POCKET FILMMAKING 101
Guest lecturer: Wiebke Finkler
The Tuesday-Thursday after returning from fall break, a special guest came to visit: Wiebke Finkler, a German living in New Zealand to pursue a PhD in Tourism at the University of Otago. Before you can ask, her name is pronounced Veeb-ka (you would never know by the spelling unless you speak German).
She was in Canada to present at several conferences on her PhD research (“Save the Whales Part 2: The Science Communication of Whale Watching”) but flew in early to lead a workshop for my class. So starting at 9 a.m. each day (except Wednesday, when the time zone change was too much and Wiebke slept through her alarm) my class was able to create several 2-minute videos over the course of three days. | Photo courtesy of the University of Otago. |
The class split up into teams of two, and each team was assigned a researcher at the Living with Lakes Centre (the building in which all my classes are held). These researchers ranged from professors to students to government employees. Our job was to interview the researchers about their research and create a video between 60-90 seconds on what they do.
Tuesday was spent learning filmmaking techniques and being introduced to our researcher; Wednesday was spent filming and compiling the footage; and Thursday was spent getting feedback and editing the video to its final form.
Pocket filmmaking
Since this workshop did not receive any lavish funds from a production studio, we obviously did not have access to high-quality equipment. However, that didn’t stop us from holding a workshop. Instead, Wiebke used the workshop to teach us about a special kind of filmmaking: pocket filmmaking.
Pocket filmmaking is films made from “pocket” devices, e.g., smart phones, iPads, point-and-shoot cameras. While these devices can take fairly decent video, you have to work a lot harder to create a good video than with a fancy device. There are several reasons. One, pocket devices cannot track movement as well, so must be held extra steady to keep their focus. Two, since you cannot swap out different lenses, you must physically move to frame different shots. Three, transferring footage can be a pain in the butt (actually, with today’s technology, this isn’t as difficult as it once was). Four, converting file formats (this is still a pain in the butt even today).
Think this sounds like amateur work? Well, it is in some senses, but most places you work won’t have access to high-quality equipment, so knowing how to work with what you got is essential. And for proof that it can be used in big ways, take a look at this ad for Bentley created on an iPhone 5S:
Filmmaking techniques
Here is a list of tips we learned throughout our workshop:
Never have no audio
- You never realize when watching a good film how there is always some sort of audio playing in the background, even if it’s just background noise. When background noise is forgotten, it can be jarring for the viewer (which is why horror films will sometimes use this technique). When recording an interview, make sure to record about 30 seconds of the room itself to have an audio file of the background noise, to use during breaks in the video to keep the audio consistent.
- The trick with background noise is that it stays in the background. Recording those 30 seconds of background noise can help you realize if the noise is actually too loud and will cover up the interviewee’s voice (this is a big hindrance for filming outside, where the wind frequently messes with the mic). If so, you should find a different space to conduct the interview in. Pretty pictures cannot substitute for poor audio!
- As nice as it is seeing your handsome interviewee’s face on screen, watching just a talking head for minutes on end can get boring quickly. To keep a film interesting, you need to cut away to videos or pictures that illustrate what the interviewee is saying. These cut-away shots are called B-roll. Keep ideas for B-roll in mind while talking to your interviewee, and after the interview see if they will help you collect some, like showing you the machine they test samples on or sending you pictures from their research site. You can never have too much B-roll since B-roll is your “safety footage”!
- When filming a scene with two people talking to each other, the 180° Rule is essential. What is this rule? Imagine you have two people talking to each other, and you want to cut back-and-forth between the two of them. It would be very confusing if between shots one person appears to go from standing on the right to standing on the left. This can be avoided by staying on the same side of the two speakers when filming. This diagram should help:
- As you can see, you can move 180 degrees between the two people (half a circle) and position cameras at points A, B, and C. However, if you were to position a camera at point D, it would appear as if your two people had switched sides, and this sudden move would be jarring to your viewers.
Kill your darlings!
The details are nothing if a story never forms from them. Cut all the ‘ands’ that don’t directly relate to the “but” and “therefore.”
My film
The researcher my team was assigned for this project was Tom Johnston, a research scientist for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. His specialty is anything to do with fish, but the specific topic he chose to talk to my team about was measuring mercury levels in fish.
We created a great video about his research, but during the review process Thursday morning, we made a discovery that really frustrated me. It turns out we were supposed to create a video about the societal impact of his research, not the research itself (the professors tried to claim these topics are the same thing, but they are not. :P)
The issue, though, is our researcher does a lot of basic research, not applied research. That means his research is not meant to have an immediately applicable societal value. Additionally, since we thought the video was supposed to be about his research, we didn’t push him to try to come up with societal impacts when talking to him. So when sent back to revise the video, it was very difficult to create the story that we were now supposed to make.
The video we ended up with pleased the professors, but not me. His research is used by the government to create fish consumption guidelines, but these guidelines are not his research. The final video wasn’t about his research at all but how what he does plays a small part in this larger societal frame. If we had been told from the start that this was our goal for the video, I wouldn’t have been so upset, but as it stands, I liked the original draft we did of the video better.
Even though I was disappointed, the video itself I think came out well. You can judge for yourself!
Successful filmmaking workshop! Wiebke is on the far right.