CV 9 Documentary Update 2/27

CV 9 Documentary Production Update:

Preface

For this week and next week, I will not be having huge progress on my documentary updates. This week and the following, I have been spending my time writing and preparing for Man Pageant. Because I knew that I'd have a lot of work these two weeks, I originally wrote down easy jobs for me to do this week in order to lighten my load. So, if you're wondering why my job this week was so simple, that is as I planned it. Anyway, for this week my goal was to review my script and storyboard, as well as getting in contact with my interviewees if I had any additional concerns. This was not a very long job, nor can I show progress on that too well, so I also wrote down extra information that I think will be useful to me in the creating of my documentary.

B-Roll Footage

After producing my On the Spot for Boys Wrestling, I learned that I could have done more with my B-Roll. Specifically, I could have more interesting shots with my interviewees and include more scripted visuals that aren't simply long shots looking around. So, I wrote down a quick list of extra shots that I can include in the filming of my documentary in order to add on to what I have to work with in my editing during the interview sections.

1. Shot of interviewee's leg kicking the ground fast
2. Shot of interviewee writing something down on a paper as if working
3. Shot of interviewee working on computer as if working
4. Shot of interviewee's backside towards the camera and interviewer (me)
5. Shot of interviewee on the phone as if they are working
6. Shot of interviewee in thought as if it was a flashback to them planning CV 9
7. Shot of interviewee standing (180 movement around) during their introduction
8. Shot of interviewee's hands together close-up
9. Shot of interviewees getting up and leaving at the end
10. Shot of interviewer (me) behind the camera, listening and watching

Investigation Post 2/27

Work Log

Monday:  N/A

Tuesday: Idea 1 Writing

Wednesday: Idea 1 Writing

Thursday: Idea 2 Writing

Friday: Idea 2 Writing

Brainstorming

This week, I spent some time brainstorming ideas for future films and stories that I think would be cool to make. I put some time and thought into the basic ideas, characters, and plot developments that could take over the course of them.

Themes: 

Idea 1: World where people's worth is determined by their "Value," a number that is publicly displayed on their chests (where their hearts are). Governmental taxes/money, social class, eligibility for public special positions, societal restrictions; everything is decided by someone's Value. How does the Value system work? It's simply the percentage of people that like you, including yourself.

A Plot is of a character who starts at the bottom, called a "Nothing," as he has a Value of 0 (meaning he does not like himself either). He is discriminated and hated on, as people assume that anyone below 60 Value is a bad person and deserves it.

- The Nothing meets someone by chance of luck. First episode ends with main character going from 0 to 0.001; 1/1000.

- By second or third episode the main character comes to value themself, raising their number slightly higher.

- Main character has a trait of desiring acceptance even if he doesn't think he deserves it.

B Plot of someone at the top: a celebrity with 96 Value. He starts as everyone else that high does: simply wanting a higher Value to be at the peak of human acceptance.

Police officer character who maybe experiences both worlds and their ugliness?

Ending with somehow the main character(s) breaking the system by no longer caring how others view them and only on how they values themselves. 

Major theme is that the worth (or value) of something can be measured two ways for someone, how others view it or how the person views it themself. Sometimes it's worthwhile to value something based on how others do, but it isn't always a good idea to do that.

Biggest issue is the actual plot of the show. Is it a political drama? A violent rebellion? Mystery of how the world/government got this way? Idk.

Idea 2: A man and a young girl (somewhere around 10) wander a post-apocalyptic world. The man says he wants to find his family, the girl wants to be safe.

Man wants nothing to do with the girl, but she needs someone to protect and is persistent with having the man keep her safe.

They develop a father/daughter bond.

Themes of family (not blood related). Both characters have backstories that relate to how they lost their families. The story ends with them finding new family.

The man deep down knows that he has lost his family (early on it's about accepting the fact), so his actual goal in "finding his family" is to bury them to bring closure.

The destruction of the world was within their lifetimes. When the world was reaching its destruction point, the man was unable to stop the calamity from taking his family. After accepting his own death, he saw the young girl and decided to protect her with what he thought were his dying breaths so that at least someone would be able to "carry on." However, obviously the two did not perish. There was essentially a time skip between when they were about to die and when they wake up.

Mystery of how the world came to be.

Slight talk about how society reacted to the politics of the impending calamity (similar to COVID polarization), really focusing on the unhelpful arguments that people go through when they hate on each other and associate political beliefs with quality of person. A person's value is greater than a group of their beliefs.

Man was from one side of the spectrum, the girl was from the other. This creates some of the tension.

CV 9 Documentary Update: 2/21

For this week, I went into week 2 of creating my story board. As of now, I believe I have storyboarded everything I need to. I'll need to separate my speaking shots from my silent shots, but aside from that my storyboard is ordered in which I should film in relation to where I am. Here is my completed storyboard for each shot based on my Two-Column Script.

