Days of Film

Last night at about 8:30 p.m. I started to panic, looking around the room wildly. What interesting or compelling thing, between 5 and 30 seconds long, could I find to film? And then I realized, oh wait, I’m done.

I suspect these moments of panic will continue for about a week. After all, it’s hard to break a year-long, daily habit. During 2011, I posted 365 (plus a few) videos over a period of 365 days. I choose these 365 videos from thousands that I took over the year. None of the shots were edited or changed—each was posted as is.

Over the course of the year, my videos received 5907 views. Not viral by any means, but a great accomplishment. 

Here are 5 ways I am different now because of the blog:

1. Awareness of the World

Being always on the lookout for something moving that is interesting and/or compelling, I’ve become a lot more aware of the things around me. I’m much more likely to notice and appreciate all the amazing things in the world, from leaves to facial expressions to the way a machine moves. I also think more visually and filmically. 

2. Knowledge that I can achieve lofty goals in small bits

I first learned this when I participated in NaNoWriMo in 2010, during which I wrote an entire 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Once again, the idea of “baby steps,” of tackling a giant project one step at a time, has been reinforced. Choosing a big goal and working on it every day for a year makes me feel capable of doing great things. 

3. Preparedness

I rarely left the house without a video camera last year, and as a result, I was always ready to film a shot when I saw something happening (except for a few times when I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera—a certain cool snow plow will never be seen by anyone on film). I want to be ready to participate in art at any time—whether it’s having my pen or other materials in hand. 

What’s Next? 

While I’m not going to film and post every day, if I see something interesting or compelling, I may post it on this blog. 

In the next week, I’ll be posting compilation videos (all of my January clips in one video, etc.). I may even create a video that contains every shot that I took over the entire year, though I suspect it would be boring, so I don’t recommend you watch it.

Beyond that, I’m going to start editing these shots into some form of final project. I may post rough cuts on this blog, and I’ll definitely be submitting to a few film festivals. 

If you want to participate in my other life adventures and projects, make sure to follow the blog on my personal website, katherinecowley.com. 

If there is one book on Creativity that you should read, regardless of whether you’re a filmmaker, a writer, a calligrapher, a dancer, or simply a creative coin collector, it’s Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. 

While there may be elements of inspiration in art, Tharp argues that what’s more important is the habit of creativity. The habitual work makes it possible to recognize artistic inspiration, and be prepared with the skills to do something with it. Further, you end up finding and making a lot of your own inspiration. Tharp recommends always carrying a pencil with you (for the purposes of this blog, I always carry a video camera). I went to the airport a few weeks ago and thought, “it would be cool to have another plane shot.” But it still took close to a dozen shots for me to find one that spoke to me in a compelling way. Yet it was through knowing that if I kept trying and working on it that I managed to capture it. 

The idea of “creative habit” resonates with me. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Romantic (as in of Romanticism) notions of the muse, and the idea that you’re either born creative or you’re not. 

Working every day on this blog—having to come up with an interesting or compelling shot even when I’m sick, distracted, or would rather be doing other things—is the best thing I could have done for my creativity this year. I’m a better filmmaker, better at finding that angle, better at holding my hand steady, better at considering lighting and composition. Perhaps more importantly, I’m a better observer of the world—a skill that translates over to all the other creative areas of my life. Perhaps if I wasn’t looking for a shot I would’ve still noticed how cool it looked when some boys were shooting hoops. And perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed. But even if I had noticed, I would have thought, “that’s interesting” and forgotten about it 10 minutes later. 

Time, efforts, and the daily process are a huge part of being successful, both in life and in art. Whether you’re writing 1500 words a day for your NaNoWriMo novel, filling pages in your sketchbook, writing and posting an original sonnet every day for a year (as my friend Gideon Burton did in his project Open Source Sonnets), you’re doing something worthwhile. 

