16. Interview - Studio p2

Because we had a bit more time this time, I delved a bit more into his musical talents, and how he does a lot of his musical work. I didn't get a chance to ask him these things previously. Even more, he expressed to me that he had even thought more about some of the questions. This is exactly what I was talking about before when I tried to express the value of conducting the same interview multiple times.

That extra time also allowed us to get some footage of him playing piano. This was nice because I wanted to get various footage of this, but I couldn't use two cameras because of the angles I wanted. I wanted to move around him, and get shots over his shoulder, close-ups of his hands, and these kinds of things.

Other footage that I could get during this studio shoot was of Ramon writing music, and working out these challenges with paper and pencil.

I think that one reason I was able to take advantage of this shooting schedule is because I did have some specific notes. I tried to plan out some very specific shots that I wanted. This was in addition to the specific interview questions I asked. For example, I knew I wanted a shot of the inside of a piano, and him playing.

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15. Interview - Studio p1

Having the experience of the first shoot under my belt, I felt more confident about the second shoot. I knew that I wanted to shoot Ramon working, and try to photograph what it was like for a musician to work. He doesn't have a huge home studio, so we felt it was best to imitate this scenario at a large studio in Manhattan. I have a relationship with the National Opera Center, so I decided that would be a great place to shoot. They have two studios that are large, with large pianos, and that allow for a bit of freedom with camera placement, so I booked one of those rooms.

They were kind enough to allow me to enter the room a few minutes early (since no one was in there before me) to set up the cameras. This was the first time that I timed myself to figure how much time it would take to set up the cameras and the lights. It took me eighteen minutes to do this. 

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14. Interview - Church p4

All that said, though, it was nice to have this first day of shooting under my belt. We only had about fifteen minutes anyway, since he had to start working.

After the interview, he had to begin his actual work at the church. I certainly didn't want to interrupt or be in the way in any manner, so I started to pack my stuff up. However, I realized that I should try to get some actual footage of him working. He was practicing a piece of music that he would perform during the church service.

Then a few members of the church choir arrived, and I got some footage of their rehearsal, and his method of working with people.

After shooting, I didn't even try to check the footage. Maybe I was too scared. But I figured then (and I still agree with this) that it was not helpful to start to edit any footage until I had all of the footage, and until I could discern what sections, themes, or stories I wanted to tell with all the footage. That is, perhaps I would parse the footage one way, but later decide a different direction for the final film. I don't want to double work if I don't have to. 

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13. Interview - Church p3

During the first interview at the church, I also learned about other technical limitations that I would have to work around. One significant limitation had to do with file size. Working with other cameras in the past (when I was merely filming stage shows I produced), I saw that they would break up large movie files on their own, with a maximum file size of 2 gb. The iPhone does not do that. What that means, then, is that it merely produces the whole movie file as one large file. The only reason that this is really a problem is because there are file-size limitations that certain hard drive formats recognize. Because I use both Apple and Windows machines, my hard drives are all formatted for fat32 files, which has a max file size of 4 gb.

During my first interview project (that wasn't completed), I saw that iPhones kept huge files together. That meant that this time I was going to be sure to only film at about ten minutes at a time. I had to be mindful of that so that I could be sure to simply hit stop, and then record again around 10 or 15 minutes in.

Of course, all of this is on top of the max storage issue that I must deal with, since I've only got a 16gb iPhone. (My friend actually laughed at me when I told him I was trying to shoot a short doc with this; he has a 128gb iPhone). Even with two 16gb iPhones, it would be difficult to shoot more than 30 minutes on any day. Perhaps if I continue with such projects, I will have to upgrade. 

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12. Interview - Church p2

The other problem with the Canon camera was that the best resolution it had was 720HD. This is significantly smaller than the 1080HD the iPhone had.

The other issue with these cameras (that I only learned about later) is that I don't really have access to any real control over the light in the camera, such as f-Stop control. I don't know anything about that, so I suppose it was just as well that I let the camera's own automatic controls take over. However, now that the project is completed, I am seriously considering buying a higher quality camera that might allow me to have access to more controls. For this project, though, the only options I had were to alter it in post-production.

The other thing that I learned during this first shooting session was to tell Ramon to repeat the questions, since I wanted to edit-out any trace of me from the final film. This meant that I would expect him to either literally repeat the question I ask ("Why did I move to New York?"), or he would do like my elementary school teacher said, and answer in complete sentences ("I moved to New York because..."). But he didn't always answer like this during the first interview, so I knew that I would have to be kind of crafty with editing his answers together. 

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11. Interview - Church p1

The first interview was scheduled in early March. The last day of editing the finished short was in early May. That means that the whole production for this project was almost exactly 2 months. I don't know if that is fast turnaround, or not, but it felt quick to me. (I suppose that if this were my full time job, I would have completed the project faster.)

Being a musician, and knowing a bit about Ramon's life already, I had at least some idea of what kinds of images I wanted to shoot for this film. Right away, it was clear that I wanted footage of him at his place of work, the church where he is the music director. I also thought that the setting of the church would make nice shots.

