I want our documentary to be personal and have people from Liverpool tell the story about The Beatles and this success rather then have a narration and voice over telling it. I think this can help make our piece seem more personal, like Pockets.
While trying to think up ideas for shots I looked at several of Channel 4's short documentaries, 3 Minute Wonder. I think by looking at these that they keep things very simple and to the point. They don't have time to fill up space with shots that are unnecessary. I really want to have some shots of Liverpool to set the Scene but will have to make sure that we don't waste time getting to the point of our documentary, The Beatles.
As I hadn't been to Liverpool before i found it had trying to visualise the shots and locations that would be good to film out so i had to do a lot of research into Matthew street and what it looks like here is a few images that i found from the web:
Straight after our Presentation we discussed the possible ideas that we could have for our Documentary. The idea that we all agreed on was The Beatles. As the director I feel though I hadn't fulfilled my role to the most at this point as I hadn't come up with a strong idea, but I had said when I agreed to be director that I'm not the most creative so do need help to come up with the idea, once we have a god idea I could happily go and plan shots and order of which we would go about telling our story. During this discussion I feel as the others in my group then started working better and bouncing around ideas which lead to The Beatles.
Here is a Shot List and a few ideas of Story Boards that I produced in order for Hannah to make a schedule for our time in Liverpool.
At the start of the Documentary I want to show a few shots of Liverpool in general before mainly focusing on The Beatles to help set the scene, this would involve shots up and down Matther Street, the Street sign. I also want shot of people to show the popularity of this street, I think that i would be interesting to get shots of a loads of peoples feet as they walk past like a time lapse. People are more likely to carry one walking and not focus on the fact that there is a camera there if we we to have the camera down on street level at their feet. For the Interview I want quite tight framing around the Contributors faces and have them slightly of centre. each contributor would be slightly off to each side so then when they are cut into each other you have a variety of angles. I also was a lot of Cut away to the show the setting in which the interview is taking place and the scenes around Matthew Street. This was when they are on scene you focus on them, not their settings.
At this stage in Pre-Production we felt that Fiona was struggling with the scheduling and organising. Also due to personal reasons Fiona was going to be absent from the shot in Liverpool so we felt that Hannah would be able to fulfil the role more sufficiently. This then meant the roles were as follows:
The starting point for our idea for our Documentary was If Questions so i decided to mind map a range of If questions to see if there was any that I thought would be able to link into one another in order to make some sort of structure.
I liked the whole concept of If questions but was trying to think practically about it and i couldn't see a clear structure to this idea. I tried communicating this to my group but no one seemed to understand where I was coming from. As this was the day prior to our Pitch Presentation I spent a considerably long time trying to get inspiration as to what direction that I could try and bring our Documentary towards. i didn't want our documentary to turn out into something commercial that has been done time and time before. I want it to have some sort of meaning and thought process holding it together. But unfortunately I am not the most creative of people so kept coming to dead ends.
Hannah helped and together we managed to try and make a structure to the concept of If Questions as this was the angle of which the other group members seemed to want to do. Here is a copy of the idea Hannah wrote to present and some initial shot ideas that I thought up:
I wasn't that happy with this idea but it was this or nothing at this stage.
The Presentation couldn't have gone any worse. Hannah and I meet the others before the seminar in order to try and explain this idea to them. During the Presentation everyone seemed to talk over each other and no one was really sure as to what our exact approach was. This then made everyone realise the fact that we had no strong idea or structure for our documentary.
This is a 3 minute documentary by Lucia Ashmore about and elderly man and his secrets about life and cooking.
I really enjoyed watching this short documentary. I think that way that it has been put together is very well and highlights the simplicity of the character. The majority of the shots show him talking about his life, meeting his wife and cooking and each time he's very casual in the way he address the camera and audience. I think the fact that he's like this helps that audience feel as thou they are just sitting in his house with him, having a cup of tea listening to his stories as you would with you own granddad. This really appeals to me as its such a simple subject and very simply done but you feel so sympathetic toward him so want to listen to his stories and find out what else he has to tell.
Unlike the previous one, about skating, it doesn't feel at all set up, even thou the interview and pieces to camera would have been. I think I would want to bring this approach into our documentary, i don't want it to feel like your being forced to listen and except what is being told, I think it is so much more of a powerful story to have the audience wanting to listen and find out.
The piece as a whole just flows really smoothly even thou there are jump cuts of him doing things in the same position that he is being interviewed in and the cutaways. I think the constant subtle melodic song that plays throughout helps connect the pieces and shots together. I also think that is it very clever how the story flows smoothly even thou the character changes locations several times through the piece.
This is a 10 minute documentary by Orlando Von Einsiedek about a project that has been set up in Pakistan to teach Kids how to skate.
In this piece I like how they have managed to portray a very unique subject that people don't really get to see in areas such as Pakistan. This piece is based on the children and how learning to skate has managed to improve their quality of live. I think the bas of this piece is very personal but no way near as personal as Pockets. The shots feel very set up, such as the opening shots of boys skating around the town, in and out of shot. I don't really this aspect of the piece as I as a viewer don't want to feel as thou they are forcing the story upon us rather then it just naturally unravelling.
One of the things that I do like thou is the fact that this whole subject area is very unknown and not shown. there are many documentaries and programmes about the war and fighting in deprived countries such as Pakistan but it always shows the adults point, never really about how the children are affected when they can't change or choose anything, they just have to get on with growing up in these circumstances. I think by having the shots of the solders and derelict building that we are al use to seeing in amongst other shots of the kids learning to skate helps portray that the media only show aspects of what is happening when there is so many other things happening around these areas that get missed out. they focus on the negative, rather then look at the positive things around them.
Overall, I wouldn't go out my way to watch this again. it reminds me a lot of adverts trying to get people onboard with their project where as i prefer documentaries that teach and show us things that we may have not thought about before.
This is a 3 minute long Documentary by James Lees that looks at the content of peoples pockets and what the objects say about them.
I really like the way in which this is shot. He has used a lot of depth of field when filming the shots of their hands having the background of the shot out of focus. I really like this effect as brings all your focus onto their hands, not what you can see in the background. It also gives an artistic feel to the piece using very simple shots of their hands and faces but together they build up small stories about them.
What is inspiring from this piece, and what I would like to bring into ours is the how personal it is. when watching it doesn't seem set up of fake in anyway. The stories are very personal to the contributors and the narrative as a whole comes from them, not a voice over or someone telling the story for them. I want to bring this into our documentary by having the general public in and around Liverpool to tell the stories rather then us tell their story for them.
Something else that stands out when watching this is the way in which James Lees has framed the shots. In many of the shots showing the persons facial features he has decided to crop aspects out. such as having an extreme close up on the mouth or by having the contributor half off screen. I think this is some sort of signifier for the fact that the contents of their pockets and what they have said only build up a part of their entire story, showing only a part of their appearance.
We were recently given our next brief, This is for a 5 minute Documentary which will be filmed in Liverpool and based on Liverpool Stories. We had initial discussions about ideas of which we came up with the concept of If questions, for example If you only had a day to live, what would you want to do? We are thinking that we want to make the piece quite personal and use a range of people and ages from the Liverpudlian community.
We also allocated out the roles for this project, as we were not allowed to do the same role as the previous project we were unable to do our strongest roles and decided the following
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