I served as one of 6 coaches for the UNC-Chapel Hill hosted project Andaman Rising. I helped three students develop their videos. It was one of the first times I’ve been asked to coach in a somewhat academic setting, and I can’t say how much I learned from teaching. Actually, it was mostly asking them the right questions, and then was blown away by the answers ‘my’ students came up with. The pieces I helped coach were Robed In Merit, A Good Son Forever and Anchored In Faith.
One afternoon during the 3-week project at Khao Lak Resort outside Phuket, Thailand, I watched a video tutorial by Larry Jordan about the “film look” and he dispelled the notion that it’s all about 24p, which is what most of the conversations about attaining the ‘film look’ are about. He said what will really get you a film look is to: 1. don’t wash out your highlights. no ‘zebra stripes’. 2. keep a narrow depth of field.
After hearing that, I picked up the camera and started walking around the small “tree house” that served as our editing room. It had windows on all sides. So I made it my visual playground and started taking 10-sec clips of anything. playing with light, keeping things zoomed, trying new angles. doing manual focus moves. I didn’t even have an edited piece in mind. I was just rolling tape, playing around, experimenting. A few things I discovered in the process, coming from a still photography background: most good cinematography is largely telephoto, shot from far away, and compressed, and is much more zoomed in. Part of the reason is that when dealing solely with sequenced shots, you don’t have to get ‘all the information’ in one shot. You build the information linearly through 3-4 shots that build mood. I’m still learning and playing with this…
The next day, I took out the camera for the closest ’spot news’ event we were going to cover, which was a tsunami evacuation drill that is done twice a year to test all the new equipment and routes in the area. The locals were going to run down the street at the sound of the alarm, and all the students would be running and moving with them. I figured it would be a good day to get the students in action, so I shot a little of that too.
And without much more effort, I slapped some of these clips together, added a few freeze frames of their movies, and then did some low-light shots on the beach, and wala, a little piece that helps give a sense of place and mood as the Andaman Rising project came together.
Forgot. If you use music, especially good music, give rightful credit. Even if it’s a slideshow for class. I checked the Sigur Ros website, and in their FAQ they say using their tunes for small stuff like this is cool…
October 31st, 2008 at 10:10 am
Dude, why do you have to be such a baller? You make the rest of us look bad
Miss you, brother.