Saturday Long-Take

I have to be honest; I was very skeptical about the Saturday long-take shoot. I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy or if anyone was going to show up to it. Luckily everyone did and in the end, I realized my predictions were completely wrong. I really enjoyed the whole process. I operated the camera and it was a little nerve racking since it was actual film and I only had one chance to get a good shot. I realized later that I messed up setting the aperture for the camera. At first I set it around 4 or 5.6 but when we lowered the frame rate to 12, I forgot to close down the aperture more. In the end, the shot still turned out well but it was a little over exposed. I liked how the film looked with the lower frame rate. It almost looked like a Charlie Chaplin movie, which was perfect because that is what we were going for.

I think this one-day brought the class a little closer and allowed everyone to work together and get to know one another. I liked helping out in other group’s shoots. Everyone had good ideas and it was cool seeing other people helping out and offering advice to try to make the best possible film we could in that time.

I enjoyed everyone’s films and thought they all turned out awesome but I think Shaun’s (Shawn?) group was my favorite. I thought their idea of have two people jump from bench to bench with one person creepily following and the other trying to get away.

Rough Theater

My rough theater would be all the films that I make, both for school and for personal interests. I don’t have a lot of fancy equipment so I have to improvise on a lot of things. Also, I don’t have a really fancy camera. It only shoots in 720p and I can’t manually adjust the ISO or aperture. But, I don’t think this hinders my filmmaking ability, it just makes me focus on other things and improve other aspects of my filming like camera positioning, framing, and story telling. I think this is one of the reasons why rough theater is valued so much because it shows how an artist or, in my case, a filmmaker adapts to the things that he or she has and doesn’t have.

When I read this article, I instantly thought about this one filmmaker that I really admire. He has a very unique style and he has really pushed the boundaries of how to make a film. In interviews and speeches, he talks about how he knows he can’t make a film perfect like a Hollywood movie. So instead of preventing imperfections, he highlights them. He often shows a cut of him putting a camera down or picking it up. He also does a lot of stop motion and will occasionally show a shot of him moving the piece of paper or whatever is being moved. I think showing the imperfections works better than hiding them because then the audience can get of sense of his limitations and they can see how he adapted to those limitations and created his own, unique style.