Being Intrusive

Now that I've had my first taste of documentary film making I thought I'd just write a couple of lines about some of the things I noticed while shooting.

Firstly I actually found the early stages of the shoot really exciting because we hadn't a clue what was going to happen next, we just knew we had to be ready, but no one was going to wait for us so we had to get ready on the move, I built the boom pole and the shotgun mic in seconds and I'm not even the sound guy, soon after we were swept away in large groups and I had to build my camera rig as we walked. It was crazy but still really exciting.

Once we started filming I suddenly realized how difficult it was to focus on the camera and keep track of what was going on in front of me, some lite drama would start to happen and I'd instinctively need to position myself in a suitable position and get the focus and exposure right, as this was an observational documentary and because I was using my DSLR it was quite challenging. After a while I started to run out of ideas about where to place the camera because every 10 seconds or so the same things kept happening; check a door, its locked, check a door its open, speak to person, move on, all the footage had started looking the same.

Something I felt really uncomfortable about was how intrusive I felt I was being, here we were, walking into peoples front yards, checking doors, when someone would open the door there I was with a camera in their faces filming the inside of their home. It made me feel really strange and I was unsure how much freedom I had with the camera. At times the police officer made motions that suggested I may need to back off, a few times the officer would stand with his back right in-front of my camera or close the door half way so that I couldn't see what was going on inside. As a documentary film maker you clearly have to be really nosy and stick that camera where the action is taking place.

I suppose I should mention the problems I had with sound. My DSLR has pretty poor internal sound but I was using the Rhode Videomic Pro on the shoot, the mic is very capable but I need to make sure the settings are right next time, a lot of the footage I got was far to muted, there was a lot of hiss in the background too as I upped the gain to compensate.