The Dollars and Sense anniversary event “Making It in Journalism Today” is coming up next Tuesday, May 7. It’s a great opportunity to hear from Baruch journalism alumni who are out there making careers out of what they learned here. (And yes, there will be food.)
Reminders
Starting on Wednesday, classes will again be dedicated to editing and production. If you need to use that time for additional shooting or are doing your editing elsewhere, that’s fine, but I will require your attendance on at least one of those days for a one-on-one check-in.
Final cuts of your docs, along with your whole portfolio site, are due on Monday the 13th by class time since we will need more than one class period to screen them all.
Don’t leave your portfolio websites and reels until the last minute. They are just as important to your grade as anything else you’re doing in this class. They should look polished and professional. If anyone is planning on linking their website to a custom domain, let me know now so I can help you with that.
First up: Checking in on docs, camera availability, possible collaborations.
Discussion:
Moving toward longer-form filmmaking
It’s an exciting time in the documentary filmmaking world, especially with streaming sites getting in on the game and producing and distributing so many buzzy, prestige, high-production-value feature-length docs and docu-series. Think about how many documentaries in recent months and years have been talked about around the dinner table: Leaving Neverland, the R Kelly documentary, Wild Wild Country, Abducted in Plain Sight, The Ted Bundy Tapes, Icarus (about Russian doping in the Olympics).
In this class, you have been learning to do things more or less “one-man-band” style. On a well-funded documentary project, there are more roles available: DP (director of photography), B camera operator, lighting technician, sound technician, producer, editor, etc. If you continue pursuing this field, you may find that there’s something in particular you are drawn to. Maybe you love shooting but hate editing, or vice versa. Maybe you’re a fantastic ideas person and extremely good with people and making things happen, but not as strong with the technical parts of filmmaking.
All that said, there are still plenty of documentary films out there being made by one person.
Cartel Land: A film made mostly by one guy filming alone for nine months.
“As someone who [is] a director and a producer, and also shoots themselves, it makes it a lot easier to just jump in because I don’t have to necessarily raise money,” Heineman told IndieWire in a panel discussion at the Sundance Film Festival, where his first film “Ghosts” premiered. “Canon was very supportive of me — [they] give me a camera to help shoot this, so it was very easy to just dive in and start making this.”
Feature-length documentary shot by one woman: First to Fall
While there seems to be no shortage of cursory stories from the front lines of recent Middle Eastern conflicts, filmmaker Rachel Beth Anderson decided to dig deeper. During the Libyan uprising the duo smartly embedded themselves not with emotionally inaccessible military units but with two Canadian students – friends who cast away their safe and secure western lives to take up arms in the fight to overthrow their homeland’s dictator. The resulting documentary “First to Fall” is an unflinching look not just into the struggle that would eventually oust Gaddafi, but a cinematic, exacting account of how war turns boys into men.
Lauren Wissot: So how did this doc come about in the first place? How did you meet Hamid and Tarek?
Rachel Beth Anderson: I had been living and working in Cairo as a journalist prior to the Arab Spring. When the Egyptian uprising began in 2011 I found myself filming my own friends as they turned from everyday civilians into revolutionaries. Their world as they’d known it was quickly consumed by protests, teargas, and risking their own livelihoods for the hope of a better future. I was fascinated by how quickly they rose to this “call to action,” never wavering as the danger increased, until the current dictator was removed and they were celebrating what they felt was a victory at the time.
It seemed natural to me that I should cover the next country, which happened to be Libya, where everyday people were rising up. Following the youth in Libya was an entirely different experience than in Egypt, because they weren’t just battling teargas, but were up against Gaddafi’s army who had turned his guns on his own people. Specifically, I found myself fascinated with stories such as that of my main protagonists, Libyan expatriates Hamid and Tarek. They were young men my age, studying at university like I did, living a free and comfortable life – and had felt it their personal duty to give up everything, travel thousands of miles, and go to war as untrained soldiers. I knew they would be the perfect individuals to help reach audiences beyond the borders of Libya. Tarek was incredibly sweet and he always felt it was his responsibility to help me tell the story of Libya, and Hamid had one of those strong and silent personalities that magnetized the other young fighters – everyone flocked to be around him. He took on the role of big brother to Tarek, and you could immediately tell there was something to take from these young men who idealistically wanted to create change as freedom fighters, but hadn’t yet considered the outcome.
