Documentary, new media, video art…

Installation: Reflective Space

December 17, 2010 by David Tames

Sauve-Promises-2010 I’m going to be taking an intensive two-week course over the winter-intersession at MassArt called Installation: Reflective Space. I’m wondering if there are other media makers in the Boston area that would be interested in taking this class with me? Contact me if you’re thinking about it. It would be wonderful if there were some other media makers in the class working with video, sound, and projection so we can share tools and techniques.

DETAILS

Installation: Reflective Space meets January 3–14, 2011, Monday–Friday, 9:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. in N-379, the class earns 3 credits and is offered through MassArt Professional and Continuing Education, visit their web site or call 617.879.7200 for more information or to register for the class. Download a flyer for the class as a PDF.

DESCRIPTION

Installation is a relatively recent art form that challenges traditional categories of art because of its impermanent nature and tendency to incorporate a multitude of influences. This course explores installation practice using diverse media, including but not limited to sculptural material, photography, drawing, video, and sound. Assignments encourage experimentation while reflecting on physical, psychical, and sociopolitical content in relation to the site, and include a shorter and more substantive project. Presentations, group discussions, and critiques enhance classes. Relating meaningful techniques and material to the space is emphasized over mastering shop skills. Students must have some experience with object making and the media they intend to incorporate in their projects.

INSTRUCTOR 

Danielle Sauvé is a sculptor and installation artist. She received her BA from Laval University, Quebec, and her MFA from Concordia University, Montreal. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout North America and internationally. She has created permanent public art installations, and has pieces in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum and Joliett Art Museum in Quebec.

Photo: Danielle Sauvé’s Promises (Seeking Recognitions), 2010 (photo by Richard-Max Tremblay).

R.I.P. documentary filmmaker Robert Drew, innovator who contributed to the development of American cinéma vérité http://t.co/URcuZqkhec July 31, 2014 4:24 am
Robbie Leppzer's films, important milestones in video for and about social change, now available from @docued http://t.co/Dr6ZXk95qV July 27, 2014 1:34 pm
For me, cinema is a vice. I love it infinitely. — Fritz Lang #quote #cinema The Complete Fritz Lang series at HFA: http://t.co/zK9ft0olHB July 21, 2014 10:55 pm
Exit Zero: The Documentary is close to finished, please support them @Kickstarter http://t.co/zVY9PINsnS #deindustrialization #documentary July 15, 2014 1:47 pm
Story of McDowell County, West Virginia is the story of America, DVD version of HOLLOW now available from @DocuEd http://t.co/9RlRS6ybEZ July 14, 2014 8:59 pm
Enchanted Objects: new book available tomorrow re: our relationship to technology by @davidrose http://t.co/jTDt4ERJh4 #EnchantedObjects July 14, 2014 8:57 pm

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10 reasons why making documentaries is better than making fiction films

June 10, 2014 By David Tames 4 Comments

Peter Broderick, who helps filmmakers “explore uncharted frontiers and avoid dangerous pitfalls and predators,” gave a wonderful talk this morning at Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the many gems in his presentation was his list of ten reasons why making documentaries is better than making fiction films:

10. Grants and Donors
9. Partnerships with non-profits and NGOs
8. Utility for viewers
7. Significant mailing lists and rich websites to partner with for outreach
6. Semi-theatrical and educational opportunities
5. Multiple versions are possible
4. Built-in core audience
3. Core audience trumps festivals and critics
2. Benefits of urgency, and
1. Possibly changing the world!

He nailed it! This list reminds me of some of the factors that lead me to start making my own documentaries after having worked as a freelancer for fiction, documentary and industrial works. Peter Broderick’s writings are highly recommended, as is joining his mailing list. I’ve really enjoyed the crossover sessions at the festival, more on some of them when I have time to write.

New Forms / New Opportunities Panel (Sarah Wolozin & Natasha Giraudie)

March 2, 2014 By David Tames 1 Comment

The following conversation took place during the session, ”Open Plenary: New Forms New Opportunities,“ with panelists Sarah Wolozin (Director, Open Documentary Lab at MIT) and Natasha Deganello Giraudie (CEO, Micro-Documentaries in San Francisco), and yours truly (organizer and moderator), during the Making Media Now 2013 conference on May 3, 2013 at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, presented by Filmmakers Collaborative. The text has been edited for better flow and the moderator’s traffic coordination was eliminated.

David Tamés: This morning’s session will be a conversation with two thought-leaders who have unique insights into two forms of documentary that are coming into their own: the interactive documentary and the micro-documentary. Our panelists are Sarah Wolozin and Natasha Deganello Giraudie. Sarah Wolozin is Director of the Open Documentary Lab at MIT, the group is doing research in interactive documentary and new forms. Following her will be Natasha Giraudie, CEO of Micro-Documentaries in San Francisco, an organization that’s been doing wonderful work creating short documentaries to help organizations enable social change and important action among constituencies of foundations and activist organizations. Sarah, can you tell us what your lab’s been doing?

Sarah Wolozin: It’s wonderful to be here. I used to be a filmmaker in this town, I see some familiar faces, and I’ve always had great respect for the Filmmakers Collaborative. I want to tell you a little bit about our new documentary lab at MIT. The lab was founded by William Uricchio, a media scholar, to look at these new forms. What he identified several years ago was that we’re in this profound moment of change. He specializes in looking at media in transition throughout history, with all the new technologies, with the Internet, which is interactive—everyone’s on it; with mobile technologies, with the iPad, that we’re really changing how we tell stories, who tells stories, and what their impact is.

Wolozin: It’s a really exciting moment. There’s tremendous experimentation going on. There are hackathons. There are new ways of presenting the material. Tribeca Film Festival just this last weekend had a new exhibition called Storyscapes, where they had installations for documentaries and showed new ways of working with the audience and presenting work. What we look at, too, is that there’s a real parallel between what’s happening today and what happened in direct cinema in the early ‘50s, for example, Primary, one of the flagship documentaries in terms of how you tell a story and who tells the story. Ricky Leacock, who taught at MIT, was one of the pioneers, and he was excited about what it meant to have sync sound connected to small affordable 8mm cameras, and he wanted to get them in everyone’s hands so that everyone can tell their stories and that it can be more direct.

{ Editor’s note: two upcoming POV Hackathons are now accepting applications (apply by March 26, 2014): POV Hackathon 5 will take place in New York City on May 10-11, 2014 and POV Hackathon 6 will take place in Los Angeles on May 17-18, 2014. }

Wolozin: That’s really where we come from at the Open Doc Lab, and what we’re doing is fostering this innovation. We have a lot of experiments going on at MIT. We’re trying to create a roadmap for it. It’s really new. People were just scratching the surface of what’s possible, and there’s also a lot of questions, so we’re trying to create best practices and understand how you make it and what kind of impact it has, because ultimately, we’re telling stories for impact. We wanted them out there. We have a story to tell. We want voices heard. What these new technologies represent are new ways of having impact, and profound ways of including the audience and subjects in the making of the documentary, and changing how we interact with documentaries.

Wolozin: What I want to do first is to frame what we see as the new forms. We created Moments of Innovation, a web site that looks at current types of documentaries that are happening and the practices around them, and traces the long and rich history of each of these types of storytelling. What you see when you break down storytelling, you get to these desires to immerse people, and to create things in locations, and to participate and interact and remix, and take data and visualize it, and, of course, have short documentaries. One section of the site is Immersion. Let us also say that the English-speaking documentary definition from John Grierson is that you’re making creative interpretations, creative treatments of actuality. If we think of documentary in those forms and in that way, there’s a lot that we can consider a documentary.

Wolozin: We really look at the connection between representation and technology. In the 1800s stereoscopy was a hugely popular mass medium where, with these glasses, they could create a sense of depth when they went onto pictures. Again, it created this sense of being somewhere else, which is a really strong interest in documentary. Then if you trace it, the panoramic photograph came up in 1848. Cinema with the living postcards is an early example; a trip down Market Street. If you look at this little project, it goes, just takes you down a street. Again, you have that sense of immersion in a street. Planetarium documentaries immerse you in a world of data and stars and stories. Then came IMAX and multi-screen cinema in 1967.

Wolozin: Then we get to more contemporary stuff, you all probably remember virtual reality, when everyone’s going and putting on these headsets; so again, the sense of immersion. This is just a theater group playing with technology and trying to create that sense of being there. Highrise is a wonderful project. They experiment with a lot of technologies. It’s out of the National Film Board of Canada, and they are looking, in this project, at high-rises, and they’re in one place and they are using a technology called Popcorn, you can scroll through it and immerse yourself in this environment. Then we have Condition One, an iPad, app that can create a 360-degree turn around your environment. sp you really can immerse yourself. Other categories include: Location, creating a sense of understanding where you are. We go from Sanborn maps to wilderness. I encourage you to go to this website and check it out.

Wolozin: Again, a long history of participation, and what filmmakers and storytellers were always doing was just using the technology they had at hand; Interactive, which we’ll talk about today; Games, early games in the 1800s, again, very natural way to interact; Remixing, we’ve always done that; Cave Drawings and Cave Paintings. That was in a way to use data and illustrate data, which, again, we’re living in a world full of data, important way to tell stories. Shorts, which we have a long history of, and they’re coming back. Natasha’s gonna talk a lot about that. That’s the sense of what we’re looking at.

Tamés: Natasha, can you tell us about the micro-documentary work your firm has been doing and how you got started making micro-documentaries?

Natasha Giraudie: When I was a student, I got a fellowship to go do a documentary project—at the time, it was only photography documentary; there was not the budget for film—to go spend three months in Nepal documenting the situation of children there, to create a photo bank to be used by a number of nonprofit organizations that serve children in Nepal. It was a phenomenal trip. We captured material from the Sherpa children at the base of the Everest, to the children in the Chitwan jungles, to the children in Katmandu.

Giraudie: Even though I got malaria on the trip, and even though I came back with typhoid fever, and I was in a jam-packed bus that fell and rolled off a cliff, it was one of the most phenomenal experiences of my life. It gave me a taste for the power of telling the story of social innovators in order to help move their missions forward. That’s what I do full-time now, and maybe we can see a few examples of that:

{ Editor’s note: one of the micro-documentaries that were screened during the panel is embedded below }

Tamés: It looks like we’re seeing these two trends in the evolution of the documentary form. We’re seeing a renaissance of short documentary films being made and used effectively. We’re also seeing, in the last three years, an explosion of complex, very involved interactive documentary projects that require large teams that documentary filmmakers have never had to work in before, with designers and programmers, much more complicated teams.

