Documentaries are simple in shot composition, and yet still require lots of forethought and adjustments while recording. For example, while an interview shot seems simple, it is deceptively so. For my interview with Coach Helfer, I had to figure out what angle to go with, how high/low to set up the camera, and how far/close to be to the subject. All these things go into creating a good, quality shot. If any of those factors are out of whack, the shot can look strange and take away from the story being told on camera.
As for the direction I decided to go in, the big thing I spent time on was the angle. How should I set up the camera, and where should I have Coach Helfer look? In the end, I settled on having the camera on Coach Helfer’s right, while I stood to the right of the camera. So, the shot has Coach Helfer looking off camera, almost at a 45 degree angle. This way, it’s more like the viewer is a fly on the wall to the conversation, like it’s an unfiltered, unpolished look into Coach’s mentality. As for height and distance, I went for a closer shot, so as to get the intricacies of Coach Helfer’s expressions. Height-wise, I wanted the shot to be about eye level, maybe a little bit lower. At the lowest, the shot would have been around chin to upper chest height, because any lower would have been weird for the viewer to stare at.
The B-roll was a whole other situation to deal with. With the season close to finished, I was able to attend one game, and recorded the entire game. Because I wasn’t sure what I was going to go with, I got a ton of different types of shots. I got zoomed out game footage, zoomed in game footage, and most importantly, close up/hero shots of Coach Helfer on the sidelines. I wanted to get plenty of coach action shots, which are always difficult, but luckily, Coach Helfer is very active while coaching. I got shots of him working an official, coaching up the team during a timeout, and calling out signals while the team was on defense. As for the players, I tried to get a few close-ups of some specific players, as I want to get some player interviews after the season has wrapped up, but I also just got some general game shots, as those are a lot more evergreen and can be placed anywhere in the piece.