Meeting 3

So, we met again, this time to finalize pitch ideas and organize who would be saying what/researching what.

Our final pitch idea is a historical documentary which is both evocative and education. The story will follow a track through the dome, with the camera focusing on various features of the dome. These features will provoke first a sound scape, and then a short potted history of different eras of history under the dome. These scenes will be a mix of re-enactment, interview and archive footage. We have focused very much on the aesthetics; we want the colors to be rich and nostalgic, and will shoot with a macro lens to get a filmic look. The soundscape too, will be subtly built to create a memory-like film to satisfy the senses.

Cal has been designing a mood board. We took some of it from the website (which is royal colors and black), and from our own preferences- (nostalgic and kitschy).

We have now began to research online at how other historical videos worked, at tutorials for timelapses and good tracks, at music and copyright, and for interviewees.

For our pitch, we have decided to use a prezzi and a mood board. The prezzi will have different sections- we were going to share the intro/conclusion, and the other sections are:Why we wanted to do it, main events, visual style, sound scapes, organizations. We have split each section up, which works quite well, because we all have equal amounts to say and do.

We are all researching for all of these, but my main focus is sound and camera. After some research into historical documentaries (examples from the BBC online etc) I have taken that the style of these documentaries is a "Ken Burns effect" over archive material. This is a pan or zoom out/in on a photo. This is an example with a still photo:

Here is an example from Youtube:

(Ken Burns effect tutorial, Urpo Lankinen 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTiyRDhlRY)
This is quite an easy thing to do, I realize that if we use Final cut (which I think we will, then there is an inbuilt system which allows us to do this) Here is an example: FINAL CUT SCREEN SHOT

I have also been researching how to pan and track easily, as these smooth camera moments are a noticable feature in many documentaries.   I have picked up some tips, such as using an elastic band on the tripod handle to make the pan smooth, as well as moving very slowly on a pan and speeding it up later, which is a quite cool effect. Again, there are quite a few good tutorials online which I have been looking at. Here is an example:

After Effects CS6 - 3D Camera Tracking, Maltaanon, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiwuCS5Bobk)