City For The Lost: Lost in Digitization

Monday, September 03, 2007

Lost in Digitization
Sunday, I spent the whole afternoon along the cosy street of Telok Ayer shooting a three-shot sequence for my Digital Film Production class. It was basically about a guy, his polaroid camera, old shophouses and a childhood playride. A lot of takes for a few minutes sequence. At the final shot, the original effect I wanted didn't turn out. So I came out with the idea of a polaroid of a kid on the ride. The problem is we didn't planned to have a kid for the shoot. Just at the moment, a Japanese family of 5 walked towards us. I went up to the mom, who is holding the hands of a boy [just what i needed] and tried to explain that I'm doing a project and if the boy could help me in a shot. The mother actually rejected but the father, who was walking slightly infront, turned and asked [in the most basic of English and Japanese and Sign Language] where and how long, and agreed to help. So we took like mere seconds to reframe the shot, got the kid on the ride, took a polaroid and shot the polaroid developing. I took another shot for the kid as a gift. Sounds like a shoot that went smoothly right?

Today in class, we were suppose to digitize the footage and edit it. We tried but had a lot of problem with the tape. It turned out, the tape that we thought was new was actually an old tape. And it is somehow dirty and affecting the capturing of the footage. End up, the nice shots [Mr Pang, our tech thinks so too] are forever lost in the dirty DV tape.

The polaroid is the only thing left from the shoot. I am very sad now.
found it @ 11:29 PM
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