An effective family documentary will not only honor the family, and its ancestral roots, but it will also strike an emotional cord. As a filmmaker, that is one of the most important goals – to evoke an emotional response! I look at making a film as an opportunity to use the many production values available to a Director to do just that. It is the magic of the combined total of all the elements that are in a movie that helps trigger someones emotions, and how deeply.
Just one such production value is camera motion. To have a shot actually be moving through space with its compositional focus being consistently and properly aligned creates visual “poetry”. Today, achieving this kind of movement has gotten less obtrusive to execute due to the shrinking nature of HD capture technology. Wedding videos and movies particularly benefit from motion.
Here, we see the traditional film camera dolly that very much still has a place in cinematic production Suffice to say, the more appropriate movement, the better!
The explosion of ancestry.com proves the interest in exploring family roots. Now, work with Homage Films and myself to take your story, and utilize powerful production value techniques to create some family magic!