Learning how to film

Filming class in Amersfoort with Huub

You need to have a hell of a lot of things in place when making a movie. Wow! If I was not that exhausted right now, I would say the day with Huub was mindblowing. This guy raised our movie making skills from 0 to 100% in 6 hours. :-)
It is not just going out there with a camera in your hand and a vague idea of what you want to do. If you do that you must be either Superman and fly or crash. Probably the latter.
But! now! we! have! superduperfilmingflyingskills!
Video: Where do you place a figure on the screen? Follow the 1/3rd 2/3rd rule: eyes should always be about 1/3rd from the top. Mind the talking direction as well: there should be 2/3rds of space in the direction that the person is talking to.
Mind light conditions: you don´t want it opposite of the camera, but also not right in the face of the person being interviewed.
Sound: That´s 50% of the deal. If it is too windy, stop the shooting and arrange things so that you get better material. Same goes for other sounds like cars, people talking (you now have a good reason to tell them to shut up!). If you cannot avoid to record a noise: show it in the picture! When the eyes see where the sound comes from, the brain will accept it much more easily.
Time: There should be a timecode on the tape, because afterwards, when editing, you will want to be able to navigate through all the footage and find things again. Maybe you want to filme the tape on black before, so you are sure that it has a complete timecode on it and no fractions. Having the 30 minutes spot twice on the same tapes makes it difficult to find things.

Some useful hints:

Most important: Make sure your batteries are loaded and the tape you are using is empty.
Don´t use the first minute of the tape to be sure that it really tapes and for quality reasons.
See through the material every once in a whil during the trip to make sure that you really have something. It would be a pity to come home and find out that you have only bad shots, but could have improved along the way.
Make sure you write on the tape what is on it! e.g. Tape No. 1, HUB Berlin, by Joris, eurostars@kaospilots.nl If it gets lost, people might send it to us.
Read the manual of the camera before!
Don´t use inbuild effects like fade in/out. Just plain footage.
Use earplus while filming, then you hear how the sound will be.
Be relaxed with the camera, people should not notice it. They are probably scared already.
No talking during shots! You want the natural sounds, like doors clacking when closing.
Setting: every picture tells a story. Make sure it fits your intention. Nature tells about harmony, barbed wire gives you the impression of a prison or something.
Perspective: frog perspective makes the person being filmed seem bigger and more important, birds perspective the other way around.
Remember: your audience wants these questions answered: why? who? where?


Interviewing:

Do you want the interviewer in the picture?
The interviewer should be emathetic, but not say „hm“ all the time. It disturbes the sound.
Phrase good questions that focus on...your focus. So have a focus! Everybody the same on, at least that makes it a lot more easy for the editor.

We asked people the questions:

Who are you? They usually gave us their name, age and occupation.
What would you change if you were God? Worldpeace was common ground.
What was your best moment in the last year? ...
Have you come across the term „social innovation“? Do you know what it is? No.

So I guess we have some work to do here...find good questions!

Things to be clear about before making the movie (deciding on them is actually part of making the movie):

Aim
Target group
Content
Form/Style
Duration
Language
Show/Broadcast/Distribution

Again: lots of work ahead of us here!