It’s always entertaining to watch as an adult cartoons that I’d seen as a kid.  It can be very disappointing (which is why I’ll never re-watch the classic Speed Racer cartoons).  Sometimes, though, it’s fascinating: seeing all the little jokes and subtext that no child can decipher.  Chicken Little just blew me away.  Sure, it’s the story of Chicken Little, but the political overtones are huge.  Watch it and think about politics over the last 10 years, or the recent economic crisis (or any recent crisis).  It’s a good example of how we retell stories to teach ourselves, and how to make a clear political point using creative media.  (Thanks to 4HWW for reminding me of the cartoon).

Related posts:

1. Cartoon construction

My breakthrough this week was realizing that I don't have to stick to the chronology so dogmatically.  Near the end of the race, for example, there were a couple of days near during which the team was obsessed by the Brazilian team.  In the middle of this competitive push, the our crew chief had to leave the race because he couldn't get the time off for the full race from his boss.  I struggled with this in previous drafts - do I interrupt the whole Brazilian thing with Paul's exit, or do I pull that out, breaking the chronology but telling the story better?  Seems like an easy choice when I put it that way, but it took me a little while to realize the obvious. 

All of this is allowing me to keep the movie interesting while sticking to my The War Room inspired verite style I chose when I started this whole thing.  There's not a single interview or talking head in the War Room.  Being a documentary still photographer, I thought this would be a natural style for me to slide into.  Having done it, I've got to say, "Damn, it's hard!"  Watching War Room again, I see the subtlety of their work - it feels like you're a fly on the wall, watching events transpire in real time as Bill Clinton ran for office, but the filmmakers carefully rearranged events slightly.  Events are grouped to follow storylines, so that those stories play out without much distraction. 

So while I'm rearranging things, here's a little something to keep you busy.  It's the first 15 minutes of the movie - pretty much everything leading up to the start of the race.  I haven't shown this section in its entirety to anyone yet, so I'd love any feedback you have.  

First off, is it interesting?  If not, where do you tune out?

Second, is anything confusing or disorienting?  Do you feel you know what's going on in this and what this movie is about? 

Anything else stand out in your mind?  (good or bad)

Don't worry about the sound editing or color balance & such.  I'll do that once I've got the slicing & dicing done.

And for those, just joining us, here's the whole saga of me making this movie.

Related posts:

1. RAAM: a little distance is good
2. RAAM: editing the hardest race in the world
3. Camerawork and editing RAAM

No related posts.

Related posts:

1. When in doubt, shoot B-roll

I think I first noticed this when I was a kid, glued to this marvelous new invention called HBO. I clumsily tried to describe it in my Still vs Video posts. It’s the following quote from John Houston that really crystallized the idea for me:

‘

“To me, the perfect film is as though it were unwinding behind your eyes, and your eyes were projecting it themselves, so that you were seeing what you wished to see. Film is like thought. It’s the closest to thought process of any art.” (found on p. 60 Walter Murch’s, In the Blink of an Eye)

Thinking about this quote, I realized that I use a similar approach in my writing. My fiction writing style is spartan, as you can see in Natiki. I’ve never been comfortable writing flowery prose detailing every last scratch on the furniture or meditating on each shade of color. Most human beings don’t take in that much detail when they walk into the room. People tend to notice the details only when something draws their attention. I like to write fiction similarly — supplying details a little at a time as you’d notice them while invisibly following the protagonist around. If I do my job well, you don’t notice. The writing follows your thoughts just as in film.
(BTW: Walter Murch’s book goes into this mechanism in detail. It’s a fascinating read if you are interested in editing or just love movies).