Tamés: We’re almost seeing these two interesting splits in the road (interactive documentaries on the one hand and micro-documentaries on the other), and of course, the long-form documentary is still alive and well. Natasha and Sarah, I’m wondering what you think—what are the opportunities for documentary filmmakers presented by the explosion of these forms? Clearly, it’s driven by not just the Internet and web platforms, but the accessibility of the tools and the platforms for doing this kind of work. I thought maybe, Sarah, you might want to start on that one.

Wolozin: One interesting trend is how many people are making videos and putting them up on YouTube and have access to the cameras, and what that means for a filmmaker. If you’re trying to tell a story of a town or—for instance, at Tribeca there was a wonderful participatory documentary called Sandy Storyline. It was the story of the Sandy hurricane in New York City. Rather than just going and filming it, they created a wonderful platform for people to be able to put their own stories up there. What the author did, rather than it just putting it on YouTube, they created this place where you could also go through it in ways to move through the stories, learn about the stories, and hear about it from everyone’s perspective. We’ve had discussions about the benefits of participatory. Besides the impact on the person participating, there’s also a wonderful way to get at a greater truth or reality if you have more than one person’s perspective, being the filmmaker. That’s an interesting way forward.

Tamés: What about micro-documentaries, and what are the opportunities do they they present?

Giraudie: As much as we love our craft of filmmaking, what we’re most passionate about is fueling social and environmental innovation. When we work with the social and environmental innovators, we’re noticing pretty much across the space (we’ve had the privilege of producing about 1,500 micro-documentaries in the last three years in about 30 countries) are three main trends in terms of challenges that social and environmental organizations are facing: they are having a hard time capturing the attention of their audience. Once they have the attention, they’re having a hard time staying top of mind.

Giraudie: Finally, they’re having a hard time increasing their influence with the audience and really inspiring them to join them on their envisioned future. What we’re seeing is that in parallel to their day jobs, they are being called upon to step into this role of publisher; a publisher of regular, bite-size, inspiring, educational, insightful, at times entertaining, content, like short films, for example; like micro-documentaries, that will help them keep their audience engaged and stay top of mind and increase their influence in order to move their missions forward.

Giraudie: In order to help a social or environmental innovator like nonprofit organizations and foundations and purposeful businesses step into this role, you have to be producing material that is authentic, that is affordable, and that is actionable. We are just scratching the surface of this opportunity right now.

Tamés: Well, it seems like we’re now living in a world that I believe I heard Andy Lippman predict approximately 12 to 13 years ago, I heard him say at an MIT Media Lab consortium meetings—I think it was Communication Futures—that in the future, media communication will be a core competency of every single organization. It’s will no longer a special thing that you hire out or work with an ad agency or whatever. It will becomes a core part of your business like Information Systems, like Marketing, like Employee Relations, like Manufacturing, et cetera; it will becomes a core part of your soul as an individual, as an organization. It seems like we’re living that now. Do you agree?

Wolozin: Yes, definitely. I think with the web and the ability to put content there and distribute it there you can get a lot of people to see it, you have an automatic platform where you can get a lot more people involved.

Giraudie: Yes. I just had a visceral experience with this a couple of weeks ago. I was in Atlanta, and I had the opportunity to sit in the Ebenezer Church, where Martin Luther King preached and where his father preached. Now it’s a museum, and you can sit there and listen to his sermons as they’re being played. It became so obvious at that moment that you couldn’t really separate the stories from the movement in that particular case. When he was a young child, about seven years old, and, kind of suddenly, the two little white friends that were his neighbors were no longer allowed to play with him, the story that his mother used to console him was something to the extent of, “They don’t yet realize that we’re all the same, but one day it will be better.”

Giraudie: If you fast-forward to “I Have a Dream”, it’s, “I have a dream that one day a little black boy and a little white boy will be able to play together. What happens is that storytelling, when it comes to social innovation, it’s not just the movement is happening and you’re telling the story about the movement. The power of the story is really to become so intricately involved with the movement that it’s fueling it forward. I think that is a huge untapped opportunity, and I completely agree that this sort of storytelling is becoming a core competency of anyone who is attempting to make a social change.

Tamés: Well, I’d like to open up the discussion to you, the audience, because this is really about exploring the questions and the issues that you’re curious and passionate about. I would encourage you to keep this conversation going, and to share with us some of your insights or your questions or things that you’d like to know, or questions that you’d like to ask Natasha or Sarah. I have never known a filmmaker to be quiet.

Bob Heske: A question for both of you: Distribution opportunities, like with micro-documentaries; where would you market those, or are they mostly just for businesses that want to do advocacy?

Giraudie: Micro-documentaries lend themselves to be distributed in all sorts of ways, so, from online channels, obviously, they’re very well suited. Most of our work is under five minutes, and 90% of our work is within one to two minutes. On websites through social media, targeted blogger campaigns, also in one-on-one meetings, which is very important for major donor fundraising, for example, at group events, in large stadiums at events, playing the trailers in traditional movie theaters, in hospital rooms for healthcare organizations, taxicabs, at airports; we’re just starting to explore what the opportunities are, but those are some examples.

Wolozin: I would say that people are mow thinking of documentary as a mission, rather than just a film. If you couch the documentary within a whole audience engagement campaign, then there’s a lot of different ways to have it distributed, from whether you distribute it as a theatrical film, or through the web, or you might have some live events. There’s a lot of spreadable media, if the audience is involved, there’s a good chance they’re gonna spread it, too. I think a key thing is working with the group you wanna target from the beginning, so that they’re taking—being involved not only in the production, but the distribution, and getting it out that way. What we’re seeing is a shift in terms of how you think of production and distribution, and how you work with your audience.

Giraudie: Another very powerful channel of distribution has been the U.S. Senate for us. Senators have been very appreciative of the micro-documentary format because, think of it, they have a stack of 50 page reports and proposals that they keep meaning to get to. If you can just give them the proposed solution in a two-minute piece that’s compelling and engaging, then they’re gonna be able to make that decision whether they’re gonna invest their time. Senators have told us that the micro-documentary format has been very impactful in helping them understand the matter, and then helping them getting other senators’ support for it, and even taking it to the White House.

Wolozin: To add to that, I would say—and to the idea that becoming literate—is that newspapers are going online, and there’s a lot of convergence between documentary and video and online newspaper. The New York Times Op-Docs is a wonderful forum where they’re showing short documentaries, and they’re fabulous. They’re opinions, but what’s been really interesting for filmmakers working there is the tremendous audience that you get, you get the New York Times’ audience. You have three million people right there, and people are commenting, so you get instant feedback, which is a wonderful, new, different part from linear, is that you can be iterative. You can get feedback from your audience, know what they’re thinking, work on it, put it up there from the beginning. That also has an effect on distribution.

Jay Childs: I’m curious; what is a trailer for a micro-doc? Like 15 seconds?

Giraudie: Very good question. One of our clients had a fabulous opportunity a couple of weeks ago to be on one of those Jumbotrons on Times Square, and so we needed a trailer of the micro-doc, a 30-second trailer of the micro-doc. If a two-minute piece is hard, 30 seconds is like… oh, and no sound, that’s the other thing.

Childs: I’m often struck when I try to describe or do a one-sheet for a documentary subject. It’s interesting what you said, that they wanna hear stories about people. They wanna hear stories framed around a lot of things, and don’t like the agenda or don’t like the fact that you’re trying to hit them with an issue; to be so overt. They want it sort of buried in another story that you’re talking about. How does that sort out for this, and, can a micro-doc be embedded in a project that includes a longer doc? Can you have kinda the best of both worlds? Are there examples of that?

Giraudie: Don’t club me over the head with an issue. Tell me a story about people. The way we frame this—most of our work is commissioned work, right? We have clients. Even though they’re great social and environmental innovators, they have a tendency to lean towards the promotional side when they talk about themselves. “Hi, I’m so-and-so from so-and-so organization. These are the three great reasons why we’re amazing and why you should open up your checkbook.” That is the tendency.

Giraudie: Usually they come to work with us because they see a story that portrays an issue, but in a way that they’d like to be portraying it themselves. We typically ask for permission from a client to help nudge them towards a more editorial way of storytelling when they tend to fall back on a promotional habit. The litmus test that we use for that is that when you watch the piece, are you sitting there wondering, “Hm, I wonder what they’re about to try to sell me or get me to do?” Are you wondering what the motive is behind it, or are you receiving the piece almost as a gift?

Giraudie: Think of your favorite, for example an article in your favorite magazine. You’re just getting insight and education and maybe inspiration, and you’re not sitting there wondering what they’re trying to sell you. That’s our simple litmus test. From a narrative arc standpoint, the technique that we tend to use is make a strong personal connection upfront. Then, expose the issue and what we’ve learned is necessary to address the issue. Then, use the organization’s work as examples of that solution. That provides a very nice editorial framework for presenting.

Tamés: Can you tie that to a specific example?

Giraudie: Start with a strong opening; one of our favorites is the personal connection, right? Take our Meet Connie micro-documentary as an example (embedded above). She had four children. Everyone here are parents or are involved in children’s lives somehow. We can all relate to that, too. We’re connecting from a human standpoint. It has nothing to do with AIDS or the problem of AIDS. It’s just about human-to-human, so we like to start there.

Giraudie: Then the second part is discussing the issue, so, what is the problem? If it’s presented well, then the audience is gonna connect to that if it’s an audience that cares about the issue. Then, what have we learned is necessary? In general, what have we learned is necessary to address that issue? Only then does the work of the organization come into the picture, for example, “What we have done is…” Then it’s already framed within an educational, inspirational framework. Then we like to end with a vision of the future: what is the vision, which is different from where we are today? By the way, the baby was born a few weeks ago and tested negative.

Tamés: How might an interactive documentary format allow an expansion of this model and increase that amount of engagement for a viewer? How might an interactive documentary format further those goals?

Wolozin: When you have an interactive documentary you’re working on the web, there are a lot of different elements you can work with. You can work with video. You can have a story and data right up side-by-side. You can tell many stories at once, what happens is the person isn’t being told the story, they’re discovering it. They’re going to what’s interesting to them. In terms of a topic, like a social issue, I think you can direct the course of what interests you, so it can be a more meaningful experience because you’re personalizing it. You’re deciding what part of it you want to learn about. I think that’s an important part of interactivity, is your role in getting the story, and the many elements you can put on a website or within a story.

Tamés: Some of the interactive documentary projects I’ve seen are in essence a constellation of micro-documentaries that have a connection with each other that give you, the viewer, a greater sense of agency in terms of where you go in the constellation, you’re within that world…

Wolozin: Definitely. Interactive documentaries are many micro-documentaries. Again, it’s another platform in which to make your way through the story.

Alice Stone: Natasha, I’m assuming that all of your clients have websites on which they would post a micro-documentary, is there a way to link a micro-documentary to a longer one? Because watching the example as someone who struggles to raise money for films, my response was, “Well, they flew a crew to”—was it Uganda? You flew a crew into Uganda to make a three-minute film?

Giraudie: Going back to our mission, our intention is to fuel social and environmental action. We’ve identified this need for social and environmental innovators to become regular publishers on an ongoing basis. In most of the cases, our clients come to us for series of micro-documentaries that they can release over a certain timeframe, and in some cases, annual agreements that we produce a certain number of micro-documentaries per quarter.

Giraudie: In doing this, if every time we did a micro-documentary we were to send a crew out to their location and spend days filming, it would be so disruptive to their work, and we would exhaust them to the point that they wouldn’t want to see us for another year, until their next gala event or whatever it was that they’re doing. One of the challenges that we had is, how do we make this model as light as possible for the social innovator, to get ourselves out of the way as quickly as possible? We don’t send a crew. We send one person: a solo field producer with all of the equipment in their backpack. Instead of spending days filming, 90% of our pieces are filmed in three hours. For international pieces where we consider there to be a situation of tropical factor, we add an additional three hours of filming.

Giraudie: In doing this, we are able to be light enough in our relationship with our clients that they will be able to engage with us on an ongoing basis. When I think about a ten-minute piece, often clients will come to us and ask for a ten-minutes, and in almost in every case we’ve convinced them to make it five two-minute pieces, because it’s just so much more modular. You can bead them together if you need to, but they’re very powerful separate, in and of themselves. If I were to consider making a long form documentary today, it would be so difficult for me to get out of that mindset of building the long documentary out of a series of short documentaries that could then be taken apart and used for all of these sorts of new media. Why would we fly somebody, even if it’s only one person, to Uganda for a three-minute piece?

Giraudie: All of our clients have the same concern. The first time that the Clinton Foundation sent us to Kenya, we were so excited. We just started this company three years ago, so we were excited to go to Kenya. We let everybody we knew know, “We’re going to Africa. Anyone need anything?” We got 30 orders for 30 micro-documentaries that nobody could justify flying somebody to Africa, but if we were going anyway, why not combine the efforts? That led to the launch of our Travelpool program. Every time we’re going anywhere, we post it on our Travelpool, and then as clients sign on, those expenses get reduced almost to nothing. The other thing that we’ve done is we’ve established seven hubs around the world, from San Francisco to Cape Town to Sydney to Santiago, so that we can deploy in shorter travel distances from there.

Giraudie: I’d like to add to that. If you think of a documentary not so much as a micro film, or just a ten-minute film, but a mission, like, what is the larger story you wanna tell, and what are the technologies available to you to tell those stories? Cell phone use is huge now, right? People are migrating. People get a lot of their media on cell phones. How are you gonna use that platform to tell your story? Micro documentaries are key. When you get nonlinear, it’s short, but it can have impact. Or tablets; when people wanna interact, that’s where people are. I think it’s also thinking about your story as a campaign, and all the different ways—the many iterations of it.

Alice Stone: My question for Sarah is, the whole notion of interactive documentary is very exciting to me as a viewer, and I think it’s a different skill set. It seems like a tremendous opportunity, I don’t really see a clear path to producing these yet, how can someone who has decades of experience shaping more traditional documentaries take advantage of interactive documentary?

Wolozin: Let me say I think it’s really important that people who know how to tell stories get on the web and are the ones producing interactive documentaries, and you don’t just leave it to the programmers. That’s where you get the good stories, so it is a new alliance. We’re at the beginning. There are some ways to make that happen, but if you think about how you used to organize projects, it’s a different alliance, not a bigger alliance. If you think about before, how you used to work with a cinematographer and an editor, and now you’re working with a designer and a technologist, how do you do that? There are different ways to learn how to produce these. Hackathons are great ways to meet technologists, and in two days, to start experimenting with it, and just to come up with a prototype and have that experience of creating something on the web with someone who really knows the web and knows how to do it. That’s one way. We’re starting to have more workshops. We’re working on building the field.

Wolozin: We’re in the beginning, but we’d really love to see people who have experience in traditional filmmaking moving over to making interactive documentaries. You need a whole infrastructure that’s not there yet. Funders need to be able to fund it, and they’re starting to, where they’re funding an interactive team. The same money that you would have for a documentary, you now have for your interactive team. You have your story expertise, and the interactive person has the coding and the design. Curators are showing interactive documentaries so more people learn about it, people are writing about it. If you go to filmmaker.com, Open Doc Lab has curated a whole series on this issue, how you make the transition. It’s in the Transmedia section. We are interviewing pioneers in this field, and they talk about: How do you find funding? How do you distribute? What skills do you need? There’s also a lot of resources there where you can find out more about it.

Tamés: In fact, POV recently published a list of people who are funding new media projects. It’s on the POV website.

Wolozin: It’s a great time to get into this.

Andrea Bredbeck: Sarah, as sculptor for thirty years, when we were doing installation work, we were creating an environment where people could physically choose where they moved their bodies and what they chose to consume, that’s one way to look at interaction: You have these stories moving through the interface so that people not only have a choice about what they consume that is produced by someone outside of themselves, but they have a choice about how to insert themselves into that process?

Wolozin: Absolutely. When you start designing an interactive documentary, the first thing you’re thinking about is, “How is my audience going to interact with this, and how am I gonna create different ways for them to?” A lot of it does require you to, or can require the person to create video. There is a wonderful new interactive documentary called A Journal of Insomnia. If you have a chance, check it out. You sign up for a phone call, and it calls you back on the phone between between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. and then you’re allowed into the experience. A person named Sarah, actually, greets you, and you can go and learn about—and it’s a mental illness. It’s another way of learning about that, and also, you can add your own story.There’s so much experimentation going on in terms of how you would do these kinds of things, more is possible, that’s the beauty of the web.

Tamés: Insomnia is another wonderful project from the National Film Board of Canada, one organization that’s taking risks by funding and nurturing the provocative and innovative work in interactive documentary right now. Arte in Europe has also been funding some projects, but nobody has made the investment, in terms of the scale of what the NFB has done. Go to the NFB interactive site and there you will find like ten of the top twenty interactive documentaries available right now.

Wolozin: I’d also suggest the Ford Foundation. They created a fund with Tribeca Film Institute about new media and social change. They fund interactive, cross-platform documentaries; five or six a year. That’s another funding source for this kind of work, and you can also see the great work that’s being done.

Bill Brooks: Natasha, you mentioned “we, we” a number of times, I’m curious about the size of your staff, and if you do most of your work in-house, or do you sub it out? In addition, do you have any exciting programs or anything that you’re working on right now that you’d like to tell us about?

Giraudie: There’s about 70 people working at Micro-Documentaries. I think only about eight are employees, and the rest are regular contractors. What that means is that most of them are working on their labors of love, and need to supplement the income somehow. We provide an opportunity to do that, that’s an alternative to go film the margarine commercial or something. We’re very proud to be able to do that and offer that as a new resource to talented documentary filmmakers. Currently, we are working on several hundred micro-documentaries in a dozen countries, and it’s hard for me to keep straight the confidentiality agreements. I can’t really discuss them until they are produced, but there’s dozens of examples on our website that you can see of fresh material that we have just released.

Wolozin: At the Open Documentary lab at MIT we have faculty researchers and graduate students doing a a lot of research right now. I’m the staff person running the documentary lab. We also, in terms of programs and things we’re doing, have residencies. We have a lot of events where we bring in these people working in this field to talk with local filmmakers. We also have a curriculum. When we can, we’re trying to do workshops open to the community. We definitely have a mission to get the workshops out there so people can start learning how to do this kinda work and what’s available to them. Then we have some research projects. We just got a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to create a database of this work, so that people who, again, want to start working in this field can go somewhere and learn what’s there, how it works, what are the models that have already been created that you can learn from.

Jen Calvin: Natasha, what was the genesis for your company, and what is your passion about micro-documentaries?

Giraudie: I’m from Venezuela and I started my work on long format documentaries there, working in the Amazon for films that were distributed through the Discovery Channel. When I went to California to do my graduate work, I found that the funding for that had run out. That took me on a path to software production through photography, and I ended up running a software company that helped large nonprofits raise money. I realized that even though they had some of the best stories to tell, they were struggling with basic storytelling.

Giraudie: When I met my business partner, Ben Henretig, 24 years old, just fresh out of college, he showed me this micro-documentary that he had produced, a two-minute piece to help Stanford with fundraising, it came together for me, and that was the beginning. My passion is: there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. I feel like I’m so proud to be involved in creating a better world for my daughter and for all children for generations to come, and to be making that my everyday work.

Greg Fitzgerald: I represent Deutsche Welle, Germany’s major public television international system, Natasha, your description of how you produce your micro-docs sound a lot like the same kind of production goals and everything else that a television magazine producer goes through on a weekly basis, only with quicker deadlines, is there a disconnect between what you do and television and pitching these kinds of ideas to television networks and television producers, or are you primarily focused, because the topics on foundations, corporations, those kinds of things?

Giraudie: The honest answer is that we haven’t even looked at television distribution. The demand has been so high for us in such a short period of time, where we’re just building the foundations of a small company and trying to keep up with the growth, that we haven’t even gone there. I think that it would be a very exciting opportunity for us. Most of the content we have done so far is what we consider to be overview content, orienting stories like Connie’s story, that give you a sense of the issues and the solutions that are being worked on. We’re starting to do some work also in commissioned original content, where the story is not at all—not even a whiff—about the organization itself, but it’s very audience-centered in terms of their deepest aspirations. There might be a really great opportunity to do some work there. We could talk about it later.

Cindy McKeown: Natasha, as a documentary filmmaker and web producer, I was struck by what you said, about not just telling the story of the movement, but becoming involved in the movement and helping moving things forward. What I wanted to find out is some best practices for working with not just one organization, but several organizations, around a topic that you want to move forward raise public awareness.

