Digital Video - Week 5

11/03/2020

We were given lessons on using the F55 today. How the lenses made me uneasy and it was hard to make sense and I couldn't help out much at the start because I didn't know what I was doing and the others did and they were crowding around the camera and it was hard to get through. The small size of the wide lens attached made it look out of place.

James allowed time for me to have one-on-one on working with lenses. I also figured out how to attach the viewfinder and rails etc. I also had trouble placing the attachments onto the F55 steadily because of coordination problems resulting from my dyspraxia. I attached a closer 85 mm lens because it was bigger and the size suited the F55 better.

I also discovered that cameras like the F55 were heavily reliant on mounts (tripod, handheld and Steadicam rigs) and on the attachments. Its reliance on mounts makes it difficult to handle the camera handheld in a traditional way.

11/03/2020

I was meant to have a meeting with the local organiser of the school climate strikes, but it ended up being postponed because she is unwell. I hope she gets well soon and I will contact her on Tuesday to see if she is better by then. This is a relief since I have been debating with myself whether to have her sign a contractual agreement since she's not an actor and would be unpaid.

11/03/2020

I spent time searching up for documentaries that are worth watching for my research. Kathryn suggested that I watch more documentaries.

• Man on Wire (Kanopy)
• After the Flood (Disney+)
• Bowling for Columbine
• Bully
• Hoop Dreams (Kanopy)
• Elstree 1976
• They Shall Not Grow Old
• O.J.: Made in America
• Citizenfour (TVNZ Ondemand and Kanopy)
• Won't You Be My Neighbor?
• Miss Americana (Netflix)
• Paris to Pittsburgh (Disney+)
• Waking Sleeping Beauty (Disney+)
• Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp to Pop! (Disney+)
• Expedition Amelia (Disney+)

15/03/2020

Chinn, S., Gregory, V., Ryan, M. A. (Producers), & Marsh, J. (Director) (2008). Man on wire [Motion picture]. Magnolia Pictures: Discovery Films 

The dramatized opening scene is not quite close to amongst the crowd, but it uses close angles to convey claustrophobia, doubt, anxiety, and fear when are in the van and on their way to the World Trade Center. They manage to do this in 16:9.

4:3 is naturally used for archival footage

• World Trade Center construction
• Inside the Notre Dame
• Notre Dame wirewalking (narrower ratio to suit images, plus 4:3 footage)
• Sydney Harbour Bridge wirewalking
• View of World Trade Center from a helicopter
• B-roll of 1970's New York
• Phillipe Petite (the main subject) on a unicycle

I guess the majority of the uses 16:9 to express the scope of the subject and the view of the world from crossing the Twin Towers.

Split screen CinemaScope to express the drama and action leading to their end goal on both WTC towers, almost like a bank heist

Some archival footage and images filled the screen potentially because the images were either big enough or enlarged to suit, or the footage was also enlarged to fit. It would be unlikely it was meant for 16:9 at the time because that aspect ratio wasn't conceived until 1989.

Some footage you could tell whether it was authentic or dramatised, but some I couldn't tell

None of the staged sequences were in 4:3 or in colour, but the archival footage was both in black and white and colour. However, the staged sequence were more artistic.

Some conflict, tension, and other drama were more clearer in this documentary than in the Robert Zemeckis film. It was like comparing a novel and a film adapted from the same novel.


Kohncke, A., Sorensen, S. B., Brink, J. T., Tveit, B. M., Uwemedimo, M. (Producers), Anonymous., Cynn, C., & Oppenheimer, J. (Directors) (2012). The act of killing [Motion picture]. Madman Entertainment: Final Cut for Real. 

I managed to find a streamable copy of The Act of Killing on Kanopy
I tried to pay attention to this film both as a viewer and as someone analyzing the choice of aspect ratio, but I found it difficult with watching this documentary today, especially a documentary like this that's nearly three hours long. I did manage to watch the first half hour of the documentary.

16:9 is used to open the wide open space and Indonesian landscapes to start with, but I soon discovered it was used for conventional reasons as a modern day documentary. It gives the impression of seeing on HDTV, or footage from a DSLR or digital camera.

