Documentary Project

Our next assignment is to create a 5 minute Documentary during our residential trip to Liverpool. After we got into groups I spoke up first and said that I wanted to be director, luckily getting in there just before Sophie who then voiced that she also wanted to be director. Camera was then taken by Alex and Clarice who was already going to be around Liverpool took Producer as she could do some research before we arrived. Hannah took sound thus leaving the role of Editor to Sophie.

My personal view on documentaries isn't a positive one but that's due to my way of thinking,n I much prefer documentaries about animals. If I ever do watch a documentary of peoples lives it is because I am with a friend and I cannot leave or for educational purposes, I never actively seek out to watch them.

To give us a better idea of the style and type of the documentary that we wanted to produce we look a range of documentary types including....

The Making Of Dark Days
Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul (2010) by Orlando Van Einseidel
The Archive by Sean Dunne
King Of Laughter by Nick Hillel
Erics Secrets by Lucia Ashmore
Pockets by James Lees
The Apology Line by James Lees

The two of which I am going to look at in more detail are The Archive by Sean Dunner and The Apology Line by James Lees

The Archive



I didn't like this documentary solely for the reason I thought that it was made as a bout of sympathy for the people portrayed. I didn't really give the audience anything they could take away, it may have been informative but nothing I feel you could go away and retell to someone else. I think to make it better they could have a removed a few elements such as the crying wife, or to stretch the documentary out over half an hour so that you didn't feel overwhelmed with guilt. If it was spread over time then it would have felt as though it was your choice to feel for characters. Having  it only being seven minutes then it felt like the emotions were forced on you.

The Apology Line



I felt that this was unlike any other documentaries I have seen before. The concept itself made it a documentary, it's a chronicle of real peoples confessions. The dialogue spoke volumes and the added imagery I felt slightly added to that in the sense that it was all at night giving that mysterious and secretly element whilst the characters they used during certain confessions I felt that they were metaphors for the confessions. It was defiantly the most interesting and more unique documentaries I have seen giving me a more open mind towards a subject that I thought nothing of initially.

Overall Evaluation 15/02/2012

Now that we have officially finished, have the movie exported and burned on to two different discs it's time for a little reflection from the past three weeks of work.

I feel that we worked really well as a group though at times it got a little hard especially having three people in a group and having only two tasks that needed to be done so at times someone would feel a little redundant, but we pushed through. It is odd to think back to the original idea and see how far we have come in terms of idea development whether it be down to choice or circumstance. Making a 5minute movie was a lot harder than I thought even though its a few more minutes than what we're all used to and I think because the genre was experimental that it made it a lot more challenging. Also joining a team that already had an idea in play and having no other choice than to just agree to the plans despite my opinions was quite difficult but I was glad that as we went on I became connected to the project as much as the others.
I did really enjoy the project and would like to maybe one day try again and make my own experimental movie.

Audience Feedback

I had a few people watch the final piece to generate some feedback and here are a few of the responses:


It was definitely really weird, and I guess that's what experimental is supposed to be, I didn't understand some parts but I got that the guys life was in black and white and by the end everything has colour. 


Some of the shots just didn't fit in and I thought they were over used, like the coloured dots on all over the place, I would have preferred if everything stayed black and white. The ending was really good though.


I thought the white face painted guy was a bit over the top to begin with but I got the significance as it went one. Also I think the sound worked really well, some parts freaked me out a little.

Overall the feedback was good and constructive and the majority of the people that watched had nothing but good to say.

Post Production: Tuesday 14/02/2012

Today we managed to finish everything. Having decided to get an earlier start so that we could be finished before everywhere got crowded, as per mentioned all that was left was finishing the last minute and syncing the sound with the image.  Again this took longer than we thought it would but in the end we all watched the piece three or four times to make sure all the sound was in check, the images were where they were supposed to be and that it looked good. Happy to be finished we realised that we would have to come back again tomorrow as we didn't have any discs on us.

Exporting the final video including the titles so we could then import it on to soundtrack pro and sync the sound.

Both the sound and video together in Soundtrack pro so we could add the sound effects and make sure the atmospheric track was in the right place.

Post Production: Monday 13/02/2012

Today we brought the sound and the image together. Joeley had been working on the sound over the weekend and we all came together to put it together with the image. It was a lot harder than we had initially anticipated, though the atmospheric track she had created worked well with the piece we then had the task of adding in the sound effects which involved a lot of back and forth between the three of us.

By the end of the day we had managed to get a stronger edit with only the last minute left to fully edit and to insert the sound and the accompanying effects in all the right places. Having being cooped up in the edit suit for just over eight hours we decided to come back and finish it on Tuesday.

Me and Dan doing some editing on a few of the later sections whilst Joeley worked on the earlier ones that we were certain we had no reason to edit any more.

A few screen grabs of Joeley working on the sound. Manipulating some tracks to give it an eerie feel to suit the theme of the piece.

This is the method that we used for the majority of the day.

Experimental Artists: Melina Matsoukas

Namley the video she directed by Rihanna S&M

Sound Design

Joeley decided to focus on the sound once we had established that we had finished with all the production side of things. Me and Dan commented on whatever she brought us to listen but ultimately we never had any problems with any other the sounds as we were clued in every step of the way.

To see how she got on click on the following link:

Joeley on Sound Creation and Editing

Experimental Artist: Bartholomew Cubbins

The music video Hurricane by 30 Seconds To Mars is an experimental piece by Bartholomew Cubbins, which is pseudonym used by actor and lead sing of the band Jared Leto. The events of the music video shows the three band members being chased, having hallucinations and confronting enemies in this fictional world. This 12minute piece contains explicit content and was therefore banned from a number of sites and channels when it was first released. Director Jared Leto stated that he had no problem with this.
I particularly like the exploration of each of the characters throughout the piece as well as the pacing and the realistic-ness it still manages to obtain as a music video.