Giraudie: While this idea might be obvious, there’s a lot of education to be done about it. The way that we do it is one conversation at a time, and just try to explain our perspective of social change, meaning that it requires regular, ongoing storytelling. As filmmakers, we can all help them step into this role confidently and successfully. I think it’s having clarity yourself in terms of the role of storytelling within a movement, and then very patiently telling the story over and over and over and over again. Remember the “I Have a Dream” story. It was told in 200 different ways over the course of all of those years; the same story that he had heard as a child, over and over and over again, creatively, different perspectives. That’s what we have been using to move things forward with our clients.

Tamés: Sarah, could you add a little bit to that about the challenge of having traditional filmmakers in dialog with programmers and web developers? They come from two very different cultures. I know, because I live in both, and have two sets of friends that don’t talk to each other. If you could talk a little bit about your experiences at the Open Documentary Lab and bringing together filmmakers and programmers?

Wolozin: Well, it’s a new relationship, so there’s a lot to be learned. One of the things we’ve identified is that there isn’t a common language, so how do you describe something like a dissolve in web talk? One thing that people say is web navigation is the new editing. There’s a whole new way of talking about it that people are just starting to figure out, it’s a really early phase. The other thing is these hackathons and workshops are really starting to bring the two communities together so they can learn how to work together, as well as conferences where both sides attend. I think that’s kind the way that it has to happen, again, we’re in the beginning.

Tamés: We have come to the point where we need wrap this up, I’d like to ask each of you to make a closing statement. Natasha?

Giraudie: David Denby, celebrated film critic of The New Yorker, in the last few weeks has been talking about how, in the history of film, technological innovations have always thrown critics for a loop, but in the end, each alleged disaster has led to new expressiveness. He goes through the examples of sound and color and widescreen and handheld and such. He says, “It would be lovely to report that the same thing has happened with digital, but most of the digital fantasy has been opportunistic, dazzling in an immediate way that was meaningless and dissatisfying. There’s something else setting off digital from earlier revolutions: None of the earlier developments dehumanized the cinema. If anything, they increased the human presence in movies.” I’m gonna conclude by suggesting that you invite David Denby for a debate next year, because I think we’re kind of proving things otherwise this morning.

Tamés: Sarah, a few minutes?

Wolozin: I would like to say that nobody wants linear films to go away. I think they’re really wonderful, and there’s something incredible and powerful, and for social change too, to sit and watch a story. What we’re really talking about is all these new ways of telling stories and new ways have a tremendous potential for social impact if you’re involving someone in the story. Because of these, web and the interactive nature of how we tell stories now, and especially the young generation, participatory culture, right? As Henry Jenkins says, they want to make media. They don’t want to just watch it. In working and trying to really reach people, you want to work with the way that they’re working with media, and there’s tremendous opportunity. It’s affordable, there are ways it’s affordable, the technology itself. Learning it is a whole new area, but we’re working on it. That’s really the message. Just when we went from radio to television, radio didn’t go away. Radio’s strong. Same with linear film, it’s still there, but there’s just a lot of opportunities for new ways to tell stories.

Tamés: I’m going to share one closing anecdote. This semester I’ve been teaching a class here at MassArt called History and Issues of Documentary Film. The last module that we covered was interactive documentary. The students were asked to write an in-depth review of one of ten interactive documentaries. I was, of course, expecting that they would all be totally excited by it. What’s interesting is that the twenty-six papers were divided 50/50. Half of the students were extremely excited, and talked about the sense of agency that they have with these interactive documentaries, and it’s so consistent with the kind of media experiences that they’ve grown accustomed to, and they really are excited.

Tamés: Four out of the twenty-six reviewed Journal of Insomnia and really loved it. Three reviewed Prison Valley. And four looked at Out My Window. The other half of the papers were very critical, and said that the storytelling was unsatisfying, that it was very fragmented, that it didn’t deliver the kind of emotion and satisfaction of the linear documentary. My reflection on this experience is that we as filmmakers have this amazing opportunity before us, but at the same time we have an amazing challenge, because it is harder to make an engaging emotional experience in the interactive domain. That’s our biggest challenge right now as storytellers working in new forms.

Wolozin: Right. It’s new, so we don’t know, we haven’t honed the craft. If you look at early cinema, the first experiences, they were just going out trying to film something. We’ve learned, and this is a new medium we need to learn.

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Reflections on Paul Sharits frozen film frames

February 23, 2014 By David Tames Leave a Comment

On the bus ride back to Boston this past Monday I kept thinking about the Images of an Infinite Film exhibition I saw at MoMA (on view through March 2, 2014). I loved how Paul Sharits’s Untitled, from his Frozen Film Frame series (c. 1971–76) brings into sharp relief the physicality of film. Each frame invites the viewer to imagine how it could unfold as part of a stream of images, but can’t, as they are encapsulated in plexiglass. This is a structural film re-contextualized as a floating frame of frames to be contemplated as a suspended object which, in spite of being frozen, can still evoke a film that we play in our private cinema of the imagination, with infinite variations. As digital imaging continues to encroach on films territory as a means of conjuring the cinematic imaginary, objects like this remind me of the stark difference of each medium, and yet, the protean nature of computational media makes its ultimate dominance inevitable, yet in this time of transition we yearn to touch not only our tools but the physical support upon which we make our inscriptions. Perhaps this longing will lead us to develop better tools to interface between our senses, gestures, and digital representations.

The problem, as I see it, is not with computational media itself. I don’t pine to return to acetate film, emulsions, flatbeds, synchronizers, split-reels, rewinders, cores, scratches, sprocket tears, splicers, tape, grease pencils, optical printers, laboratory procedures, projectors, film cans, loading magazines, etc. I embrace computational media and its possibilities, and remind myself that cinema as a tradition will transcend its silver-halide imaging technology origins and is being re-imagined in many hybrid forms. Each generation discovers the potential of a “new” medium, starting around 1895 and through the 1960s film held a special place as the preeminent moving image technology, and then it was challenged during a brief detour into the electronics of analog video that brought with it complicated and temperamental machines with which a new generation of artists made sense of the newly-available real-time and electronic signal processing potential of the medium, and yet, for many years film and video co-existed each with its own special qualities, it’s not until recently that film has been seriously challenged.

Now, for media makers working in the new millennium, we are making sense of an entirely new matrix: computation as the “new” medium and data as the “new” material, which takes me back to the nostalgia and ambivalence experienced as I spent time contemplating Paul Sharits’ frozen frames at MoMA, those frames did not require any device besides our own senses to read them. The beauty of film is that the material support is directly readable. But that’s also a limitation, it remains frozen once created, except for the scratches the projector contributes and the fading of the dyes. In theory, a digital representation can exist forever and is infinitely malleable, we are now challenged with making sense of the infinite synthesis and transformation of moving images inscribed in digital material and the “Images of an Infinite Film” exhibit gave me time to contemplate this, as the frozen frames shared the gallery space with moving image works working their way through infinite loop projectors, with the clickity-klackity purr of the projectors reverberating within the space.

For more about Paul Sharits, see:

Paul J. Sharits Memorial Gallery
Yann Beauvais, Editor. Paul Sharits, Les presses du réel, 2008, exhibition monograph.

Smartphone Shorts (follow-up notes)

November 3, 2013 By David Tames 1 Comment

Yesterday I gave a presentation titled “Smartphone Shorts” at Tufts University which was part of the Boston International Kids Film Festival program. This post provides follow-up notes I promised to share with participants.

For a good introduction to visual storytelling, regardless of the camera you are using, read Visual Storytelling by Nancy Kalow, an e-book published by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and available as a free PDF download. This is one of the best introductions to making short documentaries using a camcorder, D-SLR camera, or mobile phone.

Another good resource is the book Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts by Troy Lanier and Clay Nichols, it presents a methodical and readable introduction to making short videos.

The standard video recording app on the iPhone is no frills. Once you have been shooting video for a while you’ll start expecting more from the camera and FiLMiC Pro is a video recording app that provides a range of features that turns the iPhone into a pretty good video camera, giving you manual control over things like exposure, frame rates, resolution, and other key features like slow-motion, time-lapse, aspect ratio guides, and high-quality encoding. The bare bones FiLMiC Classic is only $0.99 while the full-featured FiLMiC Pro sells for $4.99. There’s nothing quite like it for the Android yet.

For iPhone owners the latest version of iMovie ($4.99) provides a straightforward and easy way to edit and share videos with your iPhone or iPad (it’s also available for MacOS). I think it does a nice job of mixing multiple audio tracks and automatically ducking music under the voice-over you record in sync with picture. iMovie provides a variety of templates for videos, however, the “simple” template turns out to be the best and least cheesy way to go when it comes to editing. While I wish iMovie offered a wider range of effects and editing options, for the price it’s a good basic app to start editing with. The current version does not allow moving the project to iMovie on your Mac (as the previous version did) but this is expected to return in a future update. The current version does crash on me once in a while, so I hope future updates will deliver a more reliable editing experience.

If you’ve got an Android phone two editing programs you might want to take a look at are Movie Editor from Goseet ($2.58) or Magisto Video Editor & Maker (Free, w/ in-App purchases for additional features, available for both Android and iOS.) I can’t say much about them because I don’t have an Android phone and thus have not actually used them myself.

Another alternative for editing, especially if you’re on a tight budget and want a basic editing system that will not break the bank, consider Adobe Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements ($199.99, available for both Mac OSX and Windows).

For iPad users who outgrow iMovie, you might want to to take a look at Pinnacle Studio from Corel ($12.99) which looks like an intriguing option (though I’ve not used it myself).

If you want more capabilities than iMovie and other basic tools can provide, what’s next? If you’re on a Mac, the next step would be to move up to Final Cut Pro X, a full-featured editing system that’s surprisingly easy to learn considering what it can do. A cross-platform alternative that’s a proven professional workhorse is Adobe Premiere Pro which I like because of the integration with Audition (for sound work) and After Effects (for motion graphics work). While Final Cut Pro X is a new application (not to be confused with Final Cut Pro version 7 and prior, which is similar in name only) Premiere has been around for a while and has more in common with earlier version of Final Cut Pro that X itself does, curiously.

Also, check out my blog posts on related topics:

Seven videos shot with an iPhone, June 7, 2013 (includes link to Framed by Mael Sevestre, shown during the session)
Olloclip expands iPhone field of view, March 3, 2013
iPhone camera support accessories, March 2, 2013
FiLMiC Pro transforms iPhone into sweet and respectable video camera, February 23, 2013

I will answer additional questions if you post them as comments to this post.

Minor updates were made to this post on November 5 and 7, 2013 to correct typos and clean up some wording.

