BAPK documentary

[Fyrel]

The topic came up earlier, and I thought I'd bring it up again. Some key questions would be:

How do we want to portray our community?

What message is the documentary trying to convey?

How and where do we want to distribute it?

Who is willing to contribute and what can they contribute?

These are just a couple questions to kick off the discussion, any other thoughts or questions about the documentary would be very welcome.

[Kirill]

To tie things up,... Ill try to summarize.

Our documentary should show, portray, be:

*Educational. It HAS to show the impacts of Parkour onto society, our lives, our habits. It has to express us in a POSITIVE way. We maybe a ble to incorporate community service, clean up activities, respect, integrity and other things into this.

* The Progression, dedication, practice.

* History of Parkour.

* BApk's background. Our history, Our methods of teaching, non-hierarchical student/teacher relationship, progression, translation of ideas into everyday life. Conditioning, our warmup....our training.

*The diversity within our community. We have to pass on the sensation of "brotherhood" we seriously have to pass on our community, and our core values.

* Responsibility for our training, respect, integrity. We have to show our serious approach to things.

* Interviews with people,especially with those to whom Parkour brought the most change.

* !!! Non-competitiveness !!! and discipline. Reference to martial arts...and the whole overcoming obstacles thing...Plus "Parkour is a way of life" --- Life is an obstacle course..... etc

* The "Being strong to be useful" Strong= combatant in soul... Instead of combatant to destroy. Self improvement.... diligence

* Stunts

* Lastly, we have to film this properly and keep the viewer's attention. We should definitely make this at times dynamic, and slow at some. But we DO NOT want to portray Parkour as a daredevil activity.

[hillexallen]

Very good...

[Kirill]

Merci

[SafeNSure]

... in one post the summa of Kirill's Way to PK.
=)

Impressive!

[Anthony]

maybe as a start we could get a volunteer who goes to jams/ training days regularly and just take some short clips (with consent of the people being "shot," of course) and eventually accumulate a whole bunch of clips and then go from there

[Kirill]

ITs incredible difficult to do something as we go along. Planning wont hamper us.But it is better to start and do everything over than to just sit and procrastinate. So Im with you!!! and lets use this discussion as a guide to what we are going to film.

[Seng]

Agree with this. Unless this is going to be years-long work-in-progress, I suggest as much pre-production as possible. So that includes (but not limited to):

- deciding how long this documentary is going to run (I say not longer than 10 minutes, shoot for 5-8)
- creating questions for interviews
- recruiting volunteers for interviews (this community has too many interesting people to include everyone- that's actually a very good problem to have)
- setting up times outside of Sunday training to film (as I mentioned in another thread, midday does not tend to be the most interesting light)
- writing an outline of the story arc- if this needs to be tweaked later, fine

Who has access to good sound recording equipment? Viewers will excuse picture a lot more than sound, especially when watching an interview.

[Fyrel]

I'm thinking about buying sound recording equipment, but as of now the research has been confusing at best. All I've got is that a "shotgun mic" is what they seem to use professionally in films and such, except I have no idea if you have to buy specific models for different cameras, or if you can record it to some sort of data-holding device, or anything. I'm willing to bite the bullet and drop a hundred or so to buy one, but I don't know anything about it.

As for lighting, holding mirrors can help reflect light to create more interesting lighting for midday shots; as well as diffused light and the such.

[Seng]

Given our resources, I think any footage with sound- specifically interviews but also any action footage where we want to get footfalls, breathing, social and environmental noises- would be mixed straight into the camera. Doing sync sound (where sound is recorded onto a separate device like a DAT or solid state deck) requires, as one might expect from the name, synchronizing sound before editing which takes additional time and some kind of slate (ie clapper) during shooting. If you're interested in learning that and taking the time in post-production, I wouldn't discourage the hands-on learning, just throwing it out there so you know what you're getting into. A boom (long stick to hold the mic as close to the subject as possible without getting in the shot) is also recommended unless you don't mind the mic in the shot or you're shooting very tight.

As for lighting, I have light control (reflectors and whatnot) but I would still discourage midday shooting for the most part. I can get into specifics individually for anyone interested, but I won't clog the thread with a rant about light quality (it's my job so I've got my own biases I shouldn't present as gospel).

However, all this stuff is a matter of how slick you want to doc to be. Like most things, get out there and make some stuff and figure out out that way. With the relatively low cost of production these days, it's largely a matter of having the time. Maybe start with a three minute film with interviews and action from a smaller, regular session like South Bay Saturdays before adding more characters to make a 10 minute film on BApk in general. Figure out what works, what is gratuitous and what is boring.

[hillexallen]

I'll start filming some clips.

[Kirill]

for the documentary length, i think we can easily achieve up to 30 minutes. A lot more information....and everything can be packed in..... (Common sense if very uncommon)--hillex

volunteers for being interviewed....

Psst. Giogrio, Chris, Dimitri, etc..
Maybe me... ;)

Hillexallen has a pretty good camera, I will aid him in editing...Fyrel will be asked to help with sound (Or lead in that case), and angles. please?.

Duration: anywhere from 8-30 minutes i think is good. People will most likely accept a longer documentary rather than a short one...BUT a short one is more likely to be viewed. If we are going to distribute this via DVDs...+ BZ cards, (I think thats a great idea, since a hard copy is, after all, a "HARD" copy. the person will submit to curriosity, while they will probably forget the BIZ card and the link....


We want more people to join us...Dont we?! so i ask is you can wear BAPK shirts during this film. Maybe even borrowing from me (once i get one) is fine.


Budget: 0$ for shooting + making, although equipment may cost.....
Distributing is a separate story.

So...trial and error. Lets start brain storming everyone!!!! dont let this drop!!!

[axci1234fire]

For Volunteers to be interviewed... lets try interviewing everyone, from newbies to people who have been practicing for a long period of time, so we get a variety of opinions and comments from people with different experience levels.

Also, are we going to have some music background? If so... I may be able to contribute, but if someone else has some great music for the video, I say go for it.

A 5-20 minute long video would be excellent. But if we are distributing by DVD... some one has to pay for the disks. Some of the equipment might be expensive, so we need to pool in some money.

This sounds like fun, so lets start filming ^^.