Location/Drama- Research into Documentaries

For this assignment focusing on the reconstruction of a film scene (My groups scene been "IT") I am working on the documentary side of this production and my role is camera man working with Chloe Lowe who is the director for the documentary. Since I want to be able to capture footage and document the process professionally and successfully, I've begun some research into different types of documentaries and the different camera movements and angles that are common within documentaries.

I started to look at popular television documentaries like "Planet Earth" and watched a variety of short clips so I could observe the camera skills and movements. I looked into it more and found that the cinematographer for the show was a man named Doug Allen, who has had experience at film and photographing many aspects of wildlife and has worked other documentaries such as "Frozen Planet". I liked his use of focus and how he could frame two important things into his shot but make you focus on one and then reveal the second slowly through focus. 

I also looked into a few websites that explained and described the difference camera movements and angles used in documentaries. A popular technique I found was the Tracking Shot, this has been used plenty of times in documentaries and is quite effective for long takes of observing someone doing something. I like the idea of having a nice focused shot without cuts to take people's attention away. But with the documentary been limited to around 5 minutes so I don't want too many extended shots that will end up been cut anyway. Another important thing I learned about documentaries (mainly for interviews) is symbolic placement, this is a method of placing something of relevance in shot weather it be the background or the foreground but it helps compliment the overall look and feel of the shot, so this will be fun and interesting to apply to a few of my shots.

I'll continue to try and gather more research on different techniques and methods but I'd prefer to try and experiment and get experience with the methods on the cameras and maybe film some unrelated topics to gain experience.