“Yianni.” La-Ra, Diane and Maria.

The Growth

Reflecting on my growth as a filmmaker, presenting “Yianni.” on screen was exciting and fun, and very learnfull, as we got to see how the class had grasped the task of making a documentary. During the last three weeks I have been thinking about what have I learned in this course about filmmaking, from both the production of Yianni, course materials, lectures and tutes. During the progression of creating Yianni, each week of production aimed to implement what was taught about documentary filmmaking. Starting with the documentary statement and the pre-production, here I learned that we could film piece by piece of Yianni as the project went. Compared to last year, we could not do this as we were following a script and needed paperwork and set ups clarified and approved before any filming could take place. This way of filming got the group to collaborate a lot, and stepping sometimes in and out of each others roles. This was great as the camera lens needed to be our eyes, and following and observing Yianni in each movement, reaction and conversation.


The progression: a Micheangelo Antonioni or a Frederico Fellini?

Thinking about Micheangelo Antonioni, a modernist filmmaker, he hit his audience successfully by filming counterculture and artistic freedom, with the use of then current music as the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Antonioni’s contribution to ‘The Devil's Drool’ and ‘Zabriskie Point’ is seen in how Yianni as the filmmaker himself interacts with the audicence. Antonioni was not a part of this two films but a scriptwriter, but I think it was Yianni’s way of acting and being, that scripted our documentary’s narrative. It became ‘a film within a film’.

What I have learned about filmmaking from TV 1 to TV 2, was the way of communicating and build up the relationship with Yianni, which resulted into the truth of the Brunswick filmmaker. Going in depth of Yianni’s comment “We’re gonna be like Antonioni and Fellini”, this made me think about which kind of a filmmaker I am. Filmmaking within the genre of drama has been interesting, challenging and a lot of fun. When looking back to the readings, a comparison to Antonioni and Fellini was drawn into the reality of this semester’s TV2 – how do we direct and construct in filmmaking. The freedom of filming Yianni at any time in any space taught me to be aware of ‘that moment’, ‘that angle’, ‘that view’ and ‘that gesture’ that created the moment of truth in what we were aiming to capture. What was more interesting and also hard to work on, was our character’s behavior in front of the camera. This is a natural human reaction, which requires time to work on, to capture the beeing and not the acting. It was the last tapes we used that gave a lot of the interview material, and that was due to spending time with Yianni and build up a bond. This could be frustrating sometimes but I realized that patience was needed to get ‘that qoute’. This was probably meant to be because in the end of the day, we had a lot of material to work with. When we sat down to establish the construction, it went smoothly for the reasons that we knew Yianni and who he is, we know his relationship to his brother Michael and his friend Nick and therefore the narrative about filmmaking needed to go from there. Like Frederico Fellini is known for his style that blends fantasy and baroque images, so would we have to do this with Yianni, as this is filmmaking of the 21st century. Some of Yianni’s own footage was used and this really made our audience aware of what kind of a filmmaker we aimed to show who Yianni was. I have grown a lot as a filmmaker due to this project, together with the past weeks course materials (reflected on in blogs August to October). I have stepped out of my comfort zone a lot as I am not afraid to put an interviewed object on the spot, interact with him or her and ask unusual questions. I have learned that some questions might be provocative but it is these ones that creates reaction and can give me, both as a radio reporter and a filmmaker, that grab and that strong comment. I am also a lot more confident on the use of software, due to improving editing skills from TV 1, working together on this in a group, crossing into each other’s roles, and also from work experience.

Collaboration
Working together with La-Ra Hinckeldeyn and Diane Vu was the most successful and funniest group project. It was actually the best RMIT group project ever. I believe this is due to previous experience, friendship and selecting the group already in week 1 and 2. La-Ra and I set goals already then and we knew Diane would be one awesome, reliable and edit wise group member–and she was into the group goals as well. This way of operating the group with clear objectives, goals and management lead into no surprises or down turns. The communication skills we had from previous also helped, as we were honest about why I or Diane or La-Ra sometimes would interfere into each other’s roles. Yes it can be wrong but so worth it – three brains are always better than one and this opened up to a wider specter of creativity. And we were all supportive to changes and decision, and happy with the end result. I have also become more confident of sharing ideas and sometimes telling why I would to or suggest a change, no matter what the reaction would be.

Comments
Thinking about how the course is run, I think it has a good structure. The way of introducing theories early is great and Robin’s idea of opening up each tute with a short film helped to engage with the readings. It opened up to interaction within the tute through debating and cooperating, which in this way, makes most students learn of the particularly course. Having a guest lecture in the middle of the course was one great idea – this brought filmmaking onto another level and opened up for a wider class discussion. This is good as we as filmmaking students within drama, get to see how this is not only in practice, but also in reality. The rotating between Paul, Christine and Robin is very helpful as we get to see different opinions and personal comments on film making, it makes the course also more dimensional to engage in. Having a reflective blog is also good and I don’t think the staff should hesitate on giving suggestions to reflections. This is good for those that are special interested and also opens up for other students, things they often would not have thought about. I suggest there could be 3 reflection tasks each week until week 9. The documentary project being ongoing is also good, as one never knows the availability of the object. Other than that I don’t think the course should be changed at all, as this structure follows up the contents from TV1. Happy holidays!

And congratulations all Professional Communication graduates!! Wohoooo!!!

The Screening

The screening was the most funny and interesting moment in this course. It is also one of the most important ones, as we as new filmmakers get the chance to see our work on the cinema screen, which can be quite a nerve wrecking presentation.

“Kaleidoscopic Views” Melissa Toh, Louise Chang, Hui Xiong and Ao Xu.

“Kaleidoscopic Views” opened up with a sentence saying ‘perception is subjective’. This way of thinking in colored letters was quite new for me and the creativity the producers used, managed to put a lot of colorful aspects of the documentary. The construction of enabling the documentary makers together with the characters, was good and it was interesting to see how this all together became a documentary. The choice of being part of the docu worked for this documentary and I think it is quite up to date with the use of technology that we have been taught in this course. Also, thinking about truth, relationship building and the choice of characters, was fascinating as it is representing something very unusual.


“Pip” Tom Farnan, Ryan Tan, Eliza Beveridge and Sher Wong.

This documentary started very strong with the soun disappearing introduction. The trick of making the audience sense the silence aspect of this docu, really persuades the audience into listening more to what is being said by pip. The framing and construction of Philippa was done well, not only because of the shots, but also because it varied with Pip’s own bits of footage. This demonstrates the producers’ narrative they were aiming to create, about Pip’s dream of becoming an actress. What strengthened this documentary was the use of audio and the choice of character. One can see how this group had to really step out of the comfort zone to create this portrait of Pip, through the establishing trust and relationship that is ongoing in the documentary. The last part of the documentary was quite strong, as it forced the audience to listen to what Philippa had to say. This phase of the documentary made it stand out, with its links to “Silent world”. I think the producers did a great job in selecting to do their documentary on ‘Pip’ and it was very interesting and fun to see the result of it after seeing the development of the docu in class.



“Oliver’s Girl” Flavia Browne, Tim Kennedy and Julian Dan.

This teenage mother documentary contained a very strong narrative about young girls pregnancy. The idea of creating a documentary about this shows how this group wanted to make something, and convey information about something that is really an important part of Melbourne’s social culture. It engaged with a broad set of audience (mothers, academics, students and people that has experienced the same) into a real life situation. What I missed in this documentary was more sound effects and more visuals. Having said that, a lot of the footage of Oliver backed it up and there were two camera angles with excellent sound that really stood out. One was when Oliver picked the flower up and I as an audience could clearly hear the young boy’s breathe being half fast, blocked with nose bears. The other angle was when the camera was still on the ground and Oliver stood up – this frame featured Oliver’s lower body but it had it all from an object, to lawn, sky blue, white flowers, and also a great depth of field that shows the neighborhood. This frame can tell more than the narrative of the teenage mum, this silent still neighborhood shot could feature the society and how much it is talked about in reality. It also links a bit to the guest lecture about conveying the truth. Having a kid by the age of 17 is known to be hard in itself, and the footage showed this through its construction. It also opened up the naïve perception amongst this, by relating it to a local Australian girl and the footages of her son.


“The Last Dance” Aloysius Teo, Kapila Selvadurai and Ivan Tay.

A dance documentary about Sean Brandt and rheumatism was a very deep and well-presented documentary. I think, that this docu strongest sides were the various clips of him being interviewed – it became a very dimensional documentary filled with visuals, very good sound and excellent construction. The filmmakers did well on the establishment of Sean Brandt and this is where sound, dance moves and the thought of the American Dream, seduced me as an audience. The selection of him talking about the disease together with dance and passion really incorporated the docu as a whole and it was a wise choice of not using any sound effects here. While watching this docu, when the Ministry of Sound music video of Sean Brandt danced his moonwalk appeared, this was absolutely marvelous inserted. I personally cant think of a better dance documentary – this one was really amazing.



“Game Theory” Ryan Gasparini, Eric Dittloff, Adam Tzinis and Nick Shomburgk

The Electronical Arts documentary featured a fascinating aspect of game theory through history and its industry. Growing up with Grand Theft Auto, Nintendo, Play Station, and now X-Box and Wii, this documentary did the contrary of what earlier filmmakers has done when presenting electronical arts – it showed the truth of it. The interview being based on the gaming theory and knowledge contributed to the truth of video games - its success is seen in how kids and adults uses this as a learning tool for knowledge. The documentary was balanced because of this as it also took the critique of video gaming into consideration. The shots here were great, good framings and good sounds. The one scene where a guy was interviewed and the screen in the background was showing persuasive words was funny! The footages of videogames and the close up of the iPad were interesting and well colorgraded. Further on it discussed the industry and the money involved in this mass medium. When the producers talked about video gaming as a business, the interactive play with the electronical arts creators, owners and players showed what gaming is all about – it is a part of the childhood essence. This play, even though some stakeholders uses this as a tool for marketing and sale, reminded the audience of earlier games (as the ‘back packer game’ and learning geographics, Sims and learning about finance) and developed the linkage of us as a players of this medium, actually contributes to the industry.

