Hi everyone,
I completed a one year graduate diploma at film school last year, majoring in documentary, it was mainly focused on film-making as a director, with some classes on the technical side of camera work, lighting and location sound recording etc. Having completed the course though, I've been trying to learn more about film-making from a cinematography point of view.
Anyway, the documentary Born Into Brothels is one of my all time favourite documentaries, and it still is. I remember watching it a number of times before I started film school, absorbing the editing, the director's/editor's narrative decisions.
At present I'm researching to purchase a prosumer camera so I was in this frame of mind when I watched it again last night. For the first time I realised how grainy the images are! I don't really have a problem with it but I was wondering if this was something forum members here noticed immediately and whether you knew what kind of equipment was used to film it (I haven't contacted the film-makers).
If you were the cinematographer in a documentary like BIB, how might you have approached the filming process, and would your decisions change if you were working with an HD camera?
- James.