Filming: Day One

Finally me and Conor got to film at last. It was great to get some filming for this under our belts and I think that it's really going to turn out well.

We filmed a lot of shots of Rory working in the workshop. The workshop is very  impressive and tells us a lot about Rory and the way he likes to work. It's a very relaxing and calming environment.

Some of Rory's pieces to be fired

 Conor was familiar with the workshop which was a great advantage as he was on camera and got some really beautiful shots. He used his Canon 550D mostly that has such great image quality. I shot a little on the Canon XF100, but we couldn't use it as well as the shutter speed settings are really strange to work out and did not look well in the lighting conditions. I fixed some settings that made it better, but overall, the best quality was on the 550D. I experimented a lot with some slow tracking and pulling focus.

We only filmed Rory working on some pieces as they will serve a great purpose for cutaways and telling us a lot about Rory and showing us how difficult and precise this craft is.

It's a massive confidence booster to get some filming done finally. We are going back to film on Sunday evening which will be a very exciting bit of filming as we get to  film Rory firing the kiln. After that we need to film an interview with Rory and some location shots and that will be us finished.

Class Viewing 3: Searching for Sugar Man

What a film. Just what a film. Searching for Sugar Man was the third film we watched in class and was directed by Malik Bendjelloul.

I personally think that this may be one of the best films I have ever seen. The way it makes you feel when it's over is shocking, it feels so good and I felt so glad that I had been told this incredible story.

Sixto Rodriguez was a singer from Detroit in the late 60's who was signed and released two albums. Both flopped in the US and he was released. He gave up singing and disappeared. Years later his music became a massive hit in South Africa. His records sold upwards of 500,000 copies. He was bigger than Elvis.

However, no one knew anything about him. Many believed he committed suicide by setting himself alight on stage. Yet no one had seen this happen. From here, a massive journey of discovery for Rodriguez begins and ends so amazingly.

The film resonated with me for days (it still is) because of this amazing journey. We are led down the road for so long about this mans suicide and we believe ourselves that he's dead as we just get let down so many times and the evidence all points that way.

Yet we discover that he's alive and it's about a man working in poverty who didn't know he was famous and his music was prominent in the anti-apartheid movement. It's a glorious moment.

It was interesting to point out that some of the interviews at the start that we see about the people saying who they didn't know who this man was and that they believed he died are also the same ones shown at the end when we know the truth. It has been cleverly edited together to tell the best story which works so well.

It's emotional when we hear from the producers who worked with him and are sad about what could have happened to him. Yet at the end, his fame doesn't get the better of him as he still lives in the house he's lived in and donates his money.

Class Viewing 2: Encounters at the End of the World

The second week's viewing was a film entitled: Encounters at the End of the World directed by Werner Herzog.

I had heard of Herzog before now and was aware of his success in the documentary field but had yet to watch any of them. He is strange for his involvement in both documentaries and fiction fields, directing Bad Lieutenant: Port Call of New Orleans and playing the 'baddie' in Jack Reacher. A unique filmmaker.

Encounters involved Herzog and a small film crew going to the South Pole in Antarctica to observe the life of the people who work there. The film is so mesmerizing because of the way Herzog tells the story.

We learn soon on of the truck driver which is essentially a bus that collects them and several others when the plane lands. Firstly, this bus isn't a normal size. It is a giant behemoth with wheels bigger than houses. Herzog asks him what he did before coming here, expecting a truck driver or a cab driver, but the man reveals he worked in a bank in Colorado. This was shocking. 

The man tells us that he moved to Guatemala and got involved in the civil rights movement and was captured by these gang members who were going to kill him with a machete, but thankfully he escaped. He closes by telling us that there was another woman captured who didn't make it and was killed. It was a very emotional and sad moment that laid the groundwork for the film.

It was very interesting to find out about the different people who live here, like the divers who must blow a massive hole in the ground then dive in sub zero temps. They don't use a tether line either and must find their way back to the small exit hole. They search for sea creatures and anything else they can find, sometimes finding new species' of creatures. According to them it's a 'very big deal' but remain calm and unnaffected because it must happen pretty regularly.

Herzog is a very effective documentarian and it may be his experience of both this genre and fiction that enables him to be so good at it. He blurs the line between fiction and reality and we almost don't know what we're watching and we get lost in it. I think it makes for really effective storytelling. He has clearly staged certain things for the camera and has paid off miraculously.

I feel it would be a cardinal sin to skip talking about the visuals in this film. The cinematography is incredible, the cavern walls look like they can tell so many stories and the underwater photography is also breathtaking.

Class Viewing 1: Nostalgia de la Luz

The last three weeks have involved us, as a class, watching a documentary that has used specific conventions and techniques to achieved a required effect. Each of these techniques are meant to make us think about how we want to make our documentary and think differently than the usual TV docs we are used to.

The first film we watched was called: Nostalgia de la Luz, translated as Nostalgia for the Light. It was a Chilean film by a man named Patricio Guzmán. The film largely deals with the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

This film is very interesting because it combines two things: the search into the past of humans by astronomers and the search by the Chilean people who had relatives killed during Pinochet's reign.

 The film opens with a telescope looking at the moon. It takes us on a journey that leaves our world and into the beyond. We are then taken back down to the earth again and shown different pieces of technology, telescopes, that allows us to see into the void that is space. We see the desert, an abundance of history. We finally see a house that someone lives in and lets us known that there is life.

It is a mesmerizing opening and lasts a solid four minutes and could pass for a short film. It speaks volumes itself with the journey it takes us on. I see it as a journey of showing us that there is much more out there than we think. We live on this planet but there is so much more and so much that we do not know. The cosmos is massive and much bigger but these telescopes allow us to see what is beyond us. The desert, dry and no life, could be viewed as an indication that even though we are full of life, we are surrounded by places that aren't. 

These places, like the Atacama desert, are the location of these majestic telescopes that allow us to see what else there is in the universe and it can also be seen that before we existed this already existed.

The opening is also unique in that it is solely visual images and the sounds of the machines, all natural. No voiceover required to tell the story which leaves it open to interpretation, a powerful tool. One that I really want to use in my documentary.