Creating a Narative

A friend of mine investigates abandoned buildings and does urban exploring. Im considering documenting his work and some of the faculties he goes into. He is also a light painter, and i think it would be interesting to see his equipment, and how he makes it.

I also have a friend who a well known dancer in minneapolis, and who has taken up the sport of Parkour. He uses the creativity of his dance skills to travel over under and around buildings and structures. Parkour is a sport in which you try and get to a destination by birds eye view as much as possible, and as fast, and smoothly as possible.

I was also considering doing a comedy spoof of my roommate who is a mailman, and is extremely dedicated to what he does, and i thought it would be humorous to make a video about him.

The fourth and possibly strongest topic I would like to document, is my Fascist Grandmother. She has some crazy stories and can be extremely offensive or kind at any given moment. I want to capture her home, because it has a strange bit of nostalgic quality to it, everything from the lighting to the American flags to the photos on the walls.I have a list of questions that she would expound upon for hours.

1. What country were you born in and what is the earliest thing you can remember from there?

2. What effect did the war have on you?

3. Who was your first boyfriend?

4. What was your first Job?

5. What happened to your first Husband?

6. What is your favorite memory

Here is a trailer from the hit documentary

Assignment 1

So for this assignment I have two ideas.

The first one has to do with filming people in their cars, I would film them from my car into their window. I have recently noticed a lot of strange antics that people do, when they think others arnt watching. I will use the car to make the tilt's and pan's. I will zoom in at some point during the video to make interesting transitions.

The second Idea is to inspect various run down buildings in the city, that have a strange nature aspect to them. I have been in a lot of creepy buildings and I would really like to explore the idea of the mystery of the remains of buildings and old places. I will use the tilts and the pans to explore various spaces revealing intriguing mysteries of the area. Alot of these places really interest me because they are so calm but yet, there is still a strange amount of sound coming from outside of the buildings, i would like to try and exclude that excess sound unless it is coming from the structure or space I am filming.

Video Review of Mark Lewis's "Downtown, tilt, zoom and pan"

The first of the two videos we watched by Mark Lewis was set in an urban part of the city, probably during winter in venice. This particular video was short but interesting. The composition is well thought out, downward angle shot, including a vent to possibly the subway or sewers that is steaming, in the bottom right quarter of the screen. in the upper right half of the shot there appears to be alot of clothes that are of very bright colors which contrasts the entire rest of the shot. there are two people who appear next to the clothes, however we only see their legs and the bottom part of their torso, the rest is cut out of the shot. one man walks away and the other stays there. I could conclude that this shot could have been set up, but if i had to guess I would say it wasn't set up.

The second video of his that we watched was shot at an upward angle however in this shot the foreground is a group of people in a dispute, however it seems a little bit scripted for me, Lewis is using a tripod or some sort of stabilizing structure for the camera, and seems to be fairly close to the fight. it could be part of a longer shot where the fighters notice his camera, then it would indicate that it wasn't set up. The composition and the lighting were very Ideal, so this leads me to believe that it was set up, too much of the action happens directly in the middle of the frame.