Final Reflections

Finding Balance!
http://uvac.uvic.ca/gallery/cornett/files/2012/08/U011.3.1.jpg

After completing our film, it is now possible to go back and reread our original film proposal and treatment and watch our final film to consider and critique the ways in which the the original concepts and conceptualization for the film and the final film aligned or strayed. I think it is important to take part in this sort of activity because it allows me to be able to see strengths and weaknesses in our organization and ideas, as well as what ended up working and not working in respect to the initial plan and final product.

As far as our proposal is concerned, we stuck to it almost to a tee, except for a few smaller details which I will explore.

Our proposal detailed working with Chris to create a film around 10 minutes in length, filmed in his studio, that would be accessible to both students and the public. We also stated that it would be made with the intention of being a useful resource for Chris to be able to share on his website, or however he so chose. We wanted to introduce Chris Paul as a Coast Salish artist and highlight the piece "Finding Balance" in the Cornett Building. While focusing on this particular piece, we also wanted to provide the viewers with a broader view of Chris' style and artworks, while displaying part of the process (although there are many) that he uses to create art. We wanted to avoid creating a film that was predominantly straight on interview footage by effectively using B-roll such as shots of his hands while he worked, Chris entering his studio, and footage of his various pieces of art. We also intended for this film to be a useful educational feature for future classes and the community as a whole.  

In our proposal we stated that "the film will focus on Chris Paul's innovative, boundary-pushing style". I think that as the film progressed this 'focus' changed. I think that we including interview clips where he discussed his innovation and style, and this innovation is evident in the artwork that we showed, but in the end, I do not think that this was our primary focus for the film. I think that if we had strictly stuck with this theme it would have been limiting for what we wanted to achieve when talking about how Chris' evolving art style and the piece in Cornett which was the focus of the class project.  

We also discussed using images throughout the film in both in our proposal and treatment, but in the end we chose not to go down this avenue. It ended up being slightly difficult to coordinate with Chris during the project and we did not want to create more work for him when we were unsure what kind of photos would have been necessary. Looking back, I feel like it may have been nice to have photos of Chris' earlier artworks when he was a youth, or Chris with his mentors or family members as these people were discussed at length in our film, but I think that although these may have been nice in the film, they may not have necessarily been exactly what we wanted in the end either.

We did not end up using Indigenous music. Although this seemed like a good idea at the onset, I think we came to the conclusion that it may have been redundant or unnecessary to try and use Indigenous music in the film. Much of what we focused on in the film was innovation and uniqueness, and by simply putting in Indigenous sounds as background music solely because we were working with an Indigenous artist seems slightly Eurocentric -- Chris may listen to this style of music on occasion, but it is not the sole soundtrack to his life.

In our proposal we talked about the importance of this film as an educational tool for a variety of reasons. One of our goals for this project was to highlight the connections between the Indigenous territory that UVic is built on, and the Indigenous artists and their works from the Artist in Residence program, with education for Indigenous communities, UVic students, and the general public on these artists and their art as part of an ongoing project for the future. In a way, this project reflects aspects of ethnographic film making that we explored in Anthropology 309 last semester. The films we produced in this class bear resemblance to Tim Asch's work. Tim Asch created films for the purpose of education of cultural anthropology in a classroom setting. He was very blatant about the methods he used and he tried to show how film making can alter or benefit the study of culture. This is similar in some aspects to what we have done with these films in order to add dimension to the Artist in Residence program.

In addition to this, we created a fairly collaborative film with our artist. We worked with Chris in a way that ensured that the intentions of our program and project and the entire process were clear to him, instead of treating our artist as a subject to be observed from a distance and learn from through the anthropologists' interpretations. This collaborative and reflexive way of film making seems to mimic aspects of John Rouch's and the Macdougalls' work. We collaborated and shared our ideas with Chris and encouraged him to input or discuss anything he wanted, and to refrain from doing anything he was not comfortable with. Chris will receive a copy of the film so that if he is unhappy with, or disagrees with the way that we have portrayed him or his works in this film, we can rework it to his liking, or scrap it entirely. At all points during the process Chris had the option to back out if he no longer desired to be part of the project. I think this point is important to note because without this key detail, it does not seem like the project could be truly collaborative. As stated above, one of the main goals of this classes projects were to create accessible and shared knowledge. These movies will be available online, at the university and through QR codes at the specific art pieces. Hopefully these films will prove to be beneficial to our collaborative artists!      

