Window on the World progress

A single character takes you on a journey into his view on the world.
To make a visual and music commentary on life is proving to a very hard task. Selecting suitable music that evokes the mood I want to create has been a time consuming but enjoyable task. Over the weeks I have listened to so much moving and atmospheric music that it made me think of the visuals before I even began filming. I have filmed at many different locations, in bath, Tavistock and on Dartmoor.
Trying to marry together visuals and sound was great fun but also exhausting as I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to editing. My film does not contain any dialogue or any specific characters and so at first impression anyone could be thinking that this would be an easy task to complete.
I considered including textual poetry on screen as well as dialogue but the lyrics of one of my chosen songs is enough to justify the imagery well.

Editing an Interview

Over the past two weeks I have been working at the Money Race edit. This has been surprisingly time consuming. It has certainly been a learning opportunity as our inexperience in filming face to face interviews has thrown up a few problems for me.

Whilst reviewing the footage, it became apparent that we needed to make the film informative and also interesting to view. This meant using a variety of cut away shots of Hannah, the interviewer, the interviewees.
The first difficulty I had to overcome was the lack of cutaways in response to both Rob and Don’s answers. The second difficulty lay in the fact that we did not have enough cut aways of posed questions to the interviewee. This meant that I had to use a more creative way of editing using more archive footage to lay over the posed questions. Despite this, I think that the use of archive footage looks great within the interview and reinforces the questions in a creative way hopefully keeping the audience interested.

I have learnt that preparing questions for an interview is very important. Reviewing the footage more closely I noticed that my research into Don Foster’s career was very beneficial for the interview. I also noticed in his facial response and body language to our interest in his involvement with the warm front scheme, education ministerial career and comments about the BBC provoked a pleasing response from him and proved that I had done my homework!

Getting to grips with filming - The Don

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The 7th April was a day for correcting our errors and shooting enough film for our cutaways. The interview with Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat MP went well. He answered all the questions in depth which will be a valuable contribution to our film.

Selecting good questions is an important part of the process so that his responses don’t consist of yes and no answers. I think our questions enabled him to answer fully.
To set up the filming we had to work around his small office. Time was obviously important to him and we all realised that organisation and completing filming to time with minimal fuss is very important. Time is money!
We began by filming our interviewee only. We then followed this by recording noddies of both Hannah and Don Foster. We also recorded several over the shoulder shots of Hannah and some of her asking the most important questions.

With the lighting we had to position the camera away from the window and set the white balance. Fortunately the desk was in the right position in the office adjacent to the window allowing reasonable lighting conditions for the interview.
We asked if it would be possible to record the entrance shot of Hannah entering the building which was no problem.

We completed our paperwork with release forms and location agreements after the interview and Don wished us well for the completion of the film. It was a very productive day for filming. Now, back to editing!

Troubleshooting

There are so many things to remember when shooting on scene that certain parts of the process can be missed out. As part of the film we needed to record various shots of Hannah for continuity and storyline purposes.

Our main problem was that unfortunately during some filming, sound wasn’t recorded in the cutaways. We decided that we would have to shoot them again. As Hannah is the link character in our documentary, we needed to shoot her coming in and out of shot in Bath and her walking in and out of shot in the Rob Mears interview. We also had to remember continuity of wearing the same clothes.

It has been a great learning point for the group that it is important to record more footage than you need even they are pointless cutaways of shop fronts.

At first I believed that you didn’t always need sound for cutaways. Now thinking about the editing process, I think it could be beneficial even if the sound is not needed to include this in the filming. Including sound provides the finished film not only with continuity but also vital atmosphere if needed. This allows for a smooth seamless transfer between sections, without great pauses to panic the viewer.

My collection of newspaper cuttings and articles need to be worked into our completed film. We will do this in the publishing lab by photographing them and editing this into our final cut. Sourcing archive footage is also proving to be quite a problem. It is difficult to gain permission as people who have obtained and uploaded the videos to the internet often don't know where they have obtained the footage. I am not sure how much of our research material we will be able to use but am hopeful we could include as much as possible to create a more varied and interesting documentary.

Diary Dates

We have several dates that will move the project forward. On 7th April will be our interview with the Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster at his Bath office. The morning of 8th April is an opportunity for a lighting and grip demonstration. This will be useful for knowing what lighting will be needed in Don’s office for recording.
After the Easter break on 26th April we will be meeting. This is followed on 30th April by the rough cut of the film ready for final hand in at 4pm 6th May.

Green Gauge - Change to Documentary

As media students I suggested that it would be a good idea if we made the documentary more personal to us. The whole group decided upon making the documentary based around a member of our team.

It was quickly decided that this would be Hannah. The point of using Hannah as a direct subject gives an emotional tie with the audience keeping them interested in what’s happening. It also allows a stronger story line and variety in shots keeping the audience keen regarding the new visuals.

We are in the process of getting shots of Hannah outside the interview buildings and doing a piece to camera on her opinions after the interview.