4/28/19 | Final Shoot: Self Interviews
The last thing I needed before I called the production a wrap was the interviews of me and Pat. In a participatory style documentary, it’s very much needed so the viewer can better put a face on the person they’re listening to.
This was probably one of the harder shoots simply because it was all on me to pull it off I knew that I would need some help. So, I recruited two of my friends to sit behind the camera and monitor audio.
For location, I decided to shoot in a classroom. It just seemed the most appropriate since it’s where I did a majority of my research and work at. (Oh, and I’m a student so…)
Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of this shoot, but I have footage to prove it!
So, I ultimately ended up doing three interviews. The first was a two person between me and Pat, the second being just me, and the third was used as extra footage for the post documentary 3 minute recap. I was a little nervous at first on how these were going to turn out, but they actually aren’t that bad. I’ll have to fix some lighting and color issues in post, but other than that, it turned out pretty good.
4/19/19 | Music Recording
For background music, I really wanted to create some tunes on my own instead of going out and buying a license for them. I actually really love music production and thought I would take a stab at making background and opening tracks to the doc.
4/14/19 | Reshoots
So, I decided to use this day of filming to reshoot some stuff. Out of all of my ingest, there was some b-roll that needed to be recorded and also some additional stuff that needed to be shot. That’s really what this day was about.
4/12/19 | Drone Shots!
One thing that I knew I was going to need (Or at least really wanted) in this doc was some drone shots of downtown Tampa. Especially all of the construction that is going on. I was in class one day and Santi had pulled up a fellow classmate, Jason Ryan’s drone footage that he did in Tyland for a Documentary class and I immediately fell in love with the look. When asking if he wanted to help me out with my shots, he was all for it. I knew pretty much exactly what I wanted, so it was really just a matter of us going out one day and getting it done.
Overall, it turned out really nice and will act as a beautiful opener to the doc!
4/03/19 – 4/10/19 | UPA Meeting Shots
A big part of my documentary is showing how some people are acting against gentrification in Tampa. One of the biggest groups responsible for doing so is the Urban Progress Alliance . A non profit organization dedicated to finding ways to better educate the public on what’s happening in the city of West Tampa while also figuring out ways to have redevelopment while lowering the levels of gentrification. My partner Pat is a member of this organization and I went with him a few times to film some shots of the meetings. I think it turned out pretty good. The first time, I didn’t have any external audio pickup so I’m going to have to see if the footage is salvageable. The second meeting, however, I was able to get a rode mic and an external H5 recorder which resulted in a lot better audio.
4/04/19 – 4/23/19 | Narration Recording
The next step in the production process after filming the interviews was going in and recording the narration. This turned out to be a lot harder and tedious than I thought it would be. Simply because I’m not really a good public speaker and that’s something you have to be when narrating a documentary. Sound is everything to a film and I didn’t really see this until I started recording the audio and put it over some of my clips. So, I had to spend a lot of time in the audio recording suite here on campus going over each section of my script and taking the time to really enunciate and provide crystal clear diction to each and every word I said. And, while it was a seriously long and gruesomely redundant process, it paid off.
I used Logic Pro to record all of my audio. Basically, I created a new track for each section of the script and named it accordingly and then saved each logic file by page.
3/30/19, 3/31/19, 4/06/19 |Blackbox Interviews
The First Weekend (3/30/19 + 3/31/19)
So, after many unanswered emails, scheduling conflicts, and hours of stress, we came out with some pretty good interviews for the first round. One big problem was that we were only able to record audio on the external H6 recorder. Which, while it does pick up ok sound, it’s for sure not as good as a Lavalier or a boom. (All checked out from the cage 🙁 ) But other than that, I think it turned out pretty good. The content is really good and I can always raise the levels of the audio and change the EQ in post so I’m not too worried. The setup took a little bit of time, but it was definitely worth it. In addition to no audio equipment, we didn’t have any lights and relied on the blackbox interior lighting. Which honestly did the job justice just as well. We had two cameras setup for this first round of interviews: A main camera and a side close up camera. This turned out to be really helpful because the T3i cameras, for some reason, tend to stop filming regularly, so when one stopped, I could just go to the other camera.
