Personal Evaluation

Throughout the making of this documentary the group has faced problems with members not showing up on certain days like group meetings and editing but me and other members of the team just got on with it and filmed and edited.

On the day of filming we encountered problems with the 3 point lighting there just wasn’t enough space in silvers living room to set it up, so we had to dim the lighting in her living room to make it look darker. There was also problems with sound when we booked out a boom mic we wasn’t given a wire. By the time we realised this we was already at slivers house. We had to use the wire on the mic which didn’t stretch very far.

We encountered problems during the editing process i had captured everything onto avid including the audio but when we started to put footage on the timeline there was no sound so we had to capture everything again. When it came to working in a team I got on well with everyone and for the editing process everyone got to have their say and give their input. For the documentary to work well it had to be edited in two. First step was to just choose AUDIO on what silver was saying and the second was IMAGE to fit with Silvers story.  I wanted to work on the first step so I listened to everything that sliver was saying then, picked the most important parts. I personally think it was better to chose sound first because once we had her story we could then use images to convey what she was saying.

The editing style for our documentary is slow paste with dissolves. If we Used fast jump cuts it wouldn’t allow the audience to feel her story. Having audio followed by silence works more effective for the piece that we are making because it helps create more of an atmosphere.

I’ve learnt form past mistakes to always have a varitey of cut aways becuase the last documantary i made my subject was just sitting in one place which became very boring to watch. This time round i made sure that we filmed a varitey of cut aways i was very pleased with the footage we had recored we had a lot of stong pictures to choose from.

 As you can see by the lighting it is very dark because she has a dark story to tell. We got  a mid angel close up of her mouth talking to hide her face.

As another alternative to filming her mouth we also filmed shots of her arms and hands because some people generally use hand movements when they talk. We also captured her hands shaking when she was holding her cigarette.

sliver was’nt talking for this part but we still filmed her lighting up her cigarette.

 She began to cry  when she was talking about her miscarriage so we got an extreme close up of her tears to capture her emotion.

When she was crying she asked us to stop filming her. I thought  this mask would be a great contrast to represent her tears. Followed by silence because having no sound can sometimes say a lot.

We captured filler footages of Silvers arm chair just to show the sate that she lives in. Its real she is a junkie and by the state of her house you could see that she had issues. We also got filler footage of her wall paper it had cracks in it to illustrate she had cracks in her life.

When she talked about not having a reason to give up drugs due to her mischarge she also spoke about her niece so we got filler footage of her niece’s toys. To show the audience she is not a dangerous person she’s allowed to be around kids.

When it came to editing as a group we all had our own different opinions but we made it fair by deciding on what the majority wanted to keep in and leave out.

Through editing I have learnt that it is okay to uses pauses in-between cut a ways especially if it looks good visually.  From filming  I’ve learnt to always double check equipment because we could of had much better sound if we had noticed that there was no wire with mic.

Shooting Script

Picture	Sound
Begin with white a wall paper with the camera paining down to silver	Her talking about how she’s not a drug addict
Shot of her arms with the camera panning to her mouth smoking a cigarette	Her talking about signing on
Title- Real life Silvers story- fade into a black screen- fades back into Silver  talking	Continues talking about signing on
Cut away to her lighting a cigarette	Silver talks about how she got into drugs and who introduced her to it
Dissolve out to show a clock on the wall followed by a blank screen	Continues talking about signing on
Cut away back to silver with a close up of her preparing drugs on the kitchen table	She explains about her struggles to get high
Cut away back to silver talking with her mouthThen another cut away with her talking with her hands	Talking about her miscarriage
Camera cuts to Silver crying then dissolves to the mask on the wall	No Sound

Experimentation, sources and insperation

We are making a 3 minute documentary on a young woman who goes by the name ‘silva’ who wishes to have her identity hidden so I am looking at a number of ways in which I can do this.

When I watch crime watch they often darken out people’s faces to conceal their identity so using the 3point light system would be helpful because it can be used to create shadow around the face.

 i was just expermenting with my stills camera but becuase i have a senstive camera it picked up the light  even though i blocked it out. but i was going for the complety dark look where,  just the out line of the body is shown. but i think the bright light in the back ground still gives out a nice effect.

this image here is similar to the one above but i brightend the light a little bit more. The subjects face is kind of shown but you still can’t see them.

i really like this image here. i think it would make a great cut away. when i watch interviews some times they just show the hands and some people talk with there hands. and to be honest i would rather see hand movement rather then just my subjct black out like the images above becuse at least theres some type of movement rather then just sitting still.

This is another image I like. You can only see the subject’s hair but you can’t see the face. In a way I would like to have some parts of my subject’s body visible because the audience can build up some type of connection with them.

 

 i found this image on google .Rather then darking out our subjects face we could use shadow to help tell her story.  we could shine a light onto a wall. so our audince can still see the out line of her face that way it’s not so boring and creates interest because you can see our subject making movements with her shadow. The documentary about sliva life is such a sensitive subject and an extreme close up of her face would help capture her emotion, but because we can’t get an extreme close up of her face it would be a good idea to get a close up of her shadow like this image.

