Documentaries

Documentary [dok-yuh-men-tuh-ree] : based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements.

Although this class is focused on narratives, I felt like documentaries essentially do the same thing. They tell a story to the audience. They introduce a world, a conflict, and how it can be resolved or has been resolved. Narratives do the same, with an opening scene that is completely opposite from the ending scene, and a climax in the middle. The reason why I'm writing this is because recently, I researched more into documentaries and how to make a good one for my trip to Myanmar this winter. I feel like the same elements that make a documentary can also be applied to making a narrative film.

How to make an effective documentary

1. What is the message you want to convey?

I think this is an important question to ask yourself. Before you even think about what equipment you need, you need to find out what the focus of the documentary is going to be, and why you're filming this in the first place. What are the issues you want to address and offer solutions to? Is it going to be worthy of your audience's time? And make sure the topic you choose is also something that you're interested in, as well as enlightening and enganging the audience. Generally, documentaries are about controversial issues, and as well as educational. If you're going to provoke, fully explain.

2. No one likes to be lectured

Although it's the documentaries job to inform, you don't want to bore the audience and make them feel like they're in a classroom. This can also be applied to films as well: Don't tell, show. People don't go to see films to have a person tell them what the film is about. We go to see movies to see the emotions and the drama and the action. With documentaries, you don't want to lecture your audience and over inform them on the subject. Instead, you want to inspire them to learn more about your documentary and be involved as well. 

3. Outline, outline, outline

It honestly can't be emphasized enough. Outlining what you want to include in your documentary or film can help you organize your shots and time schedule as well. You don't wanna be out in the middle of the day ready to shoot, and not know what you need to film. Along with that, it's better to overshoot than to undershoot. You want to have more shots to work and edit with, especially if you're travelling to a location and you'll only be able to shoot certain days. Re-shooting sucks, and no one wants to go through all that effort, only to not have enough shots. 

4. Music 

Music can completely change the mood of a scene, even manipulate how the audience can react towards a clip because of the sound. It's one thing to enhance the scene with audio, and another to alter it's intent. When editing, it's important to ask if the shot can speak for itself. If it can't and you need music to alter it in anyway, chances are you're going to ruin it and make the audience feel disconnected and even feel different than what they were supposed to feel. 

What exactly goes into an episode of The Newsroom?

A LOT (hopefully you read the title). The Newsroom isn’t the typical show when it comes to its content. Actually—if I do say so myself—it’s reasonably atypical. For those of you who have never watched the show, it’s basically about a news station and all of the stories the station reports on, along with the individual plots it follows regarding the show’s characters, but that’s not the important part. The important part is how the writer of the show, Aaron Sorkin, manages to somehow put on at least one complete news broadcast every episode while actually doing a substantial amount of research (many of the news stories have been real-life occurrences or have been based on ones) for each of these broadcasts.

Have you ever seen a news broadcast? Well I'd sure hope so. If you haven't, you, sir/ma'am, are a caveman. Anyway, a whole lot of different things go into an average news broadcast. There's the talent, the crew, the equipment--and yes--the story. Here's the thing. Putting on a broadcast is a lot of work. Having done this in classes (on a much lesser scale, of course), I know this to be a fact. You know what else is a lot of work? Shooting a field project. Now, imagine putting on a broadcast...while simultaneously shooting a field project. Now imagine incorporating said broadcast into said field project. Sound easy? Nope.

For every single episode of The Newsroom, there is AT LEAST one news broadcast is incorporated into the show. While the scene is taking place in the station's control room, the broadcast is being shown on the monitors right in front of the actors. The show is clearly happening right in front of us--but guess what--so is the news broadcast. Whether viewers realize it or not, an entire news broadcast is going right in front of them as well. Basically, two shows are being shot for the sake of one show. Cool, right? Yes. Yes it is.

Think about this. For every broadcast that's made in the show, at least one of the stories discussed has, at some point in our recent history, occurred. Such stories as 9/11, Occupy Wall Street, and the 2012 Presidential Election have been covered in The Newsroom, and each of the topics would require a large amount of research to make sure they were portrayed correctly in the show. Well guess what. The proper research was clearly done. While watching the show, it's evident that enough research was done to make sure the show portrayed the events as realistically as possible, and to make sure the stories were reported as accurately, if not more so, than they were in real-life broadcasts.

It's simply amazing to think about the extraordinary amount of work that must be put into each and every episode of Aaron Sorkin's, The Newsroom, and I truly hope that there are more shows like this one to follow soon.

Novels vs. Screenplays

I love reading books. All kinds of books. I have had this passion for since I was probably 9 or 10, but it wasn't until tenth grade that I discovered a passion for creative writing. One of my closest friends in High School did a lot of fan fiction and wrote her own short stories, and because I love to read, I was her captivated audience whenever she wrote something new. It was during this time that I thought, "Hey! I should try to do this!" And so I did... only I wasn't as successful at first. I think I have around five or six stories that I started writing or have notes on that I just never finished. I guess I just never realized how much went in to telling a story: Characters have to be discovered and developed, the plot should twist and turn in ways that are both unexpected, yet make sense, research has to be done in period pieces, etc. This is true for novels, non-fiction, screenplays, and theatrical pieces. 

I tried to write my first mini-script for the stage just before my sophomore year in high school. Let's just say it wasn't the best piece of writing I have ever done, and I didn't really enjoy it. I have taken several creative writing classes in both high school and college that I have absolutely loved. Right now I am even working on a novel that I started in a class that I took last fall. It will probably be a long time until it is finished, because the more I write the more I find out that I need to still do more research. Since I was so unsuccessful in playwriting, and I loved creative writing for novels, I thought that was the only writing I would or could ever do. Hence why I was so nervous for the course Developing Story Narratives that I took last semester. 

