This article was written by communications intern Alisha Bhandari.

In November, Singapore American School hosted Mike Rogers (Class of 2000) during IASAS Cultural Convention: Art and Film to be the guest artist for the film students. Rogers and his company—Persistent Productions—also produced two SAS documentaries, Changing Education from the Inside Out and Inside Change.

Mike Rogers has worked as director and director of photography for the past 14 years in documentaries and feature films. Rogers focuses on telling true, heartfelt stories through documentary films and advertisements. His work has been awarded the Dolomythos Award for Best cinematography from Outdoor Film Festival, Italy for the film ‘Step by Step’; Winner in the Innovations in Global Health category in the CUGH Pulitzer Global Health Video Competition for ‘Clear as Day’; Best Short Documentary Film Award Gold Coast Film Festival for Documentary Film ‘In the Spirit of Laxmi’.

Rogers hosted a workshop called ‘Situational Cinematography’ at CulCon and these are some learnings from the workshop and delegates’ interactions with Rogers himself.

Equipment knowledge

“The biggest takeaway from the Situational Cinematography workshop was that I have been setting my camera settings wrong and how it made post-production more difficult to handle because of the coloring. I thought to myself, no wonder I get so caught up and frustrated about the colors in my videos when editing. Also, I learned about waveforms! I've briefly touched on it before, but I never learned it that in-depth. I really like how Rogers delivers what he is trying to teach with a purpose, like why he set up his lighting and equipment to teach us that in real life, you really don't have two hours to set everything up. Therefore, you have to use your time wisely.”
—Rara, International School Kuala Lumpur

Lighting
They learned about how to light interviewers, ISO settings (a camera setting that will brighten or darken a photo), as well as aperture (a hole or opening where light travels).

“I learned a lot about lighting, ISO and aperture. I also learned how to read the wavelength graph. I thought that the thing we did at the end of the workshop was useful, but we were given too little time to actually execute it.” 
—Ronny, Taipei American School

Personal and professional insights
Rogers told delegates stories about his own experiences in the field, working for professional companies, and using high-end equipment.

“I learned how to set up an interview and how to use light waves to make films look better. His background information and his companies stories were really cool and interesting. However how he explained the light waves and how he made us use light waves ourselves was what I think was the most interesting and educational.”
—Ryan, Taipei American School

Although I didn’t have the opportunity to sit in a workshop with Mike Rogers during the convention, I received a personal critique session with my partner.