Jaguar Videos – The Orphanage Project

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
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925
Bellevue, WA
Jaguar spent the month of September working from San Diego, on a two-part project, consisting of building a little system for the kids at an orphan’s home in Baja, Mexico and documenting the project on video. I worked on the filming with San Diego recording artist Gregory Page, who is editing a final version of what I’ll refer to as the Main Video and I’m putting together a separate version, focused on the story of the system and using a lot of the left over footage.

It's going to be exciting. Keep an eye on this thread in weeks to come for some clips. We hope to have the final versions ready by the end of 2015.
 

Jaguar

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Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Sneak Peek Clip of the System

Here's a sneak peek clip of the DOF system and the first two listening customers who came by.

The footage I took of the kids listening to music is sparse. It was getting late by the time I finally had the system ready for listening, so I ended up just playing something and opening the door to see who came by...word spread among the 6-8 yr old boys, who seemed to fancy this space as their new man cave.

I built a server for the system and loaded the library drive with music from The Beatles, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, etc, for them to discover later. I don't know how many of these kids have ever heard the music of The Beatles, but my informal survey of the teenagers led me to believe the number is somewhere close to zero.


 

Jaguar

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Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
The Orphanage Project: Shot on the Sony A6000

Here's another clip from the Orphanage Project last September. This was shot by Gregory Page on a Sony A6000, with the Sony 35mm. The color and sound is stunning right out of the camera and the package retails for only $1,100.

This is one of my favorite clips. YouTube upload degrades the quality somewhat, but you'll get the idea. The kinetic energy suggests he was shooting 720/60fps. The little guy you see in the middle was on this thing constantly and always in his spot in the middle.


Note: These embedded videos often default to low quality (360p on my laptop), but if you go to the YouTube link you can set the quality to full HD.

https://youtu.be/hn5u5-wNtn8
 
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Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
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925
Bellevue, WA
The Orphanage Project: The first short film has been released!

Check out the first short film from this project! This video was edited by San Diego recording artist, Gregory Page, from footage he and I took in Mexico, last September. We appreciate any feedback you may have.

Two more films by me are still coming from this project. The first will be 20-30 minutes, similar to Gregory's in content, but more of a traditional short film presentation. I'm deep into the editing and it's an arduous process. The second will be about 10 minutes and focus on documenting the stereo system I built there. I'll be working on these two through the end of this year and hope to release them on the Jaguar Facebook page by February or March, but I'll be posting a preliminary draft on this forum for feedback before then.


[video=vimeo;144531185]https://vimeo.com/144531185[/video]

Note: These embedded videos sometimes default to low resolution (360p on my laptop), but if you go to the YouTube link you can set the quality to full HD.

https://vimeo.com/144531185
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
Hi Darin. I watched the first video. The images are clear and pretty clear of compression artifacts. Just a minor comment that the text flashed by a bit too quick. I barely had enough time to read them before they changed. Maybe I am a slow reader :).

At high level though, I am a bit confused about what appears to be a documentary that has no vocal tracks. I would have loved to hear the children with some subtitles. The music was nice but I don't think should not have been the only soundtrack. I know there are online resources where people with good voices read what you tell them for very little money. That may have been a better choice than using text.

On the artistic side, one of the hallmarks of using digital still cameras is their much larger sensors compared to traditional video cameras. This then allows use of selective focus which brings a lot of interest to images which are otherwise in full focus from front to back. In that video, except the last couple of minutes, did not show that. It had the look of "video camera" with everything in focus, no doubt due to use of the 35 mm lens. When shooting what is basically moving portraits, a long lens would have afforded much more interesting images. I would have focused on the eyes, smiles, textures, details in their clothing, etc.

Of course as always, it is much harder to criticize than do :). So I you don't mind my rather direct comments here.
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Thank you for your constructive criticism Amir, that's exactly what I'm looking for and I appreciate it.

I had the same suggestion to Gregory about slowing down the text in that section. He said he did it that way to convey the overwhelming and hectic nature of the challenge. I think 567 diaper changes a week speaks for itself, but that was his reasoning.

