Pre-Mini-Doc
Reading and Writing
Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video chapter seven explores a broad variety of lighting options for shooting footage. After all, a video is merely a photograph that is the capturing of light. The better the quality of the the light captured the better looking the subject and more you have the work with during editing.
Exterior lighting can be adjusted best by considering the time of day with the angle of the sun. At just the right time during sunrise or sunset it’s commonly referred to as the golden hour for photography. Even with the sun you can adjust the angle of light via a reflector.
Interior lighting can be more complicated, but luckily we do not need to reinvent the wheel as there are common patterns to follow. A basic lighting setup good for many circumstances involves combining a fill light, key light, and a backlight. Sometimes a fourth light is added as an additional background light.
Chapter nine is about making it happen. At the end of this blog post I’ve included a pre-production plan for a mini-documentary I’ll be releasing next week, also referred to in the book as part of the shooting plan. Planning ahead reduces the need to trying to compensate in the editing phase or wasting time on-set.
I took away from this section the reminder that you can film in any order that makes sense for recording depending on people’s time. I’ll likely leverage this idea to record b-roll footage and an intro/outro a different day so as to not waste my interviewee’s time and to reduce my workload for the day.
Research to Inform
Below are two examples of min-documentary style videos I appreciate that have an interview aspect to them.
Adam Savage has been in the industry for a long time including his famous time on Myth Busters. Since then he’s been running a YouTube channel where he commonly records himself in his shop discussing what he’s been learning lately. Sometimes his interests take him to interesting places talking to even more interesting people.
The audio clarity is great allowing us to hear everyone’s voices clearly while also being able to hear the action from props in the scene. The camera isn’t often on a tripod but there are so many dynamic shots I like how it’s done. This is great for how many close-ups we get of the props shown off in the video.
Laura Kampf is a queer creator and builder who’s been making content for some time. I adore her camera-person who brings a lot of small creative touches to the videos while often making it feel like he’s offering us a casual insight into her day-to-day projects like she is always busy. This video in particular is a prime example of us as the camera walking up to meet her as she’s already at work on another project.
Create
Below is a pre-production planning document for next week’s mini-documentary! I’m excited to meet up with my friend to grab coffee and hear their responses to these interview questions.
Update: Turns out I have a lapel microphone. That eliminates a potential complication I noted in the document below.