An RMIT media student reflecting and blogging on her experiences at uni, on making and learning.

Well, yesterday we had our interview with Texta, and the day before we interviewed Hazel. I feel both went really well. I’m sitting in the edit suites watching the rushes right now, and they both sound good (nice and clear) and they both looked good visually. Hazels was in a studio, but we went to Texta’s home to film hers (as she was our main interviewee, we wanted her to feel as comfortable as possible – it was more convenient for her to be filmed at her house). Alene and I walked in and immediately turned to each other to say ‘Her house is so cool!’ We wanted to film everything, but the interview was the main thing we had to turn to. As we only had dedo’s with us for lighting, we set up the interview in the kitchen, near a window to utilise the natural light. Texta had told us previously she was worried about the light, and it was a little troublesome. The sun kept scooting behind the clouds (or more accurately, the clouds in front of the sun) and the dedo was only good for fill/backlight, but while we were having a heart attack everytime the light changed at the time, the footage looks nice in retrospect. Alene also had a little difficulty moving around the kitchen, because it was a narrow space, but again, the rushes look fine.

Hazel’s interview was set up in a studio at RMIT with a black curtain, and we used a kino and a dedo. I think it looks quite effective with the black curtain backdrop and this is where we plan to film the rest of our interviews. We have the studio booked for the weekend of the 1st and 2nd of October. We may be cutting it a little fine in terms of getting a fine cut ready for week 12, but we intend to get as much b-roll as possible before then, and possibly some interviews if we can squeeze them in. Alene also took some b-roll of Melbourne and China town a few nights ago. WE HAVE THINGS WE CAN TURN INTO A DOCO! I’M HAPPY!

Weeeell……We are up to date with the number of articles that we require (I think we may even be one ahead). I have an idea for another that I could possibly do while we wait for a couple of our twitter followers to reply to our tweets asking them to submit something.

Our last article was an interview with fellow Facebook page and food blogger Anthony, of Anthony’s Italian Recipes Just Like Grandma Used to Make. It’s a pretty in depth interview with him, thanks to Michael for organising that, and to Carmen for getting it all prettified on the Tumblr. We had some issues getting it up on Tumblr in the beginning so that it was all the right size, but it’s there now, so I suggest to anyone who comes across this, to go take a look. We have 29 followers as of this date on our Twitter account and 31 likes on Facebook – not as prolific as we would have hoped. The problem I’m finding on Twitter is that the people I follow, or the people who follow us are already in tight-knit communities of their own, and while they communicate frequently with one or two of their Twitter ‘friends’ (maybe they know each other in real life, I’m not sure) it takes a bit more doing to start retweeting and replying to people they don’t know. Some of them just ignore me completely when I tweet @them. Others ignore everyone completely and just repeatedly post links to their own content (to my mind, these people are spamming and their posts are starting to annoy me). However, there are a few who are promising (these are the ones I tweeted at asking for content, as I said above).

At RMITV I’m getting some more experience/knowledge of the social network phenomena/fact of life. Studio A has a new segment this season, in which we ask a social media question at the start of the show, and ask us to tweet answers during the show. We come back to it at the end. Last weeks question was ‘What should be the name of Beyonce and Jay-Z’s baby?’ The question is posted a couple of hours before the show, so we have time for some good responses. Now, I’m not the online producer, I’m just a humble camera op, but I will say this: Follow the twitter account ladies and gents and get involved!

Have to remember to calm down. We have an interview scheduled for today, and our main interviewee/subject, Texta, is scheduled for tomorrow. It’s all going to be fine. However, I’m once again reminded of how nerve-wracking documentaries are. I’m far more nervous than when we made our short drama/fiction last semester. On the other hand, I have an idea for my own documentary growing in my head. Gah!

In…..

…and out….

We will produce a documentary. I think we made the mistake of being complacent at the start of the semester. 12 weeks seemed a lot of time. Now it’s week eight and we were freaking out a little today. I don’t think any single one of us is to blame for that. It was the responsibility of all of us to remind each other and keep each other moving. However, trying to look positively, we have an interview prepared for Monday. Alene is out shooting some B-roll tonight. We have a shot list of ‘performative’ stuff taking shape. A weekend booked on the first and second of October. In between now and then we will be recording Texta’s interview whenever she is available. She is the main one I’d like to interview. Once we have her, I think we’ll have our documentary, whatever else happens.

Also, is it a sign of my frame of mind if I hear this cacophony of crows calling outside and I immediately run out the door in my socks to record them?

As I type this, I’m watching a television wildlife documentary called ‘Ocean Giants’, narrated by Stephen Fry and about, as the name might suggest, whales and a group of cameramen who go searching for them to film them. At one point, they go looking for Blue Whales, the largest mammal in the world, which they’ve never been able to film before, and they manage to get some brief glimpses of them. Members of research teams accompany them too, trying to make sense of the whale behaviour.

