Class Notes: Week 4
- Saleem and Milton Q&A
- Neckstrap
- Rest of camera on chest and goofball leg out - three feet of slide right there
- Rest a phone on the surface with a napkin
- Music video vs interview
- Sound is covered in music video, wav file is better than mp3 - play it off a loud iPhone speaker
- Make your artist really rap what they mean
- Gesturing - not actually moving
- Storyline narrative vs live performance
- Airs way on the side of b-roll - spend an hour doing performance
- A lot of b-roll, not just the video - emotionally resonant
- Depends on performer - show person talking, more story-based interview
- Depends on delivery of person
- Not the most compelling on camera - stay true to energy and feeling
- Interview with b-roll footage
- Almost all of them have someone looking directly at the camera
- Choice to have them look
- In the videos, it is "please help us" - see them early on looking into camera
- Tend to now try and start with voice of person
- Beatmaking lab - person producing killer beat is person on laptop
- Find a way to tell them - hey I am taking you on a cool story here - isn't going to be a webcam thing
- DukeForward - John Supko
- Cool software - showing that process was bland - another opportunity to interview for news
- Find something more interesting to do - something that is more fun to do - Princeton experiment with CD players
- Pre-production
- Documentary - what does a person do - guy who played racquetball in a crazy outfit for Heavenly Buffaloes
- Video is about whatever it happens to be - Coffee store on bike - b-roll was clear
- Milton - moved to Durham working as a chef, knew friends who were doing trucks
- Cocoa Cinnamon - knowing Aurellie/Leon - did a great job of communicating who they were - relational story - not just fundraising
- Kickstarter with soundtrack is off - as if it is an old kung-fu - flopped as a fundraising effort - could tell that he loved kung-fu, but friends who shared and asked people to donate - would not have made the Kickstarter
- Milton loves stories - ask him to speak and decide how long before telling him to shut up
- Not a business person - no master plan for cookie dominance -
- Sold 9000 cookies on the bike, don't need to start a business, embrace it
- All Durham stories are interrelated - all building brick and mortar
- Split time of electrician, plumber - cross-pollinate all the time
- Sort of encouragement - compassionate entrepreneurship - using that as an advantage to beat up on competitors - I learned some stuff that would really help us all
- Kickstarter - balance asking - weird to ask for something unless you feel an emotional connection with someone
- Café Beyu, Runaway - find a mix of emotional connection, bit of story - have to like the person who is talking to you
- People are very savvy now - can tell when someone is being fake - try to hang out with person long enough to push past - get them out of presentation mode
- Stack interview - few simple questions in beginning, keep it conversational - show genuine interest - does not always work - if you are really fascinated by some aspect of the story, you should probably tell that aspect of the story
- Don't ask for anything until you have caught a bit of their vibe - Kickstarter - people with a plan, more skeptical - want to convince that there is stability and right solution/answer for need to product, inspire that quality of production exists, make ask at end - different for each situation
- Your videos don't have to be asking for money - more focused on storytelling
- Milton - "If the filmmaker is not surprised, then it is not going to be a good story/documentary"
- Find out something you did not know and surprise yourself
- It's okay to go back and ask a second interview if you want better discussion
- Hopefully you can convince them to open up as a selling point - video is asset for these entrepreneurs
- Always try to make things you want to have exist in the world
- Compromises - family needs to be fed/with survival
- So much marketing, want to not only make marketing
- Make it a story you would want it to see
- Interviewee is not giving you concise answers - how do you deal?