The Final Cut

When finalizing Yianni in weeks 13-14, the build up of our relationship with Yianni got expressed through the docu. Having the responsibility as a sound designer, controlling the sound levels, adjusting fad outs and overlays, were after each cut and edit finalized and resulted into a consistent rhythm of audio and footage. After the lecture on the copyright law, I thought the sound and the guitarplay we have captured was captivating enough, to strengthen the character ‘Yianni.Fin’.

The most challenging part of the final edit was how to implement the constructive criticism given, into the narrative we were making of the Brunswick filmmaker. The tasks here were to control and build up the emotion and sympathy for the filmmaker, through sensational events. These contained the true interaction with Yianni and capturing him and not an actor, and his relation ship to Nick and his brother Michael. We asked how we could do this when our tutor Robin remembered us about our audience. To categorize the audience specifically, this is RMIT’s second and third year professional communications and media students aged 19-26. Some perhaps more experienced with life, work and/or university, more than others. After discussing this and sitting together doing the final edits, we knew that the audience wanted to see events they could recognize themselves with, which could also identify the character himself and his real life. We had to remember to not destroy the flow of the audience emotional build up, but strengthen it.

Technical things we faced were handled with group collaboration, questions and help from the FCP soft ware. What we thought looked like a little compression mess up of ‘placement into correct destination’, turned out to be an audio detail, that had been fine all day. Why the audio could not be played after compression was due to that our film had to be burned to the DVD first (this was why one burns the DVD out of the program). Tuesday 5pm, our ‘Yianni.Fin’ was born, 8 minutes and 41 seconds long.

The rough cut

The post-production of ‘Yianni’ is entertaining and challenging, but most importantly the material we now have shows what we managed to capture of the portrait on Yianni.Fin. The rough cut presented yesterday was interesting and fun, as it engaged one group work to another with feedbacks and constructive criticism. Thinking about the claustrophobic issues we had earlier when filming has improved and we got more out of the filmmaker Yianni as we went filming and spending more time with him.

A joke of ‘more is more’ from yesterday actually worked in the rough-cut presentation and ‘the self’ and unconscious behavior of the character. However, the most noticeable about our character while working with and on him in the post-production, is his way of unfolding. We were moving there when he was talking, from generalization to the surface of a deep, controversial or paradoxical ‘thing’. But as soon it started to drop into a tiny deep conversation, our character cut the topic there. After a couple of consults with the teaching staff, we have realized that that was not a problem – it was simply the natural way of being of the character. The best thing about the material gathered is that we have the interviews and the information and the structure sorted out, so the editing for the final cut is inserting and refining cuts, together with inserting the credits. Yianni has material from his own production we are hoping to use and I think this will be the insight of the filmmaker we are aiming to portrait.

In terms of editing skills, we found it weird how the time-code were playing around with us. Then after reflecting on why this had happened to two out of our seven tapes, this was because we are not used to do this type of filming. In short films, the set up and the rule of ‘action’ being called out allowed the cameraperson to roll those extra 5-10 extra seconds before capturing. In documentary, capturing the essence of the moment is so important that the record buttons get flicked on and off without thinking about ‘action’ being called out. By batch capturing the tape a couple of extra seconds before or after a shot, this still saves the footage. Other things in editing are the funniness of clichés. Yes it can be awkward but still, if it fits in – it fits in only where it is appropriate, and it contributes to make something funny.

Editing and the director's idea

The director’s idea and editing presented in the lecture, talked about how the documentary will en up on the screen. This semester has explored more into filmmaking aspects that we were introduced last semester, and this has been recognized during the work of the group project. Will the director’s idea come up on the screen? “Forbidden” was shot in post-production and early cut out. The sound effects used were okey but had it been shot in production maybe the sound decision could have been a bit more abstract and related more to the topic. For sound design, editing and burning, Garbage mats and dvd pro are suggested to be used. We used toast last semester and might do it again.

Green fields was interesting to see but only if it looks naturally. The use of supers is standard sbs and it is important to not just put them straight on but knowing which colors and font sizes to use. The fine cut is to make every cut absolutely perfect and ‘not okay’ but with perfect ending on both sound and footage cuts.

Lastly, the lecture talked about media management. The more experience the better and good file management is better than poor. Every work place has a totally different stye of file management and ethos. But what the work places and also education institutions have in common about file management, is labeling, coloring, fonts (caps and lower case) style guides and manuals. One must never replace a folder but create a new folder - check space and trash mark them instead.

Last lectures

The lecture talked about plenty film making and production aspects. These were many and are: ethics, objectivity, organization, markers and markers in sequence, in clips, keyboard shortcuts, AUDIO, depth and breath, maintaining good levels, keeping nat sots, mix on the fly, frequencies, 3 band, boosting and elimination and strengthening the voice, attributes, pasting, coloring and image, effects, shot matching, doing it in small bursts, split screen, titling, matte for color and tracking.

Spending time and implementing constructive criticism into the editing process will fulfill these aspects and result into a good outcome. Dedication of time and doing one of these at the time will strengthen our ‘Yianni.Fin’ and already I can see why these things are so important. If the sound is not good over half the docu wont be good. If the colors are not good than neither will the film be. The eyes and ears are the tools that make the audience believe a film and a docu and if sound and footage are not convincing enough than neither is the audience satisfied. Luckily we have done our job and now we need to construct it and show it.

El Peers: Group communication and collaboration

This week was the self and peer assessment. Being a strong group of three females, we decided from week 1 what we aimed for in TV2 and what we wanted to get out of the documentary production. I think, since we had a grade and effort foundation from the start, this has contributed to us working equally, on the amount of workload for the documentary. Communication barriers occur for both technical and social issues and these are aspects of real life we can learn off. The most important point of our group work has been trust. We don’t have to check up on each other before passing the hard driver onto each other for individual work because we know that the person before has done the job. And if not there would be an explanation of why.

I think Diane and I have got to know each other better in a short time and have ‘that unspoken language’ both inside and outside the editing suites. With La-Ra it has been the same mindset, probably because I have known her since last semester. The reflection of this semester’s group work was seen on Thursday’s honest assessments and grade settings. We have worked differently in both the first part of the semester and the second part of it due to prioritizing of courses and work and it has all come together that we work fairly and equally in terms of effort and time.

Post-production and project material

Through the editing process, our filming and material selection has improved. And most important and interesting feature of our project, is the material we now have to play around with when construction Yianni. The rough sketch of constructing Yianni looks like this:

-Establishing Yianni: the part of the beginning of and dreams of being a filmmaker, the best friend Nick and the constant presence of the talking brother Michael.

-Yianni the filmmaker and the self: the philosophical part of filmmaking process, issues and the language of film analysis and critique on film making for products. This part also includes what a filmmaker thinks of another filmmaker.

-A filmmaker and the real life: this part finalizes the documentary and will show the paradoxes, controversial and ethical issues within the filmmakers real life, and he actually feels about it and why.


This construction happened after we got feedback on the material and observing the clips and Yianni in real life. The selection is not randomly or historically made, but this is what we have captured in the weeks of filming ‘Yianni.Fin’. There are some technical issues that we are able to fix and I thought it was our fault that mic gain or lens issues happened and we felt like failures, so strongly wanting to our best. This meant more than TV1 and serendipity. The experience from real life of production during my work placement suddenly reminded me of why we are students some are second and some third years. The mentor was right – ‘see that is why you guys go and do Higher Education. You guys do things and errors that you learn from. Why mistakes occur is because you guys know what went wrong and they will never happen again’. He was right.

Reflecting on post-production

When editing, this is where every producer and filmmaker gets the big eye opener. Technical issues happen, and that has more to do with our set of skills rather than the camera equipment. Why does the capturing freeze, why is the sound level low and what on earth is with the exposure and camera lens? The character talked at its best but there is something there on the screen that is not meant to be there.

This semester I have learned how to tackle software issues. Not having the guide near me has contributed to me finding creative solutions for time code, reel and logging issues. The guide is good to have as a back up but I think a 1-5 step of opening and preparing the capturing with knowing how to do it in two ways helps and also saves time. It might look a bit clumsy when two scenes have been captured in as one, but it helps out the quality of the segment, as it is not being cut up and disturbed. When giving the time code enough seconds to run, this prevents it from causing serious breaks in the shoots and repetitions, as it is not being found. When rough cutting Yinnai, this appeared in a few shots so on Friday’s filming we did not forget it, making it easier to capture the reel than it was with good old tape 3. The rest of the tapes went fine until the last one.

25 degrees all over Melbourne on this beautiful Saturday morning as I strolled to RMIT to rough cut my sequence. The deck was not happy to se me and shut off, and I looked at the massive Mac screen perfectly made by Mr. Jobs himself and the error message. Then back to the deck…Well, it looked quite dead and it had eaten my project’s last tape. What was wrong with the deck? Professor Richard for the first time sounded a bit quieter on the other end of the phone than before. It wasn’t my technical skills and neither the Professor’s knowledge. This was a serious technical deck issue for HVD production. Solution made – a new challenge for the tech guys and mystery to be solved Monday morning.

Trust and camera behavior

Feedback given in week 10’s tute was that we had to step away from being claustrophobic, in our documentary of Yianni.

