Self-Directed Project - Behind the Scenes

 

Finding myself in a bit of a time crunch for my documentary project, I ended up doing nearly all of the filming for the project at once. Of course I started with filming the interview with my dad.

I decided to film the interview using two cameras - one from a side view and one a bit more head-on - to give shot variety within the interview. I also wanted to see how his expressions could be viewed differently from different angles.

This choice ended up being a lifesaver, because for some reason my main camera (and the mic it was connected to) didn't record for the first half of the interview. But thankfully, because of my dual-camera setup, I still got this first half recorded on my secondary phone camera, albeit with lower sound quality.

I regret not taking a photo of this interview setup I used, although I did take a photo of the general clutter I had to deal with when filming. My dad was turning this room into his personal music room, so there was plenty of his stuff laying around. Thankfully I was able to move enough of it out of the way so I was able to have a clean setting for the interview.

 

Where I was standing when I took this photo is approximately where my subject and the area my camera setup was in, which I had to deal with for the rest of filming.

 After the interview, I gained a pretty good idea of some shots I wanted to film. Specifically, my dad spoke about how he got into music when he was little, and how he would flip through many of his mom and sibling's records. Thankfully, my dad has kept a lot of his old records, which I used as a reenactment of sorts.

The closest thing I could find for lighting was a small ring light my mom used when she used to work as a nail specialist (at least I assume so, I just found it lying around). It had a clip on it, so for most shots I ended up using an old lamp to clamp this light onto to hold it up, almost like a DIY tripod.

Notice the rather crude method of holding up this light for most of my shots.

One unfortunate detail about this ring light was that it had a pretty short cable. This made sense for nail usage and clearly wasn't designed for filmmaking purposes.

 

[Top] This cable was just long enough to make this shot work.

[Bottom] A full image of what I was dealing with for the shot (I was filming the silver sound system on the left)

I also composed a shot where all the lights were turned off except for the ring light to distinguish it from the earlier "childhood" scene and basically create a whole new scene that showcases some of the CD's the band made over the years.

Since the camera was pointed almost directly downwards, it's lucky the couch was there to keep the tripod from falling over!

The final shot I filmed came to me on-the-spot while I was editing the video. My dad was telling a small story about how the band's name came about, and I thought it could be told better visually than audibly. It was a simple handheld shot of me writing out the band's name. I also decided to include some random items that were still laying around to give the scene an spur-of-the-moment feeling, which was supported by the somewhat shaky camera movement.

 

There's that clip-on light again...