I just recently finished up my latest project with Christianity Today. For security reasons, it was going to be impossible to actually shoot on location, so we thought that an audio track with still images would be just dandy.
This is what we came up with
Now the question I have is this – Is this a slide show or a photo essay? Is there a difference? I think so.
It’s like the difference between desk top publishing and graphic design or videography and cinematography.
Erroll Morris, the godfather of the modern documentary, recently tweeted the following:
REGRET: Most documentaries are illustrations not investigations.
I have done a lot of work in short form documentary over the past 7 years and far and away, the vast majority of it has been illustrations. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy this work – trying to figure out what a client wants to communicate and then working with them to craft a story that lines up with their message. It’s the way a lot of the corporate world communicates and it’s effective. But there’s another way to do documentary that is a lot riskier – an investigation where the outcome is not known at the advent of production.
In June, I set off for Ghana with the charge of investigating the prosperity gospel, a teaching that can roughly be described as “God blessing you materially according to the amount of faith you display through sacrificial giving.” I went into the trip with my own assumptions about the prosperity gospel. I had seen the clips on YouTube and watched the damning interviews on 60 minutes. I thought I knew what I was getting into. But then I hit a big bump in the road.
My director of photography, Jeff Pohorski, came down with a nasty case of something. We didn’t know if it was H1N1, giardia, or Montezuma’s revenge. All we knew is that Jeff was not going to be able to travel with me. So we adapted and I decided that I would shoot everything. Because I wouldn’t be able to do interviews as easily as a one man crew, I decided to interject myself into the narrative, something that I have never done (or plan to do in the near future.) It’s not easy to shoot, interview and track the story all at the same time, if it was, you wouldn’t need a camera man at all. But for some reason, we just seemed to hit all the right places at the right times (thanks to my on-the-ground fixer, Joyman, and the oversight of Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, who is featured in the piece.)
What you see in the final edit is my actual journey of insight as we travelled around the Accra area in Ghana. From the initial shock of what the prosperity gospel can look like in a small congregation to the tangible life training that is given at large mega-churches to the cost of this theology for many poorer people – and all this happens within a world view that is very different from my own.
My hope is that this documentary is indeed an investigation into the unique expression of the prosperity gospel in one African country. More likely, it is probably an investigation of one American who travelled to Ghana and realized he didn’t know as much as he thought he did.
I wrote this as a comment on a friend’s blog and thought I would post it here.
I jumped onto the VDSLR bandwagon a little late, and so far I have been really happy. For me the decision was based on three things
1. Image quality for the average viewer – sure the VDSLR may not have the same resolution as a variety of other options, but to the average viewer (almost anyone that isn’t looking at the piece on a large screen display looking for compression artifacts) the image is better on the DSLR. They are looking at things like color, saturation and depth of field. Most of these people will never be able to explain why they find this image more pleasing, but it is to them – and they are my primary audience, not a bunch of gear heads (who I do like by the way).
2. Delivery options – This is where I had to be honest with myself. At this point in my career, I am not delivering pieces to get transferred to film and displayed in theaters. This year only about 10% of my work was for broadcast television where it gets displayed in 1080i. Almost all of my work is either delivered through the web (the majority through vimeo’s embedded player which is at 720p) or downconverted to SD for DVD delivery (we’re still several years away from the average corporate client wanting BluRay.) There is no way I need HD uncompressed. In fact, that would only make my life more difficult.
3. Form factor – I am one of the people that actually prefers the smaller camera for a good amount of situations (as long as it’s equipped with something like the Z-finder). It’s unobtrusive, subtle and easy to pack away. My main complaint is that getting shots from the hip (which I like to do a lot with my Canon HDV camera) is really hard without a tilt screen.
But there are issues the first being cost. People look at the 5d or 7d and forget that there is probably another 1-3K that you need to spend on lenses, audio gear and media. Not quite as affordable as it appears.
And then there is work flow. Having to convert all the files to an editable format is taxing, especially when some jobs are based on my ability to do a quick turnaround.
