When developing our long-form documentary films, there’s often an element of discovery in the production process. We’ll spend time with people over the course of weeks, observe them and learn of new opportunities to film. But just as often as we wait for interesting moments to unfold on screen, we also conceive of opportunities to film.
As filmmakers, we wanted to contribute to storytelling during the coronavirus pandemic. But in the early days of the pandemic, we were unsure of how to start; we hadn’t yet considered how to film people safely. We were interested in how kids were processing this time – we are parents of young children – and thought we could ask them to share their perspective through interview and illustration.
Shooting interviews in a studio can be an ideal scenario. You’ve got a nice large open space with background options, plenty of lighting and grip, and usually great acoustics and silence when you need it. However, none of that comes for free and without restrictions. Studio time can range from $200/hr to multiple thousands of dollars per day. And it’s not often possible to get all of your interview subjects into the same studio on the same day. So sometimes you have to bring the studio with you. How can you replicate a studio look without a studio? Here’s how we do it.
For this project, we needed to source and manage a locally based video team in Jakarta. Timeline and budget didn’t allow for sending a video team from the USA. We’ve managed international video teams remotely for a variety of projects, meaning we direct and produce from DC while the local team executes our production plan. We then edit all the material in-house to produce the finished video. Here’s some tips we’ve picked up along the way on how to efficiently and effectively work with remote video teams.
Our beloved feature film Keeping the Kibbutz is still garnering attention this month. It was one of only a handful of films featured on the front page of Snagfilms this month and it was also awarded a prestigious Telly Award for excellence in television documentary! It’s a nice pat on the back as we dive into our next feature film.
For one of our clients, we were tasked with filming a series of interviews with a wide range of subjects all over the world. The goal was to keep the focus on the subject and their story. Guided by this goal, our visual approach was to film stripped down, simple close up interviews with as abstract a background as possible. We aimed for shooting locations that were simple and modern, sometimes even just a white wall or corner. This runs counter to the type of setting we usually request for interview shoots – something with character, natural light, architecture and a setting that provides visual context for the character or story.
This week we rented a Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 50mm f/2 ZF.2 to use on our Panasonic AF100 to film the walking gallery. We knew that the painted jackets by Regina Holliday would be the star of the video, so we wanted the capability to get some really great closeups. This […]
By Tessa Moran We’ve finally completed a rough cut of Keeping the Kibbutz after 8 months of editing! Admittedly, the project had been put on hold as we were busy with full-time jobs and paying gigs like our recently completed short Making Mothers. But in recent weeks, as our other […]
By Tessa Moran We finally captured all 45 hours of tape, and have now embarked on the task of logging. That is, labeling and organizing all of our captured footage. We have tried to be very detailed in our descriptions of each scene so that we can use the searching […]
Well, we did not lie. We bought the Mac Pro (well we said we would buy the 15th, but it came out a week earlier than that!) Our Mac Pro arrived a couple of days ago, and it was well worth the wait. Months of staring at our tapes, patiently […]