Friday, March 21st

This past week has been devoted to editing! Most of what we're doing is going through what we actually have a deleting any redundancies or poor quality shots. We have a lot more footage than we anticipated, what with two separate filming sessions, each using two cameras, and we still need to get higher quality footage of the piece! We were also thinking about getting some footage of a classroom; we want to utilize a school setting to invoke the feeling of residential schools, but we may need to figure out a plan B so that we don't run out of time...

One thing we did have to rework today was the over framework of our film. We had wanted to divide the film into three parts, each part reflecting a different panel of Maynard's triptych piece, but I think we misunderstood what each panel signified. The left and right panels actually speak to very similar themes, so we decided that we could retain the tripartite structure of our film, but rather than having each section centered around a different panel of the piece, instead we would show the left and right panels shown in the second section about residential schools, and the center panel shown in the third section about education and making connections. The first section will still be about Maynard as an artist, and will exhibit other pieces of his, as well as much of the interview footage, and the footage of him working on different pieces of art.

Shawn and I have also attempted to shoot the actual piece, which has been installed in Cornett. Unfortunately, we did not anticipate how challenging it would be to obtain footage of it without seeing our own reflections in the glass... There are also bright, glaring lights and NO EXIT signs shining in the glass as well, and we tried covering them up, but with little success. We think that if we could get some kind of studio lights to flush out the reflection, we may be able to shoot the piece; otherwise, we might not be able to get any shots of the glass panel head on.

We put together a mini introduction for Andrea to look at. She seemed fairly pleased with what we had accomplished, and encouraged us to keep pushing forward. I'm really quite happy that she liked the framing of the interview shot, because we spent so many hours trying to find the perfect spot to situate Maynard, and because the pieces he brought luckily worked perfectly to form that grounding triangle. So far, I must say I'm really happy with the team that we have; we all bring something really positive and productive to the work. Amanda is especially shining in the editing department! I'm feeling quite fortunate to have such a dedicated and talented team! 

Saturday, March 15

Last Thursday, we had our second filming session with Maynard. This time around, we filmed him actually working on a few pieces of his art, so that we could get a few shots of his hands and his paint brush. Maynard exhibits great pride in the fact that he only employs manual means of designing his pieces (pencils and paint, rather than computers), and so we wanted to capture that on film for the first section about Maynard as an artist. He is very skilled and attentive to the tiniest details of his art, and we wanted to invoke this attentiveness by utilizing extreme close-ups of his hands and his paintbrush. What he can accomplish with such a thick brush, and the precision that he can obtain is astounding!

For this session, the team didn't arrive to the venue as early as the last time we filmed with Maynard, because we were already fairly familiar with the space and what we could do in the hall. We set up the table in the center of the hall so that we could utilize the lovely sun that was shining that day to light up him and his work. We used two cameras, one to capture the entirety of Maynard and his piece, and the other, propped up on some of my library books, to obtain the extreme close-ups of his hands and his paintbrush that would invoke Maynard's process of manual design. Unfortunately, the second HD camera was not available, so the camera used for the extreme close-ups was not as high quality as we would have hoped. Still, the session was very successful, and we all felt very fortunate to be able to watch Maynard in the process of creating such beautiful pieces of art.

After shooting Maynard painting, we also took some establishing shots of Maynard walking into FPH, just to set the scene of the interview. I also took a shot of Maynard smiling and standing against one of the walls of the hall; everyone thought I it was weird, but I thought it would make a really cool (albeit slightly cheesy) introductory clip for the film.

Now that we have several hours of footage, we will need to start doing some serious editing! Next week, the team will get together for a few intense sessions of watching what we have, removing what we know we won't need, documenting what we do have, and editing the different clips together into the bare bones of our film!

Saturday, March 8th

Last Thursday, we had our first film session with Maynard. It went rather well, I thought! We met a few hours early to scope out our venue, which was in the Ceremonial Hall of the First Peoples House. Maynard was fine with filming in Victoria instead of his home up island, and he thought the First Peoples House would be an appropriate space in which to film him and his work. We arrived at the hall in the morning to figure out the best background and lighting situation for the interview. There was an open panel of glass running down the center of the ceiling, and this provided some good natural lighting. There were also lights set up along the walls, but when we practiced shooting, they were just too bright and distracting, so we opted to not film along the walls themselves. We chose instead to have Maynard sit along the steps with his pieces.

He arrived with several lovely pieces of art, and we formed them into a triangular set up around him, to sort of ground the image in a nice, balanced way. It was decided that I would be the primary camera person, Amanda would be the interviewer, and Shawn and Michelle would oversee the entire process and retrieve the secondary audio, as well as keep track of our schedule. We white balanced (of course!) and filmed for maybe an hour to an hour and a half. Amanda posed the prepped list of questions that we had sent Maynard the day before, and he gave very full answers to each one. He hadn't brought any actual art supplies with him, and we all thought it would be interesting to shoot him as he worked, particularly his hands and the application of colour, so he offered to return next week for another film session. We definitely lucked out; Maynard is easy-going and accommodating, plus he has the best stories (did you know that Snoop Dogg stole his beer in Vegas?!).

Overall, the session was very productive. I definitely think we got something good from the interview, and I'm excited to see what we can accomplish next week as well.