Filmmaking Craft
Shallow depth of field in documentary, and when to stop down
What controls shallow depth of field, how sensor size and equivalence change it, and why documentary shooters often stop down to keep focus and context.
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Power on location: batteries, power banks and power stations
How to power a film shoot on location: counting batteries, USB-C power banks, NP-F packs for LED panels, power stations, generators and flying with lithium.
Read the pieceWelcome to Frames North
We write about documentaries and independent films the way a good programmer talks about them in the lobby: what the film is actually doing, who made it and how, and why it might be worth your evening. Some pieces are reviews and essays, some are practical guides to festivals, funding and the craft, and a fair number come back to Canadian screens, where so much of the world’s documentary tradition was invented.
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Filmmaking Craft
Building a world from room tone: sound design for documentary
Documentary sound from location to delivery: room tone, ambiences, wild lines, foley ethics, dialogue editing, noise reduction, the mix, loudness and stems.
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Documentary
American Revolution documentaries worth your time, seen from Nova Scotia
A guide to American Revolution documentaries, from Liberty! to the Ken Burns series, with the Canadian side: Halifax, the Loyalists and the Black Loyalists.
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Documentary
Model release forms for documentary: what an appearance release covers
What a documentary appearance release should cover, from likeness and territory to minors, locations and archive, and why Quebec protects image more firmly.
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Filmmaking Craft
Field recorders for documentary: handheld or bag recorder?
How to choose a field recorder for documentary sound: handheld or bag recorder, how many XLR inputs, 32-bit float, timecode and sync, headphones and power.
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Canadian Cinema
Remembrance on film: Canadian documentaries and the world wars
From the NFB's wartime reels and Churchill's Island to the fight over The Valour and the Horror, how Canadian documentaries have remembered the world wars.
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