2004-05-18 - 3:57 p.m.
Ha ha ha, joke against me. Today I filmed about sixteen students for my Washington trip video. I was really worried about being able to do it right, because I�ve got to film thirty-five students who wrote really good statements about the trip and that gets them into the video. I don�t have a lot of time to get this filming done, because school will be out in three and a half weeks, and the only time I can film them is during their lunch break and I still want them to have time to eat and play (and they want to have time to eat and play!).
My set-up looked professional enough. I had made a nice little ad hoc set, which really was just a chair for the interviewees and one for me behind the camera, set up outside around the building in a quiet corner where the noise of kids playing in the playground wouldn�t interfere with what the kids are saying, and yet was close enough to the action that I could attract or snag the kids I needed to get on camera. The student�s chair is against the wall to the side of a darkly shuttered window that belongs to one of the offices. I didn�t want the chair completely against the white stucco wall of the building, or against a door, or below one of the ubiquitous donation plaques. I had my camera on a professional tripod and I even used a lavalier microphone, the kind that clips on the interviewee�s shirt like on a talk show. The kids loved the effect of the lavalier microphone being clipped on. (Of course, many of them have parents who actually run real TV studios.)
Everything looked fine in the camera�s viewing screen and the interviews were great, I liked the performance of the kids. But when I got back upstairs to check out what I filmed (I was worried about the sound level, but that came out okay), what to my horrified eyes do I see but this big lug reflected in the shuttered window as plain as day! The presence of my body reflected in the window did not show up on the viewing screen, but the videotape sure picked it up almost as if I had been filming into a mirror. Isn�t that just about the most classic blunder a person can do? How stupid! And not only that, but kids who hung around to watch the action show up in the reflection, too.
I�m not going to redo those shots, it was too much work, time is of the essence, and the performance of the kids themselves was fine, it was only me that was bad. I just will be sure to not EVER make that mistake again, and for the remaining nineteen kids, you can be sure there will be no reflections�I will move that �set� to out next to a tree, or something.
Somebody told me that the editing software should take care of this problem, probably by artificially zooming the picture closer so that my reflection disappears out beyond the frame. Fortunately, if I can do that, I can be closer to the kids� faces without hurting the quality of the composition. I hope. Otherwise, I absolutely am going to have to using the titling feature to run a little disclaimer down at the bottom of the screen that warns something like �Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!� And, I suppose, this blunder makes the whole enterprise a lot less serious and into something more casual and fun. After all, it could make the film worth multiple viewings, to at first catch what the interviewees are saying, and then again to watch all the stupid shenanigans being reflected in the glass.
But really, I do hope I can fix it. (And I don�t guess I�ve got a real film-making career coming my way any time soon.)
�
 |
 |
�
