Keep On Keeping On

I met with Mr. Cass on Monday and I got my microphone. I'm so glad I have this connection and I'm able to use the digital media equipment, because it has made this project a little easier on me. Mr. Cass and I discussed the style of interviews that can happen. I might choose to include my voice asking questions, or I might just use what people say. Stylistically I might choose to have people looking off to me at the side, and not talking directly into the camera.

In class on Monday, we further discussed the movie, Barnsong. In particular, part of the conversation the stuck out to me was the idea of the learning that one obtains along the way. It's not the end of the world if people don't completely finish their projects. Of course it's preferable to meet and exceed goals, but along the way there is still the continuous process to show off. Although I still hope and expect to complete my project within the time limits, this makes me feel a bit more comfortable with the constraints I'm faced with. Moving forward for this week and next, I'm getting my wisdom teeth out on Friday, so I'll be busy and in some pain for at least part of break. I hope this doesn't prevent me from getting out and about in continuing to shoot for my project. 

I've decided that instead of a rigid schedule, I would prefer to check out the availability of people around Ithaca and look outside at the weather conditions, along with my own varying schedule. I think it will work better overall if I just aim to get out around town a few times a week when the moment seems right. It will be more comfortable for me and get the best atmosphere and lighting in what I'm filming.

Also, although I have talked with some people, I'm still always looking for more people to volunteer to interview with me, so if you happen to be reading this right now and would like to help me out, drop a comment below or send me a message at csgarbo@gmail.com. Thanks!

Sonder?

I know I've been talking about the cold so much, but wow, it is still pretty nasty! Despite the windchill being two degrees this morning, the sun was shining and I was able to get some great footage. Mainly, I got more b-roll footage. I went all over downtown Ithaca for a couple hours. Some places I got included different commissioned art pieces, various views of creeks, driving down the street, the State Theater, some historical landmarks, one of the planet walk stations, the Ithaca High School sign and driving by the lake.

It's comforting to see people I don't know all around me, living their lives. It's a bit like sonder. There was a family running around doing the Carl Sagan planet walk together. In another place, there was a lady walking her dog, and then there were quite a few couples hurrying along together in the cold. Everyone has their own story and I can't manage to capture them all, but I hope to uncover many different facets to the inhabitants of Ithaca.

Here is part of a mural depicting an abstract view of the Finger Lakes that I photographed today:

Potential Soundtrack?

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that I may not be able to use these songs due to the fact that they are copyrighted. I will have to look more into it, but I really hope I can...

I spent quite some time looking through music that I thought would be good to go with my documentary. I'm looking for a sort of indie-alternative/upbeat/inspiring/folk/contemporary mixture. I know it's a little early to start doing this, but I got excited when I found Our Song by Dynamic Inkline, which captures a lot of the essence of Ithaca, NY. There is a video with an interview with Ithaca Mayor Svante Myric and scenes all around Ithaca. It's inspiring because it's pretty similar to my vision of the lens I want to view Ithaca through.

I put my working soundtrack into a playlist online and it's about an hour and 15 minutes long in total. This is about what I want, because the music will fade in and out with dialogue, but will be present or most of the film. I may choose not to include some or add some later. Like I said, I know it's a bit out of order to look through music to early, but I was inspired to just sit down for a few hours, to go through music, and to find some interesting things that I hope should work. I want my own taste to be a part of the soundtrack but not to overwhelm it, because I'm aware that I also have a theme and an audience to work with.


Potential Songs:

• Our Town- Dynamic Inkline
• Truckin'- Grateful Dead
• Home- Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
• 40 Day Dream- Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
• Verona- Geographer 
• The General Specific- Band of Horses
• Society- Eddie Vedder
• Electric Love- BØRNS
• anything Wilco)
• Friends- Ed Sheeran
• Left Hand Free- alt-j
• For What It's Worth- Buffalo Springfield
• Good Vibes- Rebelution
• I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For- U2
• Let It Go- James Bay

Songs with few/no words:

• Dye- Tycho
• Your Hand in Mine- Explosions in the Sky
• Five Silent Miles- American Football
• Loud Pipes- Ratatat

Here is a picture from a local eatery! 

Lists are Great for Planning

The weather is hindering my shooting a bit. I really want good lighting outside to get more b-roll footage, but the past few days (and I believe the next few, as well) have been filled with grey skies and more snow. This is a bit of a let down, considering that- according to my Timehop app- three years ago this week, it was in the high 70s and sunny.  I have scheduled some interviews for the coming weeks and I've contacted others and am awaiting responses. For right now, I'm in the process of organizing the filming I've already gotten, and creating a list of places I want to include.

