Craig Proudley – Budgeting

Yay budgeting!

I know this isn’t the most exciting part of filmmaking, trust me I know. But it ain’t that bad! Craig Proudley came in to give us a lecture on the subject, and I found it a little interesting.
There are so many things I didn’t think of when budgeting for something, well, because i’ve never had money to budget for a film.
He talked to us about contingency, and budgeting for things that didn’t even cross my mind, like phone calls, overheads, many types of insurance, test screenings, submission fees and so on. All I know is that the first time I do budgeting it’s going to be super challenging!

For now, Craig has got us an exercise on getting as close to $1500 for a music video. Good luck to all of us!

Ciao

Love/Hate Relationship

Lately, i’ve had mental blocks, breakdowns and moments where i’ve wanted to scream and pull my hair out. Recently, I was venting to a friend, and she posed me a question

If you hate it so much, why do you do it?

My first thing that pops into my mind is, what else would I do? I can’t see myself at the end of a telephone, selling something to someone. Or spending weeks on end sitting at a desk, doing an office job. I can’t see myself being a psychologist, a doctor, a lawyer, a marine biologist, occupational therapist of whatever else all my other friends are studying at university.

The short answer? I love it.
The long answer? I can’t see myself doing anything else. In 11th grade I moved schools and enrolled in a film and TV class, thinking I could just watch movies and avoid doing physics three times a week. Next thing I knew, I was dropping everything and moved across state, leaving my family and all of my friends behind. I wasn’t worried because I knew this was for me.

Now, after many tears, headaches and after physically making myself sick with stress, my thoughts haven’t changed. The way I see it, if filmmaking doesn’t make you feel horrible and stressed at times, are you really challenging yourself and doing the best you can? Going through all these emotions just show how passionate I am about this career, even if I only know a small percentage of everything that goes on in this crazy world. I feel everything happens for a reason, and maybe this is where it all leads to.

There’s nothing better than after weeks and weeks of torture, and I mean torture, is seeing an outcome, seeing an edit come together beautifully, or even seeing a finished script. That feeling is what keeps me going.

I guess i’m writing this blog post for future me, because I’m near the end of my degree and it’s only going to get harder from now on. After December, I don’t have a safety net. But for now, I just got to get my head in the game and keep on goin’ on.

Hopefully I have more news for you soon!

– D.

ANH TRAN

Hello friends!

This is technically my first blog of the trimester. I’ve deleted my previous attempts, they were poorly worded and just dribbled on pointless issues. Anyway…

Good news! I filmed my first client video yesterday for my dear friend Anh Tran and her clothing line ‘Echo’. It was a really great experience, and I drove right into the deep end, forcing myself to tackle new things! Firstly, fashion videos, i’ve never done before. Secondly, not only setting up and lighting a green screen, but filming on one as well (thanks Alex for the help!). Lastly, editing footage on a green screen and replacing backgrounds and such. It’s going to be so much fun to play around with! Also, is going to be a lot of work!

Here are some photos from the day:

Update: zoo videos are going well, going to progress after hearing feedback and work on things further soon!
Anyway, back to work!

Talk soon!

What is my doco/ Who inspired me for my doco?

LO6; Recently I flew to Victoria with two other students to film a documentary. It’s a fly on the wall documentary with aspects of expositional hidden throughout. The expositional quality is due to the main subject being unable to be on camera because of legal issues. The reason we chose the fly on the wall approach is because we wanted to capture the natural essence of our subjects, and from this we brought out great content.

LO7; As for inspiration from a documentary director, and beside the obvious David Attenborough, I hadn’t seen too many animal or nature documentaries before making this doco myself. Although Attenborough’s documentaries are more elaborate and completely different than my documentary, I did learn valuable lessons from him. From watching his documentaries, and by discussing his documentary techniques briefly in class, I learn that you need a lot of b-roll for documentary. Because of this, I do believe we have over six hours of footage, or there abouts. I’m unsure if we would have captured as much b-roll as we would have without this inspiration.

Previous documentaries I have watched to do with animals do not match up with ours as they are about slaughter shelters and animal cruelty, and not about the good in the world. Unfortunately I have not watched many documentaries and cannot draw much inspiration from them, but I feel from myself and my crew collectively we had plenty of inspiration.

(an overdue) modes of desire

We’ve been given weekly blogging tasks, and i’m sure by my lack of activity on this website you can tell i’ve let myself slip a little bit.

Anyway, for now i’ll be talking about Michael Renov’s documentary modes of desire.

