WEEK 1
We were introduced to our our module project and went through the requirements. We also were told to research certain subjects and people like F for Fake and Philip Bloom( Philip Bloom, an SLR film maker who travels around the globe to shoot his short films (http://vimeo.com/16976799). Which I watched the day after. This was useful to draw inspiration and start thinking of ideas for our documentary that we were going to make this year.
WEEK 2
This week we were taught that photojournalism heavily influences documentary film but documentary underpins photojournalism. We also learnt the history of it as well and how Henri Cartier Bresson heavily inflenced and invtented decisive moment photojournalism and devised the obervational mode. I researched some of his work (PAR73674.jpg) and has heavily influenced my own photojournalism.
Another photojournalist practitioner who is more recent is Martin Parr and as much as he is good at what he does (moulds each shot to his liking for example LON38096.jpg) his photos are in some ways fake true to life. Which gives his photos a kind of cheating aspect to them. This is how I feel like when I look at them anyway.
Cornell Capa (another magnum photographer) is primarily a war photographer and what all these people did best was capture the: Before, middle and end.
We were also told about documentary ethics. This in itself is a broad subject and has many arguments many of which are against breaking these ethics. Data can be interpreted in such a way that can come to the conclusion that your view is right however in reality it is not. These can be broken by such a way that can create the audience to agree with the same views as the film maker but in such a way that they do not present a proper argument to the audience but present tampered information push their own beliefs about a certain subject. Dorethea Lange is an example of someone influencing an audience in to them beleiving what is not true with her photo of the Migrant Mother.
WEEK 3
450d Intro
The longer the shutter is open for the more about light is exposed on to the digitally imposed image imprinted on the camera creating high or low exposure to photographs.
ISO is the amount of light particles that saturate the photo. The higher the ISO when taking a picture the more grainer the picture becomes due to the fact that it is trying to allow as much light on to the photograph as possible. The lower the ISO the higher quality the pixels are. Making brilliantly detailed photographs.
The higher the aperture number of the depth of field the wider the hole to let light on to the photograph. This creates more of the background/foreground to be in focus. The lower the aperture number the less in focus the foreground and background is. A low aperture number is often used in portrait photos.
WEEK 4
No Lecture - group meeting to discuss and enquire about idea.
WEEK 5
RAW editing. The process of editing an image through in camera settings which have been saved from when the photo in many different ways to allow a maximal variety of ways to alter the photo in the highest quality possible. We also looked at how Magnum uses settings such as vibrance, softness and sharpness of photos and how if we could get a contract through with specifcations to how we should edit our photos. (SEE CRITICLE READING PAGE)
WEEK 6
Final Cut Pro tutorials with Korin involved us using the editing package to use its basic functions to fine edit and cut together a promo to sea worlds. One such tool we used was the 'shuffle tool' to roll a segment of footage you wanted to be shorter for example to make a cut shorter without having to un sync your sound. This would be quite useful when editing a documentary when a voice of god is used to narrate over the film and cutting the visual together will make it much easier and quicker to edit it all.
WEEK 7
We discussed our ideas and got debreifed about what we should be putting in to our presentations at the end of the semester. It was very criticle lecture to reflect on marketing our documentary and how it is so important to do so. Afterwards we had a meeting with in our group on promotion and we should all do to help. This included making our own income by selling our own t-shirts on http://fragilefocus.spreadshirt.co.uk/
WEEK 8
Final Cut pro tutorial (advance) introduced us to a new kind of editing style which involved three cameras and editing the footage like it was live. This was done through the multicam and provided us with a variety of shots to cut to during the performance. This could be very useful when editing our documentary to make it more realistic or to get the point across that this issue is happening right now. This might get the viewer to act or feel differently as they would regrister more that this is real life issue that needs to be dealt with now and can be a useful tool to manipulate the audience's perspective and view.
However what I found was that when editing the sound the EQ mixer was not as user friendly as it is in Adobe Audition due to the fact that the layout is a bit more complicated to manage mainly down to the way you change the decibels and that when you change one aspect you affect another.
Also there was correcting the edit so that it is broadcast safe in terms of brightness and colour. This involved using a filter that was under Broadcast safe and tweeking the levels until it was okay. This will be useful when considering that the project will be shown on a projector so we can take into account light differences.
WEEK 9
This week we learnt about techniques and ways to ask questions. This involved saying leading questions in to getting responses to get what we want on film. We watched a clip of Nick Broomfield's documentary 'Biggie and Tupac' which demonstrated this. Through these questions you can then begin to engage the audience much better because the interviewee is saying information that will be wanted for the director to be and the direction in which the documentary is being taken.
WEEK 10
In this week we got debriefed regarding our presentation and what we should all include in it. It gave some inspireation in how we should make our own presentation so it would stand out form the rest. Karin also made us understand how important it was for us to research and know about your primary and themes to a high enough level in order to discuss the topics with your primary in order to get information easier.
WEEK 11
N/A (had a group meeting to discuss and run through what we were going to say in the presentation)
WEEK 12
We present our presentations.
