JP Hertel – Art 250

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=luOoEE9vZgk]

Pre-Production

When thinking about a topic for this video, I immediately thought about the personal crisis I went through last semester. We all have crises in our lives, but it is important to go through them because these times of doubt can really shape us in a very important way. When I thought of how to tell this story, I kept thinking about my neighbor’s suicide. I remembered how awful it was at her funeral, to see her parents and everything. This video, then, is my response to her suicide. I think she was going through a crisis of some sort but, sadly, decided to put an end to it. She must have been very scared. Personally, this was a very difficult, serious subject to work with, but I knew I needed to do it anyway.

Hesitantly, I put myself into the mindset of the anxiety I went through last semester and wrote a story that went through a somewhat typical day, filled with setbacks and anxieties. As the day progressed, we see how much more anxious, scared, and desperate the person is becoming, leading to almost doing the unthinkable. But he pulls back, when he steps back from his mindset. A button on his mother’s jacket distracts him from going through with his (or rather, his anxiety’s) intentions, and he is reminded of his role in the world around him. Pondering for a whole night, he waits for a new day, victorious in his battle. The story can be found here. I worked through the story in my small group in class, and Brianna and Erica had some good suggestions for how I could achieve the goal of my film. Then I met with Angela and discussed the story, got a plan for figuring out which parts of the narrative would be audio and which would be video, discussed the overall shape of the story, and the importance of the jacket as its own character within this narrative.

I then sat down and figured out where I was going to shoot, how I was going to represent everything, how I was to set the mood for the film. I saw a lot of obstacles ahead, both with the logistics of everything, and the emotions and vulnerability I was setting up by doing this.

Production

As I read over my story repeatedly, I came up with a shot list. There were 40 different shots I knew I needed to use, and I divided them up into 5 different sections: Introduction, Descent, Low Point & Desperation, Realization, and Conclusion. You can see the shot list and storyboard here.

In my introductory section, I knew I wanted to establish the morning as the time of day, so I woke up super-early (by my standards anyway) and filmed the sunrise on the top of the Parking Garage by CRCE. Well, make that two sunrises. The first one was too cloudy. I took 10 minutes of film of the sunrise, knowing I would compress it down to about 7 seconds of film later. I then shot other establishing shots, such as the bright wall with the blind’s shadows cast upon it, and then the blinds themselves. I am on the top bunk, and I don’t have my alarm clock on the bed, but I needed it in the shot to establish the time, so I taped it up on the wall. I tried to place my eye in the center of the shot as much as possible. This can be sort of hard to coordinate when you are the only one filming.

As the scene moved outside, I ran into trouble with the shot of me running down the street. I enlisted the help of my friend to follow behind me. To stabilize the camera, I connected it to the tripod (very securely) and had him hold that while following me. The problem with this shot, however, was that he kept falling too far behind; I went slower to a jog, and zoomed in, but the flapping of the jacket was still not as apparent as I wanted. Originally, I was going to have a side-shot of the flaps themselves, the cameraman running tandem with me. However, this shot was way too shaky, and soon my cameraman lost patience, and left me to go do other stuff. I was quite disappointed with the end result of this shot.

One final problem I had with the introductory section was the lecture hall scene. I had further footage of the walk towards the TA, and also an upward view of the empty seats, but I accidentally filmed over that material. I don’t know how that happened, but I will definitely be more careful in the future. I think the manual focus worked quite well; originally I was going to put in a line about how I forgot my contacts that morning, but seeing as the fuzzy footage stops exactly where it does in the final film, I had to leave that line out.

The second section is the “Descent into Despair.” I wanted immediately set a different tone from the introduction. I wanted to create an atmosphere that was very whitewashed and devoid of color. The location I chose was a practice room, with its white soundboards in the background. To go with the ‘descent’ idea, I set up a series of shots from top to bottom- first my face, then my chest, and then my entire torso. I scattered my music around the top of the piano, and set myself into the feelings I had last semester. Again, I enlisted the help of a friend, who shot an 180º arch around my ears and head. I think this shot worked out, and I was really happy with it. I had two pans of sheet music, one with neat-in-a-row blank pages and one with scattered filled-in pages. For the one with the scattered pages, I tried to follow a natural dip that pages had in their placement.

The shot that signifies the end of the ‘Descent’ section and the beginning of the ‘Desperation’ section is the elevator shot at sunset. I thought this shot would work really well as a transition for several reasons. The storyline changes from daylight to darkness, and psychologically, the sunset is reflective as a metaphor. Also, the fact that the elevation is actually changing – there is an actual descent as well – works to help build a visual image that reflects the narration and general tone.

This section is the most important one, because it builds up the foundation for the main idea of the story and builds up tension to its peak. I wanted to build up tension by showing the climbing of the stairs as a process towards not only the top of the building but also to the peak of desperation. I switched from 2 pairs of static tripod shots to a first-person point of view shot approaching the door. When I opened up the door, I know I wanted to establish PAR/FAR as an important location.

I shot the moon over a duration of 20 minutes on the night of the lunar eclipse. Originally, I was hoping to have the moon at its red stage, but I was in a concert at that time, so I caught the emergence out of the shadow. It was important to have that shot though.

Something interesting with the nature of film is that the audience accepts the world with which they are presented; what I mean is that they can be pulled into believing a certain frame of reference that is different from how it appears in real life. This is important because for several shots, I used this to my advantage. For example, for the shots where I reach the precipice and raise my arms (about to jump), the lighting was way too dark near the actual edge of the building, so I shot near a false edge with better lighting. If I were to pan the camera down, you would have seen not the street below, but rather, the top ramp of the parking garage. Also, the wall is not really that high, so I put stood atop a garbage can to gain height. The glance over the edge is also a false location; the street shot is on the north edge of the garage; the two buildings of PAR/FAR lay past the south edge of the building. Finally, the shot where the camera is pointing towards my face is shot near street lamp, not on the edge. Lighting needs, again, drove this choice of location.