As far as our treatment goes, I think we ended up changing quite a bit, and I think I learned several valuable things as a result of the alterations.

I think the biggest thing with our treatment is that we did not hand in a set of interview questions when we handed in our treatment. We did this because we had attempted to, but had not been able to get a hold of Chris before our treatment was originally due, so we wrote our treatment based on the research we had done on him, but without having a feel for what Chris was like, or how he conducts himself, etc. Our intention was to create a film that would be useful for Chris as a resource, so we were apprehensive to create a bunch of questions that Chris did not find relevant or useful for him or his art world. In the end, when we attempted to share our interview questions with Chris before the interview he replied saying that he did not want to see them beforehand, so perhaps we were too lenient or concerned about being inclusive rather than taking charge from the get-go.

After we met with him the first time we began to get a feel for what we were in for and were able to return again to get some B-roll and double check to see if there was anything essential that he wanted in the film. Once we heard from him we were able to put together interview questions promptly, but we waited longer than we would have if we had just not worried about the collaborative aspect until after we created the first draft.

Based on Chris' responses to our interview questions -- interview questions are posted below--, we changed the order of our interview clips in our film from our original treatment order. After the interview was recorded it became evident that this order would not create a fluid film, so we rearranged and added to the original documents ideas. Looking at the original treatment and the information laid out by Chris, it is clear that this order would not have worked.

In regards to the setting for the interview itself and how it was to look, we ended up with something quite different from what we had originally envisioned. We had not seen Chris' studio before we wrote the treatment and had not figured out yet what work he does in the studio and what he does elsewhere. Chris is currently in the process or renovating his studio space and therefore we had several space and lighting limitations that caused difficulty for the film angle, such as the glare from the setting sun through the glass doors causing problems for the camera angle, and the interview space background because of the limited space we were in and the restraints of what could be moved around, etc.  In the future, I feel we could benefit from trying to set up the camera studio space before the interview is supposed to commence. We got quite stressed out trying to do everything within the time limit the class was given for the interview and we ended up having a less than perfect camera angle as a result.

In the end I think we followed the same general theme of our film treatment, but our final product looked fairly different than the initial idea. I think this was for the best, as we reevaluated after we started to work with Chris and figured out what would work for the project and what needed to be changed or added in. Our final film covered a few more questions that those that were posed in the treatment. I think our film turned out to be more creative and unique than it would have been if we stuck to our treatment. After rereading the treatment, it seems fairly stale and insincere, but our film seems genuine and special in a way.



Interview Questions: 

1. Introduction of himself
2. What inspired you to do a piece in the Cornett building/how did you become associated with UVic?
3. What do these pieces featured at UVic mean to you? 
4.  Where do you get your inspiration?
5.  What types of materials do you work with?
6.  Is there anyone in your life who has inspired you?
7. Can you discuss any challenges that you may have experienced over the years through your art? (ie. cedar allergies, not knowing how much people will pay, etc)
8. You’ve often been considered an ‘innovative’ artist. What are some of the reasons you think this might be? Do you consider this innovative nature to be reflected in your Cornett pieces?
9. You were a part of the Artist in Residency project. Can you explain that collaborative project to us? Do you often work collaboratively with others?
10. How has your art evolved over time, from abstract and watercolour to your more current projects?

 

Final Class Screening

On Thursday Night we had our final class where we wrapped up the course and showed our films!

It was really interesting to see the other groups films, and then to see peoples reactions briefly to our film. We seem to have been well received which is a really nice feeling.

