I learned about a number of things today. We were taught about the best methods of recording people for documentaries. Have you ever watched a documentary where someone goes around a town asking questions to complete strangers? We were taught about the best methods to do this today. We were taught that using different camera positions on each person being recorded was an effective way to make it interesting. As well as this, to record in a different location for each recording. This effect helps the flow of the film and for every piece of footage to feel fresh and not boring. It can also be a good idea if you don’t always have the person being filmed in the centre of the screen. To show them in the corner of the screen can be a good method because it will also include some of the general background which can make it a nicer shot.
When using SLR cameras, there is also a high risk of the picture quality being out of focus and this can be hard to control at first. I am someone who does hate it when it’s out of focus! The cameras we used today were on the manual setting so you had to turn the wheel (at the end of the lens) to get the camera to focus. I did find that sometimes the background was more in focus than the person being recorded. This is a skill I hope I can develop.
We were also taught to think about the demographic we want to aim our films at. We learned that it’s important to research to ensure your idea hasn’t been done previously so that there isn’t too much competition. It’s important to aim for something unique that you don’t see too frequently.
Below you can see my attempt at using people at different angles that I used two years ago. As you’ll be able to see, I did use the same location for each shot, but the angles did change. I hope I can learn to make better films.
The Film Student Diary 