Pups & Portraits

This project made me realize how incredibly frustrating any sort of documentary type filmmaking can be. I am the type of person that likes to formulate a clear picture of something in my head, and then plan it out in detail. I quickly found out that when filming something as unpredictable as puppies (the subject of my piece), everything you had in mind can quickly go out the window. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do for my portrait; when it came to actually creating that image in my head it was a completely different story.

I could not tell Ramona (my DP) to frame up a MCU of someone's face or what not. I had to think about how to communicate with her the feeling of what I wanted to come across. Most of my direction to her came in the form of sentences like: "I want this to feel rough but at the same time cuddly." No tripod shots. Everything needed to feel organic. I could not really tell her specifics. Instead, I just put my trust in her judgment of what would look good in respect to my overall vision. Since we could never predict exactly what the puppies would be doing, it was all reaction. There were moments when I would look at Ramona and say: "Hey get this shot of my face getting puppy kisses." I also discusses broad ideas like making sure everything was shot low from the level of the puppies. I did not want many shots looking down on them, instead I wanted it to be more from their level. We took a TON of footage. We were out there for hours, and most of it was simply us running around trying to coax the puppies into doing something at the right time with the camera in the right place. Now I've got tons of footage to shift through to find out those moments where everything worked out the way I had imagined. For the most part we just left the camera rolling so we wouldn't miss anything.

However, in all of this documentary style footage, there were a few shots that we spent quite a bit of time trying to get just right. For the most part, however, I wanted the moments I captured to be spontaneous and void of and sort of contrived interaction. Ironically, creating something in a controlled environment that is make-believe is easier than pulling from the real world.