Author: Post

Kedi

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The people interviewed for “Kedi,” Ceyda Torun’s documentary about the teeming street cat population in Istanbul, are not experts, or talking heads, or academics. They are citizens, moving through their lives, interacting with the cats in their neighborhoods, and their comments are casually contemplative, off-the-cuff and profound.   – Sheila O’Malley

Lengthy, loving closeups alternate with remarkably fluid tracking shots as Torun and Wuppermann consider the elegant poise, casual indolence, and gritty resourcefulness of cats (and their kittens) going about their everyday lives. – 

Reviews:

Where to stream

 

Billy the Kid

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Backstory – in 2005,  New York talent scout Jennifer Venditti came to Maine to find extras for “Bugcrush,” a horror film to be made by Bowdoinham native/Mt. Ararat grad/fashion photographer Carter Smith (Instagram; Wikipedia). She came through the Mt. Ararat commons, found sophomore Billy Price, and cast him.

After the “Bugcrush” shooting was over, Venditti saw the possibility of making a cinéma vérité documentary just about Billy, and came back to Maine to film him for 8 days, in two separate trips. The film took the Best Documentary prize at SXSW in 2007, as well as prizes at Cinema Eye Honors, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival, and the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Reviews were generally very good (85 on Rotten Tomatoes) but the film was controversial. The Times said it was a “deceptively simple portrait of a shockingly self-aware and articulate young man” that treated Billy with “genuine affection and protectiveness”; Variety, however, called it an “appallingly callous act of exploitation.”

But they go, “You have to show people respect even if they treat you like garbage.” Of course, then I’m thinking, “Then the world is a total bleak.”

Billy keeps an active presence on Facebook.

Reviews:

Assignment: Documentary

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Documentaries are everywhere. Technology has become so available that, armed with a decent camera and a laptop, anyone with a good sense of story-telling and the patience to shoot and edit it well can make a decent documentary film that could go national. (Not so true of your blockbuster adventure film.)

The major film project for third quarter is a documentary, 5 to 7 minutes long, that tells a story, rich with visual information, about

  • an event (a game, a performance)
  • an issue
  • a place
  • a history (family, a thing that happened)
  • a group (a team, some friends, a family)
  • a person (a “profile”)
  • a process
  • a phenomenon
  • advocacy – make a case for/against something

This will take planning, so there will be a midpoint deadline — “filming complete” — one week before deadline.

Filming complete, clips loaded into iMovie: Monday/Tuesday, March 26/27

And if you’re not yet satiated by the number of documentaries we’ve seen in class, there is always Documentary Heaven.

Also Vogue’s list of Best Documentaries of All Time.

And Netflix’s current documentaries.

Final due date, ready-to-show: beginning of the last week of the quarter, Monday/Tuesday, April 2/3.

Checkoff sheet as pdf is here.

Life by Lobster

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Life by Lobster cover

Interview practice

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Basics:

  • 2 minute video of a somebody talking about what they’re going to do in the future, with B-roll cutaways that illustrate/comment on what they talk about. Can be serious or funny, straight or parody.

Formal requirements:

  • No audio of “interviewer” – the audio should seem like the subject just happens to be talking the future
  • Interview framing is classic rule of thirds, with key light on the wide side, bounce light for fill
  • Subject is visually well-differentiated from background (back light?), which is intentionally framed
  • Interview is recorded with lav mic
  • At least two jump cuts in interview segments, maybe to cover edit, that are so exquisitely timed/cut that a non-film person wouldn’t even notice they happened
  • In post, fake a very slow slider push-in a couple of times to see how it affects the feeling of the content
  • At least five video-only B-roll cutaways, during which the interview audio continues under the cutaway
  • At least one video + audio cutaway, during which the audio of the interview is not heard
  • Most of the cutaway video has the camera in motion –
    • dolly/slider/steadicam
    • one or two jumpy-handheld shots at most
    • at least half of B-roll is shot by you
    • max of one looking-out-the-window-of-a-vehicle shot
  • No soundtrack music
  • Use the classic J-cut beginning – subject talking but we haven’t seen them yet
  • Fade-to-black at end, then 5 seconds of black, then outtakes showing
    • BTS: adjusting of the bounce board
    • list of questions you asked
    • BTS: question(s) being asked
    • BTS: you shooting B-roll with a slider

Due: Beginning of period, February 26/27.