Drama Research

"Drama film is a genre that relies on the emotional and relational development of realistic characters ... Often, these dramatic themes are taken from intense, real life issues."

During our introduction seminars with Debbie, we watched a series of very different short dramas. Out of the series of films, two in particular stood out for me. 

The first was Audio Tour. I found this four minute piece quite different from what I expected majority of dramas to appear like - however I did find it fascinating how differently it was structured. Narrated by an 'audio tape', a woman listening through headphones at a museum is highly surprised when the tape starts giving details about both herself and her current surroundings.

The sound design of the narrated tape worked really well in this piece and keeps the audience both interested and intrigued as to what it will pick up on next. I also noticed that atmos. was used throughout to help layer the piece and keep it somehow realistic. I feel that in drama, atmos plays an important part and we will need to carefully construct some fitting audio for our short drama. 

It is a light-hearted piece with a essence of comedy throughout. Although the ended appears to be less joyful and slightly more serious, I feel that it doesn't ruin the entire piece and is unusual ending to an unusual story. 




The second drama for Debbie's seminar I wanted to look back at again was About A Girl. Following a young 13 year old girl, obsessed with pop stars and very outspoken speaking about her day to day life, which involves the normal behaviour of a young teen, but also gives away the fact that her family life isn't great, and she may be hiding a big secret of her own.

The girl narrates her story to the audience, speaking directly to the camera as she walks down the side of a riverbank. Her story is also told with a series of flashback after she describes a certain scene - for example, she speaks about how her Dad takes her to the pub every weekend and buys her a coke and a bag of crisps. We then see either a flashback or flash-forward to the girl sat outside the pub on her own with the bag of crisps. However you can hear her Dad and his friends all inside the pub laughing and joking. At first, she gives the intention he takes her to the pub to spend some time with her and the drink and crisps are a treat. In reality, he has no choice in looking after her during this time period, so keeping her happy outside with these things allows him to then do what he wants. 
As the film progresses, you begin to get the idea that things similar to this happen on a daily basis to the young girl, but by this point in her life she is just accustomed to it. 

The flashback continue throughout the short drama. It appears she enjoys to talk about random things, like becoming famous and leaving her mum behind to actually cover something else. As we reach the end, she talks about how her mum found a puppy she was hiding and got the neighbours to get rid of it in the canal. She then quotes "Gotten dead good at hiding things from her since then". At this stage the girl has become quieter and the camera has started to pan over the location, suggesting something serious has or is about to happen. The girl then chucks a plastic bag into the canal, then as she walks away starts talking about random things  again, like getting an ice cream, as if nothing has just happened. However, as she leaves, it becomes clear she has thrown a newborn baby into the canal. 

This drama is incredibly different to the first one I observed. It is much deeper and has a more serious background story to define it. In the first drama, the colours were bright to match the light-hearted feel of it. In About A Girl, the colours through out are extremely bleak and dull, highly to represent the life and the area in which the young girl lives. Although it is a sensitive topic that is finally brought to light at the end, I feel the way the production has been created and the acting from the girl makes it incredibly realistic and hits home.
When preparing for our drama, to make it as realistic as possible, we have to ensure we find the right kind of actors that fit the script well. 

Drama Introduction

We have been introduced to our final project of the year – Drama. Working in groups we have been given the task of creating a five minute drama based on the theme ‘journey’. Last week, we were organised into groups and given a week to produce some initial ideas to then pitch our strongest to the rest of the seminar group.

For this project I will be working with Abi, Christie, Sophie and Chrissie. During our first seminar, we assigned ourselves roles among the group; I will be undertaking the role of producer.

We met as a group at the beginning of this week to draw out ideas on what we could base our drama on. We discussed various approaches including a traveller’s new surroundings and transgender topics. After a long discussion we came up with the idea of a councillor leading a rehab group; explaining to them the journey of ‘a friend’ he knew who managed to get off drugs, and his journey of recovery. We also decided to add a twist to the plot, stating somehow to the audience at the end that it was actually the councillor who had the drug addiction, and it was in fact his story. We tried to build on the story as much as we could and agreed to pitch it to the rest of the group and Debbie.