The documentary what we are making is about silvers story and she will tell us about her life. Our information came from Silver herself, she talked about how she got into drugs, how she uses job seekers and sometimes dance for extra money to feed her habit and her miscarriage being the reason she wants to stop taking drugs.  So we could prepare questions we did research before hand on drugs and jobseekers allowance. We found this information from website like talk to frank to get the names of different drugs and jobcentre plus and direct gov.

For the production I thought silver wouldn’t allow us into her house but she did and I was pleased about that because we got to film her in her own environment. where she was comfortable and she really opened up to us. Especially when she spoke about her miscarriage she broke down in tears. That was one part to her story she also talked about drug taking and being on jobseekers allowance. So when it comes to telling her story we have a lot of information to choose form. If we used the 3 point lighting with her in the studio i don’t think she would have opened up to us as much.

We all had our own rolls within the production and mine was asking questions but we all had our own input on what cut a ways we wanted to film. When it comes to editing we will all do it together so we can each have our say on what we want to include.

Group Treatment

We are doing a documentary on a young woman called silver who started taking drugs at the age of 16 now at the age of 24 she wants to change, wanting to cure her addiction. We are going for a small personal outlook into her life signing on at the job centre and how she uses money to feed her drug addiction, also how drugs have consumed her with no remorse of the death of her baby. She has spent her whole life blaming other people for her mishaps.

 The questions were hoping to have her answer are the following:

• how long have you been taking drugs? What drugs?
• What changed in your life, to make you do such things?
•  What’s changed in your life now to make you wanting to change? Miscarriage!
• Have you tried to find a job before? How did you find it?
• How are you finding life now? Are you excided to change? Yes I want to because… I want to change for my baby (tears) making me loose him/her because of DRUGS means I needed to change, it’s like I killed them for my own pleasure and being stressed.
• How much do you spend on drugs weekly?

Filming styles we want to take our character into the TV studio for a face to face interview using different lighting styles i.e. dark face, hidden identity, stand outs etc. Reason being the person has some personal issues she wants to talk about and doesn’t feel comfortable talking on camera. This will be similar to hot seating referring to drama techniques. Feedback on my video!

Feedback 1 minute trailor

I filmed my one minute trailer documentary I wasn’t able to get to my subject they were too far away so I found a ‘rocker’ shop where they allowed me film inside. I recorded there because it’s the next best thing that relates to my subject I was able to show visuals on the way she dresses.

‘Roker’  (there was music to this piece but youtube disabled the sound due to copy right)

Feedback

I was asked an interesting question if I can’t get to my chosen person would I still be able to film my documentary. And I thought about it and I can. Because my punk friend is black I know that her mum doesn’t really approve of the way she has her hair so perhaps I could interview her family members and also her friends and find out why she chose to be an outsider and it if do interview my person I could also get more personal and find out how it makes her feel that her mum doesn’t approve is she doing it just to wind up her mum or is she doing it because it’s what she wants to do.

Treatment

Josephine is a young girl with a shaven head and stand out make up she choose to be an outsider by dressing like a punk. There will be extreme close ups of her eyes, nose, mouth then I will zoom away to revel her whole face and then fade into a stills of an old photo of how she looked in school. And then I will fade back to her and ask her what made her want to change. Because of her appearance she finds it hard to get a job in retail and has to work in a factory where customers can’t see her because she’s in the back ground. I will film her in oxford street going into various different shops handing out CV’s and when she comes out of different shops I  will ask her to tell us how the employer looked at her. If she really wants a job in retail she might have to change the way she looks and I will ask her if she thinks it’s fair that she has to change the way she looks to work face to face with costumers.

I will then do vox pops in Oxford street asking random people how they would feel if they saw a punk working in ‘ Hight Street Retail’ would it bother them or perhaps they don’t care.

This documentary will ask if the world is still judgmental are looks and appearances really important?  We stay looks don’t matter but deep down do they ?

Cinematography assigment

Michael Chapman is an American cienmatographer who began his career as a camera operator where he worked on ”The Godfather’ 1972 and Jaws 1975. His talent shined through and he became a cinematographer for films like, ”Taxi driver’ ‘Kinder garten cop’ and ‘Dead men don’t wear plaid’. He did a remarkable job on the film ‘Raging bull’ with crisp clear black and white cinematography.  A lot of voliet imagery is shown inside the ring.

  The cinematography in terms of lighting is  bitter even though it’s in black and white you can tell its been made very strong to represent the brutality inside the ring. The camera angles vary for each different fight scene. In this image you can see that the camera angle has been tilted on its side to represent the knock out.

 

 

  you can tell by this image here that he pays very close attention to detail Chapman has chosen to emphasise the thick blood on the rope by using depth of field. By blurring out the crowd in the back ground you can see the blood dropping off the rope.

Robby Muller was born in April 1940 in Villemstad, Curaco. He has been a cinematographer for films such as ‘ The American friend’ 1978  ‘Dead man’ 1995 and ‘Down by Law’ 1986. 

 In ‘Paris Texas’ he does a great opening to the film by letting the camera hover over the desert so you can get a nice view of the scenery. However I noticed when I watched the film the camera hardly made any movements it would stay in one position. You would get a long distance shot of the character walking towards the camera and the camera would remain stationary even when the character walked out of the shot it wouldn’t pan to follow the character.

