Technical Design
Camera
A powerful but portable DSLR camera that shoots in HD 1080p and takes raw 18 megapixel pictures for best quality. Not only this but I also gives you the opportunity to capture sound, for best quality it is advised to attach a Rhode mic.
We used a zoom lens which has a zoom from 18mm (super wide) up to 135mm (super zoom), we also used a prime lens which is a 50mm fixed lens with fixed aperture allowing greater quality as the lens is higher quality as it is fixed.
ISO
The ISO on a camera controls how sensitive the camera is to light. The range of ISO on the 650 DSLR’s goes from 100 – 16400. You can only increase it on the stops it gives you, generally 100,200,400,800, 1600 etc… As an example ISO 100 will need twice as much light to expose the same shot as ISO 200.
With a lower ISO the higher the quality image and with the higher ISO the lower the quality image, so externally lighting a scene is better than bumping up the ISO.
100-400 Sunny (England’s outside lighting is generally ISO400)
400-1600 Cloudy
1600 – 16400 Dark
Camera Modes
M (Manual) – Allows you to change every seingle setting.
P (programmed Auto)– Camera sets the correct aperture and shutter settings but you can adjust the shooting and recording functions.
TV (Shutter-Priority) – Allows you to set the shutter speed and the camera automatically selets the correct aperture.
AV (Aperture-Priority)– Allows you to set aperture and the camera automatically sets the correct shutter speed.
Shutter Speeds
Shutter speed determines how much light and movement is captured within a shot. The slower the shutter speed the move movement and light the camera will take in. This can allow for fluid shots such as water to be captured and show the movement. Also moving lights is a great example of a slow shutter speed as it captures the lights movements and creates shapes and lines where is has captured it’s start to finish point.
Filming is always done with 1/50 shutter speed
F-Number
Lower F number reduces amount of light let in but increases the depth of field. Higher aperture lets in more light and reduces the depth of field, useful for focus pulls.
White Balance
White balance is use to determine the color correction due to the lighting. If the white balance is not checked or is off the colors are not captured correctly.
Interview Questions
Double Barreled Questions
Using this kind of question can be beneficial and risky at the same time. The best time to use a double barreled question is when the interviewee isn’t opening up to the interviewer, so by using this kind of question it can confuse the subject making them accidentally say something that they didn’t want to.
The only issue is that it makes the interviewee pause before answering the question so it’s not an instant ‘off the cuff’ response.
Trigger Questions
These questions are the most important. They are what we want to know and often gets the interviewee to tell you something personal.
Biggest Fear? Love? Hate? Are you lying?
All about getting a response.
However you have to be careful suing these as the primary has to be warmed up and comfortable with the interview otherwise they might not answer them as personally.
Open Questions
Open questions allow the primary freedom to talk. This has the potential to go off topic but they might tell you something interesting that you might not get through set questions.
Hypothetical Questions
Uses a scenario for them to answer more comfortably and is left open to interpretation whether they have had a personal experience in the subject.
Leading Questions
Leading questions are there to get to a specific point and to get the primary to answer a question in a specific way that would be beneficial to the documentary maker.
Closed Questions
Closed questions are usually answered with either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. For documentary this is not an ideal question as there is no substance in the answer. Also the question has to be heard to understand the answer, whereas if the primary came out with it all by themselves it would be a lot more effective.