Investigation Post 2/21

Work Log:

Monday: Finishing film

Tuesday: Brainstorming/Writing

Wednesday: Brainstorming/Writing

Thursday: Brainstorming/Writing

Music Video Brainstorming

Preface:

In my upcoming film, I will be shooting a music video with my friends. For this, I wanted to make something more than just a collection of the band members playing the song. I want to make a story or at least illustrate themes of friendship and close-bonds, and so I brainstormed how I could incorporate a basic story/setup into a music video. Instead of just having essentially B-Roll, I decided to have a progression of events. My goal here is to show the bonds that a group of friends develop through their high school days, trying to capture that nostalgia of hanging out with close friends and having careless fun. This bond will be played off of with the existence of the band itself, symbolizing their friendship in general. Below, I have general ideas of what can be includes with the band "The Visitors" as well as what should happen when.

https://unsplash.com/s/photos/music-video

Ideas:

• About them setting up a show
• Individual segments for each member, each doing their own thing
• More dynamic and wacky movements
• Footage of them playing from their garage concert and from THON Factor
• Scroll down of their Instagram page as it zooms out and rotates

https://cinema-friends.com/blogs/5-best-music-video-ideas

General Order of Events

• Garage
• First dimly lit and then garage door opens to start the song
• Them playing the song in the garage
• Them separated being relatively uninterested (school, job, home, etc.)
• Them meeting up at the first house
• Them playing video games
• Them in the house hanging around
• They look at the clock and start getting out
• When they get out, it's like they're moving a little fast
• One who was behind runs out
• Taking down equipment (possibly)
• Funny things happen
• The boys getting into a car (cuts of the them putting equipment into it)
• They shove it in as if it barely fits and call it good
• Them driving and having fun (POV from in the car probably from phone)
• On the way they get food
• Them arriving and setting up equipment
• Go back to them playing
• Once it's starts going off again the show is just about ready
• At the climax the show starts
• Lights turn on at this point
• Crowd enjoying show
• Juxtapose to them singing it earlier in the first location

While I'm Away Final

This is my finished film for While I'm Away

Summary of My Thoughts

I think this was a satisfactory project that does not have any real big issues with it. With my previous film, Divorce, I was fairly ambitious in what I wanted to accomplish. With this short film, I decided to play it more safe in terms of the difficulty of production and ambition of what I wanted to show in it. I wouldn't say it's amazing, but I don't really have any real problems with it either. I'm satisfied.

CV 9 Documentary Update 2/13

Storyboarding Week 1

For this week, I started the storyboarding of my CV 9 Documentary. It is important to note that I wrote down my storyboard in order of recording and not placing within the documentary. This means that I used the order I made from last week. I wrote down the speed at which I needed to do movements and in general any other information that I need when recording. 

This is what I have for my storyboards right now, and next week it will be done!

Investigation Post 2/13

Monday: Reviewing Footage for Film

Tuesday: CVTV OTS Review and Analysis

Wednesday: Media Encoder/Compression Research

Thursday: B-Roll Writing

Friday: Caption Writing

Various Things I've Learned Over the Last Week

Video Encoding

Ever since I've made my first film all the way back in 2019, I never understood what the point of media encoding was with our finished videos. Sure, we were told that we should encode things with the YouTube 720p preset, but that never necessarily meant anything to me. There were always options for other presets that were meant for other video websites, however I thought that they were all the same. If they said 720p, what was the difference between doing 720p for YouTube versus Facebook? Well, I have learned that there actually is a difference. When something goes through Adobe Media Encoder, it is being rendered, converted from an editing file to a video file, and compressed.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-0245-3_1

That idea of compression is the main difference here. Compression is essentially making the files go down to a lower size. Instead of having a 20gb video, Media Encoder works to maybe compress it down to a 13gb video. Those numbers were made up bit you get the idea. This works because of the bitrate that the files work with. Instead of having a thousand little pixels make up areas, the tiny pixels are grouped into slightly larger pixels. This is what makes the bitrate more manageable for the size of the file; things are becoming grouped together. This idea of compression is related to the bitrate of your file. The bitrate is how much information is present within your video at a time, meaning that a higher bitrate means more information for the computer to handle (specifically its bandwidth). Mike Leonard, a director, says that bitrate is essentially the depth of information in your file. Compression and bitrate is the difference between a 720p YouTube Media Encoder preset and a 720p Vimeo Media Encoder preset. While practically everything is the same for the two, YouTube tries to have a target bitrate of 16 Mbps (megabits per second which measures bandwidth) yet Vimeo has a target bitrate of 8 Mbps. That is the difference between the two Media Encoder Presets that seem like they should be the same.

