Interactive Documentary
The concept I choose for this project is to develop a story exhibiting people’s various attitudes towards money based on a murder case. One of the reasons I want to use this scheme is that “The Piano Tuner” released in 2010 left a deep impression on me and I want to imitate it and also integrate some of the elements in the society I want to criticize, such as using illegal ways to get money.
The development process is mainly divided into 3 parts. The first part is the creative writing part. I spent tons of time designing the plot, adding new characters, and making the whole murder case as detailed as possible. Then I order some stage properties, such as the fake blood, the stick, and the sunglass. The second part is the shooting part. After I finish the writing part, I ask some of my friends for help. Luckily, they are willing to help me finish this ambitious project and sacrifice their free time to play as the character in the film. We spent 6 hours a day, 4 days in total to finish the shooting part in various places. I am also very thankful to the owner of the restaurant since they allow us to shoot there. This is a really hard process. I originally thought this will work ideally and quickly. While in fact, we encounter lots of problems, forcing us to shoot the same scene again and again. Fortunately, none of us give up on this process. The last part is the editing part and the web design part. After realizing the fact that the audio effect of recording is not so good, I ask my crew to re-record their words again so that the overall effect will be better. And I use some of the techniques of PR taught in the class to make the video more appealing. The web design part I finish it in a hurry due to the limited time. If I have the chance to do it again, I think I can improve a lot by paying more attention to the details of the interacting part.
When talking about the tools we use in this project, the most useful two are the holder and PR. After the guest lecture, I begin to realize why I need a holder. It helps me a lot during the shooting process by holding the camera’s position fixed relative to the horizontal line. Most of the time, the case is I held the camera facing the characters and move along while they are acting. So the holder helps me to catch these scenes perfectly. Meanwhile, PR is very powerful editing software. For me, it’s like a combination of PS and AU and Imovie. Basically you can change the color used in the film, change various audio properties, and some transaction effects of filming. All of these functions are very interesting. The most difficult part is still Javascript. But this time we have lots of models to use so the workload is fine.
Though I know that other people might find it rough,I am satisfied with the filming part. The actors and actresses are not professional, the plot is written by me, rather than some world-famous writer, the equipment is amateur and the background scene is not the most ideal as well. But again, I am glad that I and my crews can try our best to overcome these obstacles in a limited time. If I have the time to further develop this project, I want to focus more on the interaction part. The interaction is rough and I think I can add other more interesting interactions to the film rather than adding interactions because it is required in the task.