The Creative Habit reconfirmed some of the creative practices I’m already using, but it also gave me a lot of ideas that will help me improve my projects, from this daily video blog to my writing. One quote that really struck me was Tharp’s paraphrase of an aphorism which I had never before heard: “I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read” (page 110). This reminds me of another quote I was struck by recently; Thoreau wrote, “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” 

I didn’t agree with everything Tharp wrote (for example, the idea that your creative DNA should lead you to focus on only one art form, or the bit of sacrifice-everything-for-your-art vibe that comes out in the conclusion). Yet having read this book, I feel more inspired to make a difference in the world, one creative act at a time. 

And now to share some of my videos from November. In addition to the two that I linked to above, here are my favorite shots of the month: 

1. Opening two matryoshka dolls.

2. A piano duet that I caught by husband and sister-in-law in the act of playing.

3. A Thanksgiving day game of croquet.

4. A lonely, melting solitary snowman. 

5. Trash falling into a dumpster. 

6. Leaves blowing in curious patterns. 

This documentary film project would probably have died in January, and would certainly have died by mid-February, were it not for my husband. 

This is not just a “I’m dedicating this project to him” tribute (though it may be fair to call him my muse). This is a, wow, I’m glad my husband is so amazing he is willing to DO my pet project for me when I’m unable to (emotionally, physically, creatively, etc.). 

This month, he filmed a large flock of birds, a view through a fence, and a Halloween cat for me. He had the creative idea behind the paper towel, and executed it. 

He allowed me to film him exercising, lighting our Jack-o-lantern, along with several others. And he was my videographer for the sewing machine and the origami shot, just to name a few. 

So yes, this video blog was my idea. But Days of Film is just as much Scott Cowley’s project as it is mine. When I edit this into a cohesive film, he will appear in the credits many times.

Creative acts are rarely the work of one individual. Filmmaking, in particular, tends to happen in teams. So far Days of Film’s team consists of me, my husband, my mom, and my sister, along with others who have given me ideas and insights. I also feel indebted to those who have watched my videos and encouraged me to complete this monumental task. According to YouTube Insight (which tracks and analyzes YouTube channels) I’m now up to 4,784 views for this project, and I only have 60 more videos to create. Woot! And to think I had at least five times where I seriously considered giving up. 

To close my recap for the month of October, here are a few of my favorite shots:

1. A visually cool aspect of carving a jack-o-lantern: lid removal

2. Sand flies I spotted on Antelope Island

3. A very scary character at an anime convention

4. A paper towel soaking up water

5. My favorite baby in the world playing with a toy

6. A flock of birds

7. Some exciting lens flares 

And I better stop listing favorites now or I’ll end up listing most of the month. 

Note: this has been reposted from my other blog, katherinecowley.com. 

The more I’ve worked on this project, the more I realize that your video camera truly impacts the type of shot you can get, especially when you’re doing documentary. And a lot more goes into it than whether or not your camera can shoot in HD. 

5 Things You Should Consider When Choosing a Documentary Video Camera 

1. Cameras impact people’s behavior.

When you see a camera, your experience at a place or an event changes. Even in some of the early film clips I’ve seen, over a century ago, when people know they’re being filmed they smile and wave. If people know you’re doing a project they can attempt to go about whatever it is they normally do with as little change in behavior as possible—but the awareness of the camera is always there. 

For this documentary project, it has been useful to have a small, unobtrusive camera. I’m trying to capture little snippets of life, and my camera looks like any average, little camera. I could be a tourist, a mom filming her kids, the average person who sees something cool and happens to be able to capture it on a camera that’s higher quality that a cell phone. Shots like these people jumping on trampolines or the splitting of wood are made much easier when people don’t turn their heads at the arrival of a large camera. My father-in-law would’ve been fine with me filming him chopping wood if I had asked him in advance (he was afterwards) but it was nice to capture the moment unadulterated by the awareness of the camera. 