Everyone's films, or at least what we had seen so far of everyone's films, were really quite different, yet, because of several things found within all of the films, you can really see that they are intended to be part of a series. I really liked that each film was done in a different way - for example, I really liked that the LessLIE interview was done in Cornett, at each of his art pieces. This was very different from our interview where we went out to Chris's studio and had a sit down interview. It was interesting to watch the videos and see the different ways that each group tackled this project. We were able to point out various things that made each film fall nicely into the series together, for example, each artist talked about colour being an important aspect of their art- branching out further than traditional colours. It was interesting to catch something like that in each film since that wasn't something that we had discussed in class to look into or anything with our interview questions. These moments in the film really helped me to envision these films together in a series. Of course, having the same music, title, introduction style, etc., also help to create this continuity, but it's nice to see similarities throughout the films as well. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I really like that each film had a very different feel to it even though there were similarities throughout them.   

For some reason our film had a glitch when we tried to upload it where we couldn't get rid of background noise from when we took the footage, as well as what ended up sounding like Satan talking because someones voice had been slowed down and we couldn't get rid of it. We had troubles getting our film off of iMovie and onto the other screen for viewing, but Julia was able to get it eventually, so that was good! Besides these two issues, everyone seemed to like our film which was nice to see. I'm excited to see the Maynard film when it is done! I really liked the way they set up their interview and I think they will have gotten some nice footage of him doing art, and of his art work.

I think each of us were able to pick out a few more things when we watched our film that could be fixed before we hand in the film to Andrea. Hopefully we can do that and then be done! I'm really impressed with the way our film turned out, I mean really impressed that it came together so well. I don't know why I was so doubtful, but I think we really pulled it off!

I am so incredibly pleased!

Editing: Week III

Wow,

So we had our last edit! We showed Andrea our film and picked out any problematic areas we could find as we watched and critiqued. Andrea seemed to really like it, which was very exciting. I had been nervous the whole time to show someone else our film (I'm not really sure why..), but I think it was received really well.

Julia found calm vocal-less guitar music to play in the background, and she added a clear title that looks really good! Andrea thought so too and asked Julia to pass along both the music and title format to the rest of the groups so they could follow the same trend. It was cool that our group got to pass those along to everyone.

We had to hammer through a few glitches that came about between editing the voice overlay with B-roll, or because we had taken out an "uhm" or other inconsistency that then made the vocals a little bit choppy because of the way Chris enunciated words. There is one spot we noticed that is still pretty jumpy, but there wasn't a way to really fix it completely because his words ran together, so we did our best by overlaying his interview with B-roll instead and hope that it is not horribly noticeable. We lengthened out a few B-roll scenes because it seemed a little bit like we were just jumping back and forth quickly with different shots instead of letting the audience take in what is on the screen in front of them. To me it was kind of making it seem like we had 800 things on our minds that we were trying to show all at once, so I'm glad we figured out how to fix that. I think this also made the interview flow better since we had a lot of screen time that was purely interview footage, which can be a tad boring.

Seal: http://www.chrispaul.ca/prints/detail/seal_detail.htm

It was good to just re-watch the film several times and take note of where we thought things really worked in a scene (or what we had done well), and then things that we needed to fix. I really liked the collaborative process in this film because there were so many things that each of us contributed that wouldn't have been thought of otherwise. I think that the film is pretty much ready to be screened for our final class. Hopefully there are a few critiques (but not too many!..) of things that we can improve on, either in this film or for any future film work we may end up doing.   

I really hope that Chris Paul is stoked on this film when it's all complete. Hopefully it is a good resource for his website, etc. or that he feels comfortable showing it to others to help promote his work! I really enjoyed working with Chris, so I really hope this is something that is beneficial for him in the end!
  

Edit: Week II

Well, I'm a little bit shocked, but it looks as if we have something that has come together really well!

