Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Audio interview.
I just finished editing an interview of Nicole Despres, the assistant manager of the OSS office here at Temple University Japan. It was co-edited by fellow classmate Tomoka.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Two ideas.
I have two ideas for documentaries for this class. One I don't want to discuss until I have permission from those who I would be focusing on. The other one I also don't have permission yet, but I don't expect it will be a problem.
Over the summer I did a documentary on a band. While I was quite satisfied with this, there's a lot missing. I would like to do a more in-depth interview, show them practicing or recording, and just get a bit more involved. I have a camera with me now and I intend on going to one of their shows tonight.
Hopefully, I can get started on that and/or my other idea. It might be fun to do 2 different documentaries, but I'm not sure I'll have time for that.
Over the summer I did a documentary on a band. While I was quite satisfied with this, there's a lot missing. I would like to do a more in-depth interview, show them practicing or recording, and just get a bit more involved. I have a camera with me now and I intend on going to one of their shows tonight.
Hopefully, I can get started on that and/or my other idea. It might be fun to do 2 different documentaries, but I'm not sure I'll have time for that.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Frontline/World "News War: War of Ideas"
On Monday in class, we screened a documentary titled Frontline/World "News War: War of Ideas" It was a piece from PBS about news in the Middle East. It was considered an expository documentary where the filmmaker and main protagonist went around to different news agencies throughout the world showing how different agencies treated news and events in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East.
I did not feel like the documentary took a hard slant favoring one outlet over the other, but more or less said that they were all biased and they all knew it. Due to who was making the documentary, there was a pro-America slant, but I don't think it really painted anybody as the bad guy.
The style of "Expository" mode worked well in this aspect. It was very journalistic and almost like a diary of events. In something like this, expository is useful for uncovering facts and discussing ideas. This piece did not lend itself to an artistic style based on the subject matter, so Expository was fine.
The part that surprised me the most is that the US Government has their own Arabic language TV channel. That alone was a little surprising, just because it was new information, but the shock is it is based in Virginia. I wonder the value in having the central headquarters in the United States while the target audience is in the Middle East. I can understand a branch near Washington DC, but the headquarters is a bit odd. I also wonder why this channel isn't available in America, as it is funded by tax payer's money.
I did not feel like the documentary took a hard slant favoring one outlet over the other, but more or less said that they were all biased and they all knew it. Due to who was making the documentary, there was a pro-America slant, but I don't think it really painted anybody as the bad guy.
The style of "Expository" mode worked well in this aspect. It was very journalistic and almost like a diary of events. In something like this, expository is useful for uncovering facts and discussing ideas. This piece did not lend itself to an artistic style based on the subject matter, so Expository was fine.
The part that surprised me the most is that the US Government has their own Arabic language TV channel. That alone was a little surprising, just because it was new information, but the shock is it is based in Virginia. I wonder the value in having the central headquarters in the United States while the target audience is in the Middle East. I can understand a branch near Washington DC, but the headquarters is a bit odd. I also wonder why this channel isn't available in America, as it is funded by tax payer's money.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Documentary filmmaking intro
This is my new blog for the documentary filmmaking class at Temple University Japan. I will use this as a journal of ideas and progress towards my documentary. Hopefully this will be a good place to share my thoughts and ideas as well as information on how the project is progressing.
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