Document of research- final paper

1. Road Rage in Shimokitazawa (RRIS) falls under two oral history types. It is a mix of topic history, more specifically the histories of Route 54, which has greatly evolved since its creation by Hideaki Hishikaza 60 years ago under the American post-war administration, and the actions of the Setagaya-Ku Ward Office and the Metropolitan Government of Tokyo. The Project also falls under site specific research due to its focus on the Shimokitazawa area.

2. I took many approaches and used many techniques to document RRIS. The first approach was research, both secondary (looking up articles and websites on Shimokitazawa and Route 54) and primary. I went to Shimokitazawa numerous times on weekends to get a feel for the place and to network. Meeting locals was great because they were able to meet us personally (rather than just emailing and being no more than a name) so they could see first-hand our motivations to dig deeper into Route 54 to help save Shimokitazawa. I met a member of the Save the Shimokitazawa group and he invited me to join his local tour the weekend after and later referred many interviewees to me. This networking allowed me to easily find a range of subjects – a middle aged lady, an old lady and a middle aged man) for my project. As more primary research I took part in a local tour. I was taken to many places off Shimokitazawa’s beaten path and was able to take lots of pictures for my project’s B-Roll. The tour also allowed me to meet more locals and to better comprehend their feelings towards Shimokitazawa and Route 54.

My next approach was to interview and film locals in Shimokitazawa for a vox pop. Even though this task proved to be harder than planned (details later), it was really fun to do and provided an interesting and unique start and end to my project.

Another approach used to document RRIS was interviews with locals. Because the interviewees had been referred to me (and thus they knew about my group from the referrer), we all got on very well and they seemed to be very comfortable around us. This may have also been partly because my group made sure the interviewees knew all about our project (for example, why we are doing it, why we chose Shimokitazawa and where it will be showed) and that they knew the interview questions before the interview. The interviews were highly insightful and formed the basis of my project.
Lastly, I used a blog to document my progress in RRIS. This was a Tokyo Stories class requirement although it was a useful way to record progress, problems, solutions and thoughts, many of which I needed to refer to later.

3. I experienced many difficulties during the project. These difficulties can be broken down into three types- interview-related, recording/ technical and post-production.

Interview- related difficulties: The biggest difficulty I encountered while doing my vox pop was that Japanese people are VERY camera shy. Consequently I had to ask dozens of people. I found people were much more willing to be interviewed when they were waiting for friends, in groups, knew the questions before hand and when I asked (in Japanese) 'Excuse me, do you have some time?' rather than 'Excuse me, can I please ask you a question'? I also found that older people did not want to answer nor did teenagers (unless they were foreigners) so the majority of my interviewees ended up being young adults/adults.

Difficulties when filming interviewees included space. The old lady lived in a particularly small house (and she only wanted us to do it in a certain spot), so space was tight and it was hard to have enough distance to film her at eye level. Consequently, the camera looked down at her a little bit but I overcame this during post-production by reframing her.

Recording/ technical difficulties: The two main technical problems I experienced were regarding sound (discussed later) and white balance. After looking back at my footage, one interviewee is “hot” (her face is purple) so I should have set white balance to manual rather than auto. I was not able to pick this up when filming, partly because I did not really know what to look for on the monitor.

Post-production difficulties: A big problem in post-production was dealing with interview answers. Despite the fact they are in Japanese and thus not my native language, they were not answered in complete sentences so I had to insert question slides into the project. I think the question text actually suits the inquisitive nature of our project but having the subject lead the story probably would have made it more sophisticated.

I also had a problem with subtitles. I had nearly finished them all in plain white. Although I had noticed earlier that many were illegible due to being in front of a white background or t-shirt for example, I thought I would be able to later simply add a black outline to them. It turned out though that Final Cut Pro does not permit that and I had to do them all over again with black outline. Irene tried to help me fast track this very time-consuming process by saving and pasting font attributes although we could not get this to quite work.

Another problem I encountered was dealing with many peaking vox pops. At the time of filming (done before the media workshop), I did not have a great understanding of how the audio levels work and did not realize while filming that many of vox pop responses were peaking. I deleted many of these responses during editing but wanted to keep a few with good answers. I tried to minimize the peaking in these during post-production by turning down the volume of the audio (pink line). In the future, to prevent this problem I need to keep an eye on the sound meter on the camera and ensure that the audio mark is not going into the red/high section.

Lastly, other problems were more simple and occurred purely due to a lack of experience using Final Cut Pro. For example, sometimes I could not insert pictures into timelines (they had to be converted from raw format to JPEG), music would not play (it needed to be rendered) and fades and dissolves were either to fast or too slow (did not realize you could change their speeds). I was able to quickly overcome these problems by asking someone experienced in using the program.

