Portrait of a Place

TCF 312 - Portrait of a Place - Railroad Park from UA, Telecommunication and Film on Vimeo.

This portrait tells the story of a day at Railroad Park.
I am trying to communicate the feeling of observation, exploration, and momentum of the park from a kid's perspective by placing the kids in the frame in such a way that shows their relative size to the giant city structures, by having movement throughout the frame so that the nature of the railroad is reflected in the kids busy activity in the park, and by using music that sounds like curiosity, groove, and exploration.

Reflections

(suggested listening for as you read this post, my favorite music for having introspective reflection moments to!)

I've really enjoyed learning the specifics of different cameras. Reading the manuals and then going hands on immediately after has been just what I needed. I feel much more comfortable picking up the available cameras and working with them quickly and efficiently, knowing where the things I need are located physically on them. I've also expanded what I know about filters, specifically the polarizer. I think I'm realizing that my strengths lie on the side of direction and composition. DPing is sometimes challenging in that I just still don't feel like I'm as quick at it as I want to be yet. My directing brain knows where it wants to go much faster than my DP brain knows how to get there. I'm continuing to work on expanding the way I think about the technicalities of light. It is rewarding to just get more experience and know that I am getting faster at picking things up.

Light

Obama - Nadav Kander

Mad Men

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Andrezj Dragan

Where the Wild Things Are

I like to look at catch lights in eyes for what they add to images of people. They instantly create a depth and connection to the subject that wouldn't be the same if they were missing. The portrait of Obama is powerful because in adition to catching him in an angle we're not used to seeing, there is so much light in his eyes. The absence of light in a photo like this might subconsciously associate a person with a darker personality type, but of course with the light there we're reminded of innocence and purity. The same goes for the portrait of the old man by Andrezj Dragan. He uses a similar technique in much of his work that highlights the eyes in this way. This idea is also at play in the promo still from The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. As we can see more light in Rooney Mara's eyes and less in Daniel Craig's it creates potential to interpret him as more evil, especially including the way they are positioned. I like the photo from Mad Men as a cool use of chiaroscuro technique, and the Where the Wild Things are landscape as an opposing saturation of light with more bright than dark.  

Filmmaking Goals

It always bugs me that google thinks the word "filmmaking" is spelled wrong.
It occurred to me only just now that I should add the word to my dictionary and make it stop.

It's hard not to become overwhelmed when I think about my long term goals as a filmmaker. This is because I legitimately want to do a bit of everything. I want to be as fully self-sufficient as possible in the process. I definitely do not expect to become an expert in everything with this goal, but I want to be capable of jumping in anywhere in the start to finish life of a film or tv show and knowing exactly what I want to happen. Music videos, feature length fiction films, shorts, documentaries, television programs....I really and truly do want to be able to work on a variety of projects over the course of my career. I have always wanted to work on a long-running, hour-long, single-camera, comedy/drama tv series. I just love those. I want to get to a point where I can do different styles, all the while developing my own signature. Whatever I end up doing, I know that I want to work on projects which give media representation to underrepresented groups. Being a queer, black, southern, lower middle class, female-identified kid....I definitely know what it feels like to not always feel represented by the media. And that lack of representation counts for so much more than I think people realize. I mean I watched any and all TV I could get growing up. I had my own subscription to tv guide when I was around 11 - (and I collected all of them on top of that, so I still have a giant Rubbermaid of tv guides from the early 2000s in storage somewhere).

(I probably have this issue from 2000 saved somewhere. Don't get me wrong, I loved 'N Sync dearly, but I wish I had realized what was really going on with the media's idolization of white, cis-male, straight boys in expensive clothes. There's plenty of that on TV. I don't need to add to it. Sidenote: I do want some of my work to be on TV Guide cover sometime though!)

 I watched so much tv and yet it never occurred to me until I was much older what was missing and how that influenced my thinking on what (and who) television and film considered to be valuable. So I'm definitely going to tell stories that feature people and characters that are living truths that need to be shown in the media more. I want those voices in every project I do.

My learning goal for this course in particular is to become much more comfortable picking up and using any camera immediately. I want to get better with articulating lighting technique. I definitely want to become faster in how long it takes that articulation in my head to get to my mouth, and then ultimately to my hands. I really need to immerse myself in learning how to be faster about remembering how focal length, zoom, iris, etc. will immediately affect the look of any given shot. I feel like I just take too much time thinking about it now. I want to learn more efficient/organized workflow. And a lot of other things I'm sure I can't even explain right now!