2. Every camera falls somewhere on the scale of portability

On the most portable end of the scale are phone cameras, and since people carry their phones everywhere, they can be documentarians at any moment. 

I prefer a camera that sacrifices some portability for quality. However, my video camera is still small enough that (because I’m working on this project) almost every time that I’ve left the house this year I’ve brought my camera with me.

I even managed to fit my camera through a fence in a parking garage, stick my arm through, and then open the camera so I could film lights at Trolley Square without a fence in front of them. (The desire for a shot outweighed my fear that I would drop my camera fifty feet onto the pavement below.) 

3. Not all cameras can capture fleeting moments with little setup

In some types of documentary filmmaking, things will happen—and only happen once—which you need to be able to capture well without having to make a lot of decisions about white balance, focus, etc. 

I typically leave my camera in “Easy” mode, which automates the settings. I’ve been really happy with my camera’s automatic settings, which typically get really good coloring and lighting. (The only place that I’ve found that my camera’s auto settings really don’t cut it is in certain sections of the aquarium, because of the special lighting.) 

Thus, when bison randomly decide to walk across the road, I can shoot and point, without worrying that my shot won’t turn out. I also have my camera set so that way it only uses the optical zoom. I don’t want to accidentally zoom too far and end up using the digital zoom and decreasing the quality of the shot. 

4. It’s really nice to have manual controls

While I’m a huge fan of really good automatic settings, it can also be really useful to have manual controls. For one, if your camera will let you control things like white balance, it’s much more likely to be a higher quality camera and get better shots when it’s on auto. 

And, sometimes, you have time to change the settings. This is particularly useful for interviews, scenery shots that aren’t going away (I took at least five shots of this geyser), and things that you’re initiating (like the can opener) or that will happen multiple times. 

5. The camera you choose will impact where your documentary can go later

I will never shoot a doc on a phone camera, simply because the quality just isn’t there. My camera is a very high level consumer camera (pro-sumer, maybe) but it’s not a professional camera like many of my friends own (I’m not at the point where I’m willing to spend thousands of dollars on a camera), and it’s certainly no RED. (The RED may be a camera that causes you to salivate, but the fact that they shot the new Pirates movie on it means that you probably don’t need that level of camera for a documentary.) 

The thing to remember is that the label HD is no guarantee that you’ve got a good camera. Some things are HD because they capture a huge pixel count, but if the pixels are crappy…well, it will still look bad. There’s lots of places you can read up on HD specs, what High Definition really means, etc., and I’m no expert on it, so you’ll have to read on that elsewhere. 

When I look at a camera, I want something that doesn’t limit me to posting my videos online. You want your videos to look good if you burn them to DVD or Blu-ray, and ideally, it needs to be good enough that your images will still look good on a big screen at a film festival. 

The nice about documentary is that expectations are different than if you’re making a feature fiction film.

How to attract undue attention while making a documentary: walk around with a giant steadicam stabilizing system. (Photo credit: dfritzon.) 

With a documentary film, a little shakiness is okay. A little lower quality, imperfect lighting, and some imperfections can even add to the authenticity (though if you’re doing seated interviews, people expect it to look a little better). 

I’ve been really happy with my video camera—for now, it meets what I’m looking for on the balance between size, cost, portability, and quality. In case you’re interested, it’s a Canon Vixia HF100. 

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about. In other news, with the completion of September, I’m now 3/4 the way done with the project, and have less than 100 videos to go. 

Here’s some of my favorite shots from the month of September:

1. Videos of my Yellowstone trip. All of them. Leaving the state was a good idea. 

2. A paraglider at the State Fair. 

3. Changing a light bulb. 

4. A gold light (this, in my opinion, is one of the prettiest, most whimsical shots I’ve taken). 

“What moves?” and “What moves you?” may be very different questions. 

