Author: aakhtar24

My current plan for the final project is to follow the story of a letter discovered by the main character (me) that talks about a hidden time capsule or buried wealth of some kind at a place a few hours away from where the main character lives/presently is. The story will follow along as the main character makes the journey many hours (not actually hours away) drive away to an old barn or similar abandoned location that the letter says the item is located at. Then the character will search for the item, only to give up after a few hours of searching. As the character walks back into his car, the camera will focus onto the item described in the letter. There are other elements to this story, however this is a simplification of it that will also likely change as it is continued to be refined. In theory, from how I plan to record, there will only need to be 3 main locations. One at some kind of library or coffee shop, one on the side of a quiet road somewhere (traveling B-Roll), and one at an abandoned building or yard somewhere. Between these three filming locations, I believe I will be able to simulate the illusion of the 4-5 locations the character visits in the story. This should hopefully be able to be split across 2-3 days, each only really taking an hour or 2 max for each recording session.

I have not yet filmed my interview, however, I have some fairly concrete ideas of how I will go about doing it. I plan to use a wireless lav mic to capture clear audio instead of just the built in camera microphone. Along with that I plan to use a portable light to help keep the lighting conditions consistent; even if clouds are moving in the sky changing the natural lighting, the scene should stay relatively stable. One of the main things I’m keeping in mind is keeping questions within the scope of things that are able to be filmed for B-Roll.

This video was generated through the use and reference of VEED Ai and Runway ML.

Note: Original video is 30 seconds long, an extra second added by Youtube during upload.

This is a unique circumstance where traditional methods of gathering “Visual Evidence,” as described in the text, are not possible, thus a more robust strategy must be implemented. To start with, I would gather as much possible footage from outside the hospital as allowed, staff and individuals entering the building, ambulances arriving, and anything that would depict the nature of the hospital during the pandemic. To follow this, I would include interviews from at least 4-5 nurses if at all possible to ask about life in their occupation during such trying times. A quote from the text that really resonated with me was one from the very first page. That being “in a documentary about a protest march, there was a shot of a cold-looking police officer standing by a police barrier. Behind him was a completely empty street. The narrator said, “Twenty thousand people took to the street in protest … ” But the visual evidence said nobody was there. Imagine if the voice had come from an interview rather than from the narrator.” This very long quote from the text goes on to conclude that the viewer would think the person being interviewed was lying since the visual evidence contradicted what the person would be saying. Therefore, it is important to consider what visual evidence is being presented to the viewer and whether or not it matches the audio the viewer is hearing. Going with that, depending on what responses I would get from the nurse interviews, I would do my best to get footage that best fits the verbal responses given. If someone describes budget cuts effecting hospital operations, perhaps getting some footage of damaged windows or cracked concrete on the hospital campus would help visualize that particular problem. This is the overall methodology I would use when creating this short documentary.

Works Cited:

Visual Evidence, A/B Roll Editing” and “A Short Sermon about Interviews” 

Name: Ammaar Akhtar
Date: 9-13-24
Class: DTC 208

This relatively short clip has so many different things happening in it. It feels very intentionally chaotic yet also methodical. The scene depicts a family, of sorts, assembling for breakfast and collectively contributing to the electric bill due to be payed that day. Some of the stand out things that I noticed were the long camera shots where several things happened in a single scene as the camera moved around observing the carefully executed chaos. When they have all sat down at the table to eat, they pass around a money collection basket to pay for the bill. As this happens, the camera swaps between moving shots following the box around as it is passed, and swapping between different characters speaking. It does so relatively quickly but not in a way to where the viewer cannot keep track of what it happening. Before they all sat down, the camera got several shots of everyone going to sit down at the table, which I would imagine allowed the following camera shots at the table to be more fast-paced since the viewer already knows what is happening overall. Even though the scene is clearly much shorter than a real breakfast, it doesn’t feel this way at all when watching; the editing, sound effects, and overall coordinated pacing helps make the scene feel natural and not rushed any more than what was intended.