Course Reflection

TCF 312 was a great experience for me and it helped me learn how to work with a director or DP instead of both shooting and directing myself like I do for documentaries. At the beginning of the class I had already worked with a variety of cameras, but it was good to get experience using some different ones that I would not have used otherwise, in particular the Sony EX3 and F3.

I think the class is structured well. Having the documentary storytelling assignment early in the semester helps introduce students to working as a director/DP team and is good preparation for the scene assignment. It also presents its own challenge of only using existing light. The time spent in the studio working with different lighting setups is good experience and serves as practice for the scene assignment.

I mostly work on documentaries so while directing and shooting the documentary storytelling assignments came naturally to me, planning out a whole narrative scene as a director was not something I had really done before this class. I think it was a good experience and helped me learn how to plan better and communicate what I want to a DP. It was a challenge for me to work that way since I am used to shooting everything myself, but Sarah Lane was a great DP and she understood the look I wanted and made it happen. I discovered that while I am capable of directing, I prefer to be a DP for narrative productions.

Working as a DP for the scene assignment was definitely my favorite part of the class. I have been a DP for a few narrative projects before, but never with this much pre-production. It was helpful to meet with the director and plan things out together before getting to the location. The scene I worked on presented a number of unique challenges and solving those problems was a great experience. Shooting a night exterior with a fire as the key light was challenging from both practical and creative standpoints, but it was well worth it and I learned a lot from that shoot.

DP Reel and Artist Statement

Evan Terry DP Reel Spring 2016 from Evan Terry on Vimeo.

When I started college, I was an aerospace engineering major. Although I had discovered my love of film and photography in high school, I had always planned on working as an engineer. However, after working as a teaching assistant for a documentary production class for a year and a half, I realized that I needed to go in a different direction with my education and my career.

While I thoroughly enjoy the creative freedom and opportunity for expression of shooting a narrative piece, I like to work mostly on documentaries. There’s a certain excitement about shooting in the field, in an uncontrolled environment where you can never anticipate everything that will happen. It forces to me to work quickly and under the pressure of only having one chance to get the shot. To me, this style can feel very free because I don’t have to wait on a full crew or cast to be ready. This carries over into the way I shoot most of my still photography, as well. Always run-and-gun, capturing whatever catches my eye using almost exclusively natural light. Working with natural light presents interesting challenges and forces me to be creative with framing and composition to work with what is available to me.

I enjoy how I can tell a story in a documentary in a way not possible in any other medium. The freedom in shooting is mirrored in the editing process, and I prefer to both shoot and edit my work myself. Unlike following a script, with a documentary the editor can build the story up from nothing using just the pieces that are available, yet the same pieces can be crafted into an infinite number of possible films that each tells a slightly different story in a different way.