So the student film program I am in provides a lot of opportunities for experiencing and learning both documentary film-making and film-making in general. I am learning so much. I finally get to take control of the camera and be in charge of a lot of things while shooting the film. The downside to that is that it is a bit overwhelming and the documentary often is too distracting to remember everything I need to do. For a quick rundown and explanation for all you non-Directors of Photography. Setting up a shot and while we are shooting I need to set and keep track of:

1. Focus- Making sure things are not blurry or at the least (on purpose) just the background is in focus.

2. White Balance- This is making sure the colors are okay depending on what kind of colors are in the shot and the brightness. This is easy and only requires me to hit a button and make sure it looks good.

3. Iris Size- This is probably one of the harder things to do and remember. I have to set the size of the opening on the iris which is the part of the camera that allows light to pass by the lens into the sensors. If it is too open, then the whites and lighter color get blown out, meaning they just become solid and there is no detail to it; not something one would want in most cases.

4. Sound Levels- This is the bar that shows how loud or soft the sound that’s being recorded is. I have to make sure that it isn’t too high (creating distortion) or too low (can’t hear it). Also to make sure there isn’t background noise. (See the list is pretty long)

5. Framing- What a cinematographer must do in any kind of shooting. Making sure the background and foreground look good, there is good spacing on the edges and within the frame. A must to make a film look good.

6. Lighting- Making sure the subjects and background have the correct lighting.

Our documentary is on a guy named Dirty Dan. He is a urban myth of sorts. We have done a lot of research and interestingly found a plethora of different stories. His looks, his mannerisms, even where is lives is different depending on who you here it from. We have decided to make the aim of our movie to be the search for this man while at the same time highlighting how interesting people can spark up imagination of people.

We are having a little trouble, at first all of our interviews had unusable sound. It is a mistake both on my part and the director’s part. We used the camera’s omni-mic, which means it picks up all the sound in an area around the camera. While filming interviews with people on the street, the mic picked up all the traffic sound which drowned out our interviews. At first it seemed like the end of the world, but we caught it in enough time that we could redo most of the interviews. In addition we are using the entire Adobe CS4 Suite (our main sponsor) which includes Adobe Sound Booth, where we could clean up a lot of the background noice. It works by taking an audio-print of the sound and removing the unwanted noise by isolating the sound and deleting it. Things way beyond the scope of my mind, but our editor will do her best. The other problem we ran into was all my fault, I would forget to fix something either because I was distracted or because I just didn’t have the experience. Luckily most of it can be fixed in post-production.

It is all a bit much to just be thrown into, but it is a trial by fire and I will come out of this knowing and being able to do so much more than I did before. I am so lucky. Thankfully, I am done with my part. There is no more shooting that needs to be done (unless a re-shoot is absolutely necessary). I plan to enjoy the rest of the festival and ski with an old bearded guy we met while making the movie. He is 62 and won a national bike race for his age group. He skis everyday of the winter and bikes everyday of the summer. He is my hero. His body is falling apart and he doesn’t even care. He does what he loves to do (He has over 100 pairs of skis and 20 bikes: he is amazing). I don’t think I will network much since I am still in school and don’t have any cards, though if I can, I will at least try. This year has been a completely different experience than last year and I am glad I got the opportunity and took it. I will post my movie, and if it’s good enough, maybe submit it to some other festivals. Wish me the best of luck!

Tags: cinematographaphy, cinematographer, DP, film, film-making, ideas, making, real, studio

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.