[video=vimeo;95236049]https://vimeo.com/95236049[/video]
As the world continues to shrink and technology allows our work to be seen by far more people there can still be one barrier: language. Anything involving the spoken word that isnt in your native language is usually accompanied by subtitles or a voiceover. The mix of two different voices at once or distracting words on the screen can often take the viewer away from the story. Imagine for a second that you were deaf. If you turned off the sound, would you still be able to follow what was going on? Just try it for a minute and see. This is an extreme example, as I think a good piece should be accompanied by sound, but not always words or dialogue. It should be able to tell you the story without you hearing a single word.
Think about how you would shoot a story if it was not going to be accompanied by any words or dialogue. This will force you into thinking about how visuals alone can tell a story and at the end of the day, that is our job as visual story tellers. If you look at the film All Is Lost with Robert Redford, it is the perfect example of how visuals, music and natural sound tell a story without dialogue. There are only a couple of words spoken in the entire movie, Robert Redford is the only character and the story takes place on a small yacht. To keep an audiences attention for more than 1.5hrs is very difficult.
When shooting Maestro Wu, I wanted to show his concentration and craft without words getting in the way. The Taiwanese craftsman has been designing and making knives for over 60 years on Kinmen Island. In World War II, the serious lack of materials especially steel prompted him to collect the artillery shells dropped by Allied troops and use the metal in those. Later, artillery bombardment from the mainland left hundreds of thousands more shells. The Kinmen Steel Knife now enjoys an international reputation.
I wanted the viewer to be immersed by what was going on and to be focused on the attention to detail and the beauty of what he was doing. For something like this to work you have to think about the style in which you want to shoot and also the best way to convey what you want the audience to see. I utilized almost entirely high speed frame rates for this piece. I didnt do this just because I thought it would be cool to shoot high speed, but to help tell the story.
A lot of skill and precision goes into making the knives, but it it is really hard to see unless you see it up close. By shooting a lot of tight shots and at high speed I could take the viewer into the world of Maestro Wu. When youre shooting, every shot should tell its own story. They should be unique and well thought out. A great piece can be ruined by one or two poor shots.
This one was shot in just a few hours and I had no real plan when I started to shoot it. I asked Maestro Wu after he finished making the knife whether he has an idea in his head before he starts and he told me that it usually just comes to him while hes doing it. I thought about this for a while and realised that in a lot of instances that is how I shoot. For me, the story or the ideas evolve during the shoot. I find in news and documentary shooting that trying to do too much planning in advance often does not produce a good result. Actors are good at being able to do something exactly as you want it done; that is why they are actors. Everyday people are not. They always seem awkward or the situation seems forced. I prefer to let things happen in front of me with as little intervention as possible. In saying this, of course I have a plan of how I want to shoot or the style I want to shoot it in, but the specifics always change and evolve as I go.
Read complete post:
http://www.newsshooter.com/2014/05/...h-no-words-matt-allard-on-filming-maestro-wu/