How do these kinds of solo independent doc films get made, financially speaking?
Depends on the film. If it’s a passion project and the filmmaker has the access, equipment, and time, they might be able to do most of it themselves. Or the filmmaker may start off covering expenses themselves, and then once they have enough footage to show people, they cut together a “sizzle reel” and either crowd-fund it on something like Kickstarter, or they apply for grant funding, find a private donor, team up with a production company, etc.
For next class, I want you to watch a feature-length documentary (some ideas here and here) and do a little research into how it was made. Write a short (roughly 300 words) blog post about the film, giving your personal thoughts on the storytelling, some of the backstory of how it came together, and how it was received/any impact it made.
On Wednesday, we’ll be having another guest speaker. Next week both days will be devoted to production on your docs, so make sure to bring in whatever footage you have so we can start editing. Class isn’t mandatory on these days if your time can be better spent out filming.
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 you like. And write a good bio for your About page.
Some people choose to adopt a more formal tone, while others let a bit of their personality show through. Think about how you want to brand yourself.
Requirements for Final Portfolio and Reel
You’ll need at least three main pages on your site: a Video or Home page where we can view your projects, a Reel page, and an About page where you describe yourself and your work (names/sections can vary, but that’s the general idea). Some people put their contact info on this page, while others choose to have an entirely separate Contact page. 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’ll want a nice professional-looking headshot taken for your bio page, or a shot of you in action reporting. I recommend taking advantage of having your school cameras to do this. And please 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, because I don’t want to require any of you to pay a website subscription. 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.
Bearing in mind that since most of you don’t have a huge amount of material yet to work with, your reel doesn’t need to be very long. One minute long is plenty, and you should keep it under two minutes—basically you’re just taking your absolute best shots from everything you’ve ever filmed and cutting them together with music. Feel free to use this as an opportunity to showcase clips from old projects from past semesters as well.
Even if you don’t want to pay to subscribe to a site builder, it might be worth buying your preferred domain name sooner rather than later just to lock it down. (Depends on how common your name is.) Years ago it was somewhat more common to have some kind of creative website name, but that’s rare these days. I recommend using some version of your own name dot com because it will look the cleanest and most professional.
The process of linking a domain to a website varies slightly based on which ones you’re using, but if you are planning on doing this and having trouble following the instructions most sites provide on this, let me know and I can help walk you through it.
Today as we watch these short docs, I’d like you to pay attention to the following things and make notes so that you can refer to them when we discuss afterward:
Is there music? How is it used? How do you feel about the sound mixing in general?
How would you describe the filmmaker’s shooting style? (For instance, are there lots of slow-mo, lots of handheld shots, lots of close-ups?) What about their editing style? (Frenetic/fast-paced? Clever transitions? Slow/lingering/meditative?)
What is the pacing like? How does it serve the story?
How is the story structured? Are there different scenes/chapters? How many? Are there clear scenes or does it all flow together?
What kind of B-roll is there? Is some of it creative/thematic B-roll, rather than a more literal visual of what is being discussed?
Finally, ask yourself what went into the making of this doc. How do you think the filmmaker got access? How much trust was necessary in order to achieve the sense of intimacy the film conveys? How much time do you think they spent with their subjects? What challenges would they have had to contend with in their audio/mic setup?
In class today: Pitch workshop.
Wednesday: We’ll look at a selection of short docs for inspiration.
Rough cuts of your docs will be due on April 17, before we split for spring break. Final cuts, reels and portfolio websites will all be due May 13, which was originally scheduled to be the last day of class (now the last day of class is Wednesday the 15, thanks to the snow day). This will give us two days to get through screening everyone’s work.
We’ll be talking about how it went reporting your breaking news stories and then screening your footage and Instagram posts.
Reminders/announcements:
Wednesday will be another production day, a last chance to make edits on the final cuts of your visual poems. If you’ve already completed your visual poem, coming in to class is optional and you can use that time however you see fit: Get a head start on creating your portfolio website, maybe, or do some pre-reporting so you can get the ball rolling on your short doc.