- Chain a couple questions together - ask a tricky double question - having to chain answers helps them
- Keeps them speaking in full sentences
- Straight up at end - be honestly interested and get answers you need restated for the film
- Say that whole story in 20 seconds how would you do that - force cramming into constrained
- At the end of the interview, I heard you say this, this, and this - would you mind putting it together and saying it succinctly - don't do it until the end of the interview
- Doesn't always work out
- Work Stabilizer in Adobe Premiere Pro
- Sounds in various locations - different ambient and nat sound
- Couple tricks - get a little bit of room tone - ease into that - drag from none to something
- Quiet on set
- Fill spaces between dialogue with room tone - not jarring quiet tone - can even crossfade - ease one sound bite down and another sound bite up
- Cheat sound settings a touch - record some busier room tone and tone it down if there is some background noise
- How to check audio - get multiple sources of sound on a person
- Have boom, Zoom mic, lav mic, etc
- Establishing shot of café/busy environment - brain forgives
- Set plate on table
- Make it up as you go, nobody know what they are doing - everyone is faking, impostor syndrome
- LinkedIn video - San Francisco to speak at a conference, terrifying to say - I just do it
- If you want to do it as a business, it is a constant back and forth between - making it for free and selling yourself
- Start to learn it, tweak things that aren't working
- Guacamole Premiere
- Marshmallow
- What was liked
- Space between sound bites - giving some cut-away
- Sound quality was great
- Outside b-roll
- Candid shots of Marshmallow Girl
- How y'all filmed other things in house that were unrelated - added to personality of film - made it about her
- Made it human - go to someone's home - doing interview
- What we wanted more of
- Wanted more of an establishing shot - Fayetteville Street environment
- Clearer titles - if you know using white text, use dark background
- Okay to go from dark to light if using the same font family
- More on the process of marshmallow making - food stuff- show how messy some of the stages are - ties to story of struggle
- Show ingredients - visual connection
- Mic her while she is cooking - will be conversational
- Milton's Cookies
- Only able to include fraction of insights - had struggles cutting down
- Focused in on community, family, and food time-factor with chosen and blood family
- What was liked
- Variety of b-roll
- Experiential interview - mic'ing Milton while he was doing stuff
- Able to pull off Farmer's Market illusion
- Cookie dough - Thursday night dinner - got footage and audio from there
- Feel as if hanging out
- What we wanted more of
- Community was a keyword - how do you show community - show faces of everyone that came over for dinner
- Get sense of people that came over - mention spark people had
- Marshmallow moment - what other people can you show to tell main character's story
- Let the piece breath
- Steadier shots - use a tripod
- Mateo Tapas
- Hard to ask right questions, have to ask him to repeat, build a story, authentic guy
- What was liked
- Opening sound bite - incredibly disarming
- Great sound quality
- Composition of interview - nice perspective lines, natural light, lighting - sitting on top floor of restaurant
- Restaurant b-roll was nice - spent time there
- Used b-roll well to illustrate talking points
- When someone is hard to interview - go to other people around him, cool to see
- Exterior shots were nice
- What we wanted more of
- Establishing a wider shot of room
- Hear from a customer, family
- Why he specifically decided on that restaurant, more on the story of business - what happened in Spain
- When panning from one person and panning back - expecting some change - psychologically notice when convention is broken
- Pompieri Pizza
- Good footage, wanted to go in direction that hadn't been done - some videos have been made on Seth - focused on fish
- What was liked
- Show how much he values local sourcing
- Honest interview
- Started narrative with pizza, food and then narrowed down to aguaponics
- Great composition of interview - cool fish in background - tie other b-roll to interview
- Focus on aguaponics
- What we wanted more of
- Talk more about challenges - great establishing shot
- Pizza - step in front of camera, get creative and go through process of interacting with person - soda machine - close-ups, filling up mason jar - customer perspective
- Trimming down first point
- Explore food makes change
- Fun creative ideas about cutting - contrast between fire and water - Watch Tower of Turkey
- Firehouse that Pompieri is in - had to cut it though/kill baby
- Pull more of the normal pizza stuff out and put the more interesting b-roll in
- When did he fall in love with fish?
- Fruit Juice and Coffee on 9th Street w Lindsey Williams
- Struggles getting interview with Lindsey - tons of stuff on his mind
- What was liked
- Clearly referenced personality
- Nice b-roll
- Solid establishing shots
- Great job with persevering
- Great interview subject
- Given situation, the video was interesting
- What we wanted more of
- Hearing more about Lindsey's life
- The history of that building
- Use the same camera
- Better quality sound
- Follow along with Lindsey - put mic, talk to him as he is going along with it
- Eye-level interview angle
- Watch out for yourself in the shot - there was a mirror next to the shot
- Cut from shot of Lindsey on the couch to people sitting on same couch - jarring
- Cool to get what people normally wouldn’t see
- Archival footage/photos - figure out other ways to show stuff
- Other interesting story - whole life of Lindsey is about talking to folks - might not have needed to talk about community, more about goofy talking to girls - more of a hook
- Dashi
- Hard to get interviewer to open up, be conversational
- What was liked
- Thought upstairs was shown - mentioned upstairs in sound - bar
- Gorgeous footage, foreground/background, beautiful space
- What we wanted more of
- Walk him upstairs
- Show b-roll that elaborates on story
- Go back when more people are there
- Person went to another country - tried to recreate that experience here - strange mission/journey - to recreate it here
- Find ways to get him to visualize stuff - what it is liked when you walk into an izakaya of Japan - what do you see, what do you love - show all the things in his face - describing experience and restaurant
- Go to these places as soon as you can - give you insights into how to film and approach subjects - places are successful to us
- Investment in pre-production is investment in the success of your project
- Overall, want to see more wide shots and really close shots