Presenting the Poetic

Over the week/ weekend our sound man and our editor worked with our director to complete the poetic doc. We presented it yesterday. The feedback we got was largely positive, everyone thought it looked cinematic and worked really well. There were a few issues with the sound but they are easily fixed. Overall I am really happy with the way it turned out. I would have like there to be more contrast between the start and end as far as motion and editing speed is concerned but within the 2 min piece it was always going to be difficult to have a large development in style.

Here is a version of our poetic from youtube:

Shooting and sound documentary workshop

In our shooting and sound workshops we looked at two separate ways of shooting and recording sound, in a constructed environment, and on the go. To do this we mocked up an interview on graffiti and recorded our editor drawing and walking whilst being interviewed. From this I learned that if we were to do something similar in our project it would be best to use some kind of track or steadycam or at least practice the camera movements before recording the subject for real.

In the other half of the lesson we looked at how to record in a set or house and the things that can effect it. We talked about positioning of the camera, the subject, the interviewer and of the background, including windows and doors. These offered good insights and tips into filming interviews that will help to make our work look professional. The tip he gave to us specifically was about masking our subjects. He suggested we just set the exposure to match the outside and then film them infront of a large window, turning them into a silhouette.

Doc Shooting Day 2+3

We have been shooting our poetic doc for the last few days at Stanley Tools, here is my shot list for the shooting days:

X	#	SHOT	Action	Notes	S.
	1	MED	Urbexers go down the stairs	Ariel shot	2
	2	CU	Silhouette goes past round window	Expos for outside	2
	3	MED	Urbexer walks from behind cam into darkness		2
	4	MED	Urbexer walks from darkness over cam	Opposite of sh3	2
	5	CU	Aaron with cam in front of face	Background should be 1 point perspective	3
	6	CU	Aaron with cam in front of face	Background should play on square motif	3
	7	LONG	Aaron Defacing a window. Shot from behind him to hide identity.	Try exposing for outside and inside lighting	3
	8	MED	Track of urbexers looking at graffiti timed cam flash and walk away	DOLLY	1/ 3
	9	LONG	Light version of chair and tv tracking shot	DOLLY	3
	10	MED	Lighter shot Peacock graffiti or urbexers shooting the graffiti	PAN	2
	11	MCU	Tracking shot of the windows	DOLLY (like the practice shot)	2
	12	LONG	Long shots of the large rooms, position urbexers CU and LONG	One urbexer left+close Other right+long	2/ 3
	13	MED	Bathroom, peeling walls and vegetation in better light		2
	14	LONG	Shot of the outside of Stanley tools.	Show the urbexers entering	2

So how did it go? Really well, the lighting was a lot better, much more helpful, and we had lots more time with the urbexers to get more relevant footage. We were a little restricted on the first day as the Airsofters that us the pace were using a few of the rooms however we got to move about during different times of the day so that was great. On the second day we were a little short on time but we had long enough to get the last few shots we needed so it went really well. After the first day me and Steve, the director, reviewed alll of the footage we has shot and were really happy with what it all looked like, we used the final day to get the last few shots noticed we needed and wrapped yesterday.