Documentary
For our first assignment this semester, we were given the
task to create a five minute documentary focusing on the theme “Liverpool
Stories”. As we would be travelling to Liverpool for three days to shoot, we
were open to pretty much anything in the city to base our documentary on. For
the project I worked with Sophie, Dalena, Charlotte, Chrissie and James.
During the first stages of planning and finding initial
idea, I put forward the idea of looking into the Yellow Duckmarines based at
Albert Docks. The group were intrigued by the idea, as was I, so we decided to
research further into it. For the project, I became director I tried to get
things organised along with the producer as quickly as possible. During a
personal visit to Liverpool early on in the project, I was able to physically
go over to the docks and meet the staff in charge of the Duckmarines, explain
our intentions and get a strong contact with them early on. From this stage,
Charlotte also emailed the manager and received filming confirmation before we
travelled down. We were also able to book seats on the Duckmarines at this
point to get ‘on-board’ shots during the tour.
We were very thorough in planning what we wanted to film in
Liverpool and managed to create quite detailed storyboards, call sheets and interview
questions with the staff and crew, and also the public travelling on the ducks.
The afternoon we arrived in Liverpool, we wasted no time
heading down to the docks to assess location recces and organise various times
for interviews and shooting – both in the offices and on the Ducks. That
evening, after having a closer look around the docks and Liverpool, Sophie and
I sat and planned extra footage that I wanted to include in our documentary.
On the second day in Liverpool, we arrived at the docks
around 8.30am and wasted no time beginning to capture footage of the docks
early on. We also took advantage of the quiet early morning to get our shots
inside the booking office as we knew it would soon be busy as we were in
Liverpool during half term. During the day, we set each other tasks to make
sure that we were all busy collecting features that would be necessary. For
example, while Charlotte and I were filming and sound recording on the tour,
Dalena, Sophie, Chrissie and James would either be sound recording for atmos or
collecting podcasts from passengers and the passing public.
Later on in the afternoon, we were able to collected more
footage and recordings off two of the tour guides on the Duckmarines. Although
one of the men did not wish to be filmed, he gave us a lot of interesting
information that we would be able to edit and use in post-production as
voiceovers to allow a constant flow of speech throughout. The second tour
guide, Tony, gave us an interview staged in front of one of the Duckmarines.
Once we had finished filming down at the docks, we spent the
last hour or two filming shots of where the tour passed in Liverpool, including
the Queen Victoria Monument and both the Cathedrals. As we also had one of the
tour leaflets that described the route, we tried our best to catch the bus in
actions from the exterior and various points on the tour. Luckily, we caught
some valuable shots, including bird’s eye view shots from a multi-storey car
park, and a shot of the Duck passing in front of one of the Cathedrals late in
the afternoon.
Fortunately, the weather in Liverpool was good, with very
little wind. This meant that majority of both our sound and visual recordings
were great quality once we looked back at them in the evening. Also, we managed
to collect a great deal of footage in one day, leaving the following day just
for any touch ups and added shots we wished to film.
The next day, we got up early to head to the docks for
sunrise at approximately half seven. We decided the evening before that the main
shot we wanted to capture on the final day would be a sunrise over the docks to
introduce the documentary and the area we had been filming in. Unfortunately,
the morning was extremely foggy and we were unable to capture the intended
scene. However, we were more than happy with the amount of footage from the day
before and after collecting some last few shots, were able to head back to
Sheffield that morning.
Sophie was our visual editor for the project. From the
beginning of post-production, I sat with her to go through the shots we had
collected Liverpool and start constructing our documentary together. We created
a rough timeline of the footage we had and what order we thought they would
work best in. Debbie during the editing process helped us a lot with arranging and
was able to give plenty of constructive criticism throughout to help better the
project. The final piece was put together very differently from what we first
discussed, however I feel that the finished outcome worked a lot better than if
we had just stuck solidly to original plans.
Looking at the finished piece in our presentation, I was
very happy with what we had produced. Although there were parts that could have
be touched up and improved, such as some of the atmos over the docks that at
times sounded unrealistic, I feel we worked extremely hard to produce the best
that we could. We did lack at times to all contribute as a six-man team, but I
feel that the hard work of others allowed us to produce a successful
documentary. We also sent a finished copy to the Yellow Duckmarines staff, who
were happy with our portrayal of their company and wished to use the footage on
their website.
