Log #2: I'm tired

This week was kind of a strange week. I think my cohorts agreed with me. They sent me an email basically saying how much this week sucked and how they were already lagging behind in the readings. I can agree with that. For some reason, my enthusiasm this week as been a bit haggard. Usually, I'm pretty good bout keeping up if not even ahead of the current week's readings. However, this week, I'm just not feeling it. I'm not interested, and I can't keep concentrated for more than five minutes. I think I'm just tired. It's only the end of week 3 which is kind of lame, but I think my energy will be revitalized next week. One of my cohorts has three kids and she's doing it (one of which is a new born), so if she can do it, well damnit, I sure as hell can!! 

Yet this wasn't the main point of my blog.. I just wanted to go off on a real quick rant about how this week sucked and how tired I am... Today of which was especially tiring because I was on campus from approximately 9am till about 8pm at night.

Tonight though, we were able to view a couple of the thesis films from last year's MVA students. Now, unfortunately I did not stay for the entirety of the screenings because I was exhausted and I felt like I was about to face plant the desk. The four I did catch were pretty interesting. The first one was about crazy football Trojan fans, the second about this minority ethnic group that's part Chicano and part African, the third was about horse packers, and lastly, the fourth was about a community in Peru.

After watching the four films, I now have a list of do's/dont's that I will TRY my best to uphold:

#1

For the love of god do not include a voice over. Self reflexive narrative voice overs are for the most part shitty in a documentary and I do not want my film to be lame. To me personally, they sound kind of cheesy having this omni-present voice speaking out of nowhere. Basically, it's stupid. 

#2

Along the lines of #1, #2 is to NOT include myself in my film. Ok, my topic can apply to myself, but regardless, I hate the self reflexive. The film IS NOT about me, it's about my subjects. Why am I going to be selfish and make it a story about myself? That's stupid. No one cares. I personally feel it creates a biased and therefore glorified portrayal of me. 

#3

Consistency is key!! In some of the films, it was obvious that different types of cameras were used. The quality clearly changed over different scenes. I personally am a stickler for consistency and I think it ruins the aesthetic quality of a film when you shoot in different formats. Shoot the whole damn thing in one format!! Of course, this is not applicable to added archival footage (or something old) into your film. 

#4

Get a good camera. I'm aware that the content itself is more important than the visual aspects, but I still want a perfect film. I am also aware that on a budget such as mine, it is almost damn near impossible to produce a "Hollywood" quality film. Regardless, I'd like to try my best to get the best quality that I can afford. 

#5

Avoid terrible frame changes within a interview. Perhaps they had no choice, or that it was an intentional move, but changing the frame while your subject is still talking looks so piss poor lame. Let them at least finish a thought before zooming in or something. Otherwise, it just looks tacky. 

#6

If you need subtitles in your film, for the love of god, don't pick crappy imovie style subtitles. They look terrible, they block off part of your frame, and it just doesn't give it any sort of justice.

#7

Avoid fast cuts that seemingly make no sense and are edited in the wrong areas. This is purely a technical error that can be fixed with the filmmaker. One of the films I saw looked amateur in nature because of the lame edits. Sometimes a jump cut isn't necessary....

So as you can see.. This is kind of a comprehensive list that I need to follow. I'm sure that I'll think of more along the way. I would like to point out that one of the films I saw tonight pretty much violated most of the "dont's" on this list. Let's just say that the content wasn't too great.

If any of the above makes absolutely no sense or sounds strange, it's because I'm about to face plant my keyboard because I'm beyond exhausted. I shall leave it in this unedited and not proof read form because I want to be cool like that. I'm trying to be self reflexive ok??