MSTA

With planning for the documentary beginning in September of 2019, there was the set timeline of 8 months; expecting to have the finished documentary up by April 2020.

With such a short timeline to conceptualize, plan, shoot and edit the documentary, emphasis was put on organizing the project into manageable sections.

A timeline was devised where the 8 month deadline would be broken up into 3 stages; Planning (2 months), Shooting (3 months), Editing and Refinement (3 months).

Splitting up the timeline into 3 stages allowed for more time to explore any areas of research and experiment with different ideas.

The entire documentary was shot solely on two cameras; the Sony A7RII Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera and the
JVC GR-AXM700U VHS-C Camera.

With a very limited budget, the documentary was created with equipment already previously owned.
An entire list of equipment was indexed in a spreadsheet during the planning stage of the production.

The documentary was edited on Adobe Premiere Pro.  

Shooting on the Sony A7RII provided some advantages in terms of dynamic range and low-light performance.

In my prototype shoot, I shot on the SLOG 2 picture profile (Picture Profile 7). SLOG 2 is a flat colour profile, rendering a flat and desaturated image with a higher dynamic range, which can later be manipulated in post-production.

I chose to shoot most of my footage in SLOG 2, however, I realized that shooting lowlight and SLOG 2 didn’t go so well together. As the exposure was brought up in post, the noise of the footage was also brought up as well.

The idea to use VHS-C footage came to me in the planning stage of the production. After a conversation with Immony Men (OCAD U), I was set on using old video formats to display a visual representation of “remembrance”.

With interview sections planned for the documentary, I knew I would be asking the interviewees to recall on past experiences. The challenge was figuring out how I would visually represent the interviewees recollection and draw the viewer into the past with them, reliving some of these memories as best they could.

My solution to this was to shoot segments on a VHS-C camcorder (JVC GRAXM-700U). The VHS-C footage was converted using a VHS-to-DVD converter and exported files as an .AVI for me to use later in post-production.

A lot of work was done in the post-production stage. After gathering just over half of the footage, I began devising trailers for the documentary, which highlighted visuals representing the different collectives.

At the time, I had shot 60% of the footage and used this as an opportunity to explore the aesthetics of the project.

Throughout the editing stage, I devised up “sketches” or drafts of potential ideas for how I would like to narrate the documentary.

Sticking with some loose themes of remeberance and candid moments, I took footage that I felt best aligned with these themes and composited them together.

At this stage, the editing style and thematic approach began to combine seamlessly and I could start to see what the final documentary would look like.