This week, I had a second cooperation with my group members, we shot a observational film in cafe.
Unfortunately, we were planning to shoot inside the cafe and observing the barista in making coffee, referencing to our documentary. At that time, the cafe is quite busy and they were not allowed us to shoot inside. Therefore, we decided to shoot outside the cafe and observed the people outside the cafe shop.
It is quite interesting to shoot them, because they actually did the things as usual, but in the camera, it is quite nice to look at them in the scene.
we shot the people talking, the wide shot of cafe, the close up shot of foods and people.
In the observational film, to be a filmmaker, we are actually expecting something unexpected that perfectlize the film, we never know what is gonna happen in observing. However, we can plan that what you would like to be in the film.
In the film called “time indefinite” there is kind of observational mode to interactive mode.
In the film, director Ross McElwee gets married, finally putting an end to his family’s worrying; his grandmother dies; his wife Marilyn has a miscarriage; and his father, a medical doctor, dies suddenly within a week of McElwee’s wife’s miscarriage. His mother had died of cancer ten years earlier and so McElwee returns to his father’s house, where his father’s housekeeper ministers to him about Christianity and faith.
McElwee goes to visit his friend Charleen, who is now living alone in a new apartment. She had lived on an island in an old two-story house abandoned by the U.S. Army; she and her husband worked to restore it and lived together there for years before becoming estranged. Charleen then lived there alone, but on returning home from a trip she finds that her husband has set fire to the house and died downstairs at the grand piano in an arson/suicide. Charleen has her husband’s cremated remains in a bag inside a box and tries to get rid of them but can’t bring herself to do it. From Wikipedia
the filmmaker is trying to get more information from them, he wants Charleen to get ride of her husband’s cremated into the sea, this is going to be a very nice scene. However, Charleen disobey the filmmaker’s idea and does not want to get ride of her husband’s cremated.
vickiedeng 