Class Agenda – Wednesday, April 18
Reminders
Starting next week (Monday April 23 and Wednesday April 25), classes will be devoted to editing/production, so bring in whatever footage you have so you can get started on your rough cuts.
Your rough cuts will be due by class time on April 30. Class that day is not optional. We’ll be screening the rough cuts together and giving everyone feedback.
Your final cuts will be due along with your published portfolio websites on May 14, the last day of class.
I’ve only received breaking news stories from a small handful of you, so if you have not yet done yours, please check in with me ASAP with your plan for that assignment.
Discussion: Moving toward longer-form filmmaking
Benefits/costs of working alone vs. with a team?
DP (director of photography), B camera, lighting, producers, etc.
Feature-length documentary shot by one woman: First to Fall
Interview with filmmaker Rachel Beth Anderson
A documentary funded by Kickstarter: Luchadora
Example of verite short documentary: Extremis
An interview with the director
Exploring the limits and conventions of the art form:
The future of 360 Video and VR
Why you’re going to want a 360 camera
10 things I wish I knew before shooting 360 video
The New York Times made waves with its award-winning VR short doc series “The Displaced.” Now Huffington Post, The Guardian, TIME and CNN all have their own VR production teams.
Using 360 video as part of a big video feature story:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/magazine/100000005005806/the-displaced.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/magazine/the-displaced-introduction.html
https://www.nytimes.com/video/magazine/100000004980989/we-who-remain.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/14/magazine/fight-for-falluja-vr.html
VR at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival:
https://www.tribecafilm.com/immersive
What are the challenges of storytelling in 360? What are the benefits? In what ways are these videos really utilizing the potential of the format? Are they missing any opportunities? What kinds of assignments would 360 work best for, and where would it be ineffective?
Another big trend in online video these days: live video
Using live video and Instagram stories to promote a story/give a behind the scenes look into what went into making it.
And combining the two, naturally, now there’s Live 360 video: https://facebook360.fb.com/live360/
Class Agenda – Monday, April 9
Reminders:
Starting next week (Monday April 23 and Wednesday April 25), classes will be devoted to production, so bring in whatever footage you have so you can get started editing your rough cuts.
Your rough cuts will be due by class time on April 30. Class that day is not optional. We’ll be screening the rough cuts together and giving everyone feedback.
Your final cuts will be due along with your published portfolio websites on May 14, the last day of class.
I’ve only received breaking news stories from a small handful of you, so if you have not yet done yours, please email me before Wednesday’s class with your plan for that assignment.
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Discussion: Making a great portfolio website
A few popular website builder options:
Buying a website domain:
Things to consider:
What medium (or media) are you going to be featuring prominently? Keep that in mind when choosing a template.
A portfolio website is basically an online resume. You’re selling yourself, so make sure you’re putting your best foot forward. Link to your various social media profiles, Vimeo/YouTube accounts, etc. You can even post your resume on there if your like. And write a good bio for your About page.
Requirements for Final Portfolio
You need at least two main pages on your site in addition to an optional Home landing page that showcases your best work: a Video page where we can view your projects and an About page, where you describe yourself and your work (names/sections can vary, but that’s the general idea). Those of you who have work they’d like to showcase from other classes or personal projects are welcome to create a Photography or Audio page… or organize it entirely differently if there’s another system that works for you.
You might want to consider getting a nice professional-looking headshot taken for your bio page as long as you have your cameras. And make sure you proofread! I want to see a sentence or short paragraph introducing each of your projects, on the portfolio site if the template allows space for it as well as on the Vimeo page where the video is hosted.
It is recommended but not required for you to link the website to your own domain name. Most of the site builders listed above have basic options that will allow you to host your site for free if you have a ____.wordpress.com or a ____.weebly.com address; often your site will show up with advertisements unless you upgrade (the monthly fee varies). It’s up to you whether or not it’s worth it at this stage to pay for the more polished, professional-looking website that a personalized domain will give you. A domain name will usually run you about $10 a year and it’s fairly simple to link your portfolio site to it by going into the settings and making a few changes. Let me know if you run into any difficulty here and I’ll be happy to help you.
Video Pitch #2-
1)Haunted New York- A look into the ghost tour industry of New York City and how people get kicks and thrills from being scared.
2) A look into the lives of transgender high-school students and their plans for the future.
3) I am literally open to suggestions.
Jasmine Lewis- Video Pitch #2
Pitch:
Jay Upscale Marketing is a party promotion company that focusses on throwing events throughout NYC that gear more towards Caribbean culture. They have gone from promoting small-scale club events to gaining the support of several big-name artists from the Caribbean and becoming a trusted name for Caribbean events in NYC. The company has risen to throw much larger scale events in the past year, hosting Big Bad Soca during Trinidad Carnival and Trucked this past weekend in Queens, NY.
For the documentary, I wanted to interview the CEO and approach it from two directions. One is “a day in the life of a promoter” which is a job that has changed to become much more popular with the use of social media. I will follow what his job really entails on a day to day basis. The other approach will be the overall story of his company and the different steps he took to get where he is today.