In a previous post, I talked about four different types of shots: 

1. Movement within the frame + Still camera

2. Movement within the frame + Moving camera

3. No movement within the frame + Moving camera

4. No movement within the frame + Still camera. 

I really like movement, and mostly I’ve gone for movement within the frame, with either a still or moving camera. But what moves? What type of movement is there to capture? 

I’ve discovered that most things in our world are stationary. There are so many things I see that are compelling or beautiful. A rustic barn door. A majestic mountain. A row of colors. They could make great photographs, but would make terrible videos. 

Things that either move (or cause movement):

• People: all the time we move around. We’re so used to seeing people that I haven’t actually used many people shots. Unless I can find something that makes us look or consider someone in a different way (like kids doing skateboarding practice), I don’t really use it. There’s also plenty of things where people infuse static objects with movement, making things like a pen and paper interesting (and useful). 
• Machines: humans are good at creating technology that can move largely on its own. From the Lumiere brothers’ 1895 film of a train and other early films, machines have been highly filmed. And when you stop to notice the countless machines all around us, whether they’re for serving ice cream or making cool patterns with light, you see a lot of cool things. 
• Animals: like people, animals (whether fish, birds, mammals, arachnids, etc.) can move with their own volition, and so they make quite interesting subjects. Who knew that being a penguin was so much fun? 
• The elements: storms, rain, and weather do so much to change nature. They take what is static and insert energy and upheaval into the landscape, like a lightning strike lighting up the sky. 
• Wind: wind is truly a subset of “the elements” but I feel it deserves its own category, as so many of my shots are of the wind. You can’t actually see wind, but you can see all the things that it changes. So far this year I have 24 shots that I’ve tagged with the word wind. 

Not everything that has movement “moves” or compels me, but many things do, if I can just find the right shot or angle for it. 

Here are the shots from August that most moved me (some repeats that I already linked above):

1. Journal writing

2. A yellow balloon

3. An excited puppy

4. A penguin party

5. Lightning

August was a good month—and now I’m 2/3 the way through my project. 

I make ethical decisions every single time I turn on my video camera. While my project seems straightforward (5-30 seconds of something compelling or interesting) it’s fraught with ethical dilemmas. 

For example, I was at the airport on the 14th. And admittedly, it’s really cool to watch people reunite with their families. But then here’s the questions I have to ask:

• What right do I have to film a stranger and post them on youtube? Maybe I’ll just try to post things I wouldn’t mind if a stranger posted of me. And perhaps I’ll do what most doc makers do and says, they’re in a public place. I’m not emotionally scarring any children. It’ll only be for a few seconds, and they’re not going to be the focus of this doc project, and it’s not viable to get permission forms signed from them. Let’s film them. 
• Why am I choosing to film this scene, and is it fair to the subject and to the viewer? Well, what I love is the emotion of the scene. But emotion is powerful, and can also be manipulative. What I hate is when a cinematographer ruins a perfectly good Christmas concert by zooming in on the soprano on the 5th row who is bawling her eyes out as she sings about Christ. And then that makes me cry. And then I’m upset, because I feel like I’ve been manipulated as a viewer. My tears weren’t earned, except by a cheap filmmaking trick. And yes that frumpy middle-aged lady is performing and thus has agreed that it’s alright if her image is used, but did she really want her very personal experience memorialized like that? Yet the emotion is sort of the point. I decide to film the family, but keep it a long shot. You can see the emotion of the experience, but I’m not intruding. The audience will be a spectator, a stranger watching from the distance, and not thrown into the thick of things. 

And this internal, ethical debate resulted in this shot of a family reuniting after several years. 

