Filming a Slightly Illegal Documentary

“You are hired to make a short documentary about local nurses during the COVID pandemic. The problem is you are not allowed in a hospital with a camera. What is your story? And what will be your “visual evidence”?”

It would be very difficult to show the care and dedication of the nurses during the pandemic if I couldn’t film inside the hospital… But there are ways around this.

So let’s assume I’m going to do this the legal way and not sneak a camera into the hospital. (Also why are they not allowing cameras in if they know it’s meant to be a positive documentary? Sounds suspicious to me). Not that filming inside a hospital is Illegal but still…

If possible I would first try to capture testimonies from the nurses, doctors, receptionists, and other staff. Just a few short statements about the work they do and how its been impacted by the pandemic.

I personally would utilize most of this footage as voiceovers, showing each person at the beginning of their segment. Just before and after they begin speaking to establish a face for the viewers.

It would be relatively easy to film the outside of the hospital, especially if I used a drone so they can’t catch me. I’d first create an establishing shot of the entire hospital complex in a single shot, soaring overhead and around the out side of the building to show it’s size and complexity. With variations in the time-pacing of the shot. Next I would utilize a few timelapses of the emergency vehicles, patients, and staff coming and going.

This sort of footage would make up about one-third of the documentary.

The remaining two thirds would be comprised of the nurses homes while they’re away at work, or  getting ready for, leaving, and coming home from work. The goal of capturing this footage would be to illustrate and embellish how much they work to take are of people.

I would take shots of empty homes, lonely pets, busy families, all the time making sure to leave space in the frame for the absence of the nurses. To illustrate the lives they would be living if they hadn’t chosen to commit to serving people in their line of work as a way on honoring them.

Considering the story about the Good Mother – Bad Mother, I want to be very intentional on capitalizing on the exemplary discipline of the nurses, but also highlight the humanness that makes them so lovable.

I will need to be mindful about how I edit and shoot the footage. Otherwise it could look like I’m telling a tale of travesty rather than honorable sacrifice.

Nurses Documentary Blog

The story of the documentary will be about the everyday lives of nurses during a pandemic, and the unique struggles they face by being a medical worker. I would create interview questions asking them about if/how their jobs as nurses have changed since the pandemic hit, and then I would ask them about if/how their personal lives have changed due to the pandemic and being an essential worker. For example, the information that I am trying to get at is if they need to take extra precautions when they get home from working at the hospital as to not get their household sick. Do they quarantine themselves away from their loved ones? Did they use to do their own shopping but now they have someone else do it for them? Has someone in their household gotten sick, and do they feel guilty about perhaps being the cause? Have they had a loved one die from COVID, but they were unable to see them due to being an essential worker?

Due to not being allowed at their workplace with a camera, some B-roll will be taken that is related to the narrative but not essential. As stated from the reading, “B-roll illustrates talk” so the B-roll will be in conjunction with the nurses talking about their pandemic routine. The B-roll is as follows:

  • B-roll of them getting ready in the morning and leaving from their house. The footage will show their routine, either normal or abnormal. This will be in conjunction with them talking about their routine. This footage highlights how even though people may only see them a few times per year, they are people with individual lives of their own. This footage may highlight precautions they take while being home with loved ones, or perhaps that they take a long time getting ready to work at a hospital.
  • Time-lapse footage of patients coming and going to and from the hospital, hopefully getting some shots of long lines and wait times. This view will go from a bird’s eye view, showing people arrive in their cars and walking to and from the building, then also a shot in front of the building of people going in and out. This footage, depending on what is caught, may show the demand on hospitals and their workers.

While I am personally not allowed in with a camera, I could ask the nurses I am interviewing if they would be willing to vlog updates about their shift, the focus being on their work conditions and what they have to deal with. There will not be focus on patients (as this is probably the reason why I am not allowed inside with a camera). This will be my only “evidence” to show their working conditions, and if they match with what they tell me. As stated in the reading “…shoot people doing what they’re do… Plan the location so that it becomes part of the evidence for the scene”. It’s important to show them at the location they talk about so that it becomes “real” for the audience.

The following footage will be them going home, and what they do at home. For example, their interactions with their family, how they deal with being a parent or partner, how they balance work/life or perhaps a lack of balance, the boundaries they set with other people in their household, and any precautions they take when living with other people while being a hospital worker. The footage captured would widely depend, but the point of this footage is being visual evidence for how the pandemic has impacted the everyday lives of nurses. Visual evidence is important because it shows the audience the truth of the situation, whether if what is happening matches with what is being told, and to give the audience a real sense of the reality.