After pitching our idea on Friday, we received mixed responses about or idea. The group were not keen on the idea of drug use, explaining it would either be too vague or we may come across as protesting to be ‘anti-drug use’ or appear to be penalising. Debbie also brought up the fact that if it was a councillor, he would be there under no false pretences and wouldn’t feel the need to cover up his past.

We received some very helpful feedback and after the session decided we would need to reconsider our idea, and possibly research further into some dramas. 

Presentation & Feedback

Today we presented our finished documentary to the rest of our group, Dom and Debbie. Before our session, Charlotte had double checked again if our cd's were playable. Unfortunately we found out that the picture quality of our piece was alot duller when player through a Windows PC, compared to the MACs we had been working on. Before we presented, we told our tutors but they said it would not be a problem.
After playing the finished documentary we explained our roles as a group, what we think went well, what we would possibly change and our overall thoughts on how it turned out. I told the rest of the group about my role as director, how I contributed towards the project and where I worked alongside others. I also commented on my personal views - that I felt the finished piece worked well, although it was slightly different to my origional intentions. I also commented on the fact I felt some of our cutaways were irrelevant and could have be changed.
Both Dom and Debbie seemed pleased with our documentary. They commented on how they felt we had used a simple idea and made it work well for a five minute documentary. They also gave us some good critisim back, noting that some of our sound cutaways were abit out, and some of our irrelevant cutaways were overexposed. However, it was all really good constructive critism that I feel will help us all as indivuals and a group to progress in similar projects in the future.
While we presented, the rest of the group wrote down on pieces of paper what they thought of our film, if they liked it, what we could change, etc. This was also really helpful to receive so many different opinions about our film and majoity were really positive.

I have enjoyed working on this documentary and feel that it has improved my skills of leadership and organisation. I have had to put myself out there to get things I wanted, for example having to approach The Yellow Duckmarine company in person and ask for permission to film. If I were to do this project again, I would like to be more involved with the technical aspects such as shooting and editing the footage myself.
As a group, although we lacked one member throughout majority of the assignment, I feel we all shared out the roles well and were committed to producing a successful, interesting documentary.

Editing

On Friday, our group had an edit tutorial with Debbie to discuss how filming went and our plans for editing. Unfortunately due to illness I was unable to attend, but I was informed later that day of what was discussed during that time.
After the weekend, I joined Sophie in Uni Monday morning to start helping out with editing. She had already gone through all the clips, labelled the good shots, and arranged them into similar orders.
She started going through small sections at a time that we wanted to fit together while I composed a rough timeline of what we had and what sort of order we could put them in.
We managed to edit a lot of the visual images together in a draft order and our main interview over the next few hours.

Tuesday we made more progress with structuring our documentary. I assisted Sophie further with constructing the piece, and came together with Chrissie to start adding the audio from the other interview and  other sound clips we'd collected.
Later on in the afternoon, the three of us had another meeting with Debbie to show her what we had done since Friday and receive any constructive criticism. She sat with us for a long period of time, helping to rearrange and cut between our two interviews to make it look and sound more appealing to the audience. During this time we began to get a real feel of what the documentary would possibly look like in a final cut and feel positive for the final outcome.

Over Wednesday & Thursday I popped in again to overlook some of the last stages of editing. Although the final structures were looking very different to the original templates I had drawn, I was very optimistic about the end result and felt some of the new decisions that had been made had made our presentation stronger. 

Thursday afternoon, Charlotte & I sat and prepared to burn our finished documentary onto disc as Sophie had other University presentations to attend. At first we had an issue trying to de-interlace our footage, however Charlotte was able to solve the problem effectively, burn our discs and ensure they played on another computer.