It seemed a little rocky in the beginning of the semester. The first couple practice scripts seemed to be going okay; they weren't great, but at least they were ten times better than the "play" I tried to write when I was a part of the Hanger Theatre summer camp. For the course we had three major scripts to write: a story based around an important event in our own lives, a story based on a character that we create, and a story centered around a theme. The first one was okay. I based it on the events that took place during and after my grandfather's death. The second one, I fell in love with. It is a story based on an orphan named Henry who is, in many ways, searching for a place where he belongs. I won't go into too many details, but this piece turned out fairly well, to the point where I would LOVE to film this here at Ithaca College. I want to do it right though, and the first step is making sure the script makes sense. Currently, I'm in the process of changing around a couple of scenes because the events that occur don't quite fit. The interesting thing about writing a script versus a novel is that you have to keep in mind that you are writing for a visual medium. Every emotion or internal dilemma has to be able to be seen in some way. It would be easier for a writer if subtext could scroll across the bottom of the screen, but then it wouldn't be much fun for the audience. Besides, sometimes there aren't words for certain emotions. On top of all this, the character has to move or flow from one point to another in a way that makes common sense. This means looking internally into the character to decide what is exactly going on there, so that the actions don't seem forced. 

Details, details, details. They are so important in creative writing for novels. Not so much, or at least not in the same way, for screenwriting. My professor said that you have to imagine each line as a shot in the film. That is a lot harder than it sounds. Well, I will keep plugging away at it and hopefully I will find the best way to tell Henry's story. 

~Amber Capogrossi

Montage: Oldies, Research, and Bill Viola

So I finally did it. I watched Chinatown. Surprisingly, the story line did have several parallels to the animation Rango. Although, I must say that I enjoyed Rango slightly more. 








Now, I love the old shows and movies. I grew up watching shows like Get Smart, I Dream of Genie, MacGyver, The Andy Griffith Show, Bonanza, and the list goes on. For some reason though, I wasn't sure if I would like Chinatown. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised. I loved the mystery behind the story and how the characters had both good and not so good characteristics. It made them feel very human.

The cinematography was great. Somehow they were able to create that feeling of suspense in some parts of the film just using slow pans or zooms. The lighting was great in every shot, definitely leading the viewer towards that more detective or mysterious feel. Overall it was a really great movie that I won't forget.

After watching Chinatown, I was inspired to find other older films to watch. So, I scoured Netflix and came across Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing released in 1995 and directed by Henry King. As I sat and watched this film, I couldn't help but chuckle. The acting was sometimes so over the top that to just imagine real people speaking and acting like that would just seem odd. The story plot was about a female doctor who meets a man (no surprise there) in Hong Kong. She is eurasian, her father being Chinese and her mother being English. She meets a traveling journalist, and their hushed relationship grows throughout the middle of the film leading to a tragic climax.

Both of these seem unrelated, and they are, but they both got me to thinking. If someone really wanted to re-produce these movies, there would be a lot of research involved. I started to think of all the things that would have to be looked up: period clothing, the politics of the time, the way people spoke...etc. Research is such a huge part of filmmaking that I never really considered before Professor Sinclair brought it up. This is such an intriguing idea to me because history and learning about different time periods is something that I LOVE to do. It is like learning about another culture. I'm so glad we have the resources here at Ithaca College to be able to do that kind of research.

Lastly, I would like to mention that I really enjoyed watching the video on Bill Viola and his work. The pieces that we saw in the documentary were just so moving. I think what really drew me in, from an actor's perspective, was that the slow motion allowed me to study the facial expressions of the actors in such detail. Their joy, or horror, or frustration, or despair was so intense and felt so real. Right down to their eyes you could just take one glance and understand the emotion they were feeling. It was just beautiful to see. I would love to go to an exhibition of his work someday.
~Amber Capogrossi

Tired of Reality?

Stanford University is announcing a 2 week intensive training institute on immersive virtual reality. From September 8 to September 19 they will train you in the design and programming of virtual reality worlds.

The faculty is composed, among others by researcher Jeremy Bailenson, currently the director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, whose work in the field of cognitive psychology, telepresence and virtual environments, (funded by the National Science Foundation) is highly recognized.

In the The Avatar's Influence, The Chronicle of Higher Education
- What people do in virtual reality doesn't always stay in virtual reality he argues, and makes an excellent and compelling case that virtual representations of professors can be more effective than the real thing.

In Transformed Social Interaction in Immersive Virtual Reality Jeremy Bailenson discusses VHIL research projects in an extraordinary and fast paced Metaverse U presentation . I will try to show this in class because I think it will open (or close, there is always that possibility) a few eyes and raise awareness of what we have already discussed earlier in the class, that being as we are in the midst of a paradigm shift, it is difficult, sometimes impossible to perceive what is right in front of our eyes. Sometimes because it is very skilfully disguised.

Bailenson's main area of interest is the phenomenon of digital human representation, especially in the context of immersive virtual reality. He explores the manner in which people are able to represent themselves when the physical constraints of body and veridically-rendered behaviors are removed. Furthermore, he designs and studies collaborative virtual reality systems that allow physically remote individuals to meet in virtual space, and explores the manner in which these systems change the nature of verbal and nonverbal interaction.

You can apply at http://vhil.stanford.edu