This was the first shooting that I have ever done, so one thing that I learned too late was lighting. I had two different cameras for this shot. One was an iPhone, and the other was a point-and-click Canon from many years ago (I didn't have access to the second iPhone, yet). They both welcomed light a bit differently from each other, so while one seemed like it was lit fine, the other looked quite a bit washed out. 

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10. Shooting Primary Footage

I am not an interviewer. I didn't know the first thing that I should do in order to get decent documentary content. But I do read a lot. A friend got me a book where the author interviews various foreign subjects who are living in Japan. After reading a few of these interviews, it was clear that he had a very specific script to stick to, in order to get all of his main concerns across. Of course, he would also have the flexibility to move a bit deeper in some ideas when he chose to. I just decided to steal all of those questions. While they were all geared towards foreigners in Japan, I thought they were just as applicable to foreigners in America.

Before the shoot, I emailed all the questions to Ramon, in hope that he wouldn't be too startled by the questions. I didn't know how I wanted the final film to look. But after the first interview, I realized that I wanted to be sure to edit out any of my own speaking. That means that I should have told him to repeat the question, or make the question clear, when he answered. I didn't do that the first time, but I did tell him for the second interview shoot.

I wanted to conduct the same exact interview in different places. I thought that this would allow for more variety in choosing what the final film would look like. But it also allowed for a bit of variety in other ways, too. The interview subject was able to rethink some of his previous answers. Perhaps he would change some answers, or he would elaborate on some questions a bit more later.   

Another advantage of interviewing multiple times was that I also had the chance to think about some issues in greater detail in between interviews, and therefore I could ask other questions that I might have forgotten about during a previous interview.

To be sure, I have realized that in the future, I might have to alter this method; after all, who wants to be interviewed several times? In fact, Ramon is actually my second interview subject. The first subject sat for one interview, but I didn't have the chance to get additional footage or interviews of her; our schedules never matched up. So as I develop this documentary and interview skill set, I am going to have to better adapt to situations like that, when the interview subject isn't as open to meeting so much. 

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9. Title Sequence p3

The workflow I decided upon was to simply create the title screen, and then that image would dictate where the animation would come from and go. But all of that was a bit hard if I didn't have a title. In fact, I looked through some old books by the Japanese artist Yoko Ono, and tried to get ideas for a title and themes from there. After writing several ideas down, and playing with them, I landed on "Listen To The City Breathe."

With the title, I was able to design the title shot. Not being a professional graphic designer, I only have a few go-to techniques. And so these same techniques carried over into this project. And so I got the image that I landed on here.

(In fact, after doing a bit more graphic design research, the title image for the next film will be slightly different. I was reading through some graphic design books, and I saw an example that really stood out to me; so I decided that I would add a bit more color to the gray background... but I didn't get around to making the change by the finish of the film. Then when I uploaded the image to instagram, I applied the perpetua filter, which gave the image the look I was after! So I went into photoshop, and tried to emulate that filter, and after playing with the image a bit more, I came upon a final design that I really like. But it will have to wait for the next film, since I made the change after this film about Ramon was already released.)

After editing together a few iconic New York shots, plus my title screen, I also wanted some text to fly across the screen. I already had a pool of ideas based on the words that I had already gotten from the Yoko Ono research. These were possible titles that I had considered for the series, but ones that I ultimately passed on. However, I still liked the ideas and emotions they evoked, and I felt that they still could contribute to the film. So I decided to have these short phrases pass across the screen at different times during the opening title sequence. However, like I learned from the shots that panned across the screen, having these phrases dart across the screen were to much for the viewer's eyes, I felt. I predicted that any viewer would not know where to focus her gaze. So while an early version of the title sequence had these phrases, I changed them for the final version. Instead I tried to get at the essence of the phrases with just one word, and then have that word engulf the screen. After rearranging the single words, I ended up with the words, "Dream, Live, Shine, NYC." I thought that those words were imbued with enough meaning that alone they would convey the themes and idea behind the film; but together they also worked, since my goal is now to tell the story of individuals in New York City, from their dreams, to their lives, to their shining moments. 

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8. Title Sequence p2

This was my first experiment with film editing. I tried to get a lot more moving shots, but then I realized that doing this really wasn't kind to the viewer, who would always have to shift her gaze, and move her eyes based on how I had the screen moving. It was from this realization that I decided to leave out so much movement. But there is still a bit of movement, anyway.

I also realized that some shots just didn't have the impact that I wanted them to have, so I had to leave out some landmarks that I really wanted in there, like the Empire State Building (but it was too cloudy on the shooting day), or the Williamsburg Bridge (which just didn't feel right, for some reason).

The next step was that I knew I wanted some sort of animation for the title screen. But I didn't even know what the title of the show would be. Nor did I have any idea of how the animation would come together; I had no vision for it. So I just started by looking through books and images for inspiration. I had no idea what I was looking for, but when something hit my eye, I knew it.

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