Experience with the long take shoot

This semester has really cemented my appreciation for film, that is, celluloid (not the major).  Through this class and cinematography, I have gotten more exposure to shooting on film, and I really have enjoyed it all.  Hopefully this summer I will shoot my honors narrative on 16mm, so all the practice I can get it great.  

The long take shoot this Saturday was a lot of fun.  My group completely changed our shot right from what we had planned, but it definitely turned out better than what we had thought up.  Once we got to campus and saw that it was completely packed with prospective students, we wanted to take advantage of the crowds.  However, by the time it was our turn to shoot, they had all dispersed and campus was left deserted.  Thus, we took advantage of the emptiness, and the fact that the fountain in between Morton and Leutze was actually running, probably to impress the prospective students.  Chris kindly volunteered to get soaking wet, and we formed our long take's plot around this idea.  Stacey did a great job operating the camera, and I tried my hardest to channel my inner purse thief and provide a believable performance.  Everything went surprisingly smoothly, and I think we got the exposure right on.  That was probably a combination of luck and skill in both the shooting and development processes.  Hopefully the post-production will go just as well.  I already have some ideas for the sound design, and am looking forward to seeing the image at the right speed and reversing the negative.

It was pretty amazing to see everything actually work out for everyone.  No one made any real mistakes, at least none that affected their final product.  The whole class worked together well and answered each others questions, when they came up.  For the most part, everyone seemed pretty educated about the process and willing to contribute the best they could.  I think all the groups had great ideas that translated well into the long takes.  Probably most impressive to me was how properly exposed everyones image was.  I was nervous about how it would turn out, particularly because the cloud cover was rapidly changing throughout the day.  I suppose film is pretty hard to overexpose though.  I doubt we could've done that with a video camera and no light meter/monitor.  All in all, it was a fun experience.

My Experiences with Film

I learned a lot from this assignment.  Mainly, it was a serious learning experience to watch hand drawn animations translate into actual visual movements.  The whole time I was doing it I really had no idea what to expect.  I didn't quite know how long to extend movements/how quick to make things rotate, etc.  Even with the keyframe drawings and trying to think in terms of 24 frames per second, I still had some trouble trying to understand just what it would look like when projected.  That being said, I think I timed mine out pretty well.  They could have lasted a little longer I guess, but there was a certain ethereal quality about the speed/image relationship that was mysterious.  You couldn’t quite tell what anything was, and that was definitely part of the allure.  Also, random chance seemed to play a role as well.  I am sure that many “experts” at these techniques meticulously plan out their work, but I like the serendipitous aspect.  For example, the magazine transfer turned out cooler the second time I did it.  The first time, in class, I tried to choose images that I thought would look good together.  In the end, it all went by so fast it didn’t even matter.  Then, the second time, I just sort of cut out cool looking parts of the magazine and layed them out randomly.  It ended up better than the first experiment.
If I could do this all over again, I would incorporate more rayogram stuff.  I think that turned out the coolest.  It also was the most intensive and/or difficult part.  There are a lot of extra things you need rather than just film and a paper clip, for example, chemicals and a dark room.  Scratching on top of the rayograms really added a lot of depth.  More or less, it seemed like the more techniques added on top of each other in layers, the cooler and more complex the image turned out.  I really liked the part I animated, not because of my animation, but because I painted the film behind it.  First, I used tape to mask it, then painted on either side of the tape with different colors.  It ended up being a pretty neat and dynamic background.  However, I’m sure there are times when you could add too many elements to the image.  That being said, I would like to try again!