Evaluation: Documentary & Drama

Documentary Evaluation

For the documentary I believe my group started off well. Oliver, Nick and I met up and discussed our ideas and what was to be pitched in the seminar group. We had two good ideas, one being similar to the Skateistan documentary, however it would be in a well known skate park in Liverpool and we would be interviewing employees of the skate park and asking for stories or asking regular members of the skate park. The aim for this idea was to make it different to other skate documentaries by talking about personal experience within the park rather than just advertising it in a way. I tended to gravitate towards the second idea as it was an interesting and different subject to the usual ideas. Oliver found a website which had an archive of images of Liverpool during the Second World War. And finding the source of the archive, we wanted to interview the owner and ask about his inspiration towards the images and then connect the World War II images with images of Liverpool in 2015. The pitch in the seminar group went well as we provided a power point presentation unlike any other group and provided some visuals. We finalised that we would proceed with the World War II archive idea and proceeded to develop it into a narrative and construct an interview whilst contacting the owner to make sure we could interview him. When it came to the day of travelling to Liverpool, we received an email to say we could not interview the owner of the archive due to more than reasonable circumstances and therefore, we had no idea. Also, two members of our group had not been able to come, one of them I did not expect any contribution from them whatsoever but the other had good reasons not to come. Leaving Oliver and I alone on the trip. Luckily, this happened to another group in Liverpool as well so we could join to make a group and they had a good idea when pitched to us and we took over the roles that were free. The idea was very interesting as it is of a boat called the Ellan Vannin, that had sunk in the Liverpool River a few years before The Titanic had gone down, therefore, no one really knew about it as The Titanic overlooked it. There was also a poem that went with the boat which we would use in our final piece. One thing was lacking though which was an interview. The first day after resolving our problems, we went to the marina and museum in Liverpool as a new group to scout the location and finalise what was to be filmed the next day and what we could use. My role being the sound recordist with Oliver, we began searching for sounds we could record around the marina as well as in the museum and noting them down. The second day we took our equipment to the marina and we split into two groups for the first half of the shoot. Oliver and I stayed around the marina capturing sounds of the river crashing on the walls, seagulls flying by and footsteps across the bridges. Also, getting some footage using the second camera to use as cutaways and general footage around the area that could be used. When in the museum I wanted sounds of the people talking and walking around and also a guide talking about one of the boats in the museum. Plus, sounds within the library such as book pages being turned over. The third day was planned to interview a member of the museum that knew information about the boat we was documenting but it turned out that we had missed them or they did not have time so the group was worried but Kelly mentioned how she came up with the idea of the Ellan Vannin from a family friend and that we could interview him after the Liverpool trip. Therefore, we left Liverpool and Kelly went to visit the family friend and interviewed him herself as he lived away from Sheffield. An original group member was supposed to edit the footage we had taken from Liverpool, however they decided not to for some reason and then Tom began to edit. I began doing some sound design and as it was my first time using the software I learnt some new techniques such as using noise reduction and EQ. Oliver then took over the edit as we all stayed to chip in and help with the post-production. The edit was getting so close to being done when someone noticed that most of the footage had disappeared from Avid and most of it had to be started all over again within only a day or two to go before it was to be presented. Oliver and I then stayed till late hours in the edit suite to make sure we had a documentary to present and we also ordered pizza to the University to maximise our work ethic. All in all, the Liverpool trip was a very enjoyable experience as was making a documentary. However, improvements could have been made to our final piece such as getting a lot more footage that relates to the story in order for it to be more enjoyable to watch. Interchanging the poem and information from the interview with live footage of the marina and sounds to engage the viewers a lot more as the end piece needed to have a bit more pace or some change in pace. However, it was full of information about the Ellan Vannin and the footage and sounds and final edit still had a good flow.

Drama Evaluation

For the drama I believe my group started off well again, we met up to discuss ideas and we had more than enough to choose from. My idea for the drama was to have a main character that would be heavily invested in keeping his desk area clean and organised and when it was not to their satisfaction, it would make them very uncomfortable and would be constantly trying to perfect it. There would also be a second character that would be a counter part to the main character. This character would come into the desk space and make mess or tamper with it unintentionally, leaving crumbs or cutlery on the desk for example, leaving the main character always cleaning up after them and re-organising their desk space in order to feel comfortable with it again. This idea would use extreme close ups and slows in order to show the opposite emotion between the two characters. My idea was chosen a long with another in which would contain a relationship between two characters that use post it notes as communication. And using the post it notes specifically to show the journey between their relationship and use one defying shot of a room filled with post it notes. The two ideas were presented in the seminar group and it was decided that we should combine the two ideas together. Roles were then chosen in our group, Oliver director, Kelly producer, Nick on sound and cinematography for me and so Oliver and I began writing the script with Oliver eventually taking over the full script as he was director. Dan then joined our group as we had a session in the studio in which we would have actors read over our scripts and re-enact a scene so we could get a visual of how it would look. It was a great opportunity for us and it gave me an insight of what camera shots Oliver wanted to use. Although the actors were great during the session, we did not have any actors to use on the actual shoot. Leaving us to use Kelly as the female character and George, Nick’s friend, as the male. We also had issues with our location, the original use of a house did not come through and we had to use a student house which was not as bad as I had thought. The day of the shoot we gathered at University to grab equipment and then transport it to the location. A clamp was missing from our slider unfortunately so when it came to an outside scene it was hard to use the slider as it would not move as freely and smoothly as we wanted. Therefore, the shots were not as good as hoped. Dan and I had been swapping over camera through the first half of the day due to us having the same role, except for the scenes where we used two cameras. And, later in the day Dan would shift over to lighting and I took over cinematography altogether. I think the shoot went well throughout as we got a lot of footage and most of what Oliver wanted to capture. However, we had overestimated five minutes of film time and if all of the footage was to be used it would have ended at around eight minutes of film. Therefore, a lot of footage was taken out in post-production and that is when the film began to lose its sense and there became a lot of holes in the narrative. The film tends to jump from scene to scene with some continuity issues. A few times this happens in when April changes clothes between scenes when she should not have. And others where Dillon goes into the kitchen and does not find a post it note on the wall where they usually should. Plus, a bedroom scene where Dillon walks in on April lounging around and all of a sudden, they just start arguing with no real ignition due to certain clip or sound not being added to save time. However, I think the film is still relatively understandable and it still has a flow to it and changes in pace to show the tension building and when it is calm between the relationship. And, there is a clear journey and development between the two characters. I say we did a good job for a tiring thirteen hour shoot. Throughout post-production Oliver was in control of the final edit, with Nick doing a lot of sound design. With Dan and I always there and involved with the edit to chip in. As there was two days to edit, Dan and I became runners for Oliver, getting food and drink here and there. When presented Oliver explained the holes and issues we had in our film very clearly for Dom and the rest of the group to understand, which helped us out a lot. Overall, it was a great experience and enjoyable for me as I had a group I liked to work with and we all had a similar vision we wanted. Even though there was a lot to improve such as time to prevent holes in the narrative. Specifically for me, I enjoyed my role of cinematography and using the techniques I wanted to use such as handheld shots and getting crisp footage. And, I have taken the cinematography module for the second year so it really helped me to experiment with the cameras and prepare me for the second year.