Unit 1 Assignment 2 Film Review

First, my director sent me 2 films by Stan Brakhage (Mothlight & Dog Star Man) in order for me to get some inspiration, because I’ve never really worked with experimental films (although I know every film is experimental in one way or another). Since you cant see what is exactly shot in these 2 films because of the superimposing and all the other effects, I talked to our TA Jean-Jacques about it. He gave me 3 films which were audio-visually very inspiring, and they are 1) Occidente - Ana Vaz 2) Peter Mettler- Sizerre 3) Sin Dios Ni Santa Maria – Elena. I visited a couple of locations with the director prior to the shoot. We also had a couple of meetings with the sound recordist and editor to discuss schedules and filming approaches. Filming went well in general. It was challenging for me

The good thing is that if we feel like we have to shoot more footage, my Sony camera is ready. On location, I didn’t really talk to the sound recordist because our collaboration together had already happened in pre-production. But one thing I did was when we were done shooting on the first rainy day of the shoot with the C300, our plan was to shoot the train railway and some industrial buildings at night, and to go to Saint-Laurent Street in the next morning. I suggested we switch those schedules since that day was on a Saturday, and I figured that going out at night during Halloween would help me capture some interesting visual images in terms of light, aesthetics, costumes, busy streets,… I also figured this would be good for our sound guy who would be able to capture real life situation, conversations, and can just explore the busy streets. Now for my most important lesson, I realized that if you feel like you are losing the track you are working on, the MORE questions you ask, the better (instead of just “trying to figure out what you’re doing and wasting time”). In conclusion, we ended up with great footage of almost 5-6