Os Marnotos Production Began This Week

I began production this week on a documentary short film called Os Marnotos (The Saltworkers). I’m telling the story of making sea salt in Aveiro, Portugal by methods that have changed very little since the Romans were in town.

 

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From Coverage to a Visual Style

I consider this the basics (exactly where I began with journalism and documentary film students): Capturing sequences is the beginning of visual storytelling.

A sequence is a series of photos or video (or both) that tells a particular story, or examines a particular moment, within a larger story. You begin learning to capture sequences by following the “rules” of  coverage: Making sure you have the three basic scene types. These are 1) wide establishing shots that set a scene, 2) medium shots, usually focused on people doing things, to capture the relevant action, and 3) detail shots that take us closer than would be possible by our just standing there.

For example, here’s a short short that’s really just a single sequence packaged into a mini-doc, I guess. But it’s easy to see how this is constructed from shots described above.

What happens when you run this well-worn framework through the decisive moment and Malick’s dogma?

So I don’t have a slick answer to that question. Maybe what I mean is to state it like a command: Hey, you, run the classic form of the video sequence through the decisive moment and Malick dogma and see what happens.

I think that is how we might begin to move from coverage to creating a visual style.


Posts in this series:

Where I Differ With the Dogma | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)

Visual Style Conveyed in Words — Maybe | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)

What is Lyrical Style? | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)

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Approaching 1K Images on Instagram

I posted my first picture to Instagram on 22 November 2010. I think I was using an early iPhone — the 3G perhaps.

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It’s just a tree outside my office at Craig Hall on the campus of Missouri State University. I had recently installed the app (it was released that October), and I was looking for something to share. This tree seemed good enough at the time.

I think “good enough at the time” probably has been the ethos of the entire project as I approach 1,000 published photos. Eighteen more to go.

Over the years I’ve put in varying amounts of effort into Instagram. Mostly that effort was focused on documenting something odd or interesting or personal. I have a series of sorts that’s been running for a decade — “stuff you see,” i.e. weird things I run across. Sometimes I even thought I might be doing art. But no matter what, I forgot about the vast majority of these images soon after posting.

More recently, I’ve begun using Instagram to promote my work — especially after 2014 when I successfully moved my academic career from research (the rhetoric of journalism) to creative (documentary filmmaking).

There’s a wide variety of images on my feed. But what hasn’t changed is the utter lack of any audience beyond friends, family, and a few hangers-on. I have 411 followers. I’m happy to have every one of them.

I have given up trying (perhaps I didn’t try hard enough) to grow an audience like the one I had with my Rhetorica blog back in the day.

I’ll alert you when I hit 1,000. Days from now? Weeks? I don’t know. I won’t be trying to hit 1,000.

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Days Away From More Misery

The last time Donald Trump was president, he took children away from refugee parents attempting to enter the United States. As a deterrent.

It was an immoral policy and one we’re now likely to see again soon — or something equally reprehensible. Can it get more reprehensible? I don’t even want to think about that.

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Josh Rubin, of Brooklyn, New York outside the internment camp at Tornillo, Texas. in 2018.

The Carbon Trace Productions documentary crew filmed some of the protests in the summer of 2018 and along the way met Josh Rubin, of Brooklyn, New York. Here was a guy willing to put his body on the line for an idea and a technique of disobedience. The idea was to call attention to moral failings of all of those who helped run the entire apparatus of the child internment camps — from cooks to Congressmen. The technique is called Witnessing. Basically you keep watch, and you let everyone who goes into the camps, for whatever reason,  know that you’re watching.

Ahead of whatever terrible things Trump has in store for refugees, you might wish to re-visit the past. Check out our film, Witness at Tornillo, about a lone guy who started a movement now called Witness at the Border.

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The Rhetoric of Camera Size and Dead Cats

So people generally act one of three ways when a camera appears.

Some ignore you no matter what. I like them the best. Some mug for the camera in various ways. This can actually be useful, depending. It can also be very annoying. And, finally, some get suspicious or even upset. I try to avoid them if I see that reaction — unless, of course, they are part of the story I’m telling. Then I might try to work it out with equal parts charm and bullshit.

A few of the latter type showed up on Saturday when I was traveling to Lisbon to cover the Não nos encostem à parede (Don’t put us up against the wall) anti-racism protest. Video coming soon on my YouTube channel.

Original 360cfde7 5f93 4807 9453 7443e72ea998 Pxl 20250111 173930098The reason: I was carrying a big camera with a big dead cat. Now it wasn’t my biggest camera. It was my Canon XC-10, which is my run-n-gun camera that I employ in situations that might be dangerous to the camera, including, but not limited to, water or street riots.

Thankfully, neither of those occurred on Saturday. But the morning started off with security at the Aveiro train station stopping me because they thought I might be filming. I wasn’t. The lens cap was on, and I had the camera slung over my shoulder (monopod attached). But that didn’t stop them from stopping me and giving me a mini-lecture about filming at train stations.

Had I been carrying my SONY a6400 (or a smartphone!!!), I would have looked like a tourist, and they would have said nothing just as they say nothing every day to the hundreds of tourists who arrive at the station carrying cameras and smartphones.

The second encounter was a bit more alarming except that charm and bullshit diffused the situation. I left the protest as it was getting dark and decided to walk the length of the Rua do Benformoso one more time. This is the street where the police — and here I agree with the protestors — committed at blatant act of racism and xenophobia against the people of that neighborhood — populated by many immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and Africa.

Pxl 20250111 134116710Earlier when I walked the street in the daylight — I had lunch at a local restaurant — no one paid any attention to me. I didn’t film, but I did make a few pictures with my phone. On the way back through, I think emotions were running a bit high from the protest.

Long story short: Two young guys told me not to film (Note: I was not pointing the camera at them and had not done so previously.). I ignored them. Then one of them pushed me. I said, curtly, “I’m working” and continued. Another guy gave me a harder shove. That’s when I whipped out the charm and bullshit, explaining quite accurately: I’ve been filming the protest. I agree the police acted badly.

The two guys then apologized and offered to help me 🙂

So I’ve had more than 40 years of experience making photos and video in public for the purpose of telling all kinds of nonfiction stories. People act the three ways I mentioned at the start. There’s an interesting continuum: The larger the camera, the more people either mug for the camera or are suspicious of the camera. The smaller the camera, the more people ignore you.

And if you have a large dead cat, well, that just pegs you as someone who is up to something.

Choose wisely.

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