The 3rd Year students on Winchester University’s Journalism course have an interesting project coming up. A departure from making news programmes or writing mentally destabilising dissertations, it will soon be time to remove our green eyeshades and slap on berets as we make an artsy film.
The project, entitled Land, will be filmed in sections by teams of students and aims to capture aspects of existence in our region.
My “team” consists of me, and I will be covering Craft.
My goal is to seek out craftspeople who, in this age of digitisation and automated production, have helped to keep their ancient trades alive.
As well as good pictures, I plan to capture the sounds these people make when doing their jobs, and edit them to make a soundtrack to go with the footage. The result will look something like a music video. For this reason, I will be aiming to film trades that have very distinctive sounds. If they are rhythmic, that will be a help, but it’s not necessary as the editing process will take care of that.
I will be aiming to work a few of the following: Blacksmith, farrier, thatcher, leather worker, butcher, basket weaver, and any more I may come across.
I hope to be able to use a Sony Z1 to film, as the lens is better for extreme close-up shooting than the PD170, so it will be better for capturing the small details I imagine will make the film what I hope it to be. Having said that, the PD 170 is better in low light, and so there will be a trade off either way.
I may also use a Canon 7D DSLR with 50mm f1.4 lens when I wish to achieve very shallow depth of field. But this will complicate matters somewhat, as syncing sound, and a change in picture quality, will make the editing process a little more difficult. The 7D also films in progressive scan, which can cause issues of jerkiness, especially when panning. This is something I will need to keep in mind if I decide to use this camera.
Here is a link to a film I will be using as my inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBN-CAhOYQ0
