The beginning of filming

This week I presented my final degree show project to the rest of the students, their participation is vital to the work, so the idea had to be pitched soon and as clearly as possible. After watching a series of Tate Shots and noticing the relevance of these short films to my work I explained to the rest of the group what exactly I needed their help with. 

My intention for the final degree show is to make a film that focuses on the research I have most recently been doing. Linda Weintraub’s Making Contemporary Art: How Modern Artists Think and Work talks of the way in which artists are able to survive in the art world, in relation to the audience and generally making a living. What intrigued me about this book was the many different examples of the way in which artists went about surviving, the scope of opinions and ideas is astounding. My work has always been theory based, so writing is extremely important and is something I will also be doing that will end up working in tandem with the film. I have been looking closely into essay films, as this is a format that has always interested me. The power of the found and abstract footage, combined together with witty narration and clever editing interests me. The way in which these films are almost subliminal, the intention of the filmmaker is difficult to see but towards the end pieces start to come together and the overall “message” of the film is revealed, the way in which these films are manipulative of the viewer is both clever and funny. I hope to question the students of the Fine Art degree and discover more about who they are and why they are where they are. I will be filming them in a very relaxed and conversational interview setting, based in locations that are significant to them. The questions will aim to uncover the aspects of the artist that you might not necessarily see in an exhibition, enabling the audience to question in a much greater context what it is they are actually looking at. 

The questions are:

Why are you an artist?

What motivates you to make art?

Who is your audience?

How do you communicate with this audience?

What is arts function in society?

The questions are particularly broad but also rather hard to answer and I have come to realise that they are revealing about the person answering. These interviews will allow for an insight into what an artist really thinks, and most importantly the differences between where the students feel that they stand. 

My short term aims for the next few weeks are to try and gather as much footage as possible, I will make a habit of taking my camera everywhere with me, as there are so many opportunities where I can capture people working. The easter holidays have made it reasonably difficult to get a good head start with this as we are only allowed in when another student is present, however I plan to make the most of the quiet in the studios and film a minimum of three people. I have come to discover that I really am not a film student, and it is going to be impossible for me to learn everything about film in just a few weeks. After taking a few books out from the library and having inductions with the technical learning resources department, I know there are a few things I can improve on to get a better quality of image and also a few other things that I am going to have to consider as well. However, I am not going to stress about the perfection of the film. The essay film format is loose and often very abstract and unclear. The quality of the footage itself is not relevant, it is what is being said that is. I am also going to continue researching some more techniques that I can use when filming, by sourcing books and getting feedback from staff at the college. Having met at the beginning of the week with a member of staff who is no stranger to film and equipment, I realised that it is incredibly technical. The look I hope to get for my film is not going to be polished, it wouldn’t be possible to achieve a perfect technical film, so I will aim to do the best that I can possibly do in the time we have left. 

I experimented with filming Sarah’s studio space and seeing how good the cameras were at filming in the bright light of the studio. I also wanted to test out using different angles and editing together these to create the different perspectives. At the time I only worked with the one camera, however when filming for real I plan to have at least three cameras at a time. 

I realised that the DSLR camera image quality was excellent and the bright light of the studio was reflective of the atmosphere that we work in daily, which is something that I felt was important as the film will be shown in the same space but it will look very different. 

I wanted to film the students in areas that they were working, or have worked previously and felt most comfortable. Sarah is a close friend who works with installation, sound and film, questioning what it means to be a female artist as well as her relationship with her children and family. Sarah’s work is confessional, and she has often taken refuge in the TV studio on campus and recorded various diary entries or pieces of writing. We managed to book out the studio for a few hours on Thursday and gathering together a DSLR, a flip camera, an iPad and an iPhone I set up with the intention of filming Sarah in this space answering the questions. This was much more of a trial run than actually getting a load of footage as it will be possible to film Sarah again quite easily. It was a way of testing out the lighting in the space as well as the use of different cameras and equipment. The TV studio had brilliant lighting although I am not sure about the bright green of the background screen. There are many ways that the use of such a bright colour could go, it might work well in the film as a contrast to the white of the studio, or it could clash terribly. I was interested in experimenting with using black and white and a mixture of colour images, so I could perhaps change this to black and white and make the whole image softer. As for the cameras, the quality of the footage on the iPad was not very good compared to the other cameras or even an iPhone. The DSLR was by far the best but there is something about the mobility of the other cameras that I really liked, I was able to put them in small places and position them in more ways that the DSLR. The sound for the piece was quite good but this was due to the room being isolated, in the busy studios and workshops capturing the sound might be problem. Nevertheless, I have considered the use of subtitles, which are often used in essay films, this could be an easy solution to the issues with sound as well as using microphones and recorders. 

A part-time student Arlene said she’d be interested in being filmed without having looked or thought very much about the questions. This spontaneous honesty is something I was interested in capturing, being able to see what people truly think instead of something they have spent an entire evening thinking up! Arlene is currently crafting a large model aeroplane, and is in her second from last year at the college. I scouted her out in the wood workshop with just the one camera and found her working on the model plane. She answered the questions naturally and has a gentle temperament, the loud noises of drilling from the workshop contrasted completely with what was being recorded. Noise was an issue with this recording, as often someone would put on the extractor fan which drowned out all audio. However, I feel that these small things work with the space well and make it realistic. The DSLR was also on autofocus for this recording as I didn’t have much time to set up and think about the equipment as it was an impulsive shoot, this meant that it often focused off of Arlene and what she was doing and then onto the people working in the background. I personally really like it when it did this, however I guess technically this is actually very wrong. These are the differences between what I want to do and the making of a completely technically sound film. 

To ease the process of editing I will be transcribing all of the individual recordings, and shoots as this will make it easier later on when I want to see everything of what was said by the individual people in order to sync them together. Although this was the main aim, I realised that having these transcribed was not only good for me but an excellent thing for the person speaking to have a record of, sometimes you do not quite remember what you said and it can be strange seeing that written down. The process of transcribing is slightly time consuming but necessary I believe. 

From my experience with the first few recordings I have realised that it is important to consider the noise around the area, as this can have a great effect on the recording, and sourcing some mics for the recording in the studio will be important. I have also realised that it is incredibly difficult to film all of these things on your own, particularly when I had the three cameras going at once. Not only is it hard to keep track of what each camera is doing but it's difficult to focus on what is being said as well. I will be glad after easter when Ruth will be around to help with this, as I think it will make the entire process a lot smoother and the quality of the footage will also be better. After a few mistakes with recording I understand the importance of checking that all the memory cards have space, that the cameras have battery and that all the settings are in sync and correct. There is nothing worse than one camera stopping halfway through as you lose that part of the film that could in the end be crucial. I need to focus on learning some more techniques and getting together the correct equipment, as well as taking more time to set up and checking that everything is okay with the cameras. I am looking forward to continuing with the filming and taking on board the things I have learnt from the first few attempts!