This film is arguably performative documentation in itself


Batzias, N., Kaplan, A., & Whitwell, V. (Producers), & Gameau, D. (Director). (2019). 2040 [Motion picture]. Screen Australia; Good Thing Productions.

2040 uses CinemaScope to make the message clean and pristine, and have consistency between the dramatised and factual parts of the film. I'm struggling to find meaning or how aspect ratio conveys a message in a film at this time.

Bates, J. (Director). (2010). The whole world's watching [Television series episode]. In I. Gardiner (Executive producer), 50 Years of New Zealand Television. Prime Television.

I seem to remember just getting right in behind their batons, so I could shoot through the police lines at the demonstrators

- Allun Bollinger, 2010

Allun Bollinger shot some stuff in Christchurch... just fantastic footage. Right by the elbows of the cops going 'move, move'. If you're being paid 25 bucks an hour, you're not going down there to get your head smashed in, you know what I mean. So the television guys were all in the back with their telephoto lenses. So they covered it in terms of the news, but it was all distant, it didn't have that same immediacy, you know. It was not effecting in the same way.

- Geoff Murphy, 2010

AlBol footage

TVNZ footage

This shows that depending on the circumstances, there can be danger or health and safety risks as a camera operator shooting amongst the crowd. I do not see that happening in shooting the climate strikes. The 1981 Springbok tour was different, it was the country on the edge of civil war.


Maybe the choice of aspect ratio in 2040 (in this case, CinemaScope), it is to encourage wonder and optimism on what could be possible in the future, which is supported by the VFX.

15/03/2020

I did some camera tests on the Urusa with its framing guides involving aspect ratios. I will add overlays in post later. The frame is of the jackets on my bedroom door and did multiple takes and was framed in respect of the selected aspect ratios.
It could be good for my exhibition content

16/03/2020

Ben Dean. (2020, January 16). KITT [Video file]. https://vimeo.com/385369619

This is a short documentary that Nick at SIT Pro recommended to me and it experiments with aspect ratio in a similar way to what I have in mind. It's also a Staff Pick video on Vimeo.

4:3 used to a personal and somewhat nostalgic, but not personal enough to be for an interview. It does manage to help you focus on one subject, the main subject. 

16:9 and CinemaScope is used to be more formal looking and to convey an artistic look to convey drama and action to the main subject. This is more likely to happen in 16:9 or CinemaScope in this documentary, but it does happen sometimes in 4:3. 

The documentary switches between aspect ratio very quickly and in an instance.

The fast paced editing makes you more engaged in the visuals than the actual subject.

I might watch this again later to see if I can come up with any more thoughts on this short documentary.

17/03/2020

I watched KITT again this morning...

The 16:9 is used for drone footage to fill up the screen like you are floating in the air like the drone, as well as being like how 4:3 is used, which is gives the impression of an archival home video. 4:3 in this documentary doesn't always trap the viewer in focusing on the main subject and so it still somehow manages to allow the background to compliment the main subject like CinemaScope or 16:9 would. 

The use of 4:3 changes in purpose every now and then, chaining from a VHS overlay with film grain (sometimes the use of 16:9 does this too) to an crystal clear artistic look and then back to the VHS overlay and so on. I think perhaps the filmmaker wanted to experiment and see what it would look like if features of one aspect ratio were applied to a different aspect ratio as seen in here.

It also uses the same subject or composition with different aspect ratio, which could work into more than one of my research arguments.

This is a very experimental documentary and I think that why there is so many potential meanings or purposes to the use of aspect ratio in this example. I should probably look into more experimental documentaries.

Overlaying the Urusa footage

I tried to download aspect ratio overlays, but it had troubles doing so. I find the computers tend to have problems accessing and connecting to the local networks. I could only test 4x3, Academy Ratio, and 1.85:1 for now onto the Urusa footage using Premiere

I found there very little and subtle difference between 4:3 (1.33:1) and the Academy Ratio (1.37:1)

1.85:1

4:3 / 1.33:1

1.37:1 (Academy Ratio)