Seven videos shot with an iPhone

June 7, 2013 By David Tames

Great work does not always require a fancy camera. While I love shooting with my Panasonic HPX170 DVCPro HD camcorder, sometimes the iPhone is a better choice when I need to maintain a low profile and I can shoot what I need with the iPhone’s fixed lens or with a wide-angle lens attachment. There are lots of great examples on Vimeo and YouTube of videos shot, in part, with the iPhone, as well as examples of works shot entirely on an iPhone. Here are seven examples of videos shot entirely with an iPhone.

156 Turns (3:24, Seth Schaeffer and Greg Tracy, 2010, YouTube). This is one of the better examples I’ve seen of a documentary shot entirely using an iPhone. In the summer of 2010 Seth Schaeffer and Greg Tracy shot this short documentary with the iPhone 4s. The video was neither color graded nor treated with image enhancements, however, they took advantage of the Owle Bubos (since then it has been updated and renamed to Phocus) to stabilize the camera and use a variety of lenses. It is an impressive feat to shoot an entire piece like this with a iPhone and the right accessories, the secret sauce in many iPhone videos.
Coffee Branch iPhone Documentary (3:00, Stephen de Villiers, 2012, Vimeo). This is a nice portrait of a person and a place shot entirely on an iPhone. The filmmaker spent a day with the folks from his favorite coffee shop.
Syria: Songs of Defiance (24:52, Al Jazeera). In this video from the Al Jazeera People and Power series an undercover correspondent takes us inside the lives of Syria’s anti-government demonstrators, the iPhone allowed the filmmaker to be less obtrusive than they might have been with a camcorder.
iSolation (5:07, 2012, Daniel Hume, Vimeo). An exploration of isolation amongst people living in an urban center. Shot with the iPhone 4S, edited in Premiere Pro, color grading done using Magic Bullet Looks.
Flying iPhone 4 (HD Aerial Video) (1:29, Brandon J Laatsch, 2010, YouTube). A fun video in which an iPhone is sent up carried by balloons, slyly subtitled as “the best way to fix the iPhone’s reception issues.”
Framed – an iphone 4S short story (3:20, Mael Sevestre, 2012, Vimeo). While this is not a documentary, it’s a lovely example showing that with the combination of good story, interesting characters, proper exposure, expressive framing, and the judicious use of Magic Bullet Looks you can certainly make up for many of the limitations the iPhone imposes on visual storytelling.
Kevin Sweet: Intervals (1:19, David Tamés, 2012, Vimeo). A short piece edited quickly, shot with an iPhone 4S and the standard video app, however, the audio was recorded using a professional lavaliere microphone and a separate recorder.Double-system sound (the term used to describe shooting picture and recording sound using separate devices and then synching picture and sound in postproduction) has experienced a renaissance in the digital era with D-SLRs and iPhones in the mix.

If there are other exemplary videos shot with an iPhone that you like, I’d love to hear about them.

Photo credit: Screen shot of FiLMiC Pro video application by Cinegenix, LLC.

The Hatchback Production Kit

June 2, 2013 By David Tames

I recently conducted a workshop titled “The Hatchback Production Kit” at the Camera Company Pro Video Show in Dedham, Massachusetts. During the workshop I promised to post an inventory of the items I discussed in the workshop. I described the kit I’ve assembled for shooting formal interviews. I prefer shooting hand-held and travelling with a single camera bag, however, sometimes I need more gear to achieve specific results. This kit, suitable for both documentary and bare bones narrative, is designed to fit in the hatchback of a compact car and is also designed for air travel. In a pinch I can lug it all by myself, though I usually work with a collaborator. Rather than purchase a specific kit, I think the best approach is to put together a custom kit that meets your own unique needs based on your own shooting style and production value priorities. This kit is an attempt to balance capability, cost, weight, and size and I am always adding and subtracting items from it as my shooting needs change. The kit is divided into four separate components: 1. Camera bag, 2. Tripod bag, 3. Sound case, and 4. Lighting case.

1. Camera bag

I currently shoot with a Panasonic AG-HPX170 camcorder (3-1/3″ CCD chip). I prefer a camcorder for hand-held shooting, however, I sometimes will borrow a D-SLR when I want the “35mm look” in terms of shallow focus. I love the ergonomics of the HPX170, the Panasonic look, the excellent microphone pre-amps, and the fact that it records four channels of audio. When using XLR inputs 1 and 2, the sound from the on-camera stereo mic is routed to channels 3 and 4, providing stereo ambience that often helps to fill out “dry” lavaliere audio. This camera captures video in the DVCPRO HD format and records to P2 cards. I like the reliability of the P2 cards and the low amount of image compression of the DVCPRO HD format compared to AVCHD. Although the HPX170 is only a 720p camera, I often inter-cut HPX170 footage with other footage shot with 1080p cameras with excellent results. Sharpness is more than a single technical factor, lighting, exposure, and the subject/background relationship also contribute to our sense of image sharpness.

If I was to purchase a camera today, I would most likely buy the Panasonic AG-HPX250 camcorder. It improves upon the HPX170 with a true 1080p imager and several other features, but essentially it is pretty much the same camera. I use an old Steadicam JR camera bag to carry the camera because it’s just the right size for the camera and accessories. Finding just the right camera bag is tough, because a lot of cases don’t fit “under the seat in front of you” and for air travel this is a key requirement. A good case currently on the market you might consider is the Portabrace CS-DV4R/PAN camera case specifically designed for the Panasonic HPX170/HPX250 cameras, but it’s larger than what I like using, though it does provide better protection for your camera than the hand-me-down case I currently use.

There are a lot of other great cameras out there, but this post is about what’s in my kit. The Sony EX1 and EX3 cameras a strong contenders and have the advantage of being 1/2″ chip cameras, offering shallower depth of field for a given angle of view. They also have better, brighter LCD panels, however, the cameras are physically larger than the HPX170 and HPX250 cameras, and I prefer the smaller cameras (but not too small). Here’s the inventory of my camera bag:

Panasonic AG-HPX170 camcorder

Two Panasonic 64GB P2 memory cards

Three Panasonic CGA-D54 Li-Ion batteries (I recommend sticking with the genuine Panasonic batteries, knock-offs are not as high in capacity and do not last as long).

Panasonic battery charger/AC adapter w/camera power cable (came with the camera)

Dolgin Engineering TC200 two position battery charger for Panasonic batteries (along with the stock charger this allows me to charge three batteries at the same time overnight)

Sony MDR-7506 headphones (I’ve replaced the Sony ear pads—that degrade ungracefully over time—with Beyerdynamic EDT 250 Velour Padded Ear cushions that are more comfortable, I suggest avoiding knock-offs and purchasing quality Beyerdynamic pads)

Tiffen 72mm UV-haze filter (protects lens)

Tiffen 72mm polarizing filter (essential for richer colors on a sunny day and reducing glare and reflections as well)

Lens cleaning kit (Brush, Microfiber Cloth, Fluid, Tissue, Blower, Lens Pen)

Quarter (for tightening and removing the camera plate)

Gaffer tape on small a spool (handy stuff with hundreds of uses, don’t ever substitute duct tape for gaffer tape, gaffer tape, when applied and removed properly, does not leave disgusting residue like duct tape).

Camera case (see discussion above)

Sunpak Pro 724M carbon fiber monopod (I attach the monopod to the outside of my camera bag with velcro ties. I like shooting hand-held using the monopod to lower the center-of-gravity of the camera, making it easier to keep the camera stable, effectively using the combination of my arm, hand, and tripod as a makeshift Steadicam).

Depending on where and how I’m shooting, I will move the chargers and extra batteries into the sound case and keep whatever sound gear I’m currently using with me in the camera bag. When it’s time to pack up and go home then everything goes back to it’s original position. For this reason it’s important to find a camera bag that’s large enough to add the extras you need while shooting (wireless microphone and/or shotgun, extra battery, headphones, etc.).

2. Tripod bag

I do a lot of my work hand-hend, however, for formal interviews and scenic establishing shots I like to use a tripod. Here’s my camera support kit (it all fits in the rugged nylon case that comes with the tripod):

Manfrotto 503HDV head with Manfrotto 351MVB2K legs combination (The 503HDV head provides smooth, fluid movement and the legs are very stable. These models are no longer made, however, the closest equivalent in their product line is the Manfrotto 504HD head and the Manfrotto 546B legs. These tripods are heavy enough to be stable, while light enough to carry on your shoulder.

Davis & Sanford Steady Stick Compact (I prefer this lightweight and small camera support system over more complex, heavier, and expensive stabilizer systems. A belt-mounted support arm supports most of the camera weight and leaves your hands free to control camera movement. This does not replace a standard Steadicam by any means, however, with practice it can be a much smoother alternative to hand-held. The build quality and design leaves a little to be desired, but given the price, especially when purchased at a discount, it’s a good value.

Padded bag (I travel with the Manfrotto bag that came with my 503HDV and 351MVB2K combo, this nylon bag, although rugged, is not designed to be checked as baggage, however, by loosening the pan and tilt controls as well as the 75mm ball joint, and removing the pan handle, I’ve managed to check the head and legs as baggage many times without damage. If you leave these tight, however, you are asking for trouble when the case takes a hard tumble).

3. Sound case

Good sound gear is essential, and as a rule of thumb, you should spend as much on your sound kit as you do on your camera kit, since sound is half of the picture. Here’s the inventory of my sound kit, I sometimes I only use a single wired lavaliere or a pair of wireless lavalieres, but I also like to be ready for anything, so I bring the whole kit along. Sound is very important and critical in documentary work. My goal has been to fashion an effective all around solution that can serve me in many different situations. Sound gear is a good investment you’ll get a lot out of for many years to come. Cameras come and go, but sound gear will provide you with many years of service. Here’s my current sound kit:

HPRC 2550W hard rolling case (I’ve checked this as baggage many times without any equipment damage, it’s the same size as a carry-on with smooth rolling wheels and a retractable handle. Pelican also makes great hard cases, I own four of them, but in this form-factor I liked the design of the HPRC case better).

Sound Devices 302 mixer (quiet pre-amps, excellent limiter, range of configuration options, tough as nails)

Sony MDR-7506 headphones (a second pair, the first one lives in the camera bag, see notes on these headphones in the camera section)

Rycote Softie windshield (essential when shooting on a windy day, standard foam windscreens don’t cut it on a windy day)

Rycote Softie pistol grip (good for hand-holding the shotgun mic, can also be used for mounting it on a boom pole)

Rode Boom Pole (I use this hand-me-down aluminum boom pole rarely, however, if I found myself using a boom more often, I’d definitely get a nice K-Tek carbon-fibre boom pole with the cable inside. The boom pole, of course, does not fit in the sound case, so I never travel with it. When travelling, there are a few situations in which I have used my monopod as a short boom since it has both sized treads on it so I can attach the Rycote pistol grip to it. Not ideal, but it worked in a pinch.)