Fast forward a few days. It’s 10 at night and I haven’t found anything interesting to film. Perhaps it’s because I took the same walk as every other day. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t paying attention to the movement in the world around me. Perhaps I have a boring life (though I doubt it). So me and my husband decide to create a science/musical/entertaining/cooking experience that I can film. I’ve done this countless times, but it raises other ethical questions:

• Can I count this as documentary if it’s, well, staged? The whole idea of a documentary is that you’re documenting life as it happens…and if I’m interfering to make life happen then it’s theoretically not a documentary. On the other hand, what if part of what I’m documenting is myself and my interactions with the world? By obviously doing so, I’m admitting that the filmmaker is never truly just an observer, and always becomes an “actor,” no matter how they try. I could also make the case that everyone uses B-roll footage, much of which is staged. (B-roll = clips of life that often go on top of speaking, serve to bridge cuts, and create a general atmosphere/visual context for the documentary.) However, this isn’t really b-roll, because these shots are the point. The conclusion I’ve come to is that “this is how it would look if someone decided to put food coloring in a vase of water, and regardless of the fact that I would not have done so if I weren’t doing this doc, this is how it looks.” Science docs do this all the time. I suppose what I’m engaged in is the science of looking and seeing how things look and move and interact. 

And then on occasion I run into other ethical questions:

• What if there’s music in the background of my shot that I don’t have permission to use? I’m under 30 seconds, so I should be fine arguing fair use, but I need to make sure it’s an essential part of the experience, and yet still a periphery thing (I’m not just using this shot so I can justify potentially violating copyright). 
• Is scaring birds so I can get a shot of them flying a mistreatment of animals?
• How acceptable are “camera tricks” (like messing with focus) in documentary?
• Is this camera angle misleading? Intentionally unflattering to the subject? 

The list goes on and on. And so I stumble my way through, trying to make good, ethical decisions that don’t manipulate the viewer or take advantage of my subject matter. And I try to stay true to the purpose of my project. 

What is the key to being an ethical documentarian? Thinking about it. Reevaluating. Asking myself tough questions. And I think this is something every documentary filmmaker should consider, because film is too powerful a medium to be used carelessly. 

If I were to write a short Documentary Code of Ethics, it would go something like this: 

Don’t do any harm. Don’t sacrifice a person, a relationship, or an emotion for a shot. Be respectful of others and their space. Be appreciative of the world and what it has to offer to you. Look to create something that is meaningful and worthwhile, for ethics is not just about avoiding negative behavior, but adding something positive to the universe. 

And that’s what I’m trying to do. On that note, here’s some of my favorite shots that I took during the month of July: 

1. Double fans with light and darkness

2. My friend the snail

3. A performer at a jazz festival

4. Colors mixing in a vase

5. A stubborn dandelion

A song that I routinely get stuck in my head is Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.” 

We’re halfway there. Living on a prayer. Take my hand, we’ll make it I swear. Living on a prayer. 

Most of the time, that’s the only part of the song I will remember, and it will just run through my head again and again and again. 

Right now the song feels rather appropriate—I have been doing Days of Film for 6 months, and at the end of June, I had posted 183 videos over a period of 181 days. To get those 183 videos, I’ve taken close to 1500 videos. 

In some ways, it’s an easy project. Every day, take an interesting or compelling clip, then post it online. Only 5-30 seconds, that can’t take that much work. And on most days, taken individually, it doesn’t. Yet on even a week to week basis, this documentary project starts to feel monumental to me. 

Every couple of days I think, “without taking a trip, what can I possibly film today?” So far, every time I’ve thought that, I’ve been able to find a shot. 

So that’s where I am, living on a prayer, hoping and planning on maintaining this project for a full year. I better plan some trips for the next 6 months, just to help myself out though. 

My favorite shots of June:

1. The Star Wars shot (of course!)

2. Resurfacing the tennis courts (I’ve never seen anything like this)

3. Fish (because of the layers and depth) 

4. A shot that is not from a helicopter (because it is visually surprising) 

5. The moon (because it’s the creepiest shot I’ve ever taken)

6. A collision (self-explanatory) 

7. The discovery of grass (because any shot with my daughter in it is amazing)

8. The Draper Summer Solstice Criterium (largely because of the sound) 

Looks like I’ve been pretty happy with the month. May the second half of the year be as fruitful as the first!

