can't do much so we just have to use what we've got; I don't think the parts we missed were that important and we got most of the rest anyway so that was good. I'm just really happy that we didn't lose all of our footage like what happened to my group last year, that would've really sucked as we worked so hard to get permission and spent so much time getting the footage.

Another thing that got us a little scared was that when we were capturing, our footage on the computer looked very pixelated and the lighting was really bad, but when we looked at the clip playing on the camera it looked really good and it also wasn't that shaky. We really want our film to turn out as we want it to look like, so we were scared we might have to re-film as we couldn't have most of our film in darkness. But in the end when we finished capturing at watched the captured clips, it turned out a lot better than we expected so we were quite relieved in the end.

Next on the agenda is still to film, get more footage and more interviews. We also need to edit the clips we have already to slowly get our final film into shape. I'm really excited to see how it turns out, but I'm also hoping our footage will be able to reflect what we want to show especially in regards to our question. I think the most challenging thing will be to find a way to cut down our clips, incorporating the key parts to really bring out what we want to say.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." - Gone With the Wind

4.10

Today was sort of a re-cap session on what we did last class (when I wasn't here) and also on the progress of our pre-production for the documentaries. We're going pretty smoothly, apart from the aspect of permission. We've gotten permission from one school, got declined by another school so now we're just waiting on one (or two) more. I was surprised that we got declined because I thought that schools would usually welcome opportunities to show their school working together with other schools. I guess they didn't think it was a good idea. But I think this is good, going through this whole process and experiencing the ups and downs because in the real world there aren't any guarantees.

Thing's aren't always go the way you planned and we just have to figure out ways to move around our setbacks, make new plans or revise old plans. I think the good thing was that we were prepared for any situation, although we are still new at this and there are a lot of things we still need to learn. I'm not panicking yet, so it's still okay!

Ms.Rosati set up the camera and the sound system for us to show us how to do an interview. This is different from last year in that last year when we used the microphones, we didn't put headphones on to check if the sound was good or okay or not working out. We didn't know that last year, but this year hopefully the sound will turn out better, especially because our unit focuses on sound. I learned that when filming an interview, the interviewee looks to the left or to the right or slightly off to the distance of the camera, never directly to the camera. They should always have a focal point to where they look at. For some weird reason I had this notion that the camera person was the one to give the questions. Perhaps that's because sometimes when you watch interviews, they don't show the interviewer, or you don't even hear the question, all you see is the interviewee

answering. Now I know that that's not the case :)

Another thing I learned (from the make-up session our group had because we missed last class) is that you should always angle the camera slightly above the person's head. Not too much higher, just a little bit. This is to create a more flattering image of the person. I think that it isn't good to position the camera level with the person because to me, it seems a little overwhelming and up in people's faces, especially with a close up.

"Love means never having to say you're sorry." - Love Story