Assignment 1

My mini doco DV was filmed over 3 days on approximately 45mins worth of tape. I have been chronicling it somewhat on Facebook so I thought I'd share a preview:

Maria is glad that Day 3 of filming is over! 5:59pm - Comment - Like

Maria Tan at 6:31pm February 26

Today was a bloody nightmare.

1. I was carrying around a lot of equipment
2. I had to queue up at Central Station for 20mins to use the ladies
3. My backpack broke while in the ladies
4. I got on location an the lifts were broken
5. I walked up 5 flights of stairs
6. I talked too much s@*% during the interview
7. My backpack decided to work momentarily and gushed open after I was out in the street
8. I bought an $80 replacement backpack

Maria Tan at 7:43pm February 26

Hmm today just keeps getting better and better.

I thought there was a mouse in the oven, I could hear clawing on metal. Turns it out was a bird. In the exhaust fan!

Carmen Li at 11:28am February 27

@_@... good luck today!

Maria Tan at 3:14pm February 27

Hehe thanks, after the bird fiasco I thought I should go to bed early in case anything else decided to surprise me :)

There were a few minor problems, and one day of filming was cancelled due to the talent backing out. This changed my opening sequence to a building site which incorporated less shots, so I decided to get a bit clever with the intro by using PIP.

In the end I had it all done in time which I'm stoked about.


Post Production

After some early hiccups with Premiere Pro CS4, I decided not to risk missing deadline by trying to use it and instead used my other PC with Premiere Pro CS3 loaded onto it. It took about 1hr to capture footage, ~1hr to 1.5hrs to cut pix and lay the VO which I recorded using Sonic Foundry Acid Pro.

The fine tuning took me around 1.5hrs or so to correct the image and audio levels, apply transitions, effects, and supers etc. I encoded almost 10 different versions and uploaded them onto Facebook to test stream quality which took up the longest time, maybe 4hrs or so altogether.


Lessons Learned

• Power supply interrupts mic input quality, no matter how good the mic is (lesson re-learned)
  
• Cherish functional backpack zips
  
• Remember to raise tripod to eye level (on MCU/CU of talent)

Trigger Street

As a digital video producer it would be helpful to join the Trigger Street community for the exposure. The judging panel consists of Hollywood celebrities and other industry big wigs which is not common in small film festivals. Entering is simple because you can upload your video online, and being part of a community with like minded people is also a bonus.

As a writer however, I would not use this website. There is not enough legal protection out there for Intellectual Property rights and I don't believe this scattergun approach is the best way to attract interested and genuine financial sponsors for writing projects.

The Blair Witch Project

I still remember the first time I watched this film with a group of friends as a high school kid at my friend Steph's house on VCD.

I hadn't seen anything like it before and by the end of the movie we were unsure as to what had happened and whether or not it was a movie or a real life event. Having to walk home in the dark was also quite scary because I was living in a semi rural area at the time.

Although the movie and website is made to seem roughly cut and "real" it is actually quite complex in its use of story devices. The 'realism' created is the underlying theme of the whole production and it is this verisimilitude that makes the Blair Witch Project film and website stand out from other films.

For example, the website itself does not state whether the events are true or false but offers further evidence in The Aftermath section on the website through falsified documents (i.e. missing persons flyer, fake police photos), mock interviews and news report audio and video which continues to draw on the strengths of verisimilitude as the basis for mythology and legends. In a sense, authenticity is the ultimate Red Herring for the Blair Witch Project.

The story devices within the film itself (e.g. asides by the students, foreshadowing in the interviews etc.) and the multitude of subtle editing techniques (e.g. dissolves at a fraction of a second that would not be picked up by the untrained eye) are complex and varied and the cliffhanger ending coupled with the website and ongoing franchises take the story's 3 act paradigm further than what the film accomplishes on its own.

Truly the work of genius!

Widget link problems solved

My previously unedited Blogger HTML template was opening horrible links in the current window, morphing the look of each site opened.

All fixed now :D

Characteristics of Digital Video

My understanding of digital video has been in the literal sense, a digitized video. I have been thinking of “digital video” as a process itself, of uploading video onto the computer to digitize it for example, and separate from the editing and post production process. To me it was just a computerized form of video.

I guess I hadn’t thought about it beyond that until today, but now I can see that there is so much more to the term.

After some thought I would have to say my new understanding of digital video is a collaboration of sound and images in motion from many different sources that have been made compatible with computer technology in order to reassemble them together into one cohesive output for presentation.

Digital media has played a major role in transforming cinema, especially in terms of special effects and animation. For example, digital media can now be used to create an entire animated movie, such as Shrek, or a character such as Gollum in Lord of The Rings. I believe the concept of cinema originally was to reproduce images and sound, now they can be created without having physically existed.

My favourite digital video would have to be the Dove Evolution commercial because it highlights how digital media is changing our perception, in this case, of beauty.

First Impressions of Early Cinema

The Lumiere Brothers

Although there is no sound to these pictures and the picture quality is not very good I am intrigued by what I am seeing. I feel like I have opened a window to the past.

I was immediately fascinated with the clothes people in the films were wearing, the different technologies like the horse and buggy, the steam train, funny hose etc. and also the differences in furniture and even crockery.

When the labourers were demolishing that house with pickaxes I thought, "Gee, that must've been tough going" and wondered about what life was like during that period.

So even though there was no narrative in these films I thought it was still quite interesting, and if I had been sitting in the audience during 1895 I would've been amazed.


George Melier

What a clever bloke! I am assuming that his interest in magic played a hand in his film making. He really went all out with illustrating the narrative by planning sets, costuming and arranging the actors to depict scenes. I can see how present day cinema has evolved from this film pioneer's work.