Please note: Please create a new post on the blog clearly labelled as your final cut. Please have them posted by midnight on Wednesday.
Pitches for your second major edited video assignment are due on Monday the 25th. The assignment: a roughly 4-minute short documentary. For those of you who are interested in getting into broadcast and being on camera, you are welcome to do a narrated doc that included you doing a standup to camera; just bear in mind that this means you will be writing a script, which is an extra step; please talk to me if this is your plan so I can give you a timeline on that and give you edits before you record your narration.
Your doc should be character-driven and should be a story that you follow over time; that means it shouldn’t be something you can shoot all in one day. This assignment WILL be journalistic in nature, meaning you can’t stage things or simply use friends or family members as subjects.
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
Set up your cameras for an interview with the lavalier mic. Take turns interviewing each other about what you did on your snow day, first with the Tascam recording the audio separately and then with the Tascam feeding the audio into the camera. Make sure to start a new video clip when you switch recording methods. It only needs to be a minute or two. Upload your footage and your audio into a new Premiere Pro project and take a look at it. Sync the audio that was recorded separately using Merge Clips.
Most of the work we’ll be doing this semester is slower-paced video where you’ll have the ability to take your time to put together a thoughtful, carefully edited final product. But you might one day find yourself in a spot news or breaking news situation where you’re filing material throughout the day as you get it.
If you are working or stringing for a wire service, they will have a system for filing footage. You’ll need to file something called a dopesheet along with your video material. The dopesheet is basically a summary of what you’re sending them so they can see it all at a glance.
Here is an actual dopesheet I filed on a breaking news assignment; feel free to use it as a template. The trick with dopesheets is not only to transcribe your sound bites accurately; it’s to distill the main takeaway of the story, because the news outlets that subscribe to your wire need to know at a glance what the point of it is, why they should care, and why it’s worth them deciding to run it. So it does come back down to good writing. Think about what your nut graph would be.
The actual video file you’ll send them (I usually use WeTransfer, although some places may have another system in place, often via FTP) will be minimally edited, but the trick is that you have to work fast. You pull out soundbites, transcribe them, and cut together a sequence of your best B-roll. Then you put it all in one video project (sound bites first, then B-roll), export, and send. It will look something like this:
Discuss: What are some of the practical considerations you might want to keep in mind when covering a breaking news event?
Assignment:
At any point between now and March 13, you will cover a spot/breaking news story. You will file a video with at least two sound bites (from different interviews) and 45 seconds of sequenced B-roll, with accompanying dopesheet. The trick is that you must file it within 24 hours of wrapping your filming.
It’s up to you what you want to cover: one option is the Queens St. Patrick’s Day Parade which takes place on the first Saturday of March (I highly recommend this one over the big official parade in Manhattan; I covered that parade once and it was possibly my least favorite assignment of all time. I don’t want to be responsible for any of you quitting journalism).
In addition to the material you film with the school cameras, you will cover the story on social media. I’ve set up an Instagram account for our class where you will post at least one permanent photo and three Stories updates before you leave the scene. Password: studioh160
Brainstorm: Breaking news stories/events in the next few weeks.
Reminder: Bring your footage to class on Monday! We will be devoting both classes next week to in-class editing/production. You should be just about done with your rough cut by the end of Wednesday’s class. However, if you would like to hold off on posting it to the blog because you plan to make additional changes to your video outside of class, you may post or update it at any time before class the following Monday, when we will screen and workshop them together.
Movie rec. size: 1920×1080 and 30fps
Shutter speed: 1/60 (or multiples of 30, ie if it’s very low light you can go down to 1/30 or if it’s very bright you can go higher)
ISO: Remember that if you go much higher than 800 or 1600, the image will start to get grainy. Sometimes this can’t be avoided, but avoid it if you can.
Aperture: The lower the f-stop, the more light you’re letting in, and the more dramatic the depth of field.
White balance: You can use Auto White Balance (AWB) if you expect to be changing light temperatures mid-shot (following someone outdoors, for instance). Otherwise it’s best to set it manually.
Movie Servo AF: Disable if you want to be able to control focus manually, and set the button on the lens itself to Manual Focus (MF).
