Author: loostme2

http://www.commongroundthebook.com/video.php

This project is the result of 14 years of observing and documenting a plot of land in Illinois, as it evolved from a family owned farm to a suburban housing sprawl. Scott Strazzante, a photojournalist, met Jean and Harlow Cagwin as they went through the steps to sell their farm. He shot them taking care of their land and animals, and the day they watched their house being torn down. After the land was sold it became a housing development and he met the Grabenhofer family and shot with them as they raised their family in a new home just a few feet away from where the Cagwins cornfields used to grow. Common Ground explores loss, love, family and what home means. 

It exemplifies long term storytelling, not just in its emotional power but in its lovely construction. The building blocks of this story are the juxtaposition of images when the land was a farm to when it was a neighborhood, and the lives of the two different families. These shots are all seem to be captured using the natural, soft, light of the environments.

The pacing of these shots throughout this piece is extremely important. You are asking the audience to take in two scenes, from different time periods, and to compare and contrast them. If you don’t leave them on the screen long enough the beautiful nuances that the photographer captured will be lost. This first set of images pretty quickly makes sense. Although the compositions are quite different you get that it is people loving on their animals.

 

But the second image set you really need to look at and think about. The posture of the hands. The quiet reflective nature of the moment. So these shots are paced out, and on the screen, for a much longer period of time.

  

Even though the vast majority of the story is told through still  images, they still managed to get some movement in there. At 01:43 there are about seven seconds of super fast cuts that put the sequence of photos into motion when the dad is teaching his kid how to ride a bike. They use this technique again, but slower and with fewer frames, at 02:37. They also included short clips of video interviews throughout the piece. At 00:43 we see the Cagwins for an interview clip. It is a pretty tight shot but includes both people. The location choice seemed like a pretty smart way of problem solving. The couple is much younger in the farm days pictures, and by the time the interviews were conducted  they clearly no longer lived on that land. So it looks like they did the interview in a garden shed or garage. It was a nice environmental portrait feel and reinstated that these are the farmers, with garden tools in the background. The tightness of the shot helped show the emotion in their face as they talked about the house being torn down. 

They used a quick transition slide, at 01:04 with text to explain the jump in time to when the Grabenhofers bought their home. This was a nice smooth transition and the start of the juxtaposition of the images of the two families that leads you through the rest of the story.

The most important piece of video plays through the last minute, starting at 06:22. It cuts between tighter shot on the husband, and a wide shot of them both, while driving through the neighborhood that used to be their farm. The camera motion in these shots all plays into the homey feel of the piece. The handheld look keeps you in the moment, it’s a bit grainy and shaky, which fits the still photo style of the piece. This movement tells the viewer that they are seeing something real, and as it happens. No high production or set up shots, just following the moment. You can see through the windshield what the neighborhood looks like, as they lightheartedly argue about where they are. We end up on a wide shot of the couple standing in the driveway of the Grabenhofers home, which pushes closer as introductions begin. After shooting with both families for 14 years we see Scott bring them together for the first time. Again this shot throws you straight into the moment, as if you are right there with them. 

http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/nepal-defending-koshi

 

The opening to this video is one of the most impactful ways I have seen still photos used in a video piece in quite some time. They set up a studio with hanging lights and string to clip the photos to. Then they moved through that space to capture video of the still photos. As someone that comes from a still photography background I am always looking for creative and natural feeling ways to incorporate still images. I think this method was very successful in telling the story, and made the photos even more tangible to the view because they are printed out. The rack focus and slow pans really helped to set the mood for the dramatic narrative that was about to be told. The ominous music and forlorn quotes from local people set the stage very quickly that all is not okay. I appreciate the fact that the photos are faces of many locals and we are hearing the thoughts of the locals. All of these factors, in the first minute and 11 seconds, lead the viewer to a basic understanding of the important issue we are about to dive in to.

We are immediately brought into this world through the music and natural sounds that they blended together. This sound design throws you right in the middle of the Nepalese jungle and really gives you a feel for the surroundings. They also use some landscape time-lapse and general scene setting clips to push this even further. By the time the narration of the film starts we have a pretty good idea of place (02:00). These beginning clips are certainly jump cuts from scene to scene, but the motivation is also to start wide with landscape, move down to the water, and then to an individual utilizing that water. Even when they do text on screen they use a nice dead space composition to house the text (02:27).

 

After we gain bit more understanding about the history of the possible construction of a dam, they move forward to show us a little slice of life. Again, jumping from scene to scene. They seem to go mostly between close up and medium shots, all focusing on details of every day life there. This focus narrows down again to everyday water use in detail shots (03:15). These shots are important to the story because it makes us care about the people involved. Shooting the places that they live, in close up detail shots, puts us in their shoes. This leads us into hearing from the people who live in the area via on screen interviews. They cut between a super tight shot, with virtually no head room, to grab at the emotional parts of the interview and a medium shot for the more general factual parts of the interview. They use this two-camera interview style throughout most of the interviews in the piece. The interviews seem to be naturally lit, which feels nice for an intimate story.

Cleverly they jump back to the studio shot still images as a transition to talk about the next part of the story (04:12).

The story goes on in this fashion for another nine minutes. They use each technique throughout the whole film, which to me greatly helps in making it feel cohesive even when they are traveling to different areas. They also tie up the piece using the same studio technique as the intro with the stills, as well as video portraits with dozens of people in close up that drive the pace of the last minute of the story (11:20).