To filmmakers, shooting is that magical time where you 'see' more, 'experience' more, even when you're in the same spaces that you've always known.
In my case, when I work in non-fiction I also do the interviews (something for which I prepare but finally do away with all paper, relying on eye-contact to guide me). So I'm kind of tense as well as hyper sensitive to the surroundings.
To go back a bit, how do documentary makers actually prepare for shooting?
In this one I knew that I wanted to do all interviews in mid-shots, so that all people could be seen in their environments. I also knew that I wanted full colour at the beginning, and then slowly take away all the colour from the images towards the end. I explained that to my camera person, and then kind of relied on her knowledge of the camera's dynamic range and her sense of framing to actually execute the shots. Even though this was the first time we were working together, after the first morning I sort of worked in my usual fashion of describing the parameters of the frame and the direction of the look of the character in frame, and then letting the camera person control things from there.
The colour schemes actually turned out to be naturally as I had wanted them, that was the 'natural' state of affairs in the places that we filmed. So I've actually done very little colour correction in this documentary.
There is very little camera movement in the documentary, maybe two or three shots. I'd rather let the audience figure the details by themselves in the frame. The size of the 16:9 frame and the picture quality of the 4:2:2 colour resolution permits this, it wasn't possible in the HDV frames. An interesting corollary of this stylistic is that it permitted me to not take any classical establishing shots for the houses. I did shoot them but ended up not using them.
Maybe I need to do a few frame grabs to illustrate this point. The stills from the set convey something completely different.
There is only one close shot of a face in the whole documentary, and when that comes on screen, it gets a reaction- you almost want to flinch, turn away. When people react like that, I know we're doing something right.
Let me move to other aspects of shooting tomorrow.
In my case, when I work in non-fiction I also do the interviews (something for which I prepare but finally do away with all paper, relying on eye-contact to guide me). So I'm kind of tense as well as hyper sensitive to the surroundings.
To go back a bit, how do documentary makers actually prepare for shooting?
In this one I knew that I wanted to do all interviews in mid-shots, so that all people could be seen in their environments. I also knew that I wanted full colour at the beginning, and then slowly take away all the colour from the images towards the end. I explained that to my camera person, and then kind of relied on her knowledge of the camera's dynamic range and her sense of framing to actually execute the shots. Even though this was the first time we were working together, after the first morning I sort of worked in my usual fashion of describing the parameters of the frame and the direction of the look of the character in frame, and then letting the camera person control things from there.
The colour schemes actually turned out to be naturally as I had wanted them, that was the 'natural' state of affairs in the places that we filmed. So I've actually done very little colour correction in this documentary.
There is very little camera movement in the documentary, maybe two or three shots. I'd rather let the audience figure the details by themselves in the frame. The size of the 16:9 frame and the picture quality of the 4:2:2 colour resolution permits this, it wasn't possible in the HDV frames. An interesting corollary of this stylistic is that it permitted me to not take any classical establishing shots for the houses. I did shoot them but ended up not using them.
Maybe I need to do a few frame grabs to illustrate this point. The stills from the set convey something completely different.
There is only one close shot of a face in the whole documentary, and when that comes on screen, it gets a reaction- you almost want to flinch, turn away. When people react like that, I know we're doing something right.
Let me move to other aspects of shooting tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment