Northwest Institute for Social Change: The Blog

Portland: Learning Video Production

As Caroline mentioned in her last post, we are making a documentary on urban chicken farming.  It has been lots of fun so far.  Filming chickens is hilarious but also extremely hard.  When first brainstorming potential shots for the project, I was imagining close ups of chickens: head bobbing, clucking, pecking, scratching.  But when we actually went out and filmed the chickens we realized just how hard it is to get a good shot.  Chickens move around so much and they’re pretty camera shy as we found out today.  We had to bribe them with sunflower seeds but even then they knew we were up to something as the three of us squatted right outside their coop with our huge boom pole microphone and  camera, excitedly cooing to coax them out.  We were trying to get some good chicken clucking sounds for the documentary so I extended the boom pole and stuck it into the chicken coop but apparently the birds mistook the microphone wind screen for some sort of animal ( it does look like a opossum) and they all scattered around the coop, blowing up dust and squawking, terrified.  Oops.  Hopefully I didn’t traumatize them too much.

I’ve also learned from these shoots that there is always more to learn about video production.  There is always something that can go wrong- equipment can stop working, batteries die, memory cards fill up, mysterious settings turn on, etc.  Only by experiencing all of these incidents and then meticulously planning ahead for the next time can you manage to avoid them.  Through this filming experience I’ve learned that every shoot teaches you something new, even if it’s just a trivial lesson.  It seems the only way to learn is through doing and messing up.  Luckily we have plenty of opportunities this week to shoot, mess up, and improve for the next time.

Rachel