Rycote Softie mount (for placing shotgun on the camera, unlike the build-in mic holder, allows me to point mic to left or right directly at the subject to keep speaker right on axis with the microphone. Unless you always center your subject, the built-in mic holder will always hold the shotgun in the wrong place. Though on-camera is not the best place for the mic, in a pinch when shooting vérité I mount my shotgun on the camera. This mount can also be placed on a boom pole.

Tram TR50 lavalier microphone, hardwired w/ power supply unit with XLR connector (this is a sweet sounding microphone, my first audio purchase that has become my favorite audio component, the flat design and wide range of “jewelry,” a.k.a. attachment accessories, makes it an easy to hide and/or place microphone)

Electro-Voice RE50/B handheld omnidirectional microphone (low handling noise, good sound quality)

Audio-Technica BP4029 MS stereo shotgun microphone (I use this microphone three different ways: 1. as an on-camera documentary microphone, using the M and S channels to capture what’s to the side (S) and in front of the camera (M) separately; 2. as a stereo microphone for recording stereo ambient sound; and 3. as a standard mono shotgun microphone by using only the mid-channel (M) with a stereo-to mono adapter cable. In a future post that’s part of my on-going sound series, I’ll be writing more about this microphone and the ways I use it.

Three Sennheiser Evolution 100 G3 wireless lavaliere microphone kits (these wireless systems are a really good value and I wrote about them in a blog post a while ago).

Rycote 10cm Hot Shoe Extension Bar (this allows you to attach two Sennheiser Evolution 100 G3 wireless receivers to the single hot shoe on the camcorder.

Two TRAM-50 lavaler microphones wired for use with the Sennheiser Evolution 100 series transmitters (I’m not crazy about the form factor of the stock microphones that come with the G3 100 series transmitters, I find it easier to work with the TRAMs and the sound is also better, so I added two TRAMs to my wireless kit)

Rycote lavalier windjammers (for use on lavaliere microphones when mounted on the outside of clothing on windy days, I have both grey and black ones, using whichever looks better on my subjects, also available in white)

Rycote Undercovers (disposable lavalier microphone mount and windshield for mounting lavaliers under clothing, an alternative to using moleskin and tape, available in black, grey, and white)

Rycote Overcovers (disposable lavalier microphone mount for use outside of clothing in windy outdoor conditions, available in black, grey, and white)

Gaffer tape (hundreds of uses)

Surgical tape (handy for when wires need to be attached to skin, rarely used, but priceless when needed)

Sennheiser Evolution 100 G3 plug-on transmitter (for use with the RE50 hand-held microphone, whatever mic this is used with must have a metal body since it is used as the antenna).

Roland R-09HR digital audio recorder (The R-09HR is no longer sold but the newer Roland R-05 is an improvement and recommended if you want a small, compact stereo recorder. I keep my recorder in my backpack or in the sound kit along with some ear buds and a pair of Giant Squid Audio Lab omni-directional electret condenser microphones which are powered using the plug-in power provided by the Roland. This is the set up I use for casual audio-only interviews. I also use the Roland for capturing ambient sound on location. If I want to use the Roland with XLR microphones, I’ll run the microphones into the Sound Devices 302 mixer and then run the line out of the mixer into the line in of the Roland.

Canare Star Quad microphone cables (Star Quad makes a slight difference in terms of superior rejection of interference from power lines and other sources of EM, I have mostly XLR-3 (mono) cables but also have a XLR-4 (stereo) cable for use when I’m recording in stereo with the BP4029 short shotgun)

ENG snake cable (for connecting the Sound Devices 302 mixer line out and monitor return in to camcorders)

Adapter cable (for connecting mix out of Sound Devices 302 mixer to 1/8″line input of R-09HR recorder when I use it attached to the mixer with Velcro)

XLR-4 to XLR-3 adapter cable (for using the BP4029 as a mono shotgun)

XLR-4 to Dual XLR-3 adapter cable (for using the BP4029 on the camera, connecting the mic to XLR inputs 1 and 2 on the camcorder)

Duracell NiMH rechargeable AA batteries (These are used to power my mixer, transmitters, receivers, and the Roland R-09HR recorder. I also have some eneloop rechargeable batteries which claim to be better performing, but I’ve not noticed a day and night difference)

Powerex MH-C801D eight cell AA/AAA battery charger (this battery charger is more expensive than any other I’ve used, however, after having two of the cheap Pearstone eight cell AA/AAA battery chargers die on me, it was time to try something more professional and reliable and this puppy has yet to let me down. My only disappointment is that the LCD display does not have a backlight. On the other hand, it does not over-heat the batteries like other chargers I’ve used, so all in all I’m happy with it.)

Energizer Ultimate lithium batteries (when I need extra long life shooting for long periods of time with the wireless transmitters, in order to avoid battery changes I’ll use these instead of the NiMH rechargeable batteries.)

Small box of accessories and adapters, especially important is the little adapter for attaching the Rycote Softie pistol grip to a standard mic stand, a.k.a. Female 5/8″-27 to 3/8″-16 Male thread adapter.4. Lighting case

4. Lighting case

I often leave this behind, but when production values call for lighting, I make the extra effort to lug this along and pay the excess baggage charges, and it always pays off to have lighting gear when you need it. Keeping everything in one case keeps things as straightforward as possible and increases the likelihood of using the kit, which consists of:

Kata OC-88 GDC lighting case with Insertrolley (both Kata and Portabrace are among thebest case makers, both offer rugged, well-designed cases, for the lighting kit this particular Kata case was perfect and has survived many plane flights.)

Lowel LC-55 Rifa-EX soft light (lightweight and compact, most often used as a key light, sometimes used as fill with 1/2 CTB or CTB when using window light as key)

Lowel 40 degree Egg Crate for Rifa (a grid will reduce spill and it’s the only practical way to control a soft light)

Lowel Rifa Balance Bar (helps to center the weight of the Rifa light on the stand, increasing stability, essential accessory)

Arri 300W Fresnel with barn doors and scrim set (Fresnels offer crisp, easy to control light with the quality of sunlight, used as a back light or kicker)

Two Lowel Tota-Lights with umbrella (often used as a background light, for overall fill, or as a fill light if needed). If I had to do it all over again, I’d get the Lowel V-Lights instead of the Totas, but I purchased the Totas long before the V-Light existed. I’m also thinking of adding one or two 150 W Arri Fresnels to the kit as accent lights along with replacing the cords on all the Arri’s with smaller cords that will fit better in the case.

Lowel Blender (a wonderful, small, bright LED light with two arrays of LEDs, one daylight balanced and the other tungsten. The unit allows you to dial in how much cool or warm light you need, the perfect fill or accent light and it can be powered with an AC adapter or a camera battery sled)

Flexfill 38″ silver/white reflector (often used as a fill light bounce attached to a microphone stand)

Three or four Avenger A625B light stands (these extend to 7.8′ but are a compact 26″ when closed (depending on the number of Totas in tow). The Avenger A625B Light Stands are no longer available, a reasonable replacement with a new stacking feature would be the Manfrotto 1051BAC Light Stand, Black – 6.75′ extended and 26″ when closed, not quite as tall as the older stands but for a portable kit, the stacking feature means they will nest more snugly in the case.

Transparent micro-bubble finish powder and make-up pads (essential to reduce shine, especially with interviewees with an oily complexion. I purchased mine at Ricky’s NYC, but you can use any professional-quality transparent cornstarch-based finishing powder on all complexions to reduce shine, there are several brands on the market, look for something that claims to be completely clear).

Spare lamps in plastic foam-lined case for all quartz-halogen units

Two or three extension cords and cube taps

Electric circuit tester

Gloves

Small tool kit (for doing minor repairs on lights among other things)

Mini-Maglite LED flashlight (along with a headband for the light so I can work hands-free in the dark)

Leatherman Sidekick (I actually have an older predecessor to this model, today there’s a wide variety of models to choose from depending on your preferences)

Half CTB gel sized with holes to fit the Rifa light (a full blue would reduce the light output too much, but using a half blue and setting white balance to that yields a nice look when mixing with exterior daylight that will appearing blue but not too blue when balancing the white balance to the Rifa with a half blue gel).

Additional expendables (gaffer tape, C-47s, black wrap, trick line, and assorted gels and diffusion

This lighting kit has worked out well over the course of many interviews. The Rifa LC-55 (500W) produces just enough light for most situations, and it’s the right choice for a lightweight and compact kit, however, if I could spare the space and weight, I’d rather be using a Kino Flo Diva-Lite or better yet the Zylight IS3. Over time I plan on replacing the quartz-halogen units with LED units as price/performance ratios improve, the Blender was a good first foray into LED lights, and a Zylight Z90, which I have used and really like a lot is on the horizon (due to its solid design and amazing color changing characteristics).

Notes: Special thanks to the students who attended The Hatchback Production Kit workshop, they inspired this blog post. Some of the material is based on a previous post, A one-case lighting kit ready for travel.

Sound for Documentary, Part 2: What is it and why is it so important?

March 16, 2013 By David Tames

In Part 1 of this series we covered eight fundamental concepts of sound for documentary. In our next post we will move closer to the practical, nitty gritty matters of sound for documentary, however, before we do, I want to briefly get into what sound is. We are going to focus on just some of basics we need to understand as documentary media makers in order to become better sound recordists, editors, and designers. If you want to go deeper into this question, future posts will include more links to resources get you going with that.

To put it in one sentence, sound is vibrations in air that touch us. Like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest, if nobody is around to hear it, did it really make a sound? The vibrations caused by the falling tree don’t become sound until they touch us. And these waves literally touch us, according to developmental psychologist Ann Fernald, who describes sound as “touch at a distance” in the Musical Language episode of Radiolab. I believe the intimacy of touch Fernald is describing has something to do with why there’s such a strong connection between our emotions and sound.

