BVA703 Research - S2 Week 7

 

21/08/2020

I still haven't heard back from Nathan Gill about filming in the CBD and the covid-19 considerations involved, but I left him a message today.

I formed the rest of the assembly edit, so from here I will be trimming down since it's 22 minutes at the moment. I also sent a short film review to the director of Ok Chloe, Charlotte Evans.

I received confirmed from Nathan Gill over the phone that my request to film on the streets have been approved and will still send me an email to me. He had doubts the public will be responsive to my production. I updated the call sheet for the postponement date and booked a boom pole and sound kit to pick up on Tuesday for the sound bites.

I sent away the call sheets for the postponement shoot day today to my film crew, Caleb Lay and Rhys Strang.

23/08/2020

I spent all day yesterday and today working on Oisin's shoot as a BTS camera operator. In this time, it made me more used to operating the FS5. I had to purchase boots for health an safety reasons at the last minute, especially since we were shooting in factories. It was a tiring weekend and I took a large amount of footage (three to three and a half hours in total).

The batteries all ran out by the end and manage the offload all the footage off the memory card.

I managed to find time to purchase latex gloves and sandwich bags (to store pens) for the sound bites shoot on Wednesday.

25/08/2020

I discovered a bombshell from Rachel today. Apparently, you must have permission to film at SIT. It was absolutely shocking since I have never been told about this since I didn't do the first year of the film course. I spoke to James about this and he suggested to email HR to ask for permission to film at the main campus, which I did.

I managed to purchase the rest of the health and safety supplies for the shoot tomorrow, which included disinfectant wipes, a first aid kit, and pens. I also got the necessary paperwork ready for Caleb to have on the clipboard.

26/08/2020

I still had not heard back from HR and I came across James this morning, who suggested inform marketing at the main campus at a last minute effort.

I had all the health and safety supplies and film equipment prepared before Caleb and Rhys arrived on campus. I explained their roles individually and gave them a health and safety talk. We did some blocking outside of the campus to prepare them to know how we will be filming the sound bites. It took less time than I thought and hey understood the layout pretty quickly.

It was an interesting experience shooting sound bites and approaching people. At first, we stayed on Esk Street, but moved around there, Kelvin Street, and Don Street to circulate. I tried to keep it in sheltered parts of the streets since it had been drizzling for most of the morning. It did however get sunny at some points. From shooting on the streets, there were many people reluctant to participate, but we did get one from each street in the hour we did shooting on the streets. 

I also managed to shoot the Pascoes and Specsavers buildings on Esk Street before it is to be demolished tomorrow. Good to now I shot a price of local visual history.

There were times where the sound levels weren't perfect because of the location noises like the CBD demolition.

We took a break on campus before moving to the main campus. Still no word from HR and so I informed marketing and they were fine with it. We managed to get a couple of interviews from students in the student building and in Hansen Hall. The sound bites done in Hansen Hall was a group interview of nursing students, whom were supportive about it. The lighting wasn't great because of the sun angle and where they were in the building (the foyer). 

I couldn't move them because it would disrupt foot traffic in the building and background noises would be more clearer (e.g. bathroom hand dryer). I also felt that having them where they were with their lunches made the shot more naturalistic and I thought sound was more important than lighting in this case. 

We got less keen students to participate than I expected, but I was still satisfied with the outcome. What I learned from the sound bites on the streets and at the main campus is that only male participants were critical of Greta Thunberg and that potential participants were keen to be interviewed for a student documentary, but not about climate change. This may provide me with an interesting angle for the documentary narrative, especially concerning Invercargill's conservative mindset.

Having a face mask worn the whole time made the shoot exhausting at the end. I had my glasses off because wearing a face mask makes my glasses fog up when I breathe. Having no glasses strangely gave me a certain level of confidence towards approaching people on the streets.

27/08/2020

Thomas, E. (Producer), & Nolan, C. (Director). (2020). Tenet [Motion picture]. Warner Bros.; Syncopy.

Tenet is a film where there's no words where you can faithfully describe what it is about. The use of Nolan's trademark soundscape I found overwhelming and makes it impossible to understand the dialogue half the time. I found the plot hard to understand and you need a extreme level of intelligence to get a sense of. 

The performances by Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, and Elizabeth Debicki were amazing. Debicki performance I found be engaging and sympathetic. I also found it different from other roles she has played, which tend to be antagonists like in Man from UNCLE, The Cloverfield Paradox, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2.

Branagh manages to convincingly portray an Eastern European antagonist and possibly the best performance he has done in years.

Watching the film made me understand how hard it had been reported to edit. It's definitely one of those films you have to watch twice. The film also seemed to go on longer than it needed to.

One way. I would like to describe this film as is James Bond meets Inception meets Avengers: Endgame.