Ashley Zammit and I asked to do our interview with Michael Pollan in his garden. We found him sitting there at a table at the appointed time, quite friendly but also on a bit of a tight schedule. After our 45-minute interview, Michael agreed to let us take some shots of his small but packed garden, which we did before running off to talk to locals at the farmer’s market down the street. Since his garden and gardening talk was cut out of our final video on food and fossil fuels, I quickly put together … Read More >>>
video
videoVideo Interview: In Michael Pollan’s garden
Thursday, July 30th, 2009Using video portraits instead of still portraits
Thursday, July 16th, 2009“It’s funny watching people have their picture taken. The moments before, so much happens in their faces, so many different expressions. And then they shoot the photo and you realize that the picture is kind of bland compared to everything that happens right before and after it.”
Ira Glass, Going Down in History episode from “This American Life.”
Glass’ quote sums up the idea of a video portrait. Basically, what they convey is those few seconds previous and after of a photo—that spontaneity that usually gets ruined in the countdown.
Capture more than just a frame. Don’t freeze life; capture it in its totality.
Wrestling with wildlife and footage
Thursday, July 16th, 2009I have been shooting much of my footage with the Canon 5D Mark ii. It has a color richness and depth of field that I cannot resist. The footage from the 5d is different from the footage one gets from a video camera. The codex, I think it is, is different. Unless one converts the footage to another codex, one is stuck with lengthy rendering times, at every editing step. Right now, I am exporting a version of my piece to share with my coach. It is taking 15 minutes. And so, now, instead of working diligently on my video, I am writing this blog post, waiting for my clips to reach 8000 percent speed.
I went out shooting last night – just as the sun was slipping away. Two days before, I’d gone out to shoot lines with my car as my dolly. On the way to those lines, I saw other lines. Big, tall steel towers. They seemed close to the road. By sight, they were. On foot, they were not.
I spent 20 minutes wrestling through flora. Between myself and the utility pole were brambles, and nests, and untold, unseen wildlife. I was particularly afraid of snakes. I was also afraid that the car I’d left beside the road and could no longer see would get towed. I wanted to shoot straight up into a tower and have the clouds rush by. There is a dearth of puffy clouds in these parts. I settled to shoot day’s fading light. With that fading, first came the bats and then the mosquitoes. And that’s what I braved for, at most 12 seconds of b-roll. Was it worth it? I escaped with only an unattached tick. Do I need to go back?
Street interviews in Berkeley
Friday, July 10th, 2009Check us out trying to get folks to talk on camera about why they eat local foods.
Ashley Zammitt and I camped out at the Berkeley Farmers Market recently and asked individuals to tell us why they eat local foods. We thought it might be good for The High Energy Diet story.
Approach: Chronicling the changing winds
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009The Changing Winds Of Newtok from philter on Vimeo.
Newtok, Alaska, is one of the first places to dramatically feel the effects of increasing global energy consumption, as temperature shifts, storm surges and a melting permafrost chip away at the infrastructure of a community of nearly 350 on the state’s central west coast.
During a window-rattling storm there Friday, July 3, I crossed paths with Stanley Tom, tribal administrator for the Newtok Traditional Council and the driver on finding funding to make the village’s move to higher ground a reality.