One shot that was very difficult to shoot was the downward view of the button. I had to show the button delicately hanging while also giving movement to the button and making it clear where it was hanging. I don’t think that this shot ended up working so well; perhaps if I had the help of someone else to hold the coat, I could have gotten a better angle or stabilized better. I think that, had I a friend to hold the coat, I could have gotten a higher angle to make the button contrast with the sidewalk more.

This button shot marks the transition between the ‘Despair’ and the ‘Realization’ section. I want it to signify the break in the subject’s thought process, and having the narration and music later will help this. One shot I was really careful about within the ‘realization’ section was the shot of PAR/FAR. I wanted to shoot it with care, and I wanted the organic movement of the camera to match the dialogue later. I believe that this will help elicit the emotional response I am trying to get out of the audience; the ‘awareness’ will hopefully be conveyed through this movement.

Finally, we reach the conclusion of the film. The night has been transformed, and the subject sits and thinks until dawn arrives the next day. I set up this shot so that the ventilation shaft and the streetlight on the roof of the parking garage frame the picture; a single set of footprints appears as he huddles in the snow. Looking back, I think that I should have sat down all the way; I accidentally didn’t and I don’t know why (other than the fact that it was very early morning at that point and I was really cold). I used footage from my first day of sunrise shooting for the dawn. The entire shooting process took place over several days (weeks if you count the lunar eclipse shooting) and involved locations from the northernmost tip of campus to the very southern end. Now that all my footage has been shot I need to edit it together with my narrative voice-over.

Post-Production and Editing
Sifting through my footage, I quickly realized I had shot a lot. I had 84 ½ minutes of film to condense down. A good portion of this was going to be shrunken down through a time lapse anyway, but even after that footage is ignored, I still had about 54 minutes of footage to filter out. The reason I had so much footage was that I was mostly filming by myself, so I could re-shoot things as many times as I wished, especially if the camerawork was not looking its best.

For example, after I came back with my footage from the parking garage, I felt that some of the takes were too long, were too shaky, or were not in good enough lighting, so I re-shot the entire parking garage scene. The rest of the footage worked out fine enough, though.

I made visual adjustments to only a select few shots. I increased the exposure on the first shots in the ‘descent’ section to make it look more whitewashed. I also brought up the red levels in some of the face shots in the ‘desperation’ section to warm it up. Finally, I adjusted the red and blue levels on the sunset shot to make it look more like it actually did that night (the camera did not pick up on the vibrant colors as I had hoped).

One issue I had issues with in my editing process was the voiceover. I used the shotgun mic directly into the computer to do the voiceover, but for some reason the mic had an awful buzzing in the background the entire time. I tried to fix this in Audacity, and searched for the source of the buzzing; I was in an anechoic practice room, and I had the mic on the tripod, so as to not pick up vibrations. I think the problem was my computer or the microphone itself. After the process of elimination, it turned out to be the microphone.

To try to remedy this, I used a friend’s microphone, but I ran into more issues; this microphone was very, very bassy, and too low in volume. I spent a long time doing different voiceover takes, and synced with the video once more. I think I could have raised the natural volume of the microphone on the mic box though, and, in retrospect, this is something I learned through this process; even though there is a slight bit of fuzziness in the background when I listen directly through the microphone box converter, that fuzz is not so prominent in the final product, especially when background noise inherent in the scene, and background music added to it are taken into account. Next time, I will have to watch out for that.

Distribution + Reflection

I was really pleased with my classmates’ response to my video. Understandably, I was very timid about showing this video; it was a very personal subject for me. But after I showed it, I was glad that I did, because they seemed to really take the main point of the film to heart (which was the main objective). I was really pleased that they did not focus on the technical aspects of the film, but rather, discussed the content of it. I could see that all of my hard work was worth it, and I really appreciated the helpful comments and thoughts, especially about how they were emotionally pulled into the story.

Unfortunately, some of my stumbling blocks I encountered during shooting and editing made their way to the final sceen, and I appreciated the suggestions for fixing those issues. Specifically, I will work with better sound awareness next time with the microphones. Just as in the first project, when I was new to cameras, I was new to microphones here, but I learned from some of the mistakes I made in the editing process and will work on that for next time. Also, some thought there were some shots that felt too staged or impersonal, so I will work with greater awareness on that issue as well. I can see where they are coming from in that regard, and I will have to think of the implications of the image more next time. Also, from a story point of view, I can see how I could have incorporated the button more in the beginning as its own character by preparing that idea a bit more.

Overall, though, I was very pleased with the effectiveness of the film for the audience. I was really happy that my story got across, and that my metaphor for the button did make its point.  Also, I was glad to see the active participation in the film; my classmates said that they were very interested in what was happening, and that they cared for the protagonist.  Most importantly, though, they could extract something from the film and apply it to their own lives.  This is always one of my main goals with any type of writing, whether it be for music, words, or video.

I think I am building on my experience with each project, and I am looking forward to working on the next one. It will be a different type of project for me, because the ones I have shot so far have had a very narrative type of feel to them, and the next project deals with the documentary interview style, which I am a bit nervous about approaching.  I think that it is possible for me to shoot in this style, because a narrative story will always be in the back of my mind when I am setting up interviews, shooting, and editing.  I am also look forward to seeing my classmates’ work.  We all keep improving quite a bit, and I can see the hard work that they are doing in creating cohesive and understandable works.