B-Roll

Over the couples of weeks, I filmed and edited together an On the Spot for CVTV on the Boys Wrestling team.

https://metigy.com/metigy-learning/ok-so-what-are-some-good-examples-of-b-roll-footage/

While I learned a lot and it was a satisfactory project, there were still some things that I could have done better. One big thing that I could have focused on was a more diverse array of B-Roll footage. What I had was fine, but it could have been more. Even if I couldn't have gotten closer to the game to record better up-close footage, I could have added more creative shots to the work. I could have added scripted footage instead of just the game and just the one shot of the interview. An addition of a worm's eye shot of the interviewee walking past, a close up of the interviewee's hands as he speaks, or even a POV shot of walking through the doors to the gym all could have added to the professionalism of the On the Spot. Having B-Roll doesn't just mean having footage to cover the audio, it means having an equally good visual stimulus that keeps attention along with that interesting audio.

Text/Caption Borders (Safe Margins)

Example One, where the placement of text is not well within the Safe Margins

Another very useful bit of information I was given came from an element in film/video that I had never considered before: it's the placement of where your text goes. One thing I never knew is that text is actually supposed to be place within a specific area of the video. When placing text in a video, there is a border of two rectangles that the text should be placed within. There is a small rectangular box which would be considered the perfect area for your text to be, and a slightly bigger rectangle that is outside that perfect zone. That second rectangle is considered the very limit of where your text should go. In the video I made, my text was outside of that text. Because I didn't know that the borders that pop up when I make text in Premiere Pro meant, I just had my text go towards the corner. However, my text actually should have went a little more to the right and up to stay within at least that bigger rectangle.

Example Two, where the text is within the Safe Margins

CV 9 Documentary Update 2/6

Explanation

For this week, my job was to line up what I wanted to film when for my CV 9 Documentary. For this week, I went through all of the parts on my storyboard/outline and I figured out when I wanted to record each shot. If I did not do this, it would be very possible if I just went back and forth between rooms and shots in the school without a plan. It's also possible I 'd forget about something. So, I wrote down when I wanted to do each shot in chronological order of when I should be shooting, rather than when it would appear in the actual documentary. This saves a lot of time for me so I know what I'm recording when.

The List:

Order of Filming - Which shot

1- 14

2- 29

3- 30

4-28

5- 35

6-1

7-42

8-17

9-15

10-17

11-40

12-8

13-36

14-21

15-19

16-2

17-3

18-32

19-37

20-39

21-7

22-4

23-12

24-13

25-16

26-24

27-26

28-18

29-10

30-33

31-22

32-2

33-1

34-42

35-30

36-6

CVTV: Final Wrestling OTS

 

Reflection

Overall, I think the video went well. Some things I liked were how I was able to intersplice different responses from different interviewees together and make them seem like they were planned to be together. I am also happy with how I was able to correctly put clips showing what each person was talking about. I will say that I think it's a bit weird to only have the one person answer the points question, because I did not ask both of them the question of how a team scores, I could only use the 30 second long answer of one person.

Teleprompter:

Are you interested in learning how Boys Wrestling works here at CV? Here is an On the Spot by Sean Hopkins that dives into the world of our CV Boys Wrestling team.

Investigation Post 2/6

 Work Log:

Monday: Reviewing footage

Tuesday: Researching blog post

Wednesday: Researching for blog post

Thursday: Note taking

Friday: Note taking

Notes on Writing a Film About Loneliness:

While originally my film for this marking period was going to be a music video that focuses on the high school experience of the unforgettable memories and bonds that teenagers make together, I have to postpone that until next marking period due to the wishes of the band who I was going to do it with. Until then, I'll be saving my notes and ideas for the future while I now shift my attention to a new film I'm making: a film on loneliness and isolation. While my last one had elements of isolation, it dealt more with how one deals with the loss of someone important. This film is now putting the spotlight fully on ideas of loneliness. Here is what I've learned from researching portrayals of isolation in film and what I've learned from making one focused on loneliness myself.

I used this article as a place to get information on how to approach this type of film.

Notes:

• Silence is good, it leaves you with less to distract from an emptiness
• Use shots that linger on
• You can use big spaces that are empty
• You can also use small spaces that are confined, restricting, and/or cluttered
• With that, you can also zoom in on characters to restrict them within the actual frame of the shot, or use a framing-technique where most of the shot is cut off with almost only the character being visible.
• Obviously, have your character(s) do things alone, like eating, watching TV, or other day-to-day activities
• Things usually should be slowly paced
• You can have shots that contrast with the loneliness that a character is experiencing. They could witness a family walking their dog, or (quite on the nose) watch Friends on the TV by themselves.
• Having someone repeat the same lonely actions to show a passage of time reinforces that idea of indefinite loneliness, not just a temporary feeling of isolation
• Darker shots have things more blurry and shroud the shot 
• In terms of wardrobe, it's good to have bland and/or darker clothes
• It's hard to get interesting shots because rapid and cool movements are tough with a slow-paced film, composition and angles have to become the interesting part of shots.
• The idea of what you're trying to do is invite the viewer into the mind of the subject. You need to be able to have the viewers feel or at least empathize with those feelings of loneliness.
• Colors should be more muted and having a tint of blue isn't a bad idea.