This weekend we discovered what that was. While filming Yianni in the bike store, this opened up the relationship between him and Nick, that we were hoping to capture. The goal of filming this day was to fill out those claustrophobic spaces and get Yianni to talk more of the essence of him as a filmmaker. Spending Saturday morning with Yianni while helping him out with the film shoot was fun, and gave the insight to see how he operated in the filmmaking field. As the hours went, he got used and comfortable having us three together around him and we got to capture more controversial and paradoxical interview material.

Lessons I can learn from the experience of filming Yianni are many. Following ethics was hard but I think it needs to be done and when interviewing one must put a person on the spot, and sometimes cross the border. Talking persuasively and conversational helps but asking questions afterwards also help. For example, as Yianni and I was driving back to the city I asked him what he thought about being put on the spot – off the record for our documentary and from a journalist’s perspective. The curiosity of why I had asked that, made Yianni talk freely of the issues around ethics but as a character of a documentary he thought it was necessary in order to get the production material.

Like Meenakshi, I found it learning full to learn in detail of how to build a trust relationship with the interview object. The more the object knows the filmmaker, the more trust he or she has towards the filmmaker. This importance is seen in how people tend to change behavior in front of the camera. I believe, that it is all about the experience from both sides. Yianni is young and sometimes it is hard to articulate and talk about film making from a beginner level. But when that is said that is how Spielberg must have been as young too. What we are producing might be a portrait of one of Australia’s best filmmakers as young one day, but that remains to be seen.

The art of the documentary

I wont forget the time Yianni said “That’s it, now the moment is gone” and I thought ‘why is he saying that, we are filming again soon and we will get that shot’. When I read Cunningham’s quote, Yianni’s comment made more than just sense – it raised the issue of capture and editing; ‘a documentary film editor’s challenge is bridging the gap between the often subtle, nuanced story that unfolds as the crew shoots a scene, and what the camera and microphone succeed in capturing” (Cunningham 277).

Well sometimes it does succeed, sometimes not. It is up to the editor and the director and what they want to show and tell versus what the footage is saying. It becomes the kind of story that could be told from the material.


The story is what we try to capture with the material, based upon the director’s concept of the documentary. For us that are editing portraits (telling someone’s life story) getting the story right is the largest responsibility and requires a careful balance. Through viewing the subject’s life, Yianni’s life artifacts, us as editors like Heredia, gets to know the person intimately. However, according to Cunningham, great editing always requires distance. With every cut, an editor makes, will raise the question: what will the subject think of this portrayal. It is up to our selection of the material that will answer this question and show our audience Yianni’s life journey in filmmaking.

Yianni – reflection of trust

Reflecting on interviewing skills when looking through the captures of Yiannis’s tapes, the build up of our relationship with Yianni was changed. When we all were on the film-set, Yianni was aware of us as doco makers being there. However, when the director did it alone, we could clearly see that he was more relaxed and less aware of the camera. More or less careless I would say and I believe this is because of the trust he has to the director as a friend in comparison to me and Diane.

Just to cross this over to the course TV Journalism, creating the trusty and honest relationship with an interviewee was something I managed to do successfully with a girl called Meenakshi Balan. On the first encounter, she was quiet, nervous and thought it was strange to talk about being an overseas student, representing a South Pacific student network. And this was just radio. But as time went she opened up and wanted to talk and share information – after 10 weeks of emails, phone calls and encounters, Balan was more than happy to be interviewed and appear on Television. Developing trust is not impossible – it takes time.

In terms of Yianni, when the director filmed, it was less acting and more the actual portrait of our subject. To mention one example, is when the Brunswick bicycling filmmaker is in the studio with his brother, engaging with the world, his brother, his filmmaking and the cameraperson “look at that, she still filming how annoying is that!” and then he laughs.

But I would not say that the other tapes have been spilt at all. After Robin gave us feedback on the filmed subject and the expectations he had as a tutor, I knew what he looked for and what we had to improve – we needed more Yianni than ‘La-Ra’s flat-mate. Robin was not 100 % convinced but after comparing the shots we had did so far and showing them, both we and Robin could see the developing relationship with Yianni and that we were close to get there – the moment of capturing the Brunswick filmmaker was coming into action.

Chatting with the group about it, we compared the materials we had gathered so far and what to do next. We have enough material for a rough-cut wit stills, sounds, interview, observational interview, and generic footage. Now were putting it together and in terms of group collaboration, varying between individual and group tasks works well for us. We think that the amount of work will be equally done in the end of the day as we shift between filming, sound design, production and post-production and editing.

Steve Thomas – The process of documentary production.

This amazing guest lecture by Steve Thomas broke down the journey of a story in filmmaking. I was really inspired by Thomas when he went into details of the restricted parameters in short film, his experience about it and what we could learn of it. For narratives and film requirement, Thomas related this to 3 key aspects of the journey:

- Journey of the story (mostly the participant’s journey, often from the past)
- Participant’s journey in making the film (wanting to make a film by interess).
- Filmmaker’s journey in making the film (use of a story teller).

Breaking down on how to view the participant and the journey, this taught me on how the journey, is more than a story of a character – it can be an own thought, a drama, a product if not more. This was shown through the linear versus non-linear construction of a doco and what unfolds in someone’s lives. Paul briefly mentioned on how we had constructed news, was quite similar to doco production – overlay, overlay, overlay, interview/grab, overlay,overlay and so on. This is the classic structure of equilibrium, the journey of the hero, where the character finds a way.

In editing Yianni, what Steve Thomas and Paul talked about in this lecture, is what I will implement into our doco, because “truth is stronger than fiction”. The refugee story ‘Hope’ touched on this together with the relationship formed with the filmmaker. It’s a survival story with beautiful framings, background music and the Yarra River as the Tigrees River. But the most important point of this type of filmmaking here is: ‘it is rather than doing something on a subject, it is with a subject, with challenges, taking the audience into the journey too”.

New words taught: challenging, voyaging and story telling. Why? Because as filmmakers and doco makers, we must remember that most people viewing this are struggling in the same position, and therefore we must look for the contradiction and the paradoxes of it, in order to demonstrate the human condition and the human nature of the particular story.

Conventions of sound in documentary

Jeffrey Rouff likes writing essays about sound in documentary. Intelligibility and fidelity are words the author uses to describe Hollywood cinematography, by saying that these are and interplay od conventions of sound as they aim to ‘clarify’. In simple terms, this means that ‘Hollywood filmmakers use cinematic techniques of image and sound to focus the attention of the spectator on the salient elements that further the narrative action’ (Carrol in Rouff: 1993 pg. 24).

Intelligibility meaning clearness, and fidelity trustworthiness, in this context of doco production, are to remind us what we have to be aware of as documentary makers. Rouff argues in this essay that ‘while documentary films often use narrative forms, they rarely demonstrate the degree of clarity that these writers sees as the standard of classical Hollywood Cinemas ’(Rouff 1993 pg .24). The intelligibility here is how character’s motivations, speech parts and lighting failures often can result into sound spaces, microphones in frame and jump cuts. Historically as Rouff describes, observational filmmakers were not allowed to intrude into their subjects life, ask questions, conduct interviews, stage set ups and influence the event of the camera: the doco makers were meant to be flies on the wall.

While Rouff talks about the history of the conventions of sound in doco production, I think we must distinguish what we want to present. A narrative is often a piece where everything is controlled and nothing is left to change. A documentary is a different relationship with change, with the right attitude we can put our trust into. For the use of Rouff’s article this is a piece that I will go back and forth into, to learn of instructions location sound and sound techniques - it is due to all the historical examples Rouff uses in his essay that makes a sense of the conventions of sound, seen in a historical timeline and different techniques used.

Doco sound design and copyright

Always get copyright.
Always test gear before going out.
Always monitor properly: signal to noice ratio and the use of lapelle mic techniques.

Sound design and copyright is one of the crucial pieces in the making of Yanni. What type of sound to use must enhance the character and also follow the laws of copyright. Paul talked about copyright in a political sense: it should use the tiniest amount of time of research, it is there to protect our stuff, property and creativity, to prove that it was written/made at a certain point.

Copyright is used for images and footage to protect their contents and sometimes resources. The actual license is mainly to be used by common sense, and it is good as seen in example of Elvis. The intended use needs to clarify the example and not my or our own intended use; when using music and saturating it, whether or not they used elvis music to aid the documentary, they are taking it into use, as it become a more motive and the portrayed image.

One must always use the common sense within copyright, also beyond music. When using incidental footage, people used in the frame of a shot one must do this by a wide shot but where one cant assert other ones. Except from when asking the people in advance for permission.

Copyright must always be sorted out because if a film is accepted into a festival, one must be assured that no money is made out of it. A rule of ‘8 seconds of music used’, however when asking for permission and emailing these people, should be confirmed by RMIT’s Copyright person - Ann Lennix.

‘Forbidden lies and Survival had bad sound as it either had been badly recorded or had no work done in the post. Lesson: always check the SWITCH on the back and on the front of the camera, signal of noice ration, boom mic techniqies. This will give better sound than a lapelle mice, because this one doesn’t suck in all the sounds around, but it is good on sound with low noices.

Construction and deconstruction:

As the same principles in drama, with editorial and geographical style, we must cover the person and focus poll between when using two persons. We should list all the kinds of cutaways and overlays that are needed in documentary as we have also done in TV journalism. Here, when making news stories, this order often has 8-10 pieces repeatedly being: PTC-overlays-overlay-grab-overlay-ptc-overlay-overlay-grab-ptc end. In TV 2 this is almost the same thing being in most times very formulate.