I've compiled a working lost from various "visit Ithaca" sites (including this pinterest board) and my own experiences. I will either interview people who work at these places or the places themselves. These are some of the areas I may choose to include (please note that some of these are technically in areas surrounding Ithaca, but extend from the atmosphere of the town):

• Moosewood Restaurant
• Sciencenter
• Treman State Park/Lucifer Falls
• Taughannock State Park
• Second Dam
• Ithaca Falls/Fall Creek
• Buttermilk Falls
• Beebe Lake
• Ho Plaza and various other places on Cornell Campus
• Various places in Ithaca College
• Sunset Park in Cayuga Heights
• The State Theater
• Stewart Park and Cayuga Lake/The Lighthouse
• Ithaca Commons
• Cayuga Nature Center
• Ithaca Visitor Center
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Ithaca Farmers Market
• Greenstar
• The Art and Found
• Sew Green
• Viva Taqueria, Gorgers
• Ithaca Bakery/CTB
• Ithaca Festival/Streets Alive/other festivals
• Grassroots organizer

Another idea I'm interested in is to create a time lapse in some areas, like on the commons, the walking bridge at Cornell, or one of the hot trucks on campus.

Here's a picture of me off a trail at the Cayuga Nature earlier this year, when the weather was nicer!

POSSIBLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

I've been thinking about how to frame my questions to get responses that will be engaging and lead to stories or discussion. I also hope that they will give me a chance to use some of my b-roll footage over what the interviewees are saying.

Here is a working list of possible items to discuss with the people who I'm interviewing (I may come back and add to it later):

• How long have you been living in Ithaca? 
• What brought you here? 
• What makes Ithaca unique or special? 
• In a brief phrase, how would you describe this place? 
• What is Ithacan culture? 
• What's your story? 
• First impression of Ithaca? 
• Favorite local business? 
• What do you do in your time around the town? 
• Favorite festival? Why? 
• What are the best activities and places to visit around Ithaca?
• Name some stereotypes you associate with Ithaca.
• Which season is your favorite in Ithaca? Why?
• Does anything else set this setting apart?
• How would you characterize the people here?

In the meantime, enjoy a view of Cornell University taken from Stewart Park:

It's Monday Mentor Meeting Day!

I talked with Mr. Cass today. We discussed the importance of organization throughout the project process. When I shoot footage, I know what I have and can organize it better if it's fresh in my mind. I can save time later if I keep the digital video and image files neat. Therefore, it would be wise to be labeling and deleting as needed. I hope this will smooth the process of editing later down the road.

We also discussed the demographics of my audience, which is fairly broad. We decided on a varying sample of people but the youngest age of interviewees in my film should be high schoolers. Mr. Cass also put me in contact with Maya from the Ithaca College Media Club. I can't wait to use her as a resource.

We met in class today during the Wise period. I appreciate hearing from my classmates about their progress. It's fun to know all of the cool things they are learning about and producing, but it's also nice to know that the path through the project isn't direct for anyone. Life gets in the way sometimes and we just have to work around it, but we also are making great gains.

In class, we watched a former Wise student's film about another student's Wise project. It was a documentary titled Barnsong. I better understand the Wise project after viewing it. The project was about making a barn, which I would generally associate with the raising of the barn, itself. However, the bulk of the film shows the before process that goes into creating a barn (such as the laborious process of getting wood and cutting it). The focus isn't on the finished product, which just gets quick recognition at the end. The Wise program offers a learning experience that the documentary shows well. It tells a story as time goes on and more skills are built up. 

Now that I watched Barnsong, I wonder about dedications and special thanks in my own documentary. I hadn't realized, but in nearly everyone's project, there are many people who must be relied upon to make the project work who deserve recognition. This film left me wondering about my own project. It got up close for small details and played in interesting aspects of lighting with an overall good variety of shots. Some questions I will now explore include how stylistically I want to conduct my interviews. For example, do I want people be looking into the camera or off to the side, and how can I frame what they say to get the material I need?

Interview Questions will be posted soon this week! Enjoy the sunshine!

PEER BLAHG RESPONSES

I looked at Maeve's and Carrie's blogs. Both have different posting styles that I think work well with the projects they are researching and doing.

For Maeve, her posts are full of information on her subject and lists sources at the end of the post, showing her research. Maybe I should do this with sources I use, too. Some are in the style of bulleted notes, some are plans that come in short blurbs, and other posts have pictures and reflections about aspects of "The Abandoned House Project." It's evident that she is organized with her time and planning. Her approach is pretty analytic.