4.In retrospect, I would change the way I approached my project by covering the stance of those people for Route 54 (for example, a Government official working on the proposal) as well as the stance of those against it. I did suggest this to my group although the consensus was to skip it and focus on advocating its disapproval. Although as Irene said, interviewing the supporting side could have in fact made our opposing stance stronger as we could have tweaked our interview questions to promote a somewhat confused response.

Another change I would make is regarding interview questions. My group asked the interviewees about 10 detailed questions so when it came time to edit, the abundance of footage was overwhelming, led to many differing opinions among my group and complicated and slowed down the editing process. We finally decided to prioritize our questions and delete the less important half. In the future I need to make sure I only ask questions vital for the project.

Based on the constructive feedback from Irene and Ron, other changes I would make include increasing the variety of pictures in the project, for example, include close-ups, unique angles. Additionally, I would ensure the gun mic is totally visible (mostly for television related projects) or not visible at all while filming.

Final video

Road Rage in Shimokitazawa from URBZ on Vimeo.

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Final poster

Poster

Last thing to do for the project was make the poster. The first two pages were done on InDesign. The first page was just a title (Road Rage in Shimokitaawa) and some pictures. The second page was maps and text about the area (mostly taken from the original proposal). The first page, a collage, was done by Kei on photoshop. It was done vertically on A3 when it should have been done horizontally but I eventually figured out how to make it fit on the presentation boards so all is good.

All in all, I'm very happy with the documentary (6 minutes) and the posters :)

Editing

This week was all about editing the project. This was a very time-consuming task but one that I also gained a lot of knowledge and satisfaction (after it was finished) from.

Editing order: voxpop, beginning, main interviews, end, b-roll, credits

Tips:
- 2-3secs a picture
- Take music from… good stuff!
- Get translations done early
- Vox pop- energy- shorter the better
- More is not always better. The non-important and uninteresting stuff MUST be cut out otherwise the viewer will become bored to quickly. I found cutting out the non-important content hard. My group asked way too many questions so when it came to editing time, it was very overwhelming. So we decided to carefully go through the questions, decide which ones were the most important and just edit them.

Problems/issues:
- I had done nearly all my subtitles in plain white but they did not look good/were illegible when in front of a white background (eg the subject’s t-shirt). I couldn’t just edit it, I had to do them all over again with black outlining. The solution to this was to save and paste attributes on the subtitles- it fastened up the process a little bit.
- Pictures going into the timelines cannot be in raw format- must be converted to JPEG beforehand
- Would have liked to have known/had more practice changing the sound of music and audio and changing the pace of dissolves and fades
- Some vox pops were peaking. Solution, make sure to check the sound meter on the camera and that the audio is not going into the red section. Solution while editing, turn down the volume of the audio (pink line) to try and minimize the noise.
- Questions were not asked openly so answers were not complete. As a result, we had to insert question slides into the project. I think they look good and suit the nature of our piece but having the subject lead the story probably would have made the piece more sophisticated. It is hard not working in your native language as you have little control over this during the filming.
- Render each time
- Editing with the team slowed down the editing process a lot. I love hearing their input and opinions, but it was much faster just to edit by myself.

Digitizing and review

I finished digitizing the footage from the station, the vox pop and the interviews yesterday.

Comments:
- framing looks good
- the gun mic is in most of the frames- not the best but its ok- it just looks television poi
- the interviewees are "hot" - white balance needs to be set to manual
- red and pinks do not look good on video (red is the weakest chip or something?!)
- watch the focus when doing interviews- the interview with the lady in the park- the leaves are more in focus then she is- use the reel at the front of the camera- the focus should be set to manual
- there is so much 'stuff' in Tokyo so it is hard to avoid swiggly lines. But prevent as best you can striped ties, fluro lights etc.

Time to start editing!

Reminders:
- figure out subtitle situation
- enough B roll?
- one more interview?
- figure out how to go about editing the interviews- re. translation and choosing what's important

List of things to do 6/30

- start editing!
- organise kei's photos and start thinking about how to use them in the video
- one more interview? owner of tibet tibet?
- discuss poster with kei and chris- 1st (pictures) and 2nd page (map, picture and text) is fine. figure out what kind of collage we want to do- options:
1) picture of an existing scene- remove or add one significant thing
2) jumble everything up
3) overlapping pictures, eg, use transparency tool on indesign/word/photoshop
4) include quotes or random words in the collage (need a phrase or something at the bottom to conclude- eg. save shimokitazawa!)
5)
*for inspiration- search in google: architecture/architectural collage, photo collage, 1920 photo collage