The Chinese photographer docu was shot with more than one camera and included more than a person talking: it had crash ins and pull outs of the frame and shot with one long tape. This jumped from talking person, mum cutting up fruit, disapoointed dad, frustrated student and also side shots. The same technique goes for ‘Drinking for England’ as the camera crew here used bits of observational shooting when the character goes into the car and also multi cameraes when she has her last drink.

Rabiger and Cunningham: effective interviewing

The most important aspect of effective interviewing, is communication. By this I mean that the director or the interviewer that is interviewing the character, must not be interrupted and when we interview Yanni, I think that neither the camera operator or the sound person should talk until after the interview is finished. It can damage the flow of the interview, and also the developing relationship.

In developing skills of interviewing, Rabiger and Cunningham’s article talk about how to treat the talent and effective interviewing. What I learned from these articles and applied into the practice of interviewing was done in a work placement and then into the course TV Journalism. Here are the key points from the articles:

-how to negotiate the information from the interviewed object.
-building a semi relationship to them.
-framing of the object and editing.
-how to conclude an interview.
-setting people at ease, framing questions
-Editing out the interviewers voice
-Take and giving


Where Rabiger talks about editing in and out the voice of the interviewer and how to negotiate the information, I did this in two rounds. In the pieces for ABC Radio National, I did the whole interview first. I had prepared 3-5 questions, but in terms of framing my question, I would make lead sentences of the question. That resulted into a conversational style with the object, and also sometimes a ‘ talk like a waterfall’, which gave plenty of material to work with. It was this negotiation of information that started a relationship with the interviews and in most cases I would let the interviewed object just talk freely about him or her as a background portrait for the interview. In this way it was easier to ask direct and open question about the specific issues and get opinions and facts as well.
In the editing process I selected the main grabs followed by creating a new track for the particular interview. After that, I then voice recorded the voice of the interviewer.

In TV Journalism we were asked to do a vox pop assessment and I thought about how I was going to frame both the interviewed objects and me and my partner Amelia’s pieces to camera. Vox Pop’s for Rabiger ‘consists of asking a range of people the same question and then stringing the replies together in a rapid sequence‘(Rabiger 2004 p. 333).

In some occasions, it Rabiger’s example of making people talk together worked out well here. There were a couple of times during the practice of street interviews, that people coming in groups wanted to be interviewed and they talked more freely and open than others, most possibly because they were communicating amongst themselves. After looking at a couple of examples of news reporters we figured out that we would put them all in the right corner of the frame, just because a communication theory from Cinema Studies pointed out that the eye line from the audience and also the viewer, has a tendency do drop first to the centre, and then a little bit to the right. We also thought in doing so, if we had to put an object into the left side, we would flop the film segment in Final Cut Pro.

In terms of manipulation, I think that both as a filmmaker and a journalist, that I must never make an assumption of a particular grab or a comment. Manipulation works for me, when the story angle is set and I can fairly and honestly produce the story into the angle that it was meant to be.

Observational exercise

Reflecting back on the exercise of observational interview, this way of documenting was like stalking an object. What I learned from this exercise was to not interact with the object but filming ‘like eyes watching and observing’.

See this:

http://antisocialparty.blogspot.com/search/label/Film%20and%20TV%202

There were couple of technical issues here than are now discussed and learned of, and these were focus, exposure and lighting. Robin introduced the use of a Kino light and this light can be dimmed and also light cylinder regulated. I think it will be a good thing to use a Kino light because it recreates the soft light coming from outside, and even though the light is dimmed, it can be edited on final cut pro. In most cases, this is not necessary as the camera wont change the focus on the color balance while shooting. Another thing we discussed in this tute was the relationship with the characters. The portrait should be a happy content that is negotiated and its relationship to the film. It is how we plan to negotiate with Yanni that will create a great result, and for this we can show him the film and ask him if he wants to have a look at it before we hand it in. Just because this will give the character peace in mind and also benefit us as filmmakers.

More research on Yanni.Fin.

After having one shooting segment with Yanni, I am still curious about who he is, both as a filmmaker, artist and as a person. Due to the development and trust with Yanni, the group has decided that when interviewing him, it is best to do it two on two, for the sake of the character not to change behavior.

Haven not met Yanni but being part of the production process, I cant wait to be able to see the creativity and the quirkiness, the character and the relationship with his brother. For sound designing, I think in this research after meeting them both, the suggestions I have for abstract background music and atmos might be slightly different and also more concise. It would be like being an audience and if there are moments where he, the character doesn’t speak, these could be moments where silence will speak, mixed with background atmos. We have gathered some material, but these were without good sound, which needs to be worked on and developed. I think this will only progress as we go on and build up the relationship with Yanni and also by observing him as an audience. The ‘Brunswick artist’ may appear different the second time we film him than the first time and here we can play around with this Melbourne character. Yanni as a filmmaker and being into documentary will also afflict us abit, as he has more knowledge of filmmaking and his consciousness to editing techniques and creating a narrative can impact on the process of the production. It will be interesting to see how he feels about making a docu about himself and how he will take to not being behind the camera and in charge of his own image. Here we will explore the truth and the reality by capturing this character.

Maxine Baker and ‘Beyond explanation’

Evita Peron’s, Don’t cry for me Argentina (1978) is one of the most known movies and musicals ever made. In ‘Lessons for life’ Maxine Baker talks about what she has learned about making documentaries. Starting off going to the cinema and becoming a doco maker Baker thinks it is more behind the production of it:

“Documentary is sometimes about seeing that there might be another side to any published story” (Baker 2006 p. 256).

What I can learn from Baker’s lessons is how to improve as a journalist and as a filmmaker. Baker talks about the importance of keeping on to the child curiousity and always ask questions figure out everything not just the facts and the background, but the details and what underlies within them. Another important learning lesson Baker mentions is that one learns more from mistakes than the right: because one never does them again.

In ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ (1978), Argentina’s political situation is explored through the romance of Evita and Peron. The Peronists were considered to be the biggest threat and mentioning the name Evita was politically dangerous. This because Peron had been in exile for years and he was returning back to his wife Evita in Argentina, where she was going to run for president. Baker, as an investigative inexperienced filmmaker in 1971 had to sneak in to the documents and pictures about Evita and Peron after closing time and travel with the rolls of unprocessed film stock in her handbag. It was the timeline, not much talking and taking no risk that for Baker worked, and she left Argentina shortly before the military coup of dictatorship began.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Spy3Nd2D6w

In terms of investigative, undercover or otherwise researching in dangerous location, one must be aware of own risks and be careful. What sounds like a gifted investigator as Lisbeth Salander (The Girl with the Dragon tattoo) is simply Maxine Baker:

-Not being afraid to ask stupid questions.
-Protecting her character.
-Knowing the Media Law in the selected documented field.
-And sometimes getting release forms signed and approved.

Another example is ‘Beyond Explanation’, the talent talks about the upbringing through the winds of politics, war and the Auswitch deport. It is a very strong and very well made doco in terms of the selection of grabs, images and sound design. The dramatical past of the talent is seen in the deep absolute truth from the war times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D536CLOVWII

The vulnerable points are touched on and the talent speaks the about the truth of the past with the topics of keeping on to the inner strength, identity and rising above the humiliation: ‘This is to pass bad things into good things to others, and it is a proof of living’. This together with the use of overhead and linking a cinema to his past becomes the successful result of a production, about reconstructing a war thorn society and survival, into a documentary.

Kuta Cowboys

Cowboys in Paradise Bali show one way of how entertaining documentaries are mediated. The filmmaker here uncovers how Bali’s Kuta Cowboys have made Bali one world leading tourist destination for romance.

http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/films/view?film_id=104058

What Virmani as a filmmaker succeeds to do for making the talents speak the truth, is maintaining the presence of camera and including ethical risk factors. In relation to the topic of interview, this is what I can learn if Virmani and include into the production of Yanni.Fin.

1 Presence – The camera always alter what is being filmed. It can chang the way people behave and people do change behaviour as they are being filmed, by talking fake, and then maybe not convey the things and the truth I was looking for. The solution here is to have reflexive style; filmmakers can be quite explicit about the camera being there and that is a part of production.

2 Exclusion – The view of the documentary is always partial, not impartial, as the filmmakers chose to speak to certain characters and not others, and also by excluding some events. Every time I button the camera on and off, it will exclude reality. Always set a plan of how long to film and also prepare what is meant to be in the frame. The frame includes things in it but it also excludes things out of it – for whatever reason, always decide to exclude some things and not others.

3 Manipulation - The things we film in film is also manipulate the way he or she sees the world. Editing constructs the reality of the film and the interview, not just capturing somebody speaking.

Lastly, the moral ethical risks in documentary filmmaking are the adverse issue of representation (as seen in the glorifying of German Nazis), the issue of news camera people (do they intervene into the car crash environment when people start crying or do they keep on filming?), and the release form.

The release form is what the talents are actually agreeing to and so are the negotiated informal rights of subject – the unwritten contract.

Playing with people's lives

Playing with people’s lives, needs to be fairly and honestly done when making a documentary. The lecture upon ethics defined issues in relation to documentary subjects. Liam talked about ethics, manipulation, truth and performance because

‘Ethics are beyond our commonsense. Ethics are embodied in law, antidiscrimination law and not all ethics are captured in law.’

The importance of understanding the murky areas of film must be defined before and during the production, in order to complete a fair, honest and true documentary as a result. But documentaries in reality tend to step outside beyond the framework of ethics, as filmmakers and talents can have different approaches to ethics.

Interview, being the crucial bit in the production, needs to follow the guidelines of the release form and if things change, then premade plans of questionnaire and editing needs to be laid out. In the examples of the indigenous girls in ‘Kalamala’ and the misrepresentation of African women in ‘Stolen’, these documentaries ended up in court, because they were degrading, contained uninformed consent or had the issue of ridicule. Then why had they agreed on the docu in first place? Or had the filmmakers not followed up the rules of ethics? How do I as a filmmaker solve this issues before shooting Yanni.Fin.?