The Second Weekend (4/06/19)
The second time around turned out the best looking back at it. We were able to acquire a boom mic for better audio and we also added another camera angle which acted as a side profile view. And, the content provided by the interviewees was awesome.
Overall, this was all such a great experience. I took away so much from this process and am truly thankful for not only Luke and Spencer for their extreme amount of help towards this, but also all of the interviewees who took much time out of their day to sit down and talk to me 🙂
3/27/19 | Continued Filming: On the Spot Interviews, Planned Blackbox Interviews, and More shots!
Interviews: On the Spot
So, there’s only so much B-Roll you can shoot before you need people/interviews and that’s where I currently am for this doc. And I’m nervous as hell! Being an introvert, it only makes sense that I hate talking to random people off the street, but that’s exactly what I have to do with this thing. However, I was really fortunate enough to be doing the same thing for a similar topic for my internship. We are doing a survey poll for the Tampa Downtown Partnership and there development forum. We had to go downtown with a camera and audio equipment and ask people off the street on what they think of Tampa and all the changes that are going on. It’s not really Gentrification interviews per stay, but it will definitely act as a great part in the documentary. And, since it’s my job to do this, I’m more obligated to do this. I did also go out with Pat this weekend and film some other on the spot interviews that also turned out great. They were both done during golden hour in the heart of armature works and just fit the scene and aesthetic perfectly.
Interviews: Blackbox
In addition, to on the spot interviews, it’s also essential that I have some experts talk about this topic first hand. After talking to my advisor, I was put in touch with some people who know a lot about gentrification and how it’s happening in Tampa. My partner in this, Pat also had some people he knew of that were in the same boat. Now I really just needed to figure out how I was going to film them. I had a meeting with Gregg, my other advisor regarding this and we came to the conclusion that instead of me going through all of the nitty gritty of setting up lights and audio and what have you all by myself, I would hire someone to do it for me. And, this is where my grant money came into play. We decided to give UT alumni and creator of “Next Level Vision Studios”, Spencer Habberman a call to see if he’d be willing to help me out. I got in touch with him and his intern, Luke a little later, and I told them exactly what I wanted out of this experience.
Basically, I rented out the black box for two weekends and am currently in the process of contacting all of my interviewees with an excel sheet of available time slots that they could come in and then we can hopefully cracked each one out one after another. Hopefully everything goes well.
3/15/19 | Production Has Started
Direction
So, at this point, I feel like I have a better view on what I want to do with this thing which is essentially turning a research paper into a film. I have always loved this kind of style of documentary making. Docs like Buzzfeed’s Follow This and Supersize Me have always fascinated me. And, they are also definitely one of the easier styles of documentaries you can make, so it all just makes sense considering I only have one semester. Also, I think it’s important to note that my “partner” in this documentary has not been very cooperative the past few weeks. I can’t really blame him though. He has a full course load and his efforts towards this aren’t being recorded at all as course credit, but it’s still frustrating knowing that is pretty much a one person job all the way through. It’s a lot of work, but I’m surviving.
Script
The script is something that has probably taken me the longest time out of this process. I’m not really a good writer and the last research paper I wrote was over two years ago. So, I found out early on in the process that I was really rusty. After the main script process was done, however, the next step was to put scenes to the words. I used the “notes” feature that Word has to do this and while it was a very tedious and long process, It definitely has helped in the long run.
This is something that will definitely help me with the editing process. I have gotten to the point where my ingest folder has gotten really big and having something like this will make it a hell of a lot easier to search through all of my footage.
More Shots
So I have been hard at work trying to get as much of downtown and west Tampa that I possibly can and doing it in the most creative way possible. A big example of this is trolly shots in the car. These have evolved quite a bit from the first time we did them. I figured out about the wonderful creation of a Slik tripod.
It’s basically just a small and portable tripod that can be taken anywhere and allows for better shots for areas that are more cramped. Like cars! haha. I have some of me Pat driving and me in the passenger seat filming and also some of me driving and the tripod taped to the back seat. Which, looking back at it was probably not the smartest decision, but it gave me some great shots.
