Evan Appleby - BFI Act2Cam blog

We started by discussing our ideas and developed the ideas of love and social media and whether love is dead in the modern era. We were then shown different types of questions that could be asked during interviews or vox pops. This included: closed questions which were more straight forward and a good opener open questions which have more answers but may be less focused leading questions which pushed toward a certain feeling loaded questions which have an assumption and call them out evaluation question to assess something comparison question that will compare subjects We then got shown how to use the cameras, lights and sound so we could go out on the street and interview some people to eventually use in our documentary, we found one elderly woman, a middle aged man and a couple to get a variety of people to make the opinions varied. This all gave us a better idea on how the documentary would turn out. This session really helped me develop my skills as a sound operator and all the iss...

We fed our ideas back to the whole course where we were then suggested to head back in the direction of technology and to add more substance and plot. After that we discussed it more then watched a documentary about the artist M.I.A to get inspiration for our projects. The documetary used videos M.I.A had took throughout her life and was put together by her college roommate that made the image of M.I.A being an activist that is constantly being beaten down by the public and people in power for her beliefs with an interesting and raw style.

 Me and Harry pitched our idea for a documentary about phone usage in the modern day where we found: access style structure Our idea was to compare an older man who never uses his phone to a younger girl who uses it a lot and switch their habits around to see how each of them are affected and then check up on them regularly. We were then put into groups with other people who also had pitches about technology and then discussed and tried to develop those ideas to shape our documentary where we ended up leaning towards the idea of love and interviews to convey it. We then set up equipment in an interview by adjusting lighting, camera and sound.

 week 1  We had an introduction to other people on the course as well as being taught about equipment such as cameras and lighting and the techniques that come with them. We looked at the exposure triangle which gave us a better idea on how to operate a camera by utilising light, exposure and focus to make shots more interesting. Throughout the course I hope I will be able to be more confident with film equipment like lights, cameras and microphone. However I think hands on experience will help me a lot more than theory and guidance from people who are more confident with it to help me with any issues I have in following this plan. I will ask for guidance from the teachers on the course and other students who have more experience with the equipment than me. To follow this plan I'm going to try and take up as many roles as I can so I have experience with each part of the documentary I am interested in. week 2 We looked at different documentary genres and which ones could be app...