By following up Dennis O’Rourke’s critical thinking, highlighting the understanding of the relationship to participation, sets the principles of why someone wants to participate in a documentary. How we as filmmakers manage this is by developing the relationship: keep the subjects that are participating informed of the documentary. There were at least six reasons why talents had agreed to participate in TV2’s documentary productions:

-A friendly favor
-To get publicity for business
-The spread of an idea, a political issue and social relations.
-Ego
-For the experience of the process, know what its like
-Or maybe as part of the brave garden: the interviewed talents fancy the filmmakers.

In ‘Bangkok Prostitution’, this is an example of how some film have pushed a couple of boundaries. The prostitute talked about her bitterness of family relations, suicide and marriage feelings. For O’Rourke the reason to show this, demonstrated the real world. By keeping on to the sense of objectivity, what was said become something objective. Like Bangkok prostitution, the distance between filmmakers and people they are filming, shows how truth is contested and that documentaries are not unmediated reality. They are instead representation of reality through mediated ways.

ABC, Melbourne and World documentaries

ABC Work Placement and Melbourne International Film Festival gave the chances to see documentaries outside the course and here I discovered how documentaries vary in context and content through time. I have always been a fan of post-war documentaries ranging from Anne Frank to Max Manus and also documentaries about sports, travel and music.

During the placement, I got the opportunity to listen to Bruce Hill’s production ‘Blogs challenge Fiji Military Coup’. This radio documentary introduces the issues of bloggers writing about Fiji’s political situation. The problem of getting the information about this got partly solved as the Fiji bloggers decided to make it electronically available on their site. As these bloggers did not want to reveal own voice or identity, the docu maker and the talents came to the agreement of using the interviewed material as long as they were not identified. In this way the ongoing human rights abuses that occurs, resulted into a true radio documentary about Fiji.

MIFF had various documentaries, from all over the world and many of my favorites were Kuta Cowboys (Bali), Bananas (Sweden), Dante’s Inferno (US), 1428 (China), Videocracy (Sweden) and Waste land (Brazil).

Feminism being a word that is strongly loaded, as people do tend approach it differently was explored in a different way in ‘Paradise Cowboys’. This doco clearly takes this into consideration when they present the women coming to Bali, finds the connection to the local guys, easier than with western men. It is the truth and the reality of the tourist women that come here and it is an entertaining documentary.

http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/films/view?film_id=104058


The docu Bananas exploits the social and political issues of banana production. Dole Food Company using a banned pesticide, caused serious health issues and death amongst its workers. This documentary represents the firs time agricultural workers from third world countries were heard in US courts. It is the juxtaposition segments, the shot construction and the choice of talents this docu did that makes it a strong one.

http://www.bananasthemovie.com/


One night as I was watching telly this woman Stacie Currie appeared on screen. She had had her first kid aged 15, and through her experince with her hum, men and the society, she became a young mum helper and fundraiser. I think documentaries like these, that are biographies demonstrates new way of beings. By making documentaries like these, I think both Stacie Currie and Ben Cousins as filmmakers shares the ability to produce documentaries that are not just about themselves, but social issues that occurs in Melbourne and also Australia today that often remains scuffed under the carpet and not talked about.

I think issues like these are those that gain attention, and one last example of this is Stieg Larson’s Millenium Triology. Say if The Girl with the Dragon tattoo (men who hate women) and the two other crime novels as well, were a Swedish documentary on the abuse of women’s rights. Even though the first book’s movie is all what the book is about, imagine what it would be like if the characters were all real and it was made in a documentary interviewing style with the film footages used from the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlF-hk3IJQE


The scenarios would have been really really great and at the same time some would be absolutely revolting. As the audience would experience it in real time, real life and with the real people, I think this movie would have an even grater impact than that it has already. One would have to see how and why men hate and abuse women.

When looking on documentaries beyond the course I think these documentaries stand out, so much in comparison to what is shown in TV2 basically because their form varies in looseness from one place in the world to another. They are the results of political, economical and social constructed ideas, reflecting on the world today, and they also show the use of newer technology. Together they all show the truth of what is being documented

Editing reflection

So how to solve a problem like Maria? Well thank god I was not the problem here but La-Ra’s editing skills. I fully understand and recognize La-Ra's blog on the issue of editing week four’s interview exercise. With 45 minutes to shoot and uploading it online as we did with the Lenny Project, some skills were rusty for me too. Whilst I was interning La-Ra and Diane did this editing and I edited a project in TV journalism. I am glad I did it, and I could see which little but important things needs improvement before the final editing. Importing went fine, but the rendering did not – why on earth had I not set the time code properly. Lesson learned. Then there were the use of editing tools; while my poor partner clicked back and forth on the razorblade and the arrows she could not understand why the whole thing did not move at the same time – always use multi marker not the simple one, it overlaps both sound and footage. What we had improved on though was lighting; daylight overcast only – gives more time for color grading and sound level adjustment.

The interview

New Zealand and extreme skiing - can it get better than that? At this point in the semester, thinking back on what I have learned about docu, the knowledge I have of it now is stronger than it was in week one. Its form that can be loose raised curiosity of how filmmakers in other fields produce documentaries. Stepping outside what is mentioned at university on docu, and exploring things of interest, I came across extreme skiing and extreme snowboarding documentaries. In both these documentaries and what has been taught at RMIT, I would still base the docu around interviews. I think if we ask Yanni the great question, he will talk like a waterfall and say those something’s that really captures the audience’s attention of the truth.

For me, TRUTH works when I can see and hear the talent, and the way he or she performs is not reconstructed but naturally told (with pauses, eye language, body gestures and emotional). In The edge of never and STEEP, extreme skiing legend Glen Pake talks about Trevor Peterson’s death and the going back to his son about extreme skiing. They wanted to make a movie about the heart of skiing and the producer meant that to do so, they would have to get to the bottom of it. The documentary introduces the story via a live interview, where they simply tell the truth of the kid that lost his father aged 6, now 15, that now is hitting the slopes that killed the father.

STEEP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7_4LrF8As
The Edge of never
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SP02fGLldM

Besides the stories of Glen Pake and Trevor Peterson, the truth here is also seen in the reality of extreme skiing: how this sport for some guys, a part of becoming a man – something that sounds bizarre and cliché, but for this particularly audience, that is the truth, the reality and the reality of their truth. No risk, no adventure and for these guys adventure is a part of life.

Fiction and nonfiction

The great divide between fiction and nonfiction is seen it is wide context of narratizstion and dramatization of storytelling. This genre can sometimes be inseparable from each other as fiction, nonfiction and documentary overlap. They do so due to the interrelationships between drama documentary and documentary drama, where people appear in reconstructed and re-enacted scenes. Author Ward states this in his examples of how real people/non actors play themselves in some way through acting and simply being. For Ward, it is the re-enacting of the real where the performing of real-life scenarios becomes fiction and nonfiction.

The documentary about the serial killer Aillen Wuornos, is what Ward names as truth valued: ‘how such acted dramas can have a documentary or truth value is something returned to below via the discussion of the various versions of the story’. Here, for Ward, (and also to be seen in Tina goes shopping or Pissed on the job), these are fictional in the sense that they are fabricated. Even though there were real life people being interviewed upon their real life story, these docus were reconstructed with performing actors.

But what about Ben Cousins’ Such is life? Is that fictional? Whether it is killings, alcohol or drug addiction I think what these have in common are the nature and the reality of a personal problem indicating a wider social issue, through fictional performance. A camera trick that I learned here from the text was shown numerous of times in Such is life, in both part one and two when the talents (Ben, the sister and the father) were speaking. Given the example of Aileen Wurons’ close up, when the talent speaks, the camera holds the talent in close-up achieving a fly on the wall observational intimacy, recognized in many documentaries and is often take as the marker of ‘authenticity par excellence’.

I think whether I was filming Aileen, Ben or Yanni, I would have to include this observational interviewing trick, to show the importance of the talent’s true story.

Researching Yanni.Fin.

Reflecting on the research of the docu, the film we have proposed to make involves the existence of Yanni Warnock – Melbourne artist and filmmaker. For the talent we have chosen to use, the research shows Yanni’s knowledge and experience of filmmaking, how he sorts out information and issues of filmmaking, his behavior and his little brother Michael. As we have discussed in the tute and also in the group, aesthetic approaches we have thought about, is the formalism of the documentary. When thinking back on the short film ‘NOW’ (1965) that was shown in the tute (and also what we talked about earlier in the semester of ‘documentary and form’ and how it can be loose) this became a key point for our project. In terms of Yanni, he can change identity due to himself as both a performer and a filmmaker, and I think it is the deepness in this we can explore through the docu production of a filmmaker. What we mentioned in the about this was how:

‘The relationship to Yanni, can celebrate the view and an image of being subjective, to this one collective authorship’.
To break this sentence down, I would highlight the challenge we as filmmakers face here: as for Yanni’s complexity of himself, the filmmaker and the artist – I think, we will experience how an interviewed person, will be more than one ‘subjective’ and maybe instead ‘subjectives’, talking about himself in one wholeness. Why I say that is because we will not know when each part of Yanni comes out. How do we know, when if he says something about filmmaking process, that something could be meant to us in how we use say for example lighting? Differentiating this will be fun I think.

Lastly on this research, the effects used in ‘NOW’ as expressions, music, tri-effects, crash zooms and culture, highlighted the theme of this movie and I believe it was this combination of footage and sound effects that strengthened this short film. For location, this has been selected. We have also tested the camera and sound equipment, and are now individually exploring both old and new technical tactics on these.