What kind of documentary on whales wouldn’t be complete without whale song?

Of course, there was some absolutely amazing footage of, what I think are, these absolutely amazing creatures. But without the sounds of the whale, the subtle movements of the underwater currents, the splashes as they breach, slapping their flukes on the surface of the water, this doco would have lacked a sense of depth. It would have been much more difficult to for the audience to immerse themselves in the doco, and really enter that world.

The use of sound in documentary is just as deliberate as the use of sound in fiction films. I’ve long since known of the importance of sound in creating an atmosphere or mood, and after today’s lecture my mind was buzzing with ideas for sound in our doco, particularly in regards to the use of silence. Sometimes silence can have just as much impact as a scene with lots of noise or music. I like the idea of alternating sound and image.

To finish off the lecture, we were played a excerpt from Chris Watson and David Attenborough in conversation. Chris Watson is D. A ’s sound recordist – he gets all the amazing sounds to go with the footage we see Attenborough’s series. The sounds that he has been able to capture over the years are absolutely amazing. When excerpts were played, Watson and Attenborough would turn the lights down, allowing the audience to totally immerse themselves in the soundscape. I myself closed my eyes to better hear/feel the effects.

Just my random/brief/slightly disconnected lecture notes for this week.

Commercial enterprise in social media.

Social media as an exchange of information “If they engage with you, you will engage with them.”

5 steps for setting up your social media programme:

- Consider the questions that people will ask. Think of these questions up front. Be frank. Be sincere about your objectives and missions.

- Become a lurker. Comment on other peoples blogs. Look around. You want people to read your stuff.

- Do a credit check. Sheer number of social media sites/opportunities to engage. Delegating jobs/tasks.

- Don’t be afraid of commitment. Depth. Engagement – simplest, least risky way to think about social media. Eg, twitter feeds built on exchange. Participation – get people to participate in what you make. Co-creation – risky, time-consuming. If you have people to engage, and a broad community, with many participants who exchange meaningfully – then you can be certain that you’ll co-create.

- Get nightlife working for you. Twitter has a life-span of 1 1/2 minutes? Keep in mind overseas timezones? 12 hour block….Schedule tweets.

Establishing your own blog is a good way to gain followers.

Look for top bloggers/twitterers in your field. What are they doing? Research – don’t go for a ’scattergun’ approach. Target the right people.

List posting.

Not just there to sell a product – there to generate a discussion.

Competitions?

Check out Anthill (online magazine)

Podcasts are good. (Maybe our group could do a podcast?)

E-newsletters.

On Wednesday, Alene, Celine and I met up with a guy called Jonathan to have a coffee and do a kind of pre-lim interview for our doco. He was a friend of a friend of Alene’s and we arranged to meet him at Fed Square. Celine and I got there first, and we soon realised we had no idea what he looked like and didn’t know how to recognise him. I was fiddling with the recording levels on the H2 zoom I’d brought and Celine was just about to message Alene for Jonathan’s number when a guy walked past on his phone saying ‘Hey Alene, it’s Jonathan’ – Celine leapt up to catch him so fast I’d barely had time to register he was our interviewee. When Alene got there we headed off to a little cafe to have our ‘interview’ with him. He was friendly and happy to answer questions. He was quite positive about his experiences and said that even though he was aware of racism existing, he hadn’t had  a lot of experience with it personally. I have a half hour recording on my computer right now, waiting to be (possibly) cut down. There was a lot of background noise in the cafe, so while what Jonathan said was really worthwhile I thought, we might not be able to use it. Still, he seems like he’d be happy to talk to us again on camera if we decide we’d like to.

My main concern now is that we nail down what we want for the visual aspect of our documentary – audio is fine and obviously quite important, but if we want to have this performative then we need to get that out of the way ASAP. We should probably pick a weekend to film the visuals we need (minus an interview footage, we are arranging those around the availabilities of our subjects) and just go and do it! Still, I feel much more calm knowing we have Jonathan on board and some form of content actually recorded.

Alene made the note that some of the questions that we asked were a little bit leading – we want to try and stay as neutral as possible (difficult as it may be at times – I didn’t really notice,  focused as I was on the Jonathan’s answers). I suppose this relates to the whole ethical dilemma that we could possibly face as well – we don’t want to force our interviews to say something they don’t want to. As I said before, Jonathan was pretty positive/neutral about the whole thing, and I’d like, if we include his part, to allow that to come across in the final cut and stay true to what we were saying. It was incredibly nice of him to take the time to come and speak to us, and it’d feel wrong to twist his words in any way shape or form. I know that that’s how the rest of the group feels too, its simply a matter of paying very close attention to how we edit the film together.