I still use my traditional video camera for all sorts of things, especially interviews and corporate work. But the 5d is creeping up in terms of percentage of use. One or two more generations of development and I think it’s pretty close to being my primary camera.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend pointed out this video. I found it quite inspiring so I set out to try my hand at developing a similar look thinking that this could be a good trick to keep in my back pocket for a special occasion.
I went out at night twice (I wish it was a little more windy when I went.) The first time, I focused on trees, but I found after a while that traffic could get some cool results. So the second time, I did some tree shots, but also tried to set up some interesting street scenes.
Here is what I came up with.
This was all shot with my Canon 5D mark II. I set it on a tripod and then just took a series of stills as fast as the shutter can move. ISO was at 3200 and shutter speed was usually around 1/30th.
My sense is that this works best with non-human objects unless they are closeups or non-traditional shots (like the shot of the shadow walking.) So my next test will be trying to get a human element and I think I have the perfect test subject.
Over the next 12 months, Christianity Today will be releasing a series of 12 online videos that Fourth Line Films produced. Each video, which is connected to an article published in Christianity Today, will explore a key issue facing the church. It’s a pretty cool project that took Fourth Line Films all over the world to find some pretty amazing stories.
The first video is an introduction to the Global Conversation and will give you a sense of the types of stories we will be telling over the next year.
See the video and the corresponding article here.
Urbanfaith.com just posted a review of the Fourth Line Films’ produced curriculum, Round Trip. It was very favorable and a thoughtful read. It’s always interesting to read the perspective of viewers who don’t have the benefit of actually experiencing a scene as it was unfolding. I found the reviewer’s descriptions of the American pastor different than my experience – particularly how he responded to an issue that came up with the Kenyan team. But that’s the rub with documentary film. It doesn’t matter how I remember a particular event, if I don’t do a good enough job in the edit room, you leave room open for people to interpret that event in the way they want. Or maybe that’s the great thing about documentaries – you throw something out there and allow people to interpret it. They may actually see it differently and perhaps that would be the case if they were sitting next to you while the event was actually happening.
I was reading an article online that talked about the importance of building an audience before a film is even released. Including people even as early as pre-production can really help get the word out about one’s project.
Well pre-production is a little late for Wrestling For Jesus, but as I head into editing it, I thought it might be good to try my hand at this principle. So I went ahead and purchased www.wrestlingforjesus.com (I should have done that a LONG time ago.) My plan is to begin posting scenes as I edit them and hopefully get some feedback and perhaps even begin to build an audience.
10 years ago, Madison Gas and Electric (MG&E) put a falcon box in their coal / gas plant. The hope was to attract a nesting pair of peregrine falcons. It took a decade, but this spring 2 falcons decided to call the box home and did what comes naturally – procreate. Three chicks hatched and later this summer, they’ll leave the nesting area for the adult peregrine life in search of their own nesting sites.
The fine folks at MG&E decided this was a story that was worth telling to their clients and to the Madison community who has taken great interest in the predators nesting above our heads. So I shot some material for them and put together a rather simple (in the best sense) video. Another company then documented the banding of the chicks (I was in Africa for this) and then finally I returned to get some footage of the chicks learning to fly.
You can see the finished product here. Fourth Line Films produced the March and July videos. Enjoy
OK, it’s a blog on NYTimes.com, but still pretty sweet.
I have now uploaded a full version of Hog Wild.
We shot this documentary in August of 2008 with a group of friends as an “extra-curricular activity.” This meant we had 4 different cameras with 3 different settings so getting the color to match was a bear. Plus since the event was in the height of the afternoon, the light stunk. I ended up just pulling out a lot of the saturation to help standardize the shots and then used Magic Bullet Looks to give a little color interest. I added a grad filter or vignette to some of the shots – particularly those that included a lot of sky.
Enjoy – and if you want to watch it in HD, watch it on vimeo. Here is a previous entry about shooting “Hog Wild.”
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