Everyone came in over the weekend or earlier on Tuesday in pairs or on their own to tackle a few little things before we got together to do our big edit on Tuesday night.This week we went through as a group and watched what we had put together a few times. We basically just tried to figure out what needed to be cut out, if any interview needed to be put back in (were we missing anything essential?), and I guess, we really just sat down and put the film together. At the end of the day we basically we left with only a bit of tweaking left to do! I was expecting editing to take like, 40 hours.. thankfully it didn't! ..Andrea scared me a little bit!

When we started doing this project in January I started thinking about how editing was going to go with 4 people. Because I had never done anything like this before, I just had no idea how this would go. I got home after the first class and couldn't help but be curious to see how we would fare during the editing process; would we but heads over ideas or would we all be on the same page? Turns out we did pretty well for a larger group with a very creative project on our hands. We could have had 4 people with 4 different visions, but we actually seemed to all be on the same page, more or less. There were a few times where people thought things should go in different order or that a certain B-roll clip would be better in one place or another, etc., but in the end, everyone was happy to listen to everyone's ideas and opinions and we were able to come to an group consensus on everything. To be honest it was great that everyone had different ideas. Because everyone had different ideas for things I think it came together in a much different way than it would have if we had done the films individually or in pairs. It's amazing how everyone has been able to bounce ideas off each other to make the film better.   

I was really worried that after hearing the poor quality audio we had when we uploaded our footage and audio that we wouldn't be able to raise the quality significantly, although, lo and behold, wondrous Julia was about to fix it! It sounds awesome now! I really didn't think we'd be able to fix it, but again, what do I know about video technology!? We were able to put out most of the 'uhms' and weird pauses with only a few little blips.I think there is one place where it is slightly noticeable, but hopefully by putting B-roll over we've made it smooth enough that most people wouldn't notice it unless they were looking for it. Or at least I hope that's the case.

We went into today with a little bit more than 16 minutes of footage including some B-roll that we still needed to fit in, so I don't think we will have any trouble staying within the time frame. I was worried when we went though our interview footage that it would be hard to cut clips down to an appropriate time, but I think it should be no problem!    

I think the biggest things we need to do now is go through and smooth out our transitions between scenes, and add in B-roll in a few more places. We finally got our Pier hotel footage into the film, and we are going to get our footage of the finding balance piece and Cornett this weekend so hopefully that B-roll will be the last of what we need to get to make everything 'fit' properly. I guess the other things left to do now are music (which is a little bit worrisome.. I'm curious to see if we can come up with something appropriate for the film..), a title and credits, a little bit of work on the opening and closing scenes and putting in the Cornett footage. Then just making sure everything is cohesive. It's crazy that there is so little left to do!

Editing: Week I

I'm very excited!

So, earlier this week we got together and uploaded our interview footage. We went through the interview footage and pulled out clips that we could potentially use in our film. We also went through the B-roll we have so far and tried to see what we can use.

Our whole interview clip with Chris lasted about 40 minutes so we had a decent amount of footage to pull from. Truth be told, it looks pretty good! I think that we will be able to move clips around and get a cohesive narrative.

We are having a little bit of trouble with our audio -- we only had my phone recording and Julia's camera mic-- so it sounds a little bit like he was in a wind tunnel when the volume is turned up, but Julia says that she should hopefully be able to fix that with another program that she has on her computer. I really hope that she can do that otherwise our interview is going to sound a little bit garbled.

A couple things we will have to figure out, most likely by laying B-roll over top of it, is that the door behind Chris is open for the first few questions of the interview, and then I closed it because there was a little bit of background noise coming from behind the door so it looks a little bit inconsistent between the beginning and the final chunk of the interview. The girls think we should be able to cut out most of the 'uh's' and 'uhms' and the time where Chris accidentally says 'ass' when trying to say something else.. fairly humorous slip, but not great for the film..

I was a little bit overwhelmed when we all sat down because of the program. iMovie is so foreign to me and everyone else seems to know how to navigate around just fine! I have figured out how to expand the clips to look at 1 second clips or 30 second clips, to drag clips, delete highlighted clips, how to delete audio from a clip, and to start and stop the clip from playing. I'd say I'm doing fairly well for an amateur!