It’s not everyday that a semi truck goes speed racing, that a kitchen light becomes a UFO, or that scraping snow off of a car becomes a war game. Unluckily I filmed no speed races, UFOs or war games this month. What I’ve discovered during the month of February, though, is that YouTube does not know how to give tag suggestions on documentary shots of life. It seems that what I’m filming goes beyond what standard YouTube videos do, or at least beyond what YouTube’s algorithms are capable of processing. 

Take, for example, the video I did of peeling an orange. Here’s a screenshot of what YouTube suggested I tag the video: 

My orange peel is bodybuilding as it poses for cats. 

Among other things, the month of February has proven to me that, luckily, I am still more capable than both computers and cyborgs (which I swear is what YouTube actually is). I hope this is true for not just tagging videos, but for the quality of the videos themselves. 

As February has come to a close, so has month 2 of Days of Film. It’s definitely been a windy month, during which I posted 28 videos over 28 days. I took approximately 244 videos to get the 28 I posted, so I’ve moved up from the 10% post to capture ratio of January to almost 11.5%. One video was actually late, but it was not my fault, seeing as the upload function of YouTube was down for several hours one evening. 

And so, for my list of what I think are the most insightful, compelling, or interesting videos of the month of February:

1. Snow falling in water, contrasted with the sounds of sirens. (It’s too easy to forget the power of sound that does not match up with visuals, or to forget how sound influences our interpretation of our surroundings.) 

2. The hand of a newborn. (It may be that I’m rather attached to this particular baby, but I think it’s a beautiful shot.) 

3. Stopping a CD player. (It’s a dying technology, and I’m feeling rather sentimental about what happens when you open the player mid-song.) 

4.  Scraping off ice and snow. (I like how your eye is led, at the end of the shot, to someone scraping off their car in the background—I don’t think I could have planned this, but fortune favors the documentarian.)

Do you have any other favorite videos from the month of February? 

I have successfully completed January, the first month of my Days of Film project. I posted 32 videos over 31 days (I cheated one day) on my YouTube channel and to my tumblr blog. I tried to make each day’s video be the very best video I could capture. Over the month of January, I took 288 videos, which means I posted just over 10% of the videos I captured. 

And I’m feeling even more enthusiastic about the project than when I started. 

My goal: to see differently. To see better. And to share those perspectives with others. My favorite video I took this month is of adding Swiss cocoa to cup of milk. When I visited Finland several years ago, I bought clear, glass mugs, so I set one of those on the table. I composed the shot at an angle so the orange on the table would be in the background, and beyond that, a fake plant that’s in the corner of our kitchen. I placed the container of cocoa close enough so it was partly in the shot. And then I pressed record, not knowing what would happen. What I saw through the screen was a perspective that I’d never noticed before, not in the dozens and dozens of times I’ve used the clear glass mug to make cocoa. 

I suppose I’m trying to train my eye and hone my technique as a visual storyteller. More than that, I want to change who I am, to really be a creator of film and not just a consumer.  

I’m no longer afraid that I’ll run out of things to film. I’m starting to discover that life in motion is happening constantly, all around me, and I just need to recognize it. For example, I live within a quarter mile of the freeway, but I’d never noticed before how many birds, and particularly geese, there are within a walking distance of my apartment. 

Yesterday, as I was filming a drinking fountain, I kept taking shot after shot. A lot of them were good, and potentially usable. But none of them were truly interesting, truly compelling. In semi-frustration, I rotated the camera half partially upside down and took one shot. And I was amazed at what I saw—the same, boring drinking fountain made interesting and new. 

And now, since this is a video blog, I better stop writing, and starting looking for things around me to film for February. But before I go, a recap of a few of my other favorite shots from January:

• A tiger eating trash in the snow.
• An icicle in focus.
• A tram at night.
• A close up of hands crocheting. 
• A toy parachute man, twirling overhead.