I’m doing some work with the year 12 VCAL class at my local high school (the same high school I attended in fact) who are making a sort of guide to the school DVD for ESL students – they provide the material, I’m sort of advising and editing it together for them. But that’s not what this post is about, I’m just providing context. The teacher of the class also teachers a year ten elective called ‘Writing for Film and TV’ (its technically an english elective). Now, I did this course in year ten – we looked at a few scripts, wrote our own and then pitched the idea for a show to a class. The course seems to have evolved for a bit, because now they read scripts for film and TV, look at film reviews and they are going to start looking at documentaries too. The teacher asked me if I had any documentaries to recommend for when it came to ‘writing’ them.

Interesting question.

I felt the urge to try and summarise the whole of my “True Lies: Documentary Studies” course in 50 words or less. All I could say was that I’d have a think, but that documentaries came in all different forms and that depending on the type you were going to make (whether it be an ‘observational’ style or ‘expository’ style) there would be more or less ‘writing’ involved. A lot of the times documentaries come down to research and the editing suite. Sure, some doco’s may have a script (historical doco’s came to mind) but I’d tell her I have a think.

A few hours later – epiphany!

Kevin Macdonald’s Touching the Void came to my mind as a good (and interesting) example for a year ten class. This film is basically a mixture of ‘talking head’ interviews and relies heavily on reenactments (at least 90% is reenactments from my memory). But it is a documentary that relies heavily on narrative structure, rather than pro-filmic events (things that the camera needs to capture ‘as it happens’). A lot of writing, planning and pre-production would have gone into this film, and they would have had a very clear idea of how it would come together in the editing suites.

So our whole objective with Home Made Helpings (well, everyones objective really) is to produce a magazine with user generated content (hopefully!), and to get the public involved and basically create a small community. These people have done it splendidly.

The LAMB – or the Large Association of Movie Blogs – is a community of movie bloggers (of which I’m a part) and the main Lamb page itself is for the most part almost entirely user generated content. They have features that run regularly, the two most prominent being Acting School 101 and the Directors Chair series. The sites admins will choose an actor or a director and ask for submissions from the members by a certain date – articles on the films, biographies, reviews – anything that relates.

This weeks Acting 101 is Cary Grant. They ask for submissions by a certain date, and then link to the different articles for all the members to see.

There is a list on the site of all the members blogs and links to such – at least half the blogs I follow are Lammies, and if you are you can grab a html button to display on your site to indicate you are a member and link to the main Lamb page. Whenever a new member is added to the list, their blog gets a plug:

To date they have over 1000 members.

Each month or so the leading members of the site will run a podcast, discussing news and movies. Members are invited to join and fill spots. Every year the site holds it very own blogging awards, with people free to push for their own blogs nominations and members invited to vote.  LAMBscores are a collection of Lamb members reviews on film, with ratings averaged out.

The LAMB also has a Twitter account and Facebook page. It’s an absolutely amazing way for different film enthusiasts to meet and share their views and knowledge. I’ve formed quite a few online dialogues with different film bloggers, nearly all found through the Lamb, and my own blog has garnered more followers since I have joined. People have told me they found my blog through the Lamb site.

I’m not sure how long this community has been up and running, but members are joining everyday and its alive and flourishing. I think its a really great example of what we’re trying to achieve with our own, though whether we reach the same numbers is questionable, and sadly not very likely in the time frame we have (whether we choose to continue after the course is over is another question).

I went to the cinemas last night, and saw the trailer for this movie:

Project Nim looks like an absolutely fascinating documentary. The trailer opened by playing on what I’ll call ‘the cuteness factor’ of the chimp, but then gradually began to allude to the ethical questions brought up by raising a chimp as a human. This ‘experiment’ took place a few decades ago now, and it looks to me as if this doco will make use of interviews and archival/found footage. The team behind this doco are already Oscar winners, so it’ll be fascinating to see whether this film will garner any nominations.

This is also appears to be the type of film that I most come to associate with the documentary format – interviews with people talking about a personal experience. Some people were apparently moved to tears by the film, and it was met with general praise at MIFF 2011 I believe. I want to see this film (not only because I’ve heard good things and it seems to be the type of thing I’d enjoy), but I’d really, really like to expand my documentary viewing outside of the course. I don’t think I will ever shake my love of fiction films – epic narratives, fantasy, sci-fi, drama – I love them all and I somehow feel much more in control when making them, but there is a certain exhilaration in crafting a documentary.

Crafting – that’s an interesting word to apply when talking about making documentary films, isn’t it? I might explore that in my next post….

But yes, Project Nim. Will go and see it and share my thoughts.