Like you, I feel that covering the sounds of the kids with music takes some life out of the presentation. There was some really precious stuff in the audio of certain clips and in some cases the sounds of the playground create an atmosphere that really brings you there. My film is already quite a bit different. There are several sections, presented as vignettes. There won't be any translation, but in many sections I use the audio we recorded with the clips (cleaned up and massaged) and in sections where I'm using music tracks, much of the sounds and dialog will come through the music.

With regard to using depth of field for artistic effect, I'm sure you're referring to the scene near the end with the little girl in the nursery reaching her hand toward the camera; Gregory did this shot, with his Sony lens, which has a 50mm equivalent focal length. Achieving the effect in this scene is a function of the lens focal length and the distance from the subject. In this case he was right on top of her, with her hand about 6" from the lens and her face about 20" away. Were he shooting from further away or with a lens more in the 20mm range this short depth of field (blurry background) effect would have been much less evident. Covering the lens with a neutral density filter will intensify this effect in the lens, but darken the image, to require more light or a higher ISO setting. It should be noted that capturing this shot requires a lot of skill with the lens, to first focus on her hand then pull the focus forward to her face, in a matter of a few seconds; had I been shooting this shot I surely would have botched it. Of course had I known how to use the auto focus feature on my camera at the time, I could have at least had an easy way to focus, if not the most elegant transition. Your point about still photography for a documentary is well taken. We didn't do any stills, but I've been making extensive use of the "Ken Burns" cropping style (where a camera zooms or pans across a still photo) and while I will pull some stills out of the video, it would be nice to have a whole collection of still photos to work with.

Thanks again for your feedback and I hope when I post my film you'll give it a rigorous review.


Hi Darin. I watched the first video. The images are clear and pretty clear of compression artifacts. Just a minor comment that the text flashed by a bit too quick. I barely had enough time to read them before they changed. Maybe I am a slow reader :).

At high level though, I am a bit confused about what appears to be a documentary that has no vocal tracks. I would have loved to hear the children with some subtitles. The music was nice but I don't think should not have been the only soundtrack. I know there are online resources where people with good voices read what you tell them for very little money. That may have been a better choice than using text.

On the artistic side, one of the hallmarks of using digital still cameras is their much larger sensors compared to traditional video cameras. This then allows use of selective focus which brings a lot of interest to images which are otherwise in full focus from front to back. In that video, except the last couple of minutes, did not show that. It had the look of "video camera" with everything in focus, no doubt due to use of the 35 mm lens. When shooting what is basically moving portraits, a long lens would have afforded much more interesting images. I would have focused on the eyes, smiles, textures, details in their clothing, etc.

Of course as always, it is much harder to criticize than do :). So I you don't mind my rather direct comments here.
 
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Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
A short Video from Gregory Page.

This is a short video created by Gregory Page (he also did the music himself). This was taken during a trip to Mexico in 2004. I invited Gregory and Tom Brosseau on a group visit I was organizing, to play some music for the kids. Gregory brought a Sony Handycam. I was wondering how he was able to find music that matched so perfectly, turns out he played and recorded the music himself.

I think the editing is pretty fantastic, given the amount of footage he had from a few hours. Note the part at about 1:30 with the little girl and the puppy who's about half her size; reminds me of that Looney Tunes / Tiny Tunes cartoon with the little girl who would put her cat through the wringer as she tried to dress it up and play house. She's clearly very attached to the dog, but I doubt the feeling is mutual.

[video=vimeo;42851823]https://vimeo.com/42851823[/video]
 
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Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Attention Seattle, Indie-film and Documentary Enthusiasts -- DOFO Screening

JaguarAudioDesign.com is pleased to announce that the Seattle Documentary Association - SeaDoc will host a Work-In-Progress screening of our new short film, Door of Faith Orphanage. This event will be held at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle, on Monday, March 14 (6:30 happy hour, 7:00 screening).


DOF_1.jpg DOF_3.jpg DOF_6.jpg DOF_8.jpg DOF_12.jpg
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA

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