Art is a Three Letter Word - ID# 382

Antioch Community High School
Documentary
Entry Description

A local tattoo artist talks about the meaning of his art.

Copyright Info

Recent Teacher Comments

  • 4/21 8:01 pm - KEEPERS: Great story about a man's personal journey and using art to find purpose. I could listen to your tattoo artist speak for a long time. Great work producing his interview and the production value of that interview is spot on. The story telling is well paced and the visual effects introduction and bump out are good! IMPROVEMENTS: I would have loved for you to dig deeper into his backstory. You touch on his journey into tattoos, but discuss and show his art influences and use some imagery of him in his younger years to do this. The broll fell short. A lot of it was shaky and at times blurry. Watch your rack focusing - particularly at the top as you move from art piece to art piece. Also, use some nat sound in there and use that nat sound to serve as transitional moments in the piece. Let's hear the needle, let's hear him talk about bit about his process in broll as he prepares his tools, ink, etc. Overall, this was a super cool piece. Keep telling stories!
  • 2/25 1:56 pm - STORY: This is an interesting story. It would have been more effective if you got a little more into his background with art. Was he into art before he started doing tattoo work? What kind of art influenced him? PRODUCTION: Your interview footage is really good in terms of the lighting and camera framing. The b-roll, however, is shaky. You need to use a tripod, for real. B-roll is the crucial part that brings the spoken story to life, and especially when your subject is ART, your video of the art needs to be CLEAN and artistic as well. Okay, let’s talk about sound. Your audio levels from the interview are TOO hot. If you recorded it hot, then mix your audio levels in post the right way. Allow me to explain: when you are mixing sound, you have 3 basic levels. You have your primary audio (voice overs, interviews, dialogue) which should be between -6 and -12 db on the VU meter. You have your secondary audio (natural sound, sound effects) which should be between -12 and -18 on the VU meter. Finally, you have your tertiary audio (music beds) which should be between -18 and -24 on the VU meter. If this is news to you, then you need to have a chat with your instructor and learn how to mix sound. Plus, you had several clips where the phone was ringing. If you are doing an interview and the phone rings, you need to do another take. You can’t be using a clip with a phone ringing in the background.
Judge 1

Positives: Lighting during interview was great. Good balance of b-roll and interview shots. I enjoyed how he talked about the impact his art has and provided an anecdote.

Improvements: I think La'Nerf introducing himself at the beginning would have been beneficial, in addition to the lower thirds. Phone ringing was slightly distracting.

Judge 2

Positives: Using the natural light during the interview made it look beautiful. B roll was very good and a great addition to tell the story.

Improvements: Graphics for names are hard to read. A box under it would have helped and a bolder font. Shaky shots. If you aren't steady, use a tripod whenever possible. You can also try to fix it in post with an effect, but it doesn't always work well.

Judge 3

Positives: Such a great story! Hearing his story of how people let their guard down and be themselves in the tattoo seat. I think this story would resonate with loads of folks. Fantastic camera work. Crisp and clear focus with a great background that is part of the artists story. Good variety of broll used over the narration to really show what the person is speaking about. Great work thinking about all this and capturing it. I thought your music choice worked well too!

Improvements: There were noticeable muffles on the microphone bumping against the subjects clothes and it sounded like the gain on the mic was turned up a bit too high. This caused me as the viewer to be brought out of the film at times. There was also a lot of background noise like talking and phones ringing during the interview. All things I know are hard to avoid, but just to be aware of to try to improve on the next shoot! In the edit, there were noticeable sound drop outs that brought me out of the film. Maybe try to cover these up with recorded "room tone" for next project.

Judge 4

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Judge 5

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