I attempted the impossible: making a funny video. I thought, in my hubris, that I could do what no other could, that a video I produced would actually be comically viable for people other than myself. Naturally, I suffered the consequences of the dawning realization that few others would like the video half as much as I do. Well, so be it. It all began when my friends told me I should make a video about crawlspaces at the high school. I said, "Anything we thing is funny or interesting really is neither funny nor interesting to anyone else". But they convinced me. They asked around, found others who also dug the idea. I asked around, found that more people liked crawl spaces than I had anticipated. Thus, I acquiesced to making a mockumentary about one person's search for the school crawl spaces which ends in them discovering an eldrich horror underneath the school. At first, things were going very well. Mr. Brandon Hearn, a school janitor, very kindly met with us before school in the morning to open up some crawlspaces and let us do filming. I must say, the filming went spectacularly. We shot the final scene, and got a truly hilarious sequence wherein my friend Gabe, dressed as a film noir detective, opens up a literal trap door a a crawlspace to reveal my friend Ben crawling on the ground and making weird wailing whale noises. Additionally, we got to actually go down there, and discovered that it's actually really cool down there. There's a giant subterranean expanse, about five feet high, with a rock bottom, no walls, and piping and darkness as far as the eye can see. I'm kicking myself becauseI forgot to snap a photo as we were pressed for time. However, this initial success proved to be misleading. None of the other scene are as funny. We tried; I asked my friend, and one interviewee, to improvise the goofiest stuff they could think of, but being very funny on video is surprisingly difficult. Well, live and learn. Now I know why making funny content is much harder than making serous content. It's just a unique talent that most people don't have and don't learn. However, I do think I did fairly well. My friend (who also acted in the video) rated it about 7/10 for entertainment, which I would say it fairly accurate. But that's enough needless self-criticism. That's also unfair to all the people who I personally think were very funny in the video. I suppose in my haste to criticize my own work, I forget that I criticize my friends as well. Anyway, the technical aspects went fairly well. I learned how to use a boom microphone, which was a lot of fun, and although it picks up a lot of static, that really helped add to the grungy, found footage vibe I was going for. All the sequences are shot as continuous shots to add to his idea that nothing was scripted or story-boarded. Most of the interviews had good composition, although I accidentally had the camera too low on one in particular. I'll just pretend that its low angle was to add drama to the scene. The lighting, focus and sound was solid or very good throughout. However, I think if I were to do it again, I would just do a short film and abandon the whole mockumentary thing. I think it urned into more of a liability as I had to straddle two radically different ideas. But it was a lot of fun. Who knew there really was a whole realm underneath the school? Now if only I knew what the heck is down there...
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I'm going a little bonkers at this point. Not one but two of my initial ideas came to nothing. One teacher I hoped to interview respectfully declined on account of the awful tragedies which befell her recently. Then, my idea to interview Peter Shank about one of his projects also fell short when I discovered that he felt unready to share the details, as the project was still in its infancy. Obviously, I don't blame either person; they are both kind people who declined for good reasons. I merely lament the fickle fancies of fate which forced me to adopt a third idea at the last minute. Fortunately, this final idea worked out surprisingly well. I decided to produce a promotional video for the Ladue Lexus Eco Challenge Team, which I am a part of. If you're curious about what the heck Lexus Eco Challenge is (after all, while would a car company care about the environment?) then look no further than my videos page. Anyway, that presented a new challenge, for I had to film the team's activities in real time as they moved around, so I didn't have the usual luxury of setting up a tripod and carefully designing shots. I must say, that was a lot of fun. I had problems with camera shake, but the shaking wasn't terrible, and I got a lot of B-roll which appeared uniquely organic on account of how candid the shots were. It was very funny to go through the footage afterward, and see recordings from where I was rolling but not focusing on anything in particular, which produced trippy, psychadelic footage. Ultimately, I ended up having to redo some B-roll of the soil erosion outside the school because my original footage was just too shaky. Because I had a time crunch, I filmed this second B-roll just half an hour before finishing the project. Below, I've attached a photo which I view as especially notorious because it represents a shot that I forgot to replicate when I went out to reshoot footage. As such, I had to run out to get the shot pictured below (which is then a third attempt) and returned with only twenty minutes left to finish. Anyway, I have to say that I messed up terribly when I went to interview the people in Lexus Eco Challenge. That day, I did four interviews: I straight-up forgot to record one, another didn't have any sound because I forgot to turn on the microphone, a third was out of focus and had awful lighting, and the fourth was the only good one. I think I just got nervous at the time, and so made a lot of stupid mistakes. I've got to remembers to chill out more next time. Fortunately, I was able to redo the third, out-of-focus one, leaving me with two good interviews to use for my video. My sincerest apologies to the two people who were kind enough to sit for an interview, but whose words are lost forever on account of my errors. On the bright side, I finally succeeded in producing a little promo video, which is, in my option, pretty good for something I whipped up in one week. On the other hand, the whole last week thing is probably indicative of deeper problems, but I like to think that these deeper problems are not today's problems: rather, they are next month's problems.
