06/12/2015 Entry #002 - Pre-Production V2

In the start of the year, as explained in my previous blog entry, the class was split into groups. Each group was to make their own documentary in the form of an interview. Most groups decided to interview some of the teachers in Globaljaya, some tried to do something unique and mimic buzzfeed by interviewing a bunch of random students with a specific topic in mind. My group, consisting of me (Fajar), Shona, Luthfi, and Min Kee, decided to interview Pak Andy, the middle school principal. I was to be the editor and interviewer, Shona the director, Luthfi the lighting and audio editor, and Min Kee the cameraman. This entry will go over what we did before producing the interview.

Pre-Production
Interview Presentation
After shooting our interview (Yes after, but this segment was to be included in this entry anyways) Ibu Lis told each group to choose an interview, analyse it for techniques, and explain how we would apply it to our interview. Even though it was too late, this was done just to test and further improve our knowledge of documentary making.

For our presentation, my group chose an interview by David Letterman with Shia Lebouf (shown below). In this video, we basically explained how there were different camera angles to show emphasis on different things according to who's talking and whatnot. The group also explained in the presentation, that the interview uses medium closeups (closeups but for the upper half of the torso and not just the face) for this and that two shots (Medium closeups on two people) were also used when both the interviewer and the interviewee were talking simultaneously or one after the other. The interview did use cutaway shots by manipulating the camera angles and focus, to make the jump cuts seamless.

However, during the presentation we did not talk about how we would apply these techniques, essentially forgetting the main reason for the interview.

Shia LaBeouf - Funny Birthday-Police-Story

The group wanted to incorporate the camera angles and mid shot's during the shoot, to make pak Andy the focus of the interview. However, we aren't going to shoot the interviewer and won't be switching angles that much due to the amount of equipment available. 

Workshops
Way back in term 1, the class actually had lighting and camera workshops so we can get some more hands on experience. It was just to help us get more familiar with the cameras and the lighting setups. Also to get us more familiar with the different shot types, possible interview layouts, and possible lighting layouts. My group did not get a chance to use the equipment in the lighting workshop. So the only way we got anything off of that was by helping other groups set up and observing them. We learned how to set up the equipments in both the workshops and how to take various shots during the camera workshop. During the lighting workshop, we got to learn how to setup and possible lighting plans to use during the interview. Which was useful but we didn't get to experiment with out own plans.

Planning
By this point, the group has already chosen the venue of the interview, which was at the waiting room outside of Pak Andy's office, and had gotten out finished script approved by him. The script was simple and we estimated it would take about 10 minutes for Pak Andy to answer them all. Now all we had to do was to decide what we were going to do during the day of the interview. We decided to use two point lighting when shooting and also to figure out what to do when it was actually shooting time.