SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS!

FADE IN:
INT. SANDRA'S BEDROOM
Headphones in, laptop plugged in, SANDRA is jamming to the Baby Driver soundtrack. However, she could not resist making a Lil Jon reference in her blog post title. 
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SO...production is going well. Even though I haven't finalized all of the research I want to conduct (lighting, stop-motion, etc.), I'm just sort of winging it whenever I am in my creative writing class to capture some B-roll before I start conducting my interviews to tie in all of the footage together.

Shots by LMFAO ft. Lil Jon.
Let's pretend they were referencing cinematography.

I have found so far my process is sort of very organic and very direct cinema; I originally planned on bringing my camera and tripod, but found it would be too much work to take it on and off of the tripod during class whenever I wanted to capture certain things within the moment. I've mainly been using my phone and a (hopefully) steady hand. However, I know for some scenes I need a tripod for certain more artistic shots.

For instance, I know I want one specific shot of the covers of all of the Literary Magazine covers (that features Creative Writing students work) on a plain background that is laid out. I made a makeshift version of this idea I'm going for in the middle of class:

This is an extremely rough cut. Composition is terrible, I know, I know.

However, I kind of want to switch it around from just stacking on top of each other to make it right next to each other. I know these kinds of shots are very characteristic of Wes Anderson, such as in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Now, I know it may seem a little backward to be doing B-roll and other footage instead of interviews at first, but I found that when I made an original full-length documentary back in November during our Documentary unit in class, we really lacked B-roll. Considering I am in Creative Writing every other day, I may as well start capturing footage while I can. I plan to conduct my interviews next week and plan to edit directly afterward. If I find in post-production I still need some filler footage, I can take it the week after spring break, but overall, it is never a bad idea to have a lot of footage. Never, ever, ever.

Until then,
SLS