In Carrie's blog, her posts are frequent, fun, and a bit less formally written. I like how she used a chart to show her weekly plan. Her post titles range from very straightforward quirky. Carrie lets us know a little about her personal life and ideas through her posts, which match up with the film she is creating, titled CARRIE. She makes her posts easy to read and one of them even has some rhyming in it.

Looking through other students' blogs made me think more about my own blog. I want to strive for variety in my posts. I also feel better about using lists in the future, because blog posts don't have to just be in paragraph form.

The Snow is Melting...

I went out and got some beautiful footage. The sun was shining and the snow has melted somewhat, making it better to walk through. I was able to use my tripod to stabilize my shots. Out on the lake and in Stewart Park, I caught glimpses of people having fun together, which is my first shot that includes people. It's still b-roll footage. Also at the lake, I tried out many different angles to get the best view across the lake.

At the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,  I couldn't get quite as much footage as I wanted to, because there is still so much snow covering everything. One thing that became very clear to me while I was there is the importance of timing. First came the airplane that was just landing and touching down. I was standing in the perfect place to capture the scene but unfortunately had just collapsed my tripod and started walking back. Conversely to this was the moment when a flock of geese unexpected flew right across my shot of a pond, making for a very cool shot that I'm happy I got on camera. Of course both of these instances were a luck game, but I now know that I should be patient and pay attention to details around me.

Lastly, I tried to figure out how to use the external hard drive and came across some complications. I tried installing the software on my Apple computer and it continued to not work. Eventually I called my brother and he guided me through how to reprogram some functions on it with a different computer. This process took me just under an hour, but now it works and I can keep everything I need in one convenient place.

Moving Forward and Mentor Meeting

I spent a while searching for a good, sturdy tripod around my house this weekend and finally found it. Now I am ready to get better shots and to begin to dive in to my project. I hope to go out and get some footage tomorrow as the weather warms up a bit.

I met with Mr. Cass today. We discussed how in a quiet place I can use a shotgun microphone with my Canon DSLR camera (in high definition). In a bigger, louder place or formal setting I will require a larger camera and different microphone. In addition, we decided when the best times are to come in and work on the computers and the usefulness of an external hard drive. I can load all of my images and video onto it and move around from computer to computer every day, instead of being tied to one single computer every time I want to edit.

I plan to go out soon and get more b-roll footage (for scenes and cutaways depicting what a person is talking about) around Ithaca.

I will be contacting some of the harder to reach people to ensure I am scheduled in to get a chance to talk with them. I'm trying very hard to think about different kinds of people to use (age, gender, job, etc). If I need to, Mr. Cass said I could use and record a Skype interview. Lastly, I need to start making a varied list of questions to ask my subjects. I hope to come up with a lot of different topics to ask about in the coming week.

I'm leaving to go to Philly on Thursday through Sunday this coming week, so it may be difficult for me to get a lot of actual filming done. I'll try to work around it and get more done during the earlier part of this week while the sun is out!

Here are some geese I saw today!

Documentaries for Inspiration

I viewed two more documentaries over the past week. Both were very moving and focused on a topic/issue rather than following a person around, like in many documentaries. This should be helpful for developing my style in my film. It's more about gathering perspectives and showing through image.

Waste Land (2010) focuses on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It shows the enormous amount of waste that comes from people today, poor and rich alike, and goes to the dump where some of Brazil's less wealthy are "trash pickers." This dump is the largest landfill in the world in terms of volume of trash received daily and is the media for Vik Muniz to use in his latest art creation. Vik Muniz is an artist who makes pictures from everyday objects and unlikely materials to create astounding and bold images. He grew up poor in Brazil, but with his success now, he wants to give back to the community. There are many scenes of the streets and homes with kids interacting with environment, which can be moving for the viewer. Throughout the film, he creates masterpieces based off of photographs he has taken of the trash pickers. All of the proceeds from this project will go back to them. He portrays the people who live and work here to give them a voice. In Waste Land people share their life philosophies while doing everyday jobs. I hope to capture this real feeling, as well.

Food Inc. (2008) is a hard hitting film that takes a deep look into the American food industry and the culture that surrounds the mass consumption of unhealthy, cheap foods. The issues such as animal quality of life, food safety, and worker safety are pressing issues in today's society and keep the film interesting. Each of these issues has a few subjects who are interviewed on their take and the personal ways that they have been affected by it. One of the strongest points in this documentary to me, is the fact that people can drive progress. The transitioning of many companies including large chains such as Wal-Mart towards organic foods shows the power of consumer culture. This is a universal view that in our society, if people demand change, they can really make a difference and be heard.

