Today we did a one-hour observational shoot as an exercise. Observational documentary is often an fascinating form of documentary because it captures the true side of people and reveals how people react without the camera, or when they see a camera directed at them.
Initially I wanted to give our documentary a style by shooting everything from high angle, but since it is so hard to find places with high angle, we decided to shoot a hidden-camera-documentary in the library. And we named it "Library Spies: From an unknown eye".
Over the exercise, I realized that in order to shoot a good observational documentary, camera needs to be on for a longer period of time. Sometimes our eyes and brain are able to record something interesting happening around us, but the camera can't. It is the matter of timing when it happens, and when the camera captures it.
Hiding a crew, a camera, and a HUGE boom pole isn't easy. Fortunately library has a great collection of books so we were able to hide behind them. Similar to the surveillance camera, the Library Spies captured incidents happened in the library, without the subjects noticing it.
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