In their landmark book, Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing Aural Architecture, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter suggest that social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. Every environment has an aural architecture, whose attributes contribute to the fabric of human culture. We can sense spatial configurations through hearing, for example, with our eyes closed we can find an open doorway or know if we are in a room with low ceilings. The aural imprint of Tokyo is quite different from that of New York, and once we have experienced one of these cities we are likely to recognize their aural imprint much in the same manner we recognize images. Sound recording on a documentary need not just be about getting clear dialog, it can also be about capturing the aural imprint of the spaces we are observing. Whenever possible, when I am out observing with my camera, I try to record stereo ambience as well. Given that a good stereo audio recorder can be had these days for about $200 there’s no reason a separate audio recorder can’t be capturing the aural landscape when you are out capturing video with your camera. In fact, given where things are heading technologically and aesthetically, perhaps we should go the distance and record surround ambience. It is all well and good that Hollywood features create amazing soundscapes during the post-production process, but as documentarians, we should try when we can to capture the actual aural landscape of the locations we observe.

A particularly impressive example of the aural landscape as an integral component of a documentary is Habana – Arte nuevo de hacer ruinas (2006, Florian Borchmeyer, English title: Havana – The new art of making ruins). For Borchmeyer the beauty of Havana lies in the poetry of its ruins and through this documentary he presents a portrait of the inhabited ruins of Havana in their final moments before the majestic buildings of pre-Castro Cuba either crumble or are renovated. When I spoke with Borchmeyer at the Rio International Film Festival the year the film was released, I told him I was impressed by the dimensionality the aural landscape in the film. He explained that when he shot the interviews, he also recorded surround sound of the environment. As a viewer I was transported into the buildings and the stories the interviewees were telling, but there was something more going on, I felt as if I was enveloped by the landscape in a manner I have rarely experienced in a documentary. All too often capturing the aural landcape is the farthest thing from a documentarians mind, however, listening to and recording the aural landscape can create a sensory experience that will engage viewers in a deep, primal manner. The following version of the film on YouTube does not do justice to the film as I saw and heard it, but it is what it is. You will get the basic idea. I recommend viewing and listening to this clip with headphones.

From a documentary filmmaker’s perspective, sound offers a way of capturing the auditory sense of space in a manner complimentary to the camera’s visual recording of that space. Blesser and Salter remind us that from prehistoric multimedia cave paintings, to classical Greek open-air theaters, through the time of Gothic cathedrals and French villages, auditory spatial awareness has been a prism through which cultural attitudes and a sense of space are revealed to us. Their book really opened up my ears to the importance and potential of sound as an integral component expanding the sensory dimension of documentary.

What is the physical nature of these vibrations that touch us the way they do? A movement, for example a hammer striking a table or those made by human vocal cords, creates waves in the air, much like when you thrown a rock, or pour a stream of water, into still waters. You see waves that move out in all directions away from the point of impact. It’s important to appreciate that these waves go in all directions, bounce off walls, travel around corners, it’s very messy. In addition, the intensity of these waves falls off quickly the farther you are from the source of the vibration.

Sound is not like light, which travels in a straight line. Recording sound is not like taking pictures with a camera, there is no equivalence to the edge of the frame. Sound travels around corners. Reflections from hard surfaces add unwanted reflections that smear the sound. Other sounds from all over the place mixes in with the sound you want to record. Sound waves are promiscuous little devils compared to the stoic light rays. With your camera the frame is the frame. You don’t see what’s out of the frame, but not so with sound, we hear everything around us and so does the microphone we use for recording. And while our sensory apparatus is good at separating a salient sound out of a collection of sounds (a phenomenon known as the cocktail party effect), the microphone and the recording systems we use capture everything with annoying equality.

The process of recording sound involves capturing an analogue of the sound waves and converting the signal as faithfully as possible into a stream of digital data. This is usually accomplished with a microphone, an electromechanical device with a delicate diaphragm that vibrates in response to the waves that fall upon it. These movements are translated into an electrical signal, which is amplified and then sampled (converted into a stream of digital data) and then stored in a data file. Two common audio file formats used in production are WAV (Waveform Audio) or AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format). Both formats are uncompressed and can reproduce the exact same signal on playback that was initially stored in them. How this process occurs through the signal chain from microphone to data file has an effect on the quality of the sound. Microphone technologies, the designs typically used in documentary work, along with various recording options, will be discussed in a future installment, as will microphone placement strategies and noise management techniques. In later posts we will also get into more details about audio files and other technical details.

For now, what’s most important to remember is that when you’re out in the field with your microphone and recording device, your microphone is always picking up a mix of three things:

The direct sound from the source you want to record,
reflected sound from surfaces close to the source (including troublesome reverberation from walls in a space), and
noise, common sources being the natural background sounds in an environment and wind noise.

In addition to these three, you also get as a bonus noise caused by electrical circuits in the signal chain, and if your unlucky, you might pick up some interference from a nearby sources of electromagnetic radiation or perhaps crackling sounds from a defective cable.

You always want to maximize the relative level of #1 while reducing #2 and #3 as much as possible. Move away from reflective surfaces, get the microphone as close in as possible (but not too too close, there’s the proximity effect, bass exaggeration when sources are very close, that works well for radio announcers but is not always what you want for dialog recording). There are also issues with breath pops (wind screens help with that).

Not only does sound radiate in all directions, it also falls off so the intensity falls off quickly the farther you are from the source, or from a physics perspective, sound radiation follows the Inverse Square Law, which is a fancy way of saying that sound intensity from a point source of sound drops off at a rate proportional to the square of the distance. Or simpler yet, double the distance from the source, you get a quarter of the original sound energy. That’s why it’s so important to get that microphone close to the source you are recording.

When you play back the sound you recorded, the reverse process takes place, the sound you recorded, stored as a digital representation (created through sampling and encoding) is converted back to an analog signal which is amplified and in turn causes the movement of the speaker diaphragm, creating vibration in the air. The sound waves that result are never exactly like the original, there’s always something that changes in the process. There’s always noise and distortion added along the way. We try to minimize these problems using good techniques and good gear.

Some terms that will come up a lot when working with sound include the Decibel, frequency, and more. An overview of human hearing, intensity, signal levels, frequency, along with some other fundamental terms and concepts, will be the topic of our next post. Hopefully these will provide a foundation that helps us better understand what we’re doing when we work with sound. After that we will dive into tools and techniques. Until then, good night and good sound.

Image credits: 1. “Water Spire’ by likeablerodent; 2. “Three things” by the author.

Sound for documentary, Part 1: Eight fundamental concepts

March 4, 2013 By David Tames

Between widespread access to affordable camcorders and the rising ubiquity of mobile phones with good video cameras, along with the ascendancy of YouTube as a major media diffusion platform, it’s never been easier to produce and share documentary videos. Across the board, however, sound is the achilles heel of many videos. While it is relatively easy to shoot with a camera, the art of positioning a microphone, monitoring, and setting levels remains an elusive mystery compared to the workings of the video camera.

This post is the first in a multi-post series on this blog that will collectively present an overview of practical techniques and a guide to the basic tools for recording, editing, and mixing sound for documentary video. Collectively these posts will help you improve your work whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or experienced media maker. Whether you are shooting with a mobile phone, consumer camcorder, D-SLR, prosumer or professional camcorder, sound is an important element of the documentary makers craft. We’ll cover the range of consumer, prosumer, and professional gear, since as documentary makers we find ourselves (more and more it seems) working in a wide range of situations, each requiring a different set of gear. Surprisingly good results can be obtained with consumer gear in a wide range of circumstances yet professional gear provides specific affordances, so we’ll cover both along the way. Throughout the series you’ll find links to resources for further study and some gear recommendations based on real world experience.

In our first installment we’ll start with an overview of eight fundamental concepts that will guide our discussion of sound for documentary throughout the series. Here we go, let’s dive in.

1. Sound coveys emotion, picture coveys information

Think of the scene in Jaws of a woman swimming in silence. Now add those two famous bass notes. A totally different experience. Consider the emotional impact. Sound carries the emotion of your video, it’s half of the picture. Paying attention to sound, both in terms of good recording and how it’s mixed and the use of sound effects and music, can make a real difference. Even if you’re only doing a simple interview with dialog only, a rich sounding human voice will make a difference. You’ll find a wonderful collection of essays at FilmSound.org by Randy Thom who worked on Apocalypse Now as a sound effects recordist back in the day and since then has worked on an impressive number of films and has received multiple Academy Awards for sound. Thanks to G. John Garrett for this Jaws example.

2. Viewers expect transparent audio

Several years ago while preparing a presentation for New Media Expo in Los Vegas I visited Vimeo to find some videos to show as examples during my session. I was amused when I came across the video shown above: the filmmaker left a note saying that he would be fixing the sound as soon as possible. We usually don’t apologize for slight imperfections in terms of our video image quality, as most viewers will overlook them, but sound is different. Peter knew he had to say something about the sound issues in his piece in order to reassure his viewers he would soon be fixing the sound (which he knew would bother them). Sound is that important. People expect transparent (good) sound.

3. Microphone placement and noise management are the primary factors differentiating amateur and professional recordings

The problem with most amateur sound recordings is excessive ambient noise from a variety of sources and low sound levels (relative to the ambient noise). As a result, it’s difficult to understand dialog, and emotional impact suffers. This situation usually boils down to improper microphone placement. Learn to listen to your recordings and experiment with different microphone types and placement options. Getting the microphone as close as practical to the sound you want and as far away as possible from unwanted noise is a good starting point. In addition, when recording outdoors, you’ll probably need to control wind noise with a windjammer. In a future post we’ll cover microphone placement in detail and discuss different types of microphones and what task each is best suited for. With a litte bit of study and a healthy amount of practice, you can obtain very good recordings, regardless whether you are using consumer or professional gear. Placement and controlling noise are much more important factors determining your final result than the cost of the gear you are using.

4. Setting proper levels and monitoring your recording is crucial

For the best recording you’ll need to actively set recording levels. Not too loud to avoid distortion. Not too soft so your sound is not lost in the noise. Always monitor what you are recording with good over-the-ear headphones (or quality in-ear fitted earbuds that provide good sound isolation) so there are no surprises while editing. With digital recording devices you can’t record anything beyond full scale (indicated as O dBfs on most meters) so if you exceed this limit your recording will sound terrible, unless your camera or sound recorder has automatic gain control (AGC), a circuit that automatically adjusts recording levels, or a limiter, a circuit that can automatically soften audio peaks without changing the overall sound level. In a subsequent post we’ll dive into reading meters, setting levels, using a limiter and even AGC in a pinch (though right off the bat I’ll say that in most cases AGC is not a substitute for manually setting levels, but with some consumer gear you will not have a choice).