Driving Visuals

Thinking about visuals that are driving this docu production, I imagine that Yanni the filmmaker, has a lot of these objects around him. Having not met Yanni but seen pictures of him, the visuals so far driving it is what is mentioned in Pawliowskis article:


“For me, making a documentary involves a degree of Schizophrenia: I try and enter the subject, see the world through its eyes, accept its logic, while at the same time maintaining an aesthetic and often an ironic distance from it” (Pawliowski 389).


The visuals I encounter here, is how a filmmaker, whether it is Spielberg, Yanni or us sees the world. How he plans a production, how he selects actors and how he will act in front of the camera by a filmmaking team as a filmmaker, are visuals driving this docu production. After seeing a black and white picture of Yanni, an unknownness hit me and I started thinking what other visuals and also audio visuals is driving this talent as a filmmaker (see: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=466160&id=745177714&ref=fbx_album).
Visualizing a guy that looks simple with historical filmmaking equipments, made me think about how he sees the world in the C21, and how we can implement this into our production.

Idea selection

The idea selection was based on the idea of art and a document participant. The curiosity of exploring the personality of a Melbournian artist and filmmaker, is what made the selection process land on Yianni Fin. I selected this idea as I was wanting to see more of art and the filmmaking process from another person’s view and level. Having been told what to expect from the nature of this character, has also made me think about visuals that can drive it – which footage to use, details and subjects.
I think the potential here is Yianni Fin’s existence and his relation to art: where do his ideas come from? How does he manage to sort them out? Why art and filmmaking? What is the essence of his life? Will we capture glimpses of the real Yianni?


To capture these glimpses of Yianni, I think B. Hampe’s (1997) statement fits in here:
“If you want to make good, believable, useful documentaries… you have to get over the idea that you can suck reality into a camera and blow it back at your audience.”


How to proceed Hampe’s statement of ‘sucking reality into a camera and blow it back at the audience’ will require hours of filming environments and asking Yianni deep and unusual questions that can cause more than a raising eyebrow but also the ‘this is real’ moment, by persuading Yianni’s nature to the camera.

Collaboration and Communication

Collaboration is crucial in any filmmaking and the approach I have for it this semester, is to continue and develop new teamwork skills. Good, honest and continuous communication is one important aspect of excellent teamwork. This semester, I am to try at least as hard as last semester and more. I was already prepared in week one and told the persons in the tute I was interested in working with, that I want to work in a tute, targeting the grades distinction and high distinction only. I think, when starting off and being honest already from day one of a beginning group work, the grade setting is crucial for how the group will work together and whom to work with. I talked with La-Ra about it, and she wanted the same and therefore we decided from then on, that this semester at least the two of us would work together on the docu production, targeting the same goal. Also, because I was lucky to get a work placement at the ABC, I informed both the group and the tutor about it and in this way the agenda for the group work knows its flexibility.
In TV 1, the ‘how to communicate’ worked when all group members were ‘all in’ for it (checking emails and having phones nearby at all times). In terms for the assessments, setting up a Google Waver is making it easier to share files and communicating instant feedback on this.

Documentary – Different from drama and fiction?

From Christine’s lecture, the requirements of characters, conflict, a journey, some kind of dramatic arc, a resolution and a theme was presented but raised an interesting question: is documentary different or not? When thinking about this question, this makes one think outside the course for a moment and helps honing ideas for what to make and create. In a documentary, shouldn’t we be manipulating the drama and the narrative to the audience? And in what way? As a documentarian, we are to a great degree in the hands of the material and the journey we seek to present is a different form. So when saying that documentary is different from drama and fiction I would say that it is this looser form that differentiates it from the two other genres, while it at the same time shares some of the same requirements. The looser form is also due to our expectations and it can be argued that documentary needs drama as we search for meaning and to understanding theme structure.

Luis Malle

Luis Malle (1974) showed this loose form as the first documentary was showing the old man walking in the street. As an audience I was searching the meaning of Malle’s work, but instead I ended up thinking about his life – why is he walking, why is he doing all these CUs and medium shots of himself in these streets? I then saw that the loose form here could have been domino effects of other elements in the shoot (the child, the bike, the street and the little street markets) signifying his life. As for documentary production, this aspect of going beneath the surface of someone’s life to discover and explore someone’s quirkyness, funkyness, façade or what it is, is what will be a selective choice for a particular piece to camera. An example of this is seen in Malle’s ‘Trop Humain’ where we see the life of a few people and their daily rhythm of bending metal. The CU of a woman bending metal in high heels, the CU of hands on metal, workers in the background and especially the CU of these workers facial gestures showing ‘not happy’ expressions clearly demonstrates the lives and the class system of these workers.

For me, this means that the documentary we will produce will require constant interrogation. I think this is important as we decide why we are telling this particular story when we make the film about Yanni.Fin. What conflict and consequences we will encounter in this documentary production will be seen in how the filmmaker inserts himself into the process and in front of the camera. This will reveal a personality in the film and the experience of the actual filmmaker.

About documentary production

Week one introduced different docus. We were talking about filmmaking and what their the producers features were and also as seen in George Franjus ‘blood of the beasts’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFAUA8_mfXs and how Franju’s documentary about animal slaughtering works as a docu. Key aspects in this horrible animal killings is how the director has captured most of the climaxes of the killings and put it together to a documentary.

I think what works in short docus is what is mentioned in the readings, and also key aspects discussed in the lecture and the tute. Domination works because it tries to grow a documentary idea from dirt, and that’s what works. Audiences, most of the time wants to see the unusual and the new. Whether it is child abuse, drinking, nudity, animal programs, historical moments, biographies or animal slaughtering, it is deeply incorporated into human beings that a somewhat fetish for something unusual is exists. It can be wonderful, disgusting or something learning full being presented but it is one unconscious part inside us that wants to see the particular ‘that’.

Briefly, I think these things are:
-Strong characters.
-A conflict
-A journey
-A world and also someone’s world view

Documentary being ‘a rhetorical form of filmmaking- designed around an argument, or persuasion’ gives a filmmaker the space to play around with different things within the production.

In both the set ups, ‘Domination’ and ‘Glean’, the filmmakers have carefully thought of what to shoot where. When the dominatrix is talking, she is presented in shot where details are not that visible, whereas when she is showing her tools a lot of the room is seen. The directing of her talking and (not sure if this was acting) showing looked like an airhostess style and gave it a more innocent presentation.

In ‘Glean’, the construction and the style of this docu was wonderful in how Varda presented to glean. It contained characters as a cat, a remix of time, juxtapositions of images and real life per today, and not to mention placing the elderly in a bar when talking about gleaning and French harvesting.

Overall, I think what these two short docus have in common and that are important for filmmaking is their random and engaging characters. They have a conflict, a dramatic arc, a resolution and a theme. I think this together with putting characters and ourselves as filmmakers on the line, by asking difficult questions, will contribute to what works in a short docu.

The Beginning

TV 2 – The Beginning

Expectations, experience and reflections made in TV 1 are the main contribution aspects to this semesters Film-TV production. The personal interest of documentary is finally getting explored and I am wondering how this production will be and what the result of this film will be. Haven done one short film production and now few weeks later making a new one is incredibly exciting and PLUS I finally found a friend that is interested in arts!

In his article, author Tobias talks about “the search for the feeling of being there”. The message this author wants to convey is the existence of the main character by digging under the surface. The clear and concise description of time and place, takes the reader into Tobia’s space of his childhood. The details of outfit, climate and location shows how this ‘Garden of Eden’ was like for him as a boy. What I can take into consideration for my learning progress of this article, is the way this author approaches this story and how has formulated it in a simple way to his audience. By talking about his documentary production experience in the chosen language, this for me as a reader looks like an introduction to his experience of filmmaking and how it all went when looking at his reflection of experience and expectations.

Attitude and technology are the main keywords of this article as this adds the contents of the article together as searching for the fragments, shots and master shots for the imagined story line – “Filming is searching for and capturing the ingredients with which to make sequences”.


In Pawlikowski’s article, where everything is being filmed all the time it is essential that filmmakers to filmmaking as opposed to recordings. The set up of scenes, narratives, shot construction and films forcing one to think through their very forms is an interesting aspect of how the author wants the audience themselves to shape opinion and create a form of the presented. What I find most important here how the filming takes place everywhere and the role of the director. Also, in the YouTube clip upon animal slaughtering, a couple of Pawlikowski’s key points are to be found:

-Force to think: crucial images of what humans are capable to do to animals.

-TV killing documentary: more variations of broadcast channels than before (difference between family and political oriented channels) and many documentaries are turning into TV series and shows.

Example: How the first notion of the fittest survival on an island can stir and create the will to kill amongst humans in the same society. From being a classic scientifical research, this notion soon turned into the book ‘The Lord of the Flies’, then the movie, then the creation of the “The Beach” shot in Thailand and now, this notion has made the collection of the “LOST” series. Its TV, its Mass Production, it’s the Future and this is what me as an audience also want to see.

-Use of real people, real truth, telling touching stories without theatrically and literary dialogues. This is still done as seen in TARNATION were images and short sentences told the two kids story.

The Screening

“Etterpåklokskap” or hindsight as its named in English is what I think is the most important learning tool for reflection in both real life and academically processes. After the submission of ‘Sneaker Spastic’, the time for the final Screening came. Unable to participate here, I thought I’d reflect this piece on what I saw from our ‘Sneaker Spastic’, ‘Dirty Laundry’ and ‘Cake’, and draw some conclusions on what I will bring into TV2. Having seen a few of the final short-films in the screening, these were very well produced and edited shots, and I think that our shots were not the best ones but are to be better with learning and improvement.