Post Production: Saturday 11/02/2012

Today it was me and Dan again as we uploaded all the footage from the previous day and spent 4hours or so labelling what we had, sifting through what was usable and adding effects to the necessary clips.
We also put together a rough assembly of the clips so we had a new sequence that we had to entwine with what we previously had. On the weekend you have to leave at 5:00pm, we got to 4:00pm and decided there was no point trying to attempt the final edit as we wouldn't get far before having to leave to decided to just wait till Monday where we would also be able to show Joeley what we had accomplished so far.

Production: Friday 10/02/2012

I was really pleased with how production went today as we were all organised and felt a lot better compared to the slump we had been in for the majority of the week. We managed to get all the shots we intended do done plus extra and managed to fit in some shots that we had previously abandoned deeming them to complicated. We had finally finished production and Dan never had to put on white face paint for the sake of art ever again. This left us just under a week to tighten the edit and work in the sound.

Tutorial: Thursday 09/02/2012

In the morning of the tutorial we all got together again to work a little more on the editing, this was the first time I had seen what the other two had edited and so I was able to pin point clips that didn't fit in and ones that worked really well. Then it was off to see Esther who gave us a range of suggestions and thoughts that we used as a spring board as to how we could improve our work.

Structure of shots can be tightened.

In the edit we could zoom in to give the piece a grainer look.

Get rid of the "Why Colour" shots.

Balls of colour on the clock.

Candles were the weakest shots. (Which we were planning on re shooting)

Split up the shots of the balls popping up to happen throughout.

Also our piece is lacking sound, which was something that we have had at the back of our mind during the production process. Initially we thought about using narration before deciding that it would take away from what we wanted the piece to say. Since then we have been at a loss, but there have been a few idea floating around such as reversing sounds to give an eerie off centre chilling feel using wind chimes. Esther did give us a few ideas which again we took into consideration and bounced ideas off of.

Putting a contact mike on something that is filled with air or water.

An olden kettle coming to boil that would increase the tension.

Making whatever sound we choose to be strange but not to over the top try-hard strange.

Juxtaposition of perhaps having a happy music with the depressing scenery.

Lastly different sources we could look at to help us for the rest of the project

1960's Mime Artists

Jacque Tati - Playtime, Mr Hulas Holiday

Eraserhead - David Lynch and Allan Splets

Overall I think it was an okay tutorial especially because we all thought that what we had so far was completely worthless, so it was nice to hear that there was still some potential and hope to making it a successfully finished piece in time for next weeks assessment. We were going to go back and do some more editing but decided against it as we weren't in the mood and I always feel it's a lot nicer and more efficient to work when you are in the mood to do so.

Post Production: Wednesday 08/02/2012

In anticipation for the upcoming tutorial we had on Thursday we uploaded the footage from the previous day and got down to making a tighter edit. It was only Joeley and Dan that did the editing as I had other plans and after some discussion we agreed that it didn't take all three of us to be there during the editing process as the third person would come with a new perspective and opinions about what does and doesn't look effective in the edit.

Production: Tuesday 07/02/2012

After uploading and looking at the shots we had gotten so far, we used this next production day to correct shots that didn't look good in edit and to try and round up what we had left.
The main part of our piece is the use of stop motion so we tried to focus on that segment as we had been putting it off and off since we had started. It worked really well but was a long process and a job that required a lot of concentration. I think we managed to work really well in terms of co-ordination. Me and Joeley doing the stop motion and Dan operation the camera. Then switching over from time to time. We were hoping that this would be the last day of Production but it didn't seem likely. It got to a point where we decided to stop and edit what we had tomorrow in order to show Esther on Thursday during our tutorial, that way wouldn't start anything that in the end may have turned out to not even be useful.

A Trip To The Moon

Not really experimentsal, though I guess for the time It was filmed in it was but I really like A trip to the Moon by George Méliés. It also helps you to realise how much film has developed over the decades.

Post Production: Friday/Saturday/Monday

After our Lecture/Seminar on Friday Me and Dan met up to upload the footage we had so far unto a mac, just so that we could better see how much we had left to do and to get a rough idea of whether or not we would have to add anything else to the story. This was because, due to the stop motion element we were worried if the final edit would even be up to 5mins long, or even half of that.

We uploaded on Friday and came back on Saturday to label the clips and also make a rough edit of what we had so far.
Me and Dan were a little worried and debated things we could possibly add to the piece or how we could edit it most effectively to make it an appropriate length.
We were agreed to do someone editing on Monday and then get back to filming on Tuesday so that we could do more editing on Wednesday and be ready for the tutorial on Thursday.

I just hope that for once our intentions go to plan.

Production: Thursday 02/02/2012

Due to prior arrangements I couldn't make it to the Production day we had on Wednesday. I was told about the range of problems that Dan and Joeley had encountered the following day including; Having no actor, The face paint not being effective and only getting done a few minor shots that day, a lot less than was planned.

So when I arrived for filming on Thursday I was informed that Dan was now to play the lead role in our piece, and we had a few hours delayed start after having to travel back into Sheffield to find a fancy dress shop that sold professional White Face Paint.

That day we did get a range of shots done, though again not as many as we had anticipated, I think by the end of the day everyone was exhausted from the early start. As well as this because a third of the piece is done in stop motion that we wouldn't have had time to continue. So we wrote down what was left to do and decided to edit together what we did have over the weekend.