Looking at our footage, I'm actually pretty excited! We went through as a group and sort of figured out what we thought the best order would be to put the clips in to make it seem logical. Kels and I offered to stay and rearrange the clips now that we had them organized on paper; I think with a little bit more playing around it, and some B-roll to tie a few transitions together, the chronology will work really well.

We still haven't gotten our footage from the Pier Hotel or from Cornett so that will also add good B- roll. I'm beginning to think that B-roll is key especially in the earlier clips when the door open or before we had Chris angle himself slightly more towards the camera.

As it stands, the interview and B-roll footage has been taken, uploaded and cut into workable pieces for us to start piecing together this coming week! I think we are going to try and come in on our own time and do some of the small things that need to be done: taking out audio from B-roll clips, cutting out uhms, etc., fixing the lighting in a few clips, etc. Hopefully the next time we all get together we will be able to get down to about 15 minutes of film, and start matching up the B-roll with the clips!

It's crazy, but I think this film could actually turn out to be pretty good in the end if we can pull this off!       

Interview Day!

Last Tuesday was the BIG DAY!!!

Last Monday we finally hammered out our final draft interview questions, and signed our gear out for Tuesdays interview!

We drove out to Chris's studio and took some B-roll shots while we waited for him to walk over. Started out a little bit shakey-- both Kelsey's hand and the weather, but we got a few good shots of the trees and his studio and the surrounding area outside of the studio. Chris showed up and we promptly made his walk back from where he came from-- several times over so we could get a few shots of him walking towards the studio. We seemed a little crazy, and I think he though so too, but he complied, and over and over again he walked around puddles, walked towards his studio and opened the door, over and over again. I don't think he thought he would have to work so hard.

Together with him we tried to arrange his little studio for our interview. This was a bit of a challenge because the sun was at an angle that was causing glare on the screen through the glass door, but the lighting in the studio was going to pick up on the camera, and we didn't have a better option but to try and squeeze Chris and Julia at a bit of an awkward angle, and we ended up with the camera at not the most ideal angle.. We were a little bit frazzled after it took us so long to deal with setting up the room and figuring out lighting-- and we realized that we were missing one of the cords we needed to use the sound piece-- that Chris ended up being on an awkward angle for the interview.. I think this is something that takes practice to do and get right. After looking at our footage on the screen I can definitely point out things on the screen that we could have and should have done differently, but we didn't think of at the time, or the constraints of the space didn't allow us to.

One thing that I'm not crazy about in our interview is that we ended up not having one of the cords for the sound piece, so we had to use my cell phone, but we didn't place it in a good spot, so its very noticeable on the tape. I thought about it when I put it down on the desk behind Chris, but I was worried that if we moved it to a less conspicuous place, our sound would be more compromised. I guess these are mistakes to learn from.

Once we finally got everything sorted out and everyone was in position for the interview everyone sort of got to take a deep breathe and just go with it from there on in. The first question got a little bit of a rocky start, but by the next question Chris was on a roll. He was great, totally calm in front of the camera, and very open with his answers. I really appreciated this in Chris. After the first question or two we asked him to respond in a way which repeated the question that Julia asked in his responses, and from then on he was good about doing that.

I thought his interview was really interesting. I found myself captivated by his answers and nodding my head at the things he was saying. After we finished up we asked Chris is he would take us to his office in his house so we get some footage of him at his computer, flipping through his computer work, and we managed to get a few small interview clips inside there, which was good, although the footage is pretty dark, so we will see how we can fix that up!

We were all pretty stoked when we left! It felt like a huge weight had finally been lifted off our shoulders now that the filming was over and it's time to sit down and edit. Despite the angle of our interview, I think our footage turned out pretty well! I think we asked good questions and good good responses!

Hopefully we will be able to cut together a cohesive film! Lets see how editing goes!!