If I were to do the project again, I would definitely love
the chance to choose a different role to work under and see how that would affect
the ideas I could come up with and then contribute to the rest of the group.
For our second half of the semester, we had to make a short
five minute drama based on the theme of ‘journey’. For this project I would be working
with Christie, Abi, Chrissie, Sophie and TS. Early on in planning stages I
volunteered to be producer. After directing in the first half of assignments, I
was interested in taking on the roles and seeing how much it would differ to my
previous one.
We struggled at first coming up with ideas for the drama. We
worried that some ideas maybe be boring, or too cliché. After a lot of
deliberating we came up with the idea of a man running a drug rehabilitation
group, and telling the company about ‘a friend’ he once knew who was an addict,
but through a journey of self-recovery, managed to turn his life around. We
wanted to try and add a twist to the story by giving away to the audience a
sign that the friend he was talking about was in fact himself.
We pitched the idea to Debbie and the rest of the group, but
received mixed thoughts about our idea. Majority of the group were not too keen
on the idea, Debbie in particular stressed the point that a man in charge of a
rehab group wouldn’t keep something like that hidden from the collective. We
realized we would have to re-think about our ideas and find a strong, more
realistic idea.
During our Easter break, Christie came up with the idea
focusing on a transgender male, breaking the news to his mother that he wanted
to changed gender and the journey to see if she would accept him for who he was,
or if he would have to continue his life without her support. We really liked
the idea and Christie continued to progress making a script.
After the Easter break, we returned to Uni to start planning
the drama further. We were able to develop the script more, and also develop
character profiles, shot lists and storyboards. TS was able to let us use his
sister house in Sheffield to film most of our scenes, and we also found a great
park nearby to shoot the rest. We were able to arrange everything we needed for
production, leaving us just to find actors.
I emailed several drama companies in and around Sheffield
over the next couple of weeks, but only managed to hear back from one, which
eventually fell through. We also posted on university drama sites and smaller
associations, but heard nothing back. Eventually, through friends we were able
to cast the two male roles; one of our actors would have to travel down from
Preston. We struggled mainly to find an older actress we could us to portray a
mother. We discussed our difficulties and agreed to change the script so that
the mother became a sister, hopefully allowing us to find a slightly younger
actress. Luckily, one of the other groups passed on the details of an older
female actress who didn’t fit their part. I took her contact, emailed her and
she replied almost instantly, agreeing to take part.
As our main character would be coming down from Preston to
shoot, we only had two days in which we had to shoot everything. We split the
four scenes between the two days; the first day, we took a while to set up, and
found it very time-consuming moving the camera around in a small space to
produce various different camera angles. Our male actors were understanding and
portrayed good performances allowing things to run as smoothly as possible.
On the second day of shooting, we met our female actress for
the first time. We were quite nervous as we hadn’t met her before, but she was
friendly and willing to try and help out where she could. As we had set up this
time before our actress arrived, we were able to get straight on with filming
without delaying time. Filming went very quickly and both scenes were done in
half the time to the previous day.
Chrissie and TS were in charge of post-production editing. A
rough cut of our intended film was made after we finished filming to show
Debbie and received feedback. After watching it back, she wasn’t excited or
moved by the film and found it quite tedious. She also noted that she didn’t like
how the story was given away within the first scene. She gave a lot of
constructive feedback for us to then go away and adapt. Christie and Chrissie
then rearranged the order of the film, adding the first scene back as
flashbacks to try and create more of a build-up. I sat in on a few of the
sessions so I could keep track of the changes being made throughout. TS also
went out and made further sound records to then edit and fit to help describe
scenes better.
Debbie continued to check the changes made, and give her
opinion on whether bits still didn’t work, and how we had improved on certain
parts that she originally didn’t agree with.
Although it has been a long process, I feel that the
finished piece has helped us to take on board advice and improve different
techniques of planning and editing that we all as a group were previously
unaware of.
Although I feel the end piece works well, there are a lot of
things I feel that could have been better. If I were to do this project again,
I would definitely look further into constructing dramas and how storyline
work. I would also take into more consideration finding suitable actors for our
roles. Our actress who played “Maggie” didn’t match the description alongside
the actor who played “Ben”. We struggled with the time limits that we had, so I
feel that we would need to plan further ahead in the future. All in all I feel
we worked well as a team. We all contributed where needed and I feel that we
have all learned valuable lessons and skills from undergoing this project, and
can definitely see where were would do things differently next time.
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