In ‘Sneaker Spastic’, the suggestion about color was a good one but in the end, creating the perfect color grading was a new editing skill and this skill can develop into the right flow with more experience. The intention of it was to do something different and creating a dark scene without making it too dark. However, the night theme had been confirmed and the audience felt identified. In ‘Dirty Laundry’, my main curiosity was the operation of camera technique, lighting, the directing of the actors and the final editing. How to make the actor play real and ‘unconscious’ of the faking of the disappearing laundry and how to transform the two worlds to the main character. Overall here, I think the lighting continuation was really good and the actor was directed well as well. The only thing within camera technique and production here that I would comment on was the shot from behind the actors shoulder where it looked like that the camera seemed like another second person’s angle instead of an ovs shot.


In ‘Cake’, my curiosity was how (and literally how on earth) these camera angles were done and varying the settings of the house used for shooting. Somehow, this team managed to shoot the first angle from a straight vertical birds eye view, from the top ceiling, and down to the actor, while she woke up in bed. The director made it clear that nothing was impossible in movie land and a two-human/ladder made ‘crane’ worked for this and really draws the viewer into this movie world that was being created. This trick together with the ‘God’s light’ shining from the box, the imitated ‘Aaaah!’ in angle voice style and the focus on the piece of cake were small details but important ones that demonstrated the short-films main point: this subject’s (the cake’s) world of dieting and craving sweets to get the perfect figure.

It’s all about hindsight. Happy holidays!

Reflection on script writing, editing and the script process.

Reflecting back to the beginning of TV 1, getting to learn the importance of script writing showed its true face during the shooting and also in the post-production. The interest from the author, the producers and the actors was there but where was the imaginary finished version of ‘Sneaker Spasic’ that Aysha Zackariya wanted to produce? Where where the real Leon and the homeless man? As I went directing, Goi sound recording and Vanessa filming, there was no time to think about that. I kept in touch with the author throughout the script process and what we are editing now these days is the result.

Time has been ticking for the past 10 weeks and watching James Miller and Jak Miller performing the main characters was the best part of the entire ‘Sneaker Spastic’. From the moment of the casting and until today I wondered if these actors were the correct people for the main roles but as the rehearsals and the shooting went there were no doubt that these two fulfilled the characters Aysha intended to create. In terms of the script, there were a couple of awkward moments where the actors struggled to perform and asked me a couple of times of the ‘how to’ in different lines. The tree of us had different approaches of it and it didn’t feel natural until the actors said it their own way. This part of the script process reflects back to the analysis to both the short films ‘Clown Train’ and ‘Three’.

Reading the script while watching the short film, became two different subjects but with the same meaning and intention of the authors idea. There is a lot of space in between the script’s lines and the actual film that are not noticeable until the post-production. It is this information (shot construction, actor’s performance, time limitation, location limitation, sound recording, camera technique, photo technique, lighting, security assessment and the casting), that I will bring into TV2, next to the academically theories of these.

However important these things are, I think the two most important ones is team building and project management.

Team building because I have learned how to tackle unpredictable situations and characteristics in a professional manner together with the constant implementation of criticism from group, class, professors and friends.

Project management because of the language of film production varies from one stakeholder to another, the time setting, the budget setting, the make up and styling, the location and production design, the newest technology and software programs and how to do all this at once together with other studies, job, family and friends. These skills are both full time jobs and not to mention, confidence builders.


Can’t wait for TV 2: bring on second semester.

Reflecting on post-production

It is funny to see and learn what went wrong and what went well in the shoots and how to do the best of the final editing. A deadline is set and the group is motivated and prepared to hit it. ‘Sneaker Spastic’ shall end on the 2nd of June, not the 11th. Due to eagerness and prioritizing the weekend for this showed that we do more out of the editing in longer days than short sessions. Plus we get to study without being distracted and interrupted by other students as in for example the library.

As our short film is coming to an end, other courses are shouting to be accomplished but we want to neatly finish the coloring, lighting, flip-flops, reverse shots, speed and duration configurations and the cuts of Leon and homeless man first. What humans can do without being conscious of the rolling camera is out of words and we have had some hard laughs a couple of times looking like question marks thinking “why does he do that? Say that?” and own thoughts of “What was I thinking when? Why didn’t we do this instead? Was I being too nice? Too bitchy? What is that thing doing in the frame?” This is placed in our sequence of fun shots and is placed separately into a section of ‘behind the scenes’. Author Scorsese was right!

Playing around FCP teaches a lot about editing but mostly about how to operate on Mac computers quicker than others by all sorts of hidden short cuts, video controls and screen, slug and viewer slugs. Film editing is fun.

Final Cut Pro and editing

Ending this semester’s Film-TV 1 with editing in FCP or Final Cut Pro is fun, and it is great to see how the footages really went. This advanced software program is giving me new editing skills and having logging the shots today some things came up. Instead of learning to use this software the wrong way I took all sorts of questions while playing around with it that needs to be cleared then the final editing can start.

Shooting ‘Sneaker Spastic’ Part 2 – w10

Shooting main scenes 1,2 and 3 and managing a group project as this one, was easier in the appartment than in the dead end lane. Lighting the actors was fun and trying to get the same light as outside improved the quality of the movie. Production design here was sun and transforming Goi’s apartment into a lane worked and we were ready to let camera roll. The main scenes were shot here and we had full control over the equipment without any interruptions. Crew development here got stronger as all of us committed to the pre-production fully and we’ve shared ideas and suggestions all the way. Therefore, during the shooting no discussion was allowed until after the last shoot as it could breach our timeframe. Neither did we face any issues with crew temperament and this might be because if something is wrong, meaning we’re just human beings and we all do have issues at some point in life, we’ve talked about this and consulted each other. Not because the feeling of that we had too, but because of professionalism and respecting each other beyond technical and film production skills. And having said that, after doing so, the division of responsibility was easier as well. I think in terms of collaboration, this one of the strongest key points we have within the group’s communication.


The actors were easy going in the main shooting, however the antagonist did have opinions that was dealt with but I think this made the shooting even more challenging and interesting as one imaginary expression of body language was replaced with another and more natural one. When doing so, the awareness of focus, focal length and lightning was in mind. Daylight interior and daylight exterior differed from the lane and into Goi’s apartment, and we experimented with the key light, red lights, main light and small lights to figure out which one was the best to use. We wanted the street light effect but without shadows on the actors faces. Luckily we had two extras on set to help us, and fitting the lighting gear into the apartment reminded us on how to use a certain amount of space into the film production.

‘Cake’ – Week 10

Super crewing is super fun. Helping out Ryan’s group of ‘Cake’ was learning full and fun. This crew, consisting of 5-7 members operated more laidback and relaxed which sometimes gave me tasks they had not thought about. For TV 2, this is how I would like to work, with a bigger crew and in a closed private location, with an actor I know. The freedom of shooting inside a house, opened up the possibilities to play around with equipments and camera angles to the fully, and compared with my own group were we take care of each other (sometimes too much), this one all the members focused on their own roles and barely intervened into each others tasks. That worked as well.

Shooting ‘Sneaker Spastic’ Part 1 – w10

Friday the 14th May was the first day of shooting and we decided after changing the location was that the first part of scene 1 and last part of scene 3 would be in the 112 Collaboration lane. After receiving film permission from the Melbourne City Council, stakeholders were notified and I got Friday’s details of delivery times and we were ready to shoot. Things that went wrong during the shoot was timing, stakeholder interruptions and actors communication. The loss of time happened early Friday morning when I thought we wouldn’t spend much time picking up the camera kit. About 45 minutes got lost and the monitor wasn’t working. However, when doing the shooting list for the weekend, we thought about things that could go wrong and the scenes we were doing this day were not big scenes but more action scenes with running and walking which wouldn’t take too much time. At 12.15 the filming hit the deadline and that was part 1 on filming. A group meeting was held directly after to find out how to handle issues that arose and solutions made. I as a director was challenged to the ultimate by the actor and communicating was hard but I decided to continue and get the production done instead of continuing discussing. It worked.

No matter how much time and neatly paper work was done to get film permission, some of the stakeholders came and interrupted. The bosses knew what was going on and I realized at a point that the film permit was given for the entire lane, not just the dead end. Strangely, even though this was not I applied for and no witch hat and pedestrian management officer was made, the film permit was still given. Phone calls and emails clearly shows which part I applied for and I got more film permit than expected, including one of the stakeholder’s private property. The confusion of why the interruptions occurred and I felt we had control and non-control over the location got answered, and I realized we had not done anything wrong here. The ‘Ahaaa’ moment came when I realized we had been given the permission to film on one of the owner’s property and he was surprised the council had allowed us to. In the end of the first shooting, we also improved our communication with each other and could not wait to film on the Sunday.

What went good in the rehearsal and what we should continue doing – Week 9/10

By getting more into to our roles and following the system of hierarchy, this improved as we talked about this in detail in the group meetings after the rehearsal. Collaborating in an honest way, opened up for creating solutions. Rabiger’s article on developing a crew, shows how important it is to continue developing standards and communication all the way through the production. We’ve learned how important it is that the crew together and the actors understand each other, the development of a terse and unambiguous language of communication and the confirmation that equipment is functioning, are crucial aspects of crew development. One example is when our camera woman wanted to try a different camera angle (handheld instead of on the tripod) and the groups response to this. The angle she wanted to use can be seen in this clip at part 2.04 – 2.08; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ESdn0MuJWQ&a=JJ2XmQZqgbA&playnext_from=ML

The shaking camera angle might interfere with the rules of having the camera constantly on the tripod, but at the same time this is the cameraperson’s field and for the project the decision is left to her. Not all of us liked the idea, but for respect for the cameraperson we decided to give it a go both ways. And it worked!