I feel this story’s importance lies in the fact that Caribbean culture in NYC used to exist mainly during Labor Day weekend with the West Indian Day Parade. The efforts of this company, allows more people to experience the culture year round.
Possible Visuals: I will let the initial interview guide most of my visuals for this project. However, some ideas I have are:
- Following him for a day
- Meetings he may have
- Setting up venues for events
- Footage of events
Supportive interviews:
- Some of the people who work with the company to put on events. (ex. bottle girls, DJs, promoters)
- Partygoers who go to a lot of their events and enjoy them
- People from Caribbean islands who may have struggled with finding events that reflect their culture.
Jasmine- Painting The Rainforest
Class Agenda – Wednesday, March 28
DSLR Audio Workshop
DSLR cameras shoot gorgeous video, but they are pretty terrible when it comes to audio. They’re not built for capturing high-quality audio; even when you capture it with a decent mic and feed it directly into the camera, it will be compressed and not nearly as good as audio recorded separately on a Zoom, or some other sort of handheld mic, or with a lavalier mic. Which creates a whole other set of issues when it comes to syncing the audio in post. Fun times! Fortunately, there are a lot of creative solutions out there available at not TOO high of a price.
The Rode Videomic
One thing to be aware of with the Rode Videomic is that most Canon DSLRs with video capability register a pretty audible hiss if you use them with an external microphone in Auto and with the default settings in a quiet environment. This is because the camera has an automatic feature that increases the audio gain in a quiet setting because it’s essentially looking for sound.
With the Videomic Pro, there are recommended settings you can change manually to eliminate this hiss. Unfortunately, we have the Videomic Go, so this doesn’t apply to our equipment, but I still mention it because the Pro is an affordable and very common mic for videographers who are starting out.
By setting the Rode Videomic Pro’s dB switch to +20 and adjusting the manual sound level setting on the camera to about 20%, you can achieve a virtually hiss-free recording if you’re recording in Manual.
Still, don’t worry about the hiss too much. It’s great for low-fuss recording in situations where there might be a low level of background noise (outside with birds chirping, etc., on a street with a bit of traffic noise, etc.) and if you’re in a totally silent environment there’s a good chance you’re in a controlled environment like an office where it’ll be easier to use the lav mic anyway.
Using the Tascam
The Tascam allows you to record audio from multiple mics/sources at once. You can record that audio separately to be synced later or feed it directly into your camera to avoid having to sync it. There are good reasons why you may or may not want to do that.
If you’re feeding audio from multiple mics into the Tascam, it will record them separately which can help you in editing later, but when you’re monitoring it on your headphones each mono (single-channel) track will be combined into a stereo (multichannel) sound. The same goes for how the sound will appear in your camera if you feed it directly into the camera (and at a lower, more compressed quality to boot) meaning you will lose the ability to mix those multiple sources separately in post.
It will, however, allow you to avoid the often time-consuming process of syncing your high-quality audio with the clips filmed on your camera that are paired with the low-quality built-in audio.
You can sync audio within Premiere Pro using the Merge Clips feature (demonstrated below) which is a lot easier than trying to do it manually.
But even still, it can be a pain, especially when you consider that DSLR interviews are by necessity often broken into shorter clips than you might find with other video cameras (they can only record for about 12 minutes before they will stop recording automatically and you will need to begin a new clip).
So whether or not you decide to input the Tascam audio into the camera will depend on your individual needs for your project.
In-class exercise
Pick a partner and set up your cameras for an interview with the lavalier mic. Take turns interviewing each other about what you did on your snow day, recording on the Tascam while also feeding the audio into the camera. It only needs to be a minute or two. Upload your footage and your audio into a new Premiere Pro project, export it and submit it to me, either with Vimeo or via WeTransfer.
Remember to ask questions in a way that invites answers with complete sentences. The classic way to frame your talking heads is to place them on one of the thirds, angled so they’re slightly looking into frame but not directly at the camera (you can accomplish this by sitting/standing directly next to the camera and instructing them to look at you). Try for a background with some depth or visual interest to it, and make sure there’s some separation between the subject and the background.
Sometimes, though, filmmakers are breaking with that usual format for more stylized interviews, with the subject centered and looking directly into the camera, or some other creative framing. This is the sort of thing that should only be done if you have a very specific vision in mind and there are good reasons for it. Maybe the subject is an activist and is addressing viewers directly.
Remember that when you edit your interviews into a finished short doc, we should only see footage of the person speaking a fraction of the time. The rest of the time, there will be B-roll layered over their voice. The only times we need to actually see this talking head shot are 1) after they first start to speak, to establish who they are and what they look like, 2) any moments where the subject is being especially human: poignant, funny, tearful, and 3) if it’s been awhile (in video terms) since we’ve seen them and viewers are at risk of being unclear about who is speaking.
At some point you may be fortunate enough to be working on a crew with lighting technicians, but for now, focus on finding natural light to illuminate your subject.