Attempting to Learn How to Make Something Look Good on Screen

This week our group got together at Felicita's before class. We touched base on what we needed to do during reading break next week. Last week Andrea sent emails to each groups' resident artist with little bios that each group member write in order to get the ball rolling communication-wise between our artists and ourselves. At our group meeting we figured out which days would work best for us to meet Chris. We sent him an email of introduction and now we are waiting to hear back! Hopefully the week after we come back from the break we can get together to make arrangements with him, and then soon after we can get together to film our piece with him! Very exciting, I think things are going to start to come together now! 

In class we talked about a few things that I found to be interesting. Firstly, although, not overly exciting, we talked about the structure and 'how to' of writing treatments and proposals for documentaries. This was a good learning experience for me for two reasons. Firstly, of course, because I have never done something like this before and didn't know what to expect when I saw it titled on the syllabus. Secondly, my brother is a documentary filmmaker, and I have never really been clear of the paperwork process and preparation that goes along with films he has created in an academic setting. I knew that an enormous amount of time and effort always goes into preparation, but seeing a list of details that must be thought about in such specifics before filming made me appreciate what my brother does more-- not that I didn't already understand how much hard work he puts in.. but still. We talked about how integral it is in our films that we tell a story through images and that we really want to create an informed representation of our artists.

Another thing that I found really interesting was looking at the ethics form that is involved in academic research. This is something I have heard lots about in different research classes, but I have never actually seen the form. It is HUGE, and very very very thorough. It is really interesting to see what needs to be considered when doing research, as well as what had to be done by Andrea in order for us to be able to do this project. This was something I am happy I finally got to go through, and it was really helpful that it was something that Andrea went over with us, explaining all the while, instead of me reading it over to myself, because I for sure would have had questions along the way.

Once again, we talked about screen composition. I went over this a little bit when I updated last week, but we watched a few short films about the rule of thirds and different shots. I appreciated the longer one we watched on different shots where we looked at full, medium full, cowboy, close up and extreme close ups, but, this time, instead of just looking at which shot was which, we talked about which shot was used for what reason, and what you can capture in a scene depending on what kind of shot you chose to use. Watching this and talking about them was helpful because I am not used to thinking about these things in a critical way when I watch things. Now I am trying to do this when I watch things to try and see how things are put together, if I think things could have been shot in a more effective way, or why a shot or angle was chosen/done really well.

FILM CLIP: one of the short clips we watched-- the guy in this film was great.... I will forever know how to place a windmill in appropriate composition)

During reading break my group is going to get together to write our treatment, as well as film our practice film for our edit workshop. I hope everything begins to come together nicely, and I am excited to see what happens in the coming weeks!

Boring center

Pazzazzzy and in thirds

Looking back at old photos I can definitely see a benefit in taking photos that follow the rule of thirds...












(Film clip link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSSOZxLnNyc )