Monday, February 25, 2008

Text Journal Entry #5 (Travis)

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Entry from 12.29.07 - Saturday

Just a real quick update here. I watched the footage from Alex’s performance on 12.13.07 at Gallery 110 in Provo. The footage looks incredible. Torben was shooting with the DVX100A and I was shooting just with a cheaper 3ccd camera, so Torben’s footage looks a little bit better. However, both sets of footage look quite good. Cade’s audio should sound great, so when we sync it up to the video we should have a great document of the performance. Ashley also caught some really good still shots. I’m sure we’ll be able to use quite a bit of the footage.

Torben captured a great shot at the very beginning of the performance...Alex is humming/droning with his voice and Torben has a great shot of him, while behind Alex, in a reflection on a window you can see the audience reacting to him in several different ways. This shot may even be a great way to start our documentary...starting right out with how Alex begins performances, and at the same time, showing various reactions to him. Other great shots are when we (Torben and I) are really paying close attention to Alex’s movements. For instance, one that I capture is when Alex is really belting out some choppy phrases and my camera is capturing his words by jolting back and forth in sync with his rhythms, pretty interesting. Torben captured a great piece where Alex is breathing quite heavily and saying words in rhythm with his breath...Torben quickly begins tapping the zoom back and forth along with Alex’s rhythmic breathing. The effect is noticeable, but not overt. It ends up working very well...another thing we can potentially use. For our first filming of a performance, I feel it is a great success. As I said the lighting works perfectly in that space.

The only criticisms that I can muster at this point is that we capture each other in our frames quite often, which is actually not to big of a concern because we will only be using short clips from this event (if anything). Another criticism is that we didn’t get very good establishing shots of the outside of the venue, we got plenty of B-roll inside the venue, but nothing to speak of outside of it. Once again, no big deal, because we can go back anytime and get some solid establishing shots outside with no problems, probably under even better lighting...

I go back to a statement from an earlier entry...if the ratio of actual footage to usable footage really is 1 hour shot to 1 minute used, than we are way ahead! I’m feeling really good about this project. More entries soon. We are going to be working like crazy on our CEL grant very soon. We are applying for the CEL grant at UVSC for $10,000. This money, if we get awarded, will cover many costs including: an Apple MacBook Pro laptop for editing, tapes, external hard drives, and money to get to shooting locations in New York and Sicily. This will really be a huge help and relief if we get it, and I think we have a good chance. More on this later.
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