Lecture Notes: Week One: Introduction to the upcoming year and module. Went through a few of last year's documentaries and took note of what the success and failures were for them. Looked at the signature's the documentaries provided and had a brainstorm and what signature could be adapted by me and my group. Group for the module was formed, and research for the web-workbook began. Started reading the Yola guides, and met up with group to discuss idea's for the documentary as well as the formation of 'Red Bus Productions'. Week Two: Magnum agency, Henri-Cartier Bresson and the 'Decisive Moment' talked about. Went through why we an audience watch documentaries, to escape our own lives by watching others. Brief history of photojournalism and documentaries. A recap of the documentary modes gone through: Poetic, Expository, Observational, Particpatory, Reflexive, Performative and Political Reflexvity. Viewed some more of last year's documentaries and took note again of the signature, and the success and failures of them. Photojournalists mentioned for further research, Capa, Walker Evans, and Eve Arnold who happened to be the birth of paparazzi. Ying Yank breakdown recap from the previous year. Continued with research and brain storming of ideas. Week Three: Still camera, Canon 450D training. Reviewed the depth of field, television industry standard (72 DPI) and manual focus. Learnt and went more into depth about the shutter speed, the best SD card to use for a faster process and the appliture number, Told how to hand camera back by setting it to its default settings and erasing the images from the SD card. Discussed with group about photo essay assignment and possible locations included London, Southampton and Brighton. Continued improvement on the yola site and research. Week Four: Week off to work on the yola sites. Took a trip to Southampton and took some photo's for the photo essay with group. Each took turns using one Canon 450D still camera. Continued with research and the yola website. Week Five: Photoshop training, and a quick recap of it from last year. Went through the standard DPI's for Television, HD Projectors, Online Media Storm, and Magnum Agency. Brightness and Contrast work together and they must be 10 higher or lower to work effectively together. Told not to use clarity (sharpness). Learnt about Raw editing and how to provide copyright for our own images using adobe bridge
Week Six: Sony PD170 camera recap training. History of production companies in the UK, and how because of technological changed they have changed too. Short filming exercise with Sony PD170, which with the group we had 30 minutes to complete. Exercise was to do a news report on the increase of tuition fees. Met up with the group and more discussions about the documentary and website happened and we improved and continued to add to the website. We decided that we are not going to use the Sony PD170's to film our documentary, we will use the Sony HV V1E HD Camera's. Below is a manual which we found helpful in understanding the camera.
Week Seven: Went through assessments and pitch, this time in more detail. Were told what we should include, what we could include and how a group started their pitch off last year to make it entertaining. Watched a few documentaries and discussed fillers, noddy, breathing and repeating. Met up with group and continued progress with the website was made. Week Eight: Started Final Cut Pro training. We were shown how to set up final cut pro. Learned how to import video and sound into the library in final cut pro. Did a little bit of editing ourselves to get the basics of final cut pro down. The following PDF will be helpful in the post-production process:
Week Nine: More talk about the pitch as well as watching a few more documentaries. We learnt how we don't listen to the question but rather listen to the answer that is given. By watching a documentary about Biggie Smalls and Tupac, it was discovered that we should interrupt our interviewees in order to get to the next question which will have the answer we really want. For example if we ask about the subject's birth date, we do not want to know where they were born, just strictly the date. Week Ten: Back to final cut pro where we learned all about titles. We found out how to put titles in our film and how to use them effectively. For example if someone has a white t-shirt on, it may be a good idea to have a drop-shadow behind the text so the text colour doesn't change from one person to another. Or alternatively, make a background where the text can be easily read. It is important to make sure all text that is used in our documentary is the same colour, size, and font. This will give a running theme throughout the film. Week Eleven: This was the week that the pitch's began. Half the class did pitch's this week and half next week. Our group had our pitch on this week. We used fortune cookies and a pinata to symbolise the 2012 conspiracy and the end of the world. We talked about audience, our promotional material, festival's, the mode the documentary will be, and the representation ie. how we will cover different views and theories. Week Twelve: The other half of the group had their pitches and we watched them. We finished off Yola and our critical analyses. |