5. Don’t buy into the shotgun myth

Shotgun microphones don’t “reach” farther, they don’t work like a telephoto lens. Sound, unlike light, is promiscuous, it travels in all directions and goes around corners. Shotgun microphones have their place, they are useful in noisy environments, especially when you can’t be as close to your subject as you’d like, however, they do not perform magic. Instead of reaching farther, they respond to off-axis sound differently in terms of reduced level, coloration, and a null point. They might look impressive, but many recording situations call for other types of microphones. In subsequent posts we’ll go into detail about various microphone types, pick-up patterns, how they differ, and in what situations you’ll want to use each of the microphones commonly used in documentary production. Given the choice between a $30 lavalier properly placed on a person talking vs. a $2,000 shotgun microphone mounted on the camera too far from the subject, I’ll take the $30 lavaliere. On the other hand, that $2,000 shotgun attached to a boom in the hands of a talented boom operator will certainly sound great, but it’s not always an option in terms of logistics, placement, or budget. This is why my first microphone purchase was a TRAM-50 lavaliere. I eventually followed that up with a shotgun microphone. Since the majority of the work I was doing in the beginning was interviews, I knew the lavaliere should be the priority. I’m lucky to have had good teachers who set me straight early on in my path as a documentary filmmaker.

6. Judicious use of compression and equalization can make a big difference during editing

Compression and equalization are two essential post-production audio effects you’ll want to become familar with and practice using them when editing the sound portion of your video. A bit of audio compression on dialog tracks can help them sound louder and cut through other sounds in the mix, but don’t overdo it. Some equalization (emphasizing some frequencies and/or deemphasizing others) will sweeten the sound of dialog, amibience, effects, and music. For example, through equalization you can make thin dialog sound a little richer through enhancement of the lower frequences and reduction of some of the high-to-middle frequencies. In a subsequent post we’ll dive into how to use these audio effects to balance and sweeten your audio tracks. Some effort in processing your sound tracks will pay huge dividends in how your video feels when you audience is watching/listening to it.

7. Eliminate the phrase “we’ll fix it in post” from your repertoire

“We’ll fix it in post” is a silly thing to say, if you record bad sound, it usually stays that way, it’s very hard to fix most poorly recorded sound. For example, if you record dialog with the microphone too far from the speaker in a reverberant room (think gymnasium acoustics), you’re going to get a series of multiple echoes from the hard walls mixed in with your dialog. You cannot fix this in post, reverb and most ambient noise is impossible to remove from the recording. There is no such thing as a remove reverberation filter and most noise removal filters do horrible things to the original sound. Record your sound effects and dialog as dry as possible by recording close to the source and controlling unwanted noise. You can take dialog that sounds too dry (because it was recorded too close to the microphone and thus has very little of the room characteristics in the recording) and add reverb and ambient sound. So get your recording right in the first place and add things like ambient noise and reverb later. Always record the sound of the spaces you work in order to build ambient sound beds you’ll use during editing. We’ll certainly spend more time on these issues in subsequent posts.

8. Consider spending as much on sound gear as you spend on camera and lighting gear

As a documentary maker you are usually recording both video and audio while observing subjects or doing interviews. You don’t just need a good camera, you need good microphones, the right accessories for mounting and support, as well as wind control, good cables, headphones, and possibly a mixer. Your investment in quality audio gear will pay off, and will most certainly outlast your camera. For example, I purchased a TRAM-50 lavaliere about thirteen years ago. It’s still a solid performer. I use it on the majority of my shoots (and even when I don’t it’s in my camera bag ready to go). Since that time I’ve gone through four video cameras. The video gear comes and goes but good sound gear is something you’ll have for a long time. My rule of thumb is spend about as much on your sound kit as you do on your camera kit. It’s a bit out of balance to spend $4,000. on a prosumer camcorder and expect to record all of your sound with only the stock microphone mounted on the camera. Even if you’re shooting with a consumer camcorder or an iPhone you can take your work to the next level with a good consumer-level microphone or two, and these will not set you back too much. When I suggest spending as much on sound gear as you do camera gear I don’t necessarily mean you should do this right off the bat if you are starting out, purchase gear slowly over time as you figure out what you need for your own style of shooting. If you can take, take gear out for a spin before you buy: either by attending a trade show, visiting a local retailer, renting from a local rental house, or borrowing from a friend. For a basic consumer-level starter kit, take a look at my recent post Basic Documentary Video Starter Kit (consumer level gear). I work with a mix of gear, some of it consumer-grade (e.g. the small lavaliere I often use with my iPhone) and other components are professional (e.g. my shotgun microphone and wireless lavalieres that I use with my Panasonic HPX170). Each tool has its place. We’ll go into detailed gear recommendations for a wide range of requirements and budgets in this series.

Until the next post, good night and good sound.

Continues in Part 2

Acknowledgments. I’m more of a camera person, I’m not really a sound person, however, I’ve had to learn along the way how to record, edit, and mix sound for my documentary work. I would like to thank Philip Perkins, G. John Garrett, Bill Shamlian, Peter Rea and Alex Griswold, five audio professionals from whom I’ve learned a lot about audio recording and post over the years. Any wisdom in this area I owe to them, any bad habits are strictly my own.

Photo credits: Jaws promotional materials copyright 1975 by Universal Pictures; sound recordist and boom microphone in a field: sound-hero by notArt; sound recordist with shotgun on a beach: shotgunning the wavicules by Strangeless; video editor at work: Jeffrey by bigredpenguin; other photos by the author.

Olloclip expands iPhone field of view

March 3, 2013 By David Tames

The iPhone lens does not have a very wide angle of view. There are times I can’t step back to frame the shot I want. There are other times I want to shoot close, but the iPhone does not have a macro capability. What to do? There’s a wide variety of aftermarket lenses available for the iPhone 4/4S/5, however, so far, the best design I’ve come across is the olloclip ($70, available at a nearby Apple store or direct from olloclip or from Amazon in versions for the iPhone 4/4S and for the iPhone 5) which consists of three lenses: fisheye, wide angle, and macro. The olloclip includes lens caps for the wide and fisheye lenses, and a cute case made of microfiber lens cleaning material. The product packaging is a little excessive (they could learn a thing or two from Studio Neat who sells the Glif) but I guess it needs to be striking in order to stand out among all of the iPhone accessories at the Apple Store, though perhaps the mail-order packaging could be more minimal. Be careful when purchasing from non-mainstream retailers, a lot of clones have sprung up like weeds and their optical quality varies. Below is the olloclip kit (case not shown) along with three configurations (left to right) on an iPhone 4S: wide angle, fish eye, and macro.

The olloclip wide angle lens approximately doubles the standard iPhone lens field of view and the macro lens multiplies the magnification of the iPhone lens by a factor of about ten. The overall fit and finish of the olloclip is very good. It’s obvious they have gone through great lengths to assure quality manufacturing and probably accounts for the additional cost compared to other adapters.The optical quality is reasonably good, chromatic aberration is not excessive, however, with the fisheye, you’ll see quite a bit of lens flare from light sources in or close to the edge of the frame that will exhibit blooming, much like when you stick a Soft F/X or similar diffusion filter on your D-SLR or video camera lens. Shooting macro is a tad awkward because you have to unscrew the wide angle lens elemnent from the macro lens element before you shoot. The macro lens opens up a whole new landscape that is now within reach of the iPhone lens. Below is a frame grab from video shot with FiLMiC Pro using the macro lens and the iPhone solidly positioned on a tripod with a Glif:

I really like the olloclip. This lens kit is small enough to carry with you so you’ll get a lot of use out of it. As someone who’s been a D-SLR photographer with a collection of lenses since I was a teenager and later started shooting with 16mm film and professional video cameras, I have become accustom to having lens choices. But the Canon D-SLR and Panasonic prosumer camera I use for my documentary work are too large to take everywhere, especially both at the same time. Given the iPhone is always close at hand, it’s nice to be able to shoot wide or close with the iPhone when the situation presents itself. If you embrace the inherent characteristics of the olloclip, rather than expect it to provide D-SLR optics on a beer budget with a shot glass form-factor, you’ll be happy with how the olloclip expands the visual possibilities of the iPhone for both photography with the Camera+ app and videography with the FiMiC Pro app.

There are are four things to be aware of when using the olloclip. First, it can easily start to slide off the phone, so be careful that it’s kept in position and check it while shooting. Second, the wide-angle lens, which you don’t want to over-tighten, can come loose from the the macro lens base, so I check this with a gentle turn of the wide angle whenever I take the olloclip out of the bag. Since you need to remove the wide angle lens to shoot Macro, it’s also easy to drop or lose it if you are not carefull. Third, if you are a fan of flash photography, you will be disappointed that the olloclip covers the flash. Since I don’t care for the flash on the iPhone, this is not an issue for me. Fourth: it covers the on/off switch, so you have to remove the olloclip to power off your phone or perform a screen grab. A minor inconvenience, but given where the lens is positioned on the phone, what choice did the designers have? They could have designed a special case you put around the phone to hold the lens and make the switch accessible, but this option does not appeal to me, I like the fact it works with the bare phone, which is how I prefer to use it.

Below are three frame grabs from video shot with FiLMiC Pro to give you an idea of the relative angle of view among the lenses. The first was shot using the standard iPhone lems, the second was shot using the wide angle, and the third was shot using the fisheye. Both the wide angle and fisheye lenses exhibit some blurring around the edges, but is not as extreme when shooting video as compared to stills.

I recently shot the following images at the Engaged Practice closing reception at MassArt using the Apple camera app. The first was shot with the wide angle lens and the second with the fisheye. Note that when shooting stills you get more of the fisheye effect since the image is not being cropped to the 16:9 aspect ratio. These are both full frame images in their original aspect ratio. While some vignetting is evident with the wide angle and even more with the fisheye, the lighting in this situation exaggerates it and in general it’s tolerable. I was literally up against the wall shooting both of these photos, they could not have been composed the way I wanted with the standard iPhone lens. The olloclip has become an essential element in my bag of iPhone accessories expanding the field of view of the iPhone lens whenever I need a wider, or closer, perspective on the world.

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Featured Posts

1. Camera bag

2. Tripod bag

3. Sound case

4. Lighting case

1. Sound coveys emotion, picture coveys information

2. Viewers expect transparent audio

3. Microphone placement and noise management are the primary factors differentiating amateur and professional recordings

4. Setting proper levels and monitoring your recording is crucial

5. Don’t buy into the shotgun myth

6. Judicious use of compression and equalization can make a big difference during editing

7. Eliminate the phrase “we’ll fix it in post” from your repertoire

8. Consider spending as much on sound gear as you spend on camera and lighting gear