 

Editing for Continuity | The Railroad Crossing | (Duel, 1971)

In the railroad crossing scene, our protagonist is caught between a rock and a hard place (or a truck and a hard place, perhaps). As the driver of the enormous, Goliath-esque vehicle that looms over our David throughout the film pushes its prey ever closer to the train that barrels down the tracks, Spielberg is careful to stay on one side of the action; the right side, to be exact, of the 180-degree rule. Though he occasionally pushes to the extremes of this range, remaining within the “allowed” space lets the audience better absorb the quick cuts and frantic energy of this fast-paced scene, without losing track of the respective locations and arrangement of the vehicles.

Mixed within cuts to and from the two vehicles, pushing in on the protagonists face and cutting to longer, more expansive shots, we even find a POV shot in the mix, as David jams his foot on the brake from inside the vehicle.

In this scene in particular, I’m interested in how the two vehicles are shot as if a conversation were taking place; in particular, there is the unmistakable rhythm of shot-reverse shot in the push and pull between David’s small red car and the hulking truck on his tail.

In summary, Spielberg’s admixture of quick, variegated framing and attention to continuity allows the audience to feel the tension and horror of the events without ever losing track of the space, and treating the vehicles as their own “characters”, so to speak, serves to amplifies the film’s themes.

Blog 9/27/24

I chose “Lake Como Remix”.

The world’s depicted through this video reminds me a lot of old video games from the 90’s and early to mid 2000’s visually. It uses much earlier builds of the google street view as well as google earth to get these photos. These photos were then used to create a continuous video of us travelling and navigating through Lake Como in Italy.

The way it’s constructed makes an interesting tourist video, because a good chunk of it is supposedly glitched out on purpose, and paired up with the older street view visuals, it does look like a broken glitched video game like I mentioned in the beginning. The added use of a melancholy soundtrack adds a lot to the exploration aspect of this tour, it makes it feel like something is wrong, and it’s weird seeing how empty the place is.

 

 

Star Wars, Everything, Everywhere, and All at Once (analysis of Star Wars Wars)

Star Wars, Everything, Everywhere, and All at Once

(An Analysis of Star Wars Wars)

 

I grew up watching Star Wars, and my family is a huge fan of the original and prequel trilogies. (My dad even owns a film-accurate First Order Stormtrooper suit, and is working on an Imperial Storm Trooper suit as well) So I already have an interest in  Star Wars. I’d also heard a bit about Star Wars Wars (though I forget where I heard of it)

I was not prepared for the onslaught of everything that Star Wars Wars was. I am very impressed with the layering. I can only imagine how much finagling it took to find the best blending mode for each layer.

It’s very interesting to watch different parts of each episode through the shapes and shadows of another. There’s an interesting sense of temporality, seeing everything happens at once.

It brings to mind the phrase with which they begin every episode, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” All these Star Wars stories take place “a long time ago” by the time we’re seeing them, we’re already far outside their time. All these event have already taken place, and we’re just watching them play out. Over and over and over again. Just as the layers of the films are placed over and over and over, the top of each other.

The effect becomes dreamlike, and really embraces the narrative of us as the viewers being completely separate from the Star Wars Universe.

Blog Post #5 (WK6) – Compositing, Effects & AI Cinema

Blog: Discuss the digital effects of one or two works listed above. What kind of spaces are depicted in these various videos? Digital effects work on the data layer of the digital image, by the manipulation of pixels. Effects, such as green screen, manipulate the color and ordering of pixels. Compositing is the layering of multiple images or tracks into a whole. Glitch effects come from the damage of code in media files. How is the realism of traditional cinema (its truthfulness in capturing images of bodies in a three-dimensional world) altered, enhanced or challenged by these techniques?  How might you use digital effects in your montage assignment?

 

Digital effects play a key role in shaping the spaces and realism of videos, allowing creators to go beyond what traditional filmmaking can achieve. Green screens, for example, replace real backgrounds with digital ones, transporting actors to places that don’t exist. This challenges the realism of traditional cinema, which usually captures real-world settings, by introducing a controlled, artificial world.

Compositing layers multiple images or video tracks, blending live-action footage with digital elements to create environments that feel real but are constructed. This blurs the line between what’s real and what’s fabricated, altering our perception of cinematic truth. Glitch effects, caused by damaged digital files, disrupt the image and can symbolize breaks in reality or emotional tension.

For my montage assignment, I would most likely use digital effects like color correction to adjust the tone of the scene or dim the lighting for mood. I might also use effects to make certain items pop, drawing the viewer’s attention to key elements. Additionally, incorporating a green screen layer could help place characters or objects in a unique background, adding depth to the overall visual experience. These subtle changes would enhance the visual impact without taking away from the realism of the scene.

Blog post 9/27

For this, I chose to talk about the video that combined all 6 Star Wars movies into one. It is one of the more unique works that I have seen in a while, as it combines 6 different films from the same series to some success. I would say its use of effects is unique as it has all the special effects that make Star Wars but has every film layered over each other, running in time with each other. This also applies to sound. Traditional cinema was altered by the layering of several movies considered traditional sci-fi.