Related posts:

1. Writing your way out of a rut
2. Video vs still photography, pt 2
3. My reading list

Related posts:

1. Camerawork and editing RAAM
2. RAAM: still cranking
3. Video vs still photography, pt 4

The first is an example of me being too worried about unmotivated camera movement. Because I didn’t want to move much for fear of distracting the viewer (or loosing possible actions that may come up), I didn’t creep around as the people shifted. Gradually the rider moves behind the inspector. It’s a really boring shot. Notice how much more interesting it feels when they step apart and accidentally give me an interesting composition. (Actually, the other reason I didn’t follow the people is because the tailgate of a minivan was inches from my head — if you watch carefully, you can see me clock myself with it).

Watch this one before I explain it:

This is another example of me being too chicken to move around a bit. We stare at the inspectors back for a long time — quite boring. But, this cameraman’s rigidity, though, lets us see another peculiarity that I call Alien Characters — people who you didn’t know existed until they start talking from off camera or suddenly appear from nowhere. It’s a bit unsettling; hence the need for an establishing shot ahead of time to show where you are and who’s there. Unfortunately, doing documentary work, you don’t always get a chance to do an establishing shot. Even if you do people often are moving around you — as in this case when two people crept up behind me who weren’t there when I started the camera.
(and don’t you just love that microphone boom…)

Related posts:

1. RAAM: editing the hardest race in the world
2. When in doubt, shoot B-roll
3. Video vs still photography, pt 4

When I’m shooting stills, I spend a lot of time simply watching. When I see an interesting moment, I lift my camera, wait for it, snap a few shots, then put my camera down and return to watching. I see another moment best shot from another spot, I move and snap a few more.
When shooting video, I can’t stand around so much. Remember that viewers expect me to show them all the key moments within a scene, leaving no gaps. I never get to put the camera down: I start rolling and continue watching — through the camera — to see what happens. I move and adapt from moment to moment, always rolling so as to not miss something. It can be exhausting because I’m shooting continuously. I’m watching, while keeping the camera interestingly framed, while listening intently to dialog for any cues for what’s coming next. I only put down the camera when it looks like there is no possibility of anything interesting happening.
The tricky part is figuring out what’s going to be interesting. A scene that took place while filming RAAM showed me how interesting scenes often begin with the most mundane moments.
The day before the start of the race, the RAAM bicyclists were required to register in person, and as usual, I came along to film it. The registration room was terrible for audio: concrete walls & floor, lots of people. It was hard to pick out one voice amongst the din, so I stopped shooting. The scene was mundane anyway — they were just shuffling papers, filling out forms. Everything was in order except the riders couldn’t find the insurance papers for the vehicles. Again, it seemed minor so I didn’t shoot it. But the minor problem became major as problems do. The racers couldn’t ride without the papers. A massive search of the registration area ensued as I finally started rolling. Tensions began to rise. One rider ran back to the motor home to get his wife who had organized the paperwork. She arrived, baby on her hip, out of breath, eyes wild in worry. She scanned the table, spotting a stack of papers. “Here they are!”, she declared. “Vehicle one, two, and three!” She dropped a bundle of paper before the official with each count. Later, another rider calmed the husband, still tense that anything was amiss: “Look, we’ve got three thousand miles to get mad at each other, let’s just stay calm and enjoy this.“
It’s an interesting scene that shows how nervous these guys were before the race. But, I didn’t get the first moment of the scene. “Where are your insurance papers?” “umm, I don’t know…” If you look at my footage, you’ll never know what they were arguing about or why it was a big deal. The scene is incomplete, and I’m not sure if I can use it. If I were shooting with a still camera, you wouldn’t have noticed the missing moment.
So, I started filming all the time. Often, I’d leave the camera rolling even when I put it down. Tape is cheap. Missing a moment is expensive. Driven by that temporal component I described in my last post, I knew I had to catch every salient moment of each scene. I had to be ready to shoot, always. In time, luckily, I started to develop my sense of when a trifle would become a catastrophe.

Camera movement is another temporal component that challenged me. Camera moves direct the viewer’s attention. I become very aware of this while filming. When I’m filming and see something coming that I want to shoot from somewhere else, I need to make a snap decision: Do I go ahead and move the camera, knowing that it will draw the viewer’s attention away from what’s going on? (but, if I’m lucky, it’ll draw their attention to something new). Or, cut filming and restart from a new position? Or, go ahead and move, planning to edit out the movement? Or, wait and hope something visually happens that makes my camera move natural (like the subject saying, “look — up in the sky!”)? Or, finally, I might decide that subject of the scene will return quickly to where I am, thus I’ll stay put, rolling. I have to make a decision like this every few seconds. With my still camera, I can just drop the camera and move. If it doesn’t work, I can jump back — nobody will ever see my waffling. It’s easier to experiment in stills.
Also, I’m filming people. I’d have a beautiful shot and someone in it would move, spoiling the composition. I can’t just move and re-frame simply because I think it’ll look better. The viewer will feel the camera move and expect the attention to shift. Unmotivated camera movement is what gives video that amateurish, home-movie feel. (Watch and you’ll see: Home movies are shot from the point of view of whoever holds the camera. Professional movies are shot from the point of view of the viewer. This is true even in a “Point-Of-View” shot: the camera may be the shark’s POV, but it’s really the audience’s POV of the shark’s POV).
At first, with all this weighing on my mind, I shot really wimpy compositions of people in conversation. Sometimes I’d frame on one person and listen for lull in the conversation to switch to the other person. The problem is that people don’t take turns when talking to each other. Conversation is overlapped and flowing. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for a break to cut on, so I’d end up watching one person for a whole conversation. Other times, I’d chicken out and shoot the pair from the side so I wouldn’t have to move as much. This is a really, really boring shot. Had I been using my still camera, I’d flit about, snapping shots and ignoring the conversation.
As with predicting interesting moments, I gradually got more comfortable with the flow of dialog and began letting my camera flow with the discussion. I realized that this is how I’d perceive the dialog had I been participating in it: I’d be standing there, looking back and forth, listening to each person. I composed more aggressively, re-framing in quick moves when it felt natural.

Related posts:

1. Video vs still photography, pt 3
2. Video vs still photography, pt 1
3. When in doubt, shoot B-roll

Think about the ways artists use composition to control your attention and mood: A photographer can set the focus to exactly what she wants you to look at first, and let the rest of the image go blurry. Or she might use a striking color on a bland background. Or she might use geometry, arranging the objects in the frame so your eyes fall where she wants them naturally. She can adjust the colors, lighting, and perspective to tune your mood: dark, grey, and moody, or bright and colorful. These are the tools that have been used from Da Vinci to LaChapelle.
Because video and film are temporal, filmmakers can use movement and time as a similar compositional element, for example in camera movement. When the camera pans away from a discussion to a closed door, we know someone’s going to come rough it. When a character throws a ball, the camera pans to see where it went. Camera movement is a little voice whispering, “look over here”. Filmmakers can use camera movement to draw your attention wherever they like. Additionally they can control the way it moves to set your moves: slow push-in for an intensely serious moment, jerkily erratic movement for confusion.
The temporal component has several effects that are subtle and psychological. For example, on several occasions, I’ve shown people a photo essay of mine, completely scrambling the order of the photographs each time I show it. I’ve found that people walk away with the same impression of the subject and same appreciation for the work regardless of the order of the images. They also don’t mind that some elements are missing. If I show a photo of people arguing, and another after they have resolved the matter, viewers feel satisfied. Viewers don’t need the photo of the beginning of the argument that shows what it was about. People fill in the gaps. In fact, with still photography, people expect to fill in the gaps.
But movies move, and as a result, I think people expect to have the gaps filled in for them. If I had shown you the same argument scene, this time as clips of video, again showing the argument and the resolution but omitting the beginning, you’d be confused or uninterested. You’d expect to be shown what it is about. That temporal component sets up a rhythm: this happened, then this, then this. If I leave out the beginning, middle, or end, it feels shoddy and incomplete.
I believe this rhythm forces the story to the foreground. With a photo essay, the story is abstract — the viewer creates the story themselves as they investigate the photos. With movies, the story is literal; the whole point of watching a movie is to see how a story unfolds. Think about it. If a friend told you about a photo show, you’d ask, “Did the show look good?” If a friend told you about a movie, you’d ask, “What was it about?”.
Why is this? Researchers have found that when a person watches another person, the watcher’s brain is stimulated almost exactly as if the watcher were doing the task themselves. That’s how we learn from others. Perhaps similarly, because movies move, we expect them to act more like real life — this happens, then this, then this — just as we experience real life. We expect each scene to have a beginning, middle, and end feel.
How you arrange those scenes, and how you show the elements of beginning, middle, and end is where the temporal component becomes a compositional component. Think of the movie Memento. It has a beginning, middle, and end feel, yet gives you the events of the story completely out of order. Compositionally, they played with the temporal aspect of the story timeline, yet it still follows the pattern of exposition, development, climax, denouement. The timeline of the audience and that of the story draw our attention towards the climax.
Watching a movie is like going on a tour — the audience moves through the landscape of the story. The director is your tour guide. While filming, his job is to be constantly aware of which scenes came before and after, and how the audience moves from moment to moment in the story. The feature film director places the camera and actors and directs everyone based on this awareness of time. The documentary filmmaker does all this on the fly, deciding where to point the camera, when to cut, and when to get extra reaction shots, all while the action unfolds in front of her. It’s much more improvisational. Either way, though, the director is doing the same thing: Using the traditional visual compositional elements as well as temporal elements, he shows you the story; “Look over there. Now over here.“
In the next post, I’ll describe how this temporal component affected my shooting.

Related posts:

1. Video vs still photography, pt 4
2. Video vs still photography, pt 1
3. Video vs still photography, pt 2

Still photographers, especially fine art photographers, have complete control of their image from beginning to end. They shoot it, process it, and create the final print themselves. The image doesn’t leave their hands until it is framed and ready to hang. Still photographers also have the luxury of much higher resolution, dynamic range, and time as they only work on a single image (see last post). All of this leads many photographers to be amazing control freaks.
I think Ansel Adam’s Zone system was the beginning of the Fanatical Photographers. These photographers work like meticulous scientists, using codified procedures to calibrate each piece of equipment their images pass through. At each step of their process, they measure the subtleties of their images using densitometers and colorimeters to extract every nuance of shade and color they possibly can. The truly fanatical spend as much time and money on their process as on making photos. When they look at a successful final image, they know that it is mathematically impossible to bring out any more detail, or to more accurately reproduce their vision. It’s all about end-to-end control.
This level of control is impossible in the world of video. Being a broadcast medium, the final image will appear on all manner of devices — from an iPod to a 9″ CRT to a finely-tuned RunCo projector. Without control of the device, videographers have very little control over their final image. (Unlike still photographers who can choose the exact sheet of paper they’ll print on). Further, the medium itself is inherently low quality thanks to the NTSC video standard (which is actually a hack from the 40s to add color to black and white TV), so even if they could control the output device, there’s little could do with that control.
Videographers, therefore, don’t attempt to create images with mathematical precision. Instead, they seek to create images that look great no matter what device shows the final image. Colors and tones must look good relative to each other, rather than meeting any absolute measurement like a step wedge. As a result, videographers tend to rely on their eyes more, asking “does it look right?” instead of “is the color accurate?” They don’t fall into the trap I see many still photographers fall into — so obsessed with details that they forget to look at the image as a whole. Videographers can stay focused on the aesthetic instead of the technical. I think this is very healthy — it’s the image that moves people, not the fact that you managed 7 zones of latitude.

Related posts:

1. Video vs still photography, pt 1
2. Video vs still photography, pt 3
3. Video vs still photography, pt 4