Other rooms for improvement during the rehearsal were working with the actors. If a suggestion of change on lines came up, letting them do it their way was more natural and worked better for both the crew and the actors. Communication development within the crew so far has also shown another field of production; project management. In terms of the learning progress of Film-Tv 1, this skill is learning ful and challenging but teaches me a lot of time priority, paper work decision and communicating to crew and actors in different ways.

What went wrong in the rehearsal and needs improvement – w9/10

Facing technical issues as lighting and sound, we learned here that little things can happen without any prediction and back up plans are crucial. Even small details as reserve batteries and the use of light fill or not makes a large difference both in production and learning Film-TV 1. Lighting the actors faces were so important to get the master shot and have continuation of light, and keeping the shot’s color balance to warm. However, the most interesting and challenging aspect of teamwork that we have had to face in the pre-production is the human nature of helping each other. Since week 2 this has been in focus from the tutes about NOT entering each other’s project tasks as this can lead to accidents with equipment and also ruin the build up of crew hierarchy. Keeping on to roles and not intervening into each others tasks as a skill is fun but also means a lot for project management seen in a whole. The problems rose when we wanted to help Vanessa with the camera, help Goi with sound and help me with directing. When we did this altogether some tasks got left out and we also lost a bit of time even though we went trough it all. Also, for collaboration a rule was set ‘Never say no’. When saying just ‘no’, this leaves group members out and limits the right to speak up. After putting this rule into practice, the collaboration has grown and the group operates more organized and professional than ever before. Discussion on technical issues, framing and acting were from then on also put to the side and more silence and order got created giving us more time and space to shoot.

Serendipity, serendipity, serendipity and serendipity. The right spot for location has been a challenging task, and having no experience for this kind of film making, the thought was to have it in a dead end of a lane. While doing the paper work in the pre-production for this, the more Film-TV 1 introduced about the camera kit the more suspicious we got about the lane. Not knowing that many Australians that owns a home, we decided to split the shooting into two sections; the action and outdoor scenes in the Collaboration Lane 112 of Lt La Trobe Street and the main stages of scene 1,2 and 3 in Goi’s apartment. Everything happens for a reason, and so does the change of location.

Directing the actor - w9

Running through the rehearsal of ‘Sneaker Spastic’, things as what went wrong, well and what needed improvement got clear. However, as a director I could not work well with one of the actors and I could not figure out why. I left it there and stepped out of the director-actor relationship until after the shooting so I could flick through Mackendrick’s article and find out what was not going so well. The thoughts on the working relationship between the director and his most important collaborator: the actor, together with Paul’s statement on how to work with the actors, taught me that I as a director sometimes have to put actors in place. For me, this required an awful amount of thinking of how to communicate ‘ that performance just sucked, you seriously have to do this or that’. I gave it a shot where I took the script away from the actors and told them ‘do this while saying that to me’ and it went from acting to doing, as if the scene was happening in the reality. At one point a question which should not be asked from an actor came up and it really pissed me off but I decided to continue staying professional and cool, and I surprised myself by talking back to the actor in a persuasive way for the purpose of a) don’t ask questions just act, and b) gain respect when I say or want ‘do this’ and ‘give me that’.

“When I get my master shot via your best performance, that’s when we finish”. I don’t like to get angry and I don’t like fighting but this worked and lesser questions came up and I got more confident as a director. What we in the group have discussed upon how much work the actors needed, the outcome of the shoot prove the opposite and we could not believe how wrong we were in the casting compared to this point of the ‘Sneaker Spastic’ production. We had thought that the protagonist needed most work but in the end it turned out that the antagonist was the one that really needed specific guidelines. Lesson learned.

Lightning

Following up on Malkevick’s article on lightning, designing this for the location when shooting Sneaker Spastic raised questions as which lights to use, do we need a generator or can we do it just using Flexifill? When casting and rehearsing we could see how the light fell on the actors face, which light source to use and how to calculate the physics of volts.

While shooting outdoor, it is important to know which direction the sun goes and where we will have to place the actors in accord with this. Malkevick’s article here tells how to differentiate daylight scene and Nykvist’s explanation of the shadow that would be good to practice. As we’re shooting in partly in daylight and in the evening, we decided to not use lightning equipment but the flexifill instead. The light will fall on the actors faces here and where it doesn’t ‘fill up enough’ we will use the flexifill.

The exam providing questions upon crash zoom and how to adjust the focus from point A to point B showed the massive amount of choices we have when shooting outside for the depth of field. When shooting in a dead end, we will experiment this with objects, props and the actors.


Learning about the safety rules of lightning shows how aware we must be when putting the lightning equipment together and when turning it on.

Week 8 Casting and lightning

The actors of Sneaker Spastic are now selected, and we looked at Robin’s aspects of lightning when casting. Before talking about lightning, the directing in casting linked this to the placement of both actors and the light set up. Reflecting back on the Pollack reading we avoided clichés and ‘worked towards causes and gave the actor a real life example they had to deal with’ (Pollack : 61). This shift between telling the actor what to do first and then implement it in a real scene gave the option to see three sides of the character; the becoming crew member, his unconscious side and how the lightning fell on his face. One example is:

Dir: Say ‘Oi!’
Actor: ‘Oi!’

Dir: Now, I’ve stolen something from you, I’m running away and your reaction is….?
Acto: (A LOT more emphasized) ‘OI!’ with more emotion and an obvious body language evoking more feelings.

I think as for being a director this is where I saw ‘what I really wanted’ and how to bring that out. The actor had personality enough to show it but the reality scene of it showed its meaning to a higher level. Knowing what exactly to look for made the acting behave truthfully under imaginary circumstances. It also made the character raise his face higher and we saw in the tape how we have to test shot with lightning.

But there was one simple question we had not thought about and it was: do you want me to cast with or without my glasses? The actor said. I realized, did Robin mention that? Does glasses matter at all? On a sunny day yes, we will have to ask Paul how to avoid too much reflection in the glasses if it happens.

In Malckiewic’s article, the practical example of the day interior and lights adjustment shows the importance of its pre-production. The choices of fill light and hard light and its placement will as in Robin’s example and also as experienced in the casting, affect (the main point in Mackendrick’s reading from week 7) what we are recreating. The whole act, with the scene construction and the actors needs to be filled with some sort of light to successfully do ‘the act of imagining the action’. Lightning here involves what was presented in the lecture and from the reading as:

-Daylight scene and strong back light
-Soft light and harsh sunlight
-Night interior - Which light sources? lamp?
-Simplicity is a key to beauty – Sven Nykvist on one shadow
-Amount of shadows
-The use of the cutter
-Controlling soft light- how much equipment does RMIT have?
-How to create night mood with using soft and reflective light?
-How to light faces? Eyelight?

To be explored.

Week 7 Lenny and Sneaker Spastic - Reflection

What went well?
For the purpose of failure, I think we did very well in the Lenny exercise. The use of limited space, gave us as a crew and the actors an imaginary feeling of how it actually is to shoot, in a certain space. What I liked about the Lenny exercise is when Paul said ‘you guys are meant to use and take advantage of the space you’re shooting in’ and he also added that we had to think about HOW we did this. This leads to my second point, where we applied this knowledge (together with the knowledge of camera, lighting, colors and sound settings) into the practice of Lenny. I believe that the 60 minutes we had, gave us enough time to follow the script to each point and also the actual options we have in this amount of space.

What went wrong?
Small things as: the director in the shoot, the boomer in the frame and the unnoticed ‘hand shift’ of the actor but also, the storyboarding. We had too many back up plans giving too many options to choose between instead of having one set of shoots per scene. Good because we had plans A,B and C but bad because this simply showed that we were detailed, picky, focused and neat on the actual shoot resulting into what a journalist lecturer (Alex) names as ‘ you guys were OVER thinking, just simplify it’. I don’t think its wrong but instead showed that the group as whole is together extreme goal targeted and learned a lot on this, and will take this lesson further into ‘Sneaker Spastic’ and in future short-film production. The storyboarding needs to be narrower for Sneaker Spastic and the conciseness of the shoot needs a) to be in the hands of the camera woman and b) reshoot after the entire actual scene.


How can I myself improve this and how can the group as a whole improve on this field?

The learning process of Film-TV 1 after this, and also when constructing the scene, we need to check for everything and keep on to our roles as much as possible. I think the article of developing a crew touches on the aspects that we find challenging both Lenny and Sneaker Spastic. When linking this aspect with Arbiger’s article, the expectations of the crew development there’s a lot to be taught. Arbiger talks about using people with experience and continuing developing communication. I agree with the author in terms of common language and responsibility. This because he introduces us new comers of this discipline, how to do what in terms of a low budget film, communication strategies for handling stress and immaturity for crew members, organizing responsibility, the production hierarchy, production department, directing, DP, sound, art department and styling (make-up and hair).

No matter how straight forwards this article is I did not like the practical implementation of it; I mean, how are we meant to remember all of this, in the time space, of scene shot’s duration say 2 minutes? Our outcome of Lenny, showed good post-production and the crew development here is reflected into Arbiger’s crew construction (386-391). By trusting this article and follow its procedures on crew management and strategic communication, I believe that if each of us maintain our roles as its highlighted in this article, then we wont be over thinking and do those small mistakes as we did in Lenny, in Sneaker Spastic.

After the casting and find the characters we’re looking for, I think then we will be stabile enough as a group to continue the fun of producing Sneaker Spastic, for Arbiger’s part on Art Department. Imagine the make-up, wardrobe, hairstyle, background, props and more that involves for the production design? The more we know the merrier, and the better the organisation and production of this film will be.