Project Management - Week 15


23/06/2020

I came in early to issue out a Nikon D90 DSLR camera to take photos for BTS. 
I will be focusing (no pun intended) on taking BTS stills with the DSLR. Especially since I have more BTS video clips and than stills at the moment.

I spent a half an hour in practicing taking stills with the DSLR since I haven't used a Nikon and used to only Canon DSLRS, and then 20 minutes taking stills and viewing them through the USB to see how focused the stills look because stills taken on a DSLR end up not as focus as it may look in the viewfinder. It takes luck to get perfect manual focus. I may look back at my documentation from my photography elective in Christchurch to remind about this kind of stuff because I'm a bit rusty.

10 minutes - Taking BTS stills
30 minutes - Troubleshooting and taking more BTS stills
40 minutes - Shooting BTS footage
40 minutes - Ingesting and post-processing BTS stills
10 minutes - Ingesting BTS footage
1 hour - Back up footage and stills onto the cloud


27/06/2020

Based on the success of backing up the footage this week, I thought I would have the same success with backing up the footage from prior the lockdown at home individually. 
However, this was not the as and it took all day to get half of the footage of the first week of pre-production.

7 hours - Backing up footage at home onto Google Drive


Moore, M. (Director & Producer). (1989). Roger & me [Motion picture]. Warner Bros; Dog Eat Dog Films.




I watched this documentary through PlayStation Store. I had a good feeling that it would be of value and/or influence to my own documentary and research.

Extensively uses archival and stock footage to introduce main human subject, location, and documentary subject. The documentary tends to have a private investigation and liberal aesthetic.

Themes - neoliberalism, economic inequality, apathy, conservatism vs social democracy

I found this documentary to be engaging, influential, and a good example of a social issue documentary.

Like my documentary, it focuses on the issue on one location and goes somewhere else if necessary

Michael Moore manages to engage and inform effectively with narration and not needing music most of the time

Moore manages to invoke drama from the effects of mass employment in Flint, Michigan e.g. no effect on the wealthy, out of touch advice from celebrities and politicians, evictions, poverty, and rises in crime

The documentary had an objective in order to drive the plot and story, which was the search fro the head of General Motors, Roger Smith.

The documentary's liberal aesthetic feeds into the wealthy, apathetic, ignorant, and conservative antagonists. There is more focus on these types of characters than the working class, disadvantaged protagonists

It sometimes tells you through narration what happened to people like the Miss America contestant, and a woman and her children in the process of being evicted

The documentary has a stretched out 16:9 aspect ratio in that those likely shot in 4:3 or the Academy Ratio have been stretched out to fill its 16:9 aspect ratio.

The overall documentary focuses on two things; one, Moore's search for Roger Smith. Two, the social and economic impact and solutions of the GM factory closures in Flint.

What's sad is that the glory days of employment in Flint became history too quickly

Half of Flint's population became beneficiaries as a result of the factory closures

The police deputy seems to be the most dominant character aside from Moore

A good use of presenting a two-sided story in this documentary through editing is having Roger Smith's GM Christmas speech voiced over Flint residents being evicted at Christmas. It's nothing, but ironic and hypocritical for Smith to quote Dickens, it's like Trump quoting Dr King

There are additional interviews in between the credits. One comments about the documentary itself.

The theme of conservatism vs social democracy is enforced by the end credits interview segment where the GM executive rejects cradle to the grave type of social security for workers in free enterprise capitalism

It was blown up to 35 mm film and judging by the grainy film quality, it was potentially shot on 16 mm film.


28/06/2020

1 hour - Compiling BTS video for social media, including sourcing royalty-free music

I have recently considered a place to shoot the BTS interviews, which could potentially be Upstage. The subject would be seated in one of the theater seats. 


29/06/2020

10 minutes - Filming BTS of animation process this afternoon. I realised this was a part of production that I needed more of after putting that BTS video together.

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