Renov see’s documentaries as:

the more or less artful reshaping of the historical world

It records,

reveals or preserves;

persuades or promotes;

analyses or interrogates;

and expresses.

Holly and I (plus a newly joined Nabil) are traveling to Melbourne to film an organisation called Saffron on the Hill. The doco will be observational and will aim to record, reveal, preserve and express. We will be capturing the life of the volunteers and Karen’s life on the hill, and exactly what drove Karen to starting this business. It will reveal the true struggle of the task at hand and help preserve the true kindness and devotion behind Karens’ work. This is a video about the organisation, however is not necessarily promotional. It is not our intention to create a promotional video, but is to express the truth of their story.

Overall, I feel we as a team are going to use many of these modes in our documentary and we aren’t limited to one singular mode.

Faramarz K-Rahber

So earlier in the trimester we had an amazing guest lecturer (Faramarz K-Rahber) come in to talk to us about documentary. He really opened my eyes as to what lies behind doco and everything in between. One of the things that resonated with me was his message of passion. Without passion, there is no filmmaking in a sense. Anyone can point and shoot and direct and you can say it was coherent and whatever, but if someone does it with passion, then it shows on film. That’s what I plan to focus on for my documentary.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to do my doco this trimester, and even more fortunate to be super passionate about it as well. I mean, i’m traveling to Melbourne to film. If that doesn’t scream passion, I don’t know what will. I’m also taking into account how much work Faramarz put’s into his documentaries and hope to follow suit, (despite our lack of time). I wan’t to make up for everything that went wrong last trimester and produce a good piece of work I can be proud of and put on my reel. I also want to capture the best story I can while in Melbourne with my awesome team. This is starting to get off topic now…

Hopefully I can do Faramarz K-Rahber, and make his time lecturing us at SAE worth while…

-D x

Rule 3 of Michael Moore’s 13 rules for making documentary films

That third rule is The modern documentary has sadly morphed into what looks like a college lecture, the college lecture mode of telling a story.

Unfortunately, this is true.
There is nothing worse than a talking head. A talking head is boring.
We want something we can really look at, something that can convey emotion and can draw attention from the audience. Nobody wants to watch a mouth move on screen. It puts all of us back into those uncomfortable seats, reminding us of late nights and sipping coffee to try and curb the need for sleep, but failing miserably until you find yourself in a puddle of your own drool.
OK, I got a bit carried away there, but long story short. It’s boring.

Documentaries have to keep up with films more than ever now as the new generation of demographic is accustomed to watching short, snappy flicks with excitement and drive. We have short attention spans and will grab our cell phones if we don’t find something interesting enough. Trust me, I am guilty of this.

This then provides us with the ultimate challenge: is it enticing enough?, and what makes it enticing?

Maybe we will never quite know the golden answer.
Anyway, thats all of my thoughts on this topic for now at least.

talk soon,

– Dx

Tri 4 begins!!
I can’t believe this is our last year of Uni. It makes me happy, sad and nervous.

This tri we’re doing documentary, which is a whole new area for me in film. I’ve never done doco before, and I haven’t watched many doco’s either. I moved house and I currently don’t have internet, which means i’m unable to watch any docos. I went and talked to Naomii (our internship supervisor) and she gave me a list of doco’s to watch, which is great. As soon as I get internet i’m gunna be all up in that!

I’m really excited for this project, as i’m teaming up with Holly and we have some good ideas forming around our doco. We’re thinking of doing a doco on animal rights, and hopefully we can team up with Animals Australia, an organisation devoted to the safety and protection of animals, while also exposing factory farms and other farms that exploit and/or harm animals. So hopefully we can get others on board also.

Overall, this trimester should be hopefully easier than last tri in some aspects. I’m grateful I don’t need to slave away on a script (yay!). However, I guess I can’t say anything until after i’ve gone through it.

Oh well,
heres to a good trimester! Talk to you soon,

– Dx

Afflictions – Short Film

SO here’s my uni submission for my short film Afflictions.
I’m not totally happy with the way it turned out, but i’ve already blogged about these things so i’m not going to repeat them and bore you. Hope you enjoy

– D x

Zombie! (Sharing is Caring Part 5)

Here’s a video I helped film/set up/light for Izzy Olsson for her Open Mic International audition. This is the song I edited, and one of the others is being edited by one of my peers.

She did a cover of the song Zombie by the Cranberries on a whim and it turned out beautifully in black and white and with the backlight. The video is taken from her YouTube channel which i’ve linked below

Her channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbi3Z-7I9AsLdIPKsZqzv-A

Her Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IzzyOlssonMusic?fref=nf

– D x