For me as a beginner film maker, this project is an opportunity and a challenge to practice my camera skills. Watching different direct cinema clips open my interest for this genre and since then I have seen many more videos in this style. I remember these kind of films from the times when I was kid and this cinema was popular on our retro channel on TV. I liked many of them but did not think about them too much. They were mostly about people working in factories, train stations, or building sites from the communist era. It was also the time when cinematography in Czechoslovakia was much more progressive than nowadays. I have tried to post some of them into my blog, but they are nowhere to be found online. From what was shown to us in the class, I really enjoyed Gray gardens by Albert Maysles.
It was a very enjoyable movie accompanied with a good mood. The grotesque situations between two main characters made it not boring or too long even though it was longer than most of the direct cinema clips. It made me think not just about the movie - what I have seen on the screen - but also about the story hidden behind the mother character during her young age. I am big fan of documentary films so I was happy to get to know more about different kind of documentaries as direct cinema or its ancestor cinema varieté.
I was interested about the roots of this genre and shortly discovered the man named Jean Rouch - the founder of cinema varieté. I watched some of his work and found it very outstanding in good way. His work brings different views on the documentary genre, now mostly produced by commercial TV channels which, in my opinion, lack realism. His documentaries about Africa as for instance Jean Rouch - Les magiciens de Wanzerbé create a unique look on his subjects which make you feel that you have seen it and experienced it with your own eyes.
I liked the combination of the music, voice over, and the picture itself in his work. The picture logic together with the changing music made a great combination and creates many different dramas and plots throughout each document. These dramas bring the importance even into the situations which I would normally considered as not that important or interesting.
I do not think that cinema varieté or direct cinema would look similar in 2018. The camera itself back then was not that common as nowadays. Ordinary people were not used to it and in my opinion they acted more natural. Not everybody had a TV or internet as we know it today. To see a movie or be part of the picture was something special as you can see by the people's behavior in these films. I would say that it was more pure compared to the modern documentary. Of course it would now look different with all the modern technology and communication channels but that does not make the direct cinema impossible to make.
Almost everybody now has access to a camera; mobile phones, availability of buying their own camera etc. People are very familiar with video making and usage of videos in the media. Seeing the movie or documentary is now just two clicks close on the internet, social media, TV, which makes it less special. From my experience during filming this small project I would say that filming of direct cinema nowadays is possible even without people interacting or behaving unnaturally, but my short film is not enough to prove this opinion.
I would personally like to see or make more of today's direct cinema in the future. As a sum up of my reflection on modern direct cinema I would say that there is still lot of interesting events in everyday modern life which would create great subjects for this type of documentary filming.
I have also seen projects from previous students and I found inspiration in one particular video named Butcher. In my opinion this film represents everything that this kind of project should represent: hand held camera, focusing during the process, different angles etc.; all of this is an inspiration for my own film.
Finding a subject for my project was and still is harder than I thought. I have contacted a lot of crafting studios around the West Midlands but always get the same response "sorry we are busy, come in December". As a last chance I went to the hairdresser in the HUB to ask them for approval to film them during work. They agreed so I could finally schedule the time for zero project.
Before the filming I was practicing focusing on objects with different distances. Since I have bought my first camera, I needed to get to know it better and learn how to set everything right. The name of the project is zero and I needed to turn off all settings which would have an influence on the requirements of the project. I turned off electronic stabilization, auto focus, and I did not even use a mic even though the sound quality of my camera is not one of its strong features.
The actual filming was very good. Some time after my arrival to the destination I spent a while observing the scene and thinking about the best composition. It did not take me long and I spotted that the lighting in the room is not very pleasant for filming and even when I tried many different expositions, there was always this disturbing flickering light of the LED bulbs which I hope will not ruin my work too much.
From two workers of the salon, I chose to film one who was coloring a lady's hair as this was an opportunity to have more action on the film since this procedure is a long process consisting of many different stages.
My second section of filming was of her colleague who was cleaning and preparing the salon for closing. I thought that I can kill two birds with one stone, but it was very hard to film them both in the same time since he started while I was still filming my first person. I managed to get some shots of him and I want to try to use it for my own practice.
Example footage
First thing I have done was going through all footage, separate them according to subject and quality of the videos.
While watching all videos I found out few problems which I did not realized on the spot or I did not take into consideration during filming. First problem was that the mentioned flickering, which I was aware of but it was much more visible then I thought it would be.
Since I did not have enough time to film my project again, I needed to come up with solution which would help me to get rid of this unpleasant blinking and still keep the "zero" above my work. Unfortunately, I could not use a lot of footage because it was affected too much by the flickering light, but I still managed to save some of it.
According to the requirements of the project I could not think about usage of any anti-flickering effects or automatic fixing solutions. My solution was overlay infected footage with the same footage, move it one frame forward and lower the opacity on the above footage down to around 50%. This helped to fix the gap between two blinks of the light and minimize the flickering. I question myself if it would not break the rules of the zero project, but considering that I fixed it just by using the same footage two times made me think that saving the footage by this technique is not really cheating.
How it looks :
The second problem I had was the lens. As I mentioned before I had trouble with finding my subject. Considering the deadline and all the work ahead I decided to go to the Hairdresser in the HUB at university as my last chance. My problem was that at that time the university's loanshop was closed and I had to use just my kit lens; therefore I needed to manage to film the whole thing with M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 II R.
Since I have never filmed by myself before, this was for me more than challenging. I was trying a lot of angles, heights, and positions. It was hard not to reflect myself in one of the mirrors which were all around the space. Using the lens was not always ideal because there was not enough space around the subject during close-ups and I needed to fit myself around many obstacles such as salon equipment, customers, etc. I filmed everything on 14mm focal length and with my micro 4/3 was 28mm focal length. I also did not want to use focus on the lens because of its quality and shaking image.
My third problem during filming was lack of filming experience. By mistake I turned on different filming priority on the camera from manual to shutter speed which set my shutter speed wrong and "infected" the image with too much motion blur, which you can see in some footage. Fortunately I spotted this mistake quickly and the rest of the clips were filmed with the right shutter speed. This happened especially on close-ups I really wanted to use, so I cut this footage and used just parts of it for my final piece.
Different versions
First version subject n.1
The first version I did was for me the most difficult one. The freedom of making it in my own style without any guidance was something new and interesting, but on the other side challenging and difficult. Choosing the right footage and thinking about picture logic took a long time until I started my first cuts. I wanted my work to have some kind of story. I was not very happy with the result and feedback from Ken approved my feelings that there was too much "tutorial-like" footage.
First version - subject n.2
The first version of my second subject was something like a bridge between my first and last work. In this clip, I tried to raise a stronger personality of the main character. The natural attitude of the man helped the video to feel more personal. Even though I prefer this subject from the attitude perspective, I decided to use my first subject for my final version as I recorded more footage of her and there was more action.
Second version subject n.1
Considering the feedback and my feeling about my first version, I tried to combine the feeling of the second video with my first character which I think went well. I have tried to use the environment of the hairdresser's salon to help me with the lack of angles, so I made several shots of the mirrors reflecting the subject. This technique turned out to be very helpful for the variety of images and made the video more appealing. Using more close-ups and showing more than just the character itself definitely filled the missing mood of the first video.
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