In addition, Food Inc. uses narration to move the story along. It also takes advantage, stylistically, of "chapters." I may be interested in doing as well for different parts of the film. I will have to see how the aspects of all the footage and interviews I get work together.

Waste Land as well as Food Inc. incorporate intense music, interviews with many, and shots that follow people. They make the viewer see the many different aspects of the subject at hand and resonate with the viewer even after the film is long over. I know these films are professionally made by countless people, and I am just one person. I still have high expectations that I can create a great project. I think viewing the documentaries, I have a broader sense of what I can use in my own work. For example, sometimes images or facial expressions are better at describing than words.

A Bit of a Rough Start

Yesterday and today, I got my first shots of Ithaca with my Canon camera. I got a bit frustrated, because it was extremely cold and blustery. I think I got some camera shake due to this, but I can make it work. I got some stills and pans of the base of Ithaca Falls, the bridge at the top of Ithaca Falls, the overlook on Sunset Drive, and the perspective from the Southeastern shore of Cayuga Lake. I hope as the weather gets better within the next few months, I will get better footage in a better mood. As for right now, I now know that I need to factor the weather into my project, to ensure I shoot on days that look like they will produce good footage.

I also spent some time at the Dewitt Mall recently and decided that a good portion of the culture that shapes this town is in the local stores. I now want to add Moosewood, Greenstar, and some other vendors from Downtown Ithaca into my project. However, I need to keep in mind that the town isn't just inclusive of the City of Ithaca but also the suburbs farther out. We have great resources in schools around the town and businesses in East Hill Plaza, the Triphammer Mall, Community Corners, and more. I know that I can't capture every opinion and piece of Ithaca in a limited amount of interviews and film time. Hopefully, I can capture the beauty and essence of this place, while keeping my audience engaged and meeting my own WISE project goals.

On a separate note, it's supposed to get up to 40 degrees this week!

(photo from 3/2/15)

Mentor Meeting!

Today, I had my second mentor meeting. Mr. Cass suggested I aim for an hour long documentary instead of going along with the plan for a half hour that I had originally intended to do. I think this will be better to get a wider scope to include more aspects of my subject but I am a bit nervous about getting enough good footage and having time to edit it all. Overall, I'm optimistic about the longer timeframe.

We discussed making a physical plan and storyboard for the different sections of my film (similar to chapters that focus on different aspects). In addition, we talked about the importance of written or verbal releases for the people I interview. I also need to start thinking about who I want to schedule my interviews with (perhaps Mayor Svante Myrick, the Ithaca Visitor Center, college students from IC and Cornell, etc...). 

Hopefully within the next day, I will get the first shots of my project. Before the ice begins to melt later this week, I will need to get the lake and falls in the wintery season.

Here's a preview of the wintery scenery (taken by me):

Getting Inspiration From Other Works

The end of the week is a great time for relaxing a bit. I was lucky enough to spend my free periods in school on Friday watching Bill Cunningham New York (2010) on Netflix. In brief, this film documents the life work, artistic ideas, and opinions of (now 85 year old) fashion photographer Bill Cunningham. He works for the New York Times creating columns that capture clothing in their natural spotlight -on the street. The documentary captures the interactions that Cunningham has with his subjects who range from eclectic to "high fashion". This movie is significant to me, because while Bill rides his bike throughout New York City and shares his philosophies, it also gives an excellent snapshot of the variety of life and culture that exists in The City. 

Cunningham discusses how his photographs capture the moment. He shares ideas about how the people in public set what is in fashion by letting their unique trends be seen and noticed on the street. There are many people who are interviewed about various past and present events that they face in New York. These include the Carnegie Hall Studio artists who are being asked to move out of residence and who give their memories about Bill Cunningham, men who were not allowed to be published in The Times because they were wearing dresses but now are fully a part of Cunningham's spreads, and the general reactions of New Yorkers, ranging from positive to neutral to negative, of Cunningham snapping photos of them walking by.

I think I can take a lot of hints from Cunningham's philosophies and techniques and incorporate them into my documentary. I want to capture Ithaca in moments of time that define it. The people are an extremely important part and I hope to capture many different perspectives that are real and natural.

In addition, I viewed a short documentary that a former WISE student created last year. He interviewed different people around downtown Ithaca. I want to approach this idea a bit differently in depth and scope, but it was definitely interesting to see another perspective!