Recent 100A Doc Work

Shaun Patrick

Shaun Patrick

Well-known member
I'm new to DVXuser.com but have owned/used DVX100's over the past two years. Thus far I've been very impressed by of the footage/overall quality of work posted on the forums and I thought I would add a little taste of what I've been shooting using a DVX100A. The link below will take you to two QuickTime movies from my graduate thesis film. It's a documentary about little league baseball that focuses on one coach and his love for the game.

www.hometeammovie.com

Coolness.
 
From a production standpoint, you seem to be the right track - you probably could use a little help with the audio. One shot you panned off to the left, that would have been an excellent time to put the stuff in the foreground in focus. But it did have a good depth of field.

But your problem lies in the editing. To put it simply - its kind of boring. The main speaker is often repeating things he has already said. In otherwords- it needs some cutting. The audio in the b-roll is a bit on the high side- high enough to add distraction. He doesn't really seem to be talking about much of anything, and when he does it takes him a little too many words ('uh','I uh', 'and' seem to be very popular) to get his point across, and then he aknowledges himself when he re-iterates what he's already said (Like I said before, you don't have much maturity at that age.)

By doing this you will inherently change the way the audience interprets the character - he may seem more.... less wordy. I think thats good, because it seems like he often is having troubles recalling information.

The reaccuring image of the shots behind the fence leads me to believe that the character is trapped in his own sick and twisted childhood traumitization of not being in the top #3 for the umass baseball team. You could probably cut all the additional baseball mumbojumbo that spirts out after that, its besides the point. I won't get too indepth about the character, to avoid offence, but it is interesting. The shots are compelling - but edit edit edit. I would not sit down to another 10 mintutes of that guy talking the way he's talking in the two examples. Oh my god.

I liked the car-shots. But. He spends 30 seconds telling something you could edit back to like ... 10 seconds in two sentences.

Nonetheless, good work, it takes a few documentaries before you start to develop a pace, especially with longer pieces.
 
nice... really nice. creative shots, great story concept. i'd agree with the above comment on loosing a few "uh's" here and there... but very impressive shooting. would like to see more. nice music too.
 
Hi,
i liked the philosophy and the style, i just found some of the cuts a little harsh for the standard audience (the character moving from one part of the screen to the other from before to after the cut), even though i understand they are originating from the same philosophy.

Im curious to know which setting you used to shoot. standard or cinelike?
Andrea
 
Coolness

Coolness

Thanks for the comments/critiques...

Redcap, I understand the need/necessity for "sound-bitish" documentary interview cutting but since the film was produced while I was in graduate film school, I had the luxury of experimenting with form and structure. While that sounds a tad pretentious, I think including the "ums" and "uhs" is a more naturalistic way of presenting an interview (not to be confused with objective since the interviews are heavily edited.) I'm a fan of films that have subjects who work through their answers by repeating themselves and posing questions to themselves. Errol Morris always does this brilliantly and, yeah, it completely depends on the strength of the subject/character to work successfully. So to respond to the "boring" editing style--it might not be everyone's aesthetic preference but every cut in the sequences that you watched was completely intentional and, at times, agonized over. Successful or not--it's all a matter of stylistic preference. So, I completely understand where you're coming from but I guess I subscribe more to the Errol Morris/Chris Marker style of documentary.

Baluardo, we were shooting with the cine-like settings in 24PA mode. Though, the exterior/hood mounted car shot was filmed using the 3-chip Panasonic DV951. I just didn't have the insurance/balls to put a DVX100 on the hood with a shitty car mount.
 
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