Broadcast Tech II begins! It's a new year, a new semester, and new challenges. My big project for the last month has been a news piece about my high school's energy and resource consumption (you'll be able to watch it here). I must say, it is far more difficult now that I have to actually produce news stories instead of just learning how to shoot videos. For example, in my beloved "At road's end, we rest alone" video, I was able to do all the writing, editing, and most of the shooting alone, and I only needed help from one friend for filming. Now, I have to set up interviews with other people who have busy lives and cool, busy jobs, which is more logistically difficult. Additionally, in pursuit of my environmental impact report, I found myself chasing numbers and statistics which are surprisingly hard to obtain. Fortunately, Mr. Mike Noonan, head of district facilities, was extraordinarily kind and researched all the necessary information for our interview. Additionally, Ms. Sue Blumm, head of the school lunch program, was kind enough to invite the Regional Dietician for Chartwells over for an interview. However, all these above-and-beyond actions from my correspondents showed me just how difficult obtaining actual information is. As a side note, I ended up getting too much information to condense into one news video. Thus, the interview with the Chartwells dietician wasn't used for this video, but rest assured, down the line, I will create a fascinating video about where the school sources its food. Anyway, another challenge I faced was now that I was interviewing people I had never met before, I was a bit nervous, and very afraid to waste their time. Tragically, this lead to me forgetting to focus the camera during my interview with Mr. Noonan. The focus isn't too bad, but it certainly isn't a mistake I intend to repeat. I also accidentally left my SD card in a camera which someone else checked out, so I had to shoot B-Roll on a different, unnamed SD card. Being unnamed, I never found it again, and so lost some of my precious B-Roll. I can't help but conclude that right now, I am very, very rusty. On the bright side, both the interview subjects were articulate and informative, and I was able to film a lot of great information. I had some difficulty finding the right B-Roll to fit Mr. Noonan's words, but ultimately, I think I succeeded in communicating Ladue's environmental impact in easy-to-understand statistics. Overall, I think its a great start to what will hopefully be a successful semester!
After taking Broadcast Tech I for a semester, I can easily say that it has been an awesome class. First, I loved doing shooting for the projects outside of school because it was very fun to apply the techniques we learned out in the world. I also liked having the freedom of being able to use all those cool techniques outside of a grey, fluorescent-lit classroom. On that note, I didn't like practicing in the classroom as much because the grey and the lighting aren't very photogenic, so it seemed we could never really get good, beautiful footage in the classroom. My favorite project was easily the Six-Word Story because I loved using film techniques in a purely narrative setting. It was just so much fun to try to show characters and themes using only a camera. If I could do anything differently, I would have loved a little more guidance on the interview project. Looking back, I think I ran into problems (such as trying to cover too much content in too little time) that could have been avoided with a little more teacher oversight. Then again, that might just be an inevitable part of learning. I would love to take Broadcast Tech II because I had a lot of fun in this class, and I'm sure it would be great to move on to more advanced techniques. My final comment would be that I wish I could have worked on the interview more, but I unfortunately ran out of time. Thank you so much for teaching us, Mr. Goble.
Well, I have finally completed the interview from my last post with additional footage and everything. This additional footage, called B-Roll, is video that my partner shot around Mr. Shank's house before, during, and after the interview. The big lesson from our B-Roll experience is to ALWAYS CHECK EQUIPMENT BEFOREHAND. Our camera ran out of battery after doing most of the interview, so we had get all the B-Roll on a phone. It turned put surprisingly well, but it was still shakier than would be ideal. Also, more tragically, we lost an great part of the interview because of the battery issue. Mr. Shank told an epic story about how the police raided his house and threatened to arrest him for possessing adult images (the images, of course, being naked people in his paintings). Unfortunately, the story was cut off due to battery problems, and isn't in the final interview. On.a happier note, I got to practice putting the B-Roll with the interview itself. Mr. Goble taught us how to use FinalCutPro to overlay one video over another so that you can show images from one while keeping the audio from the other. Furthermore, we learned about smoothly going from one B-Roll video to another without cutting back to the interview, which would be choppy, and we learned about using video sequences (like the one from my Camera Shooting and Final Cut Pro Editing post) to show the B-Roll in a logical way. Unfortunately, I was very rushed toward the end to finish to final interview, so the end product is not quite what I hoped for. I tried my best to use the B-Roll to show what Mr. Shank was talking about and to have each shot make sense with relation to the last shot, with mixed success. I had a particularly hard time trying to find copyright-free images of the Stonewall Riots, so the images I could find aren't the ideal reoslution. On the other hand, I still enjoyed practicing using the images to show, rather than tell, the Mr. Shank's story. You can see the final Humans of Ladue video here.
I just finished editing my first ever interview! It was quite something. My partner and I decided to interview an artist I know named Peter Shank. Before actually conducting the interview, we studied the process in class. Compositionally, the subject sits so their eyes line up with an upper third intersection of the imaginary Rule of Third Grid, which draws attention to their face. Additionally, they face toward the empty space in the shot, which allows the viewer to see them in an open, relaxed way. Furthermore, the camera points over the interviewer's shoulder at an angle so that the interviewee doesn't look directly into the camera, and the interviewer isn't in the shot. Finally, Mr Goble taught us that the best questions are open-ended, and allow the interviewee to die a long explanation. All of these lesson seem obvious now, but I never would have known them if Mr. Goble hadn't shown us. Before the interview even started, I realized that one should schedule far in advance, a lesson I unfortunately learned as I tried to move my interview time the day it was going to happen. Fortunately, Mr. Shank was extraordinarily kind and flexible, which highlights a second lesson: always try to interview someone friendly if you don't have much experience. That way, they're more likely to forgive your first-time mistakes. When I conducted the interview (I was the interviewer, my partner was the cameraman), I discovered that the subject tells the story, and that the interview should go wherever they want. In fact, I only asked around five questions the entire time. Finally, I learned that it is to best be courteous but unafraid to make requests. After all, you know what format of footage you can use and how to get it, but the subject probably doesn't. After reviewing the footage, I wish I could have been a little more conscientious at times, and that I could have requested that Mr. Shank do certain things differently. For example, I noticed that he kept gazing off towards the camera when he talked, so I should have either changed the camera angle of asked him to gaze the other way. However, all over all, I'm very happy with how the interview came out and very grateful to Mr. Shank for his time and his story. See the video here.
That cryptic little title is also the entire narrative for my recently-finished six-word-story (which can be viewed on my videos page). I was inspired by a philosophical question a depressed friend once posed to me: "What's the point of living if we die alone?" Unable to get my mind off it, I decided to write a six-shot movie based on someone who lives that worldivew. The morbid story follows someone in an overcoat who wanders to the end of the road, says goodbye, and collapses at the center of the road, only to be hit by a passing car. The first shot is a medium tracking shot that follows the lower half of the overcoat-wearer as they walk to an empty road and pull out a phone. This establishes the protagonist as an unknown person (whose face we'll never see) wandering toward a large road at dusk. The second shot is a canted extreme close-up on that phone, where the protagonist and a contact named Orion have sent back-and-forth messages of the word "good bye." This reveals the protagonist's inner workings, and helps establish their motive; the canted nature also helps foreshadow that something is very off. The third shot is a canted medium close-up which shows the waist of the protagonist as they walk across the screen, put the phone into their pocket, and walk farther down the road. This shot is again canted to continue to show conflict, while the movement helps transition the story from the opening exposition to the final action. The fourth is a canted (this time canted the other way) full shot that shows the shadow of someone in a long coat first falling to their knees, then falling down. This allows the viewer to see the full body movement of the protagonist without revealing their face, while the slanted shadows convey that this is a very disturbing action. The fifth scene is an establishing shot that shows a car driving rapidly toward the camera. The almost contract-dolly-like effect of the shot dramatizes the peril now befalling the protagonist. The final shot is an extreme high-angle close-up of the ground that shows a dark red fluid spilling across the scene. The bloody special effects end the story and the unfortunate fellow's life. The audio throughout is the sound from each clip overlaid with natural car sounds recorded on-site and a dark drone ambient sound from Final Cut Pro. Where the natural sound was obtrusive, I would mute it. I also added in a hollow thump sound effect from Final Cut Pro to represent the car's impact. For visuals, I used the editing software to reduce all the shots' exposures to make daytime footage seem like it was shot in low light. I also added in the six words throughout the story, with the first three words at shot 1, the next two words at shot 3, and the final word at shot 4. I had a devil of a time trying to film this entire thing because I didn't't know the limits of night-time filming at first. I initially shot the entire thing one hour after sunset, then had to reshoot everything at a later date because the footage was too grainy. Ultimately, I'm very happy with the final product, although there are a few things I would like to alter. Most notably, I would like to put the six word story on the phone and have it replace the "good bye" and the text. Also, I would like to reshoot the third shot to end exposure problems and make his actions more clear. All-over-all, though, I had an awesome time and learned a ton about filming.
I just researched the six-word story! The legend goes that the six-word story began when famed American author Ernest Hemingway made a bet with a group of writers over lunch that he could write a full story in six words. He collected his winnings with the following: "For sale, Baby shoes, Never Worn." (http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/the-urban-legend-of-ernest-hemingways-six-word-story.html). Although the validity of this story is questionable, it has nonetheless created to the tradition of writing an entire story in six, precise words. Now, professional author, ordinary internet-users, and famed celebrities alike write six-word stories, ranging from memoirs to dark statements to inappropriate jokes. Here follows a few examples of six word stories:
We just learned about how to operate a camera, how to shoot a basic video, and how to use Final Cut Pro! First, when operating the camera I learned all the basics of setting up the camera and activating it. I also learned which buttons to use to white balance and to adjust the iris, two functions I didn't even know video cameras possessed. Additionally, I practiced shooting wide shots (feet to head/entire scene shown), medium shots (waist up or a similar-sized area), and close-up shots (head only). Then, Mr. Goble introduced us to Final Cut Pro, a video-editing software. On it, I first learned how to add generator (title screens) to the beginning and end, and how to add music to a clip. Then, my partner Collin Clark and I shot a basic six shot sequence that Mr. Goble showed us: wide shot, medium, close-up, close-up, extreme close-up, and wide. We chose to shoot me playing a video game, with Collin doing some very excellent on-the-ground cinematography to get the footage. I then learned how to edit this footage in Final Cut Pro. I first added video and audio transitions, and I then edited the audio and video to make it more presentable. Thus, in conclusion, I learned all the fundamental of shooting and editing a video sequence.
I am happy to say that after trying every role in the TV studio, I have learned quite a few lessons about working the studio. Firstly, I practiced projecting my voice and siting up straight as the anchor. Later, I learned how to carefully listen to commands from the director and relay them to everyone in the studio as floor director. As cameraman, I learned how to balance the shot to incorporate symmetry and adequate space into the shot. When it was my turn to operate the soundboard, I was taught how to rapidly turn up and down the volume and judge the sound solely by ear. As tech director, I learned the technique of preparing media to play so I could easily play it precisely on the director's command. Finally, as director, I learned how to coordinate and command everyone's activities to run the entire production. I have to say, my favorite as probably director, simply because it was the hardest and most interesting. But ultimately, I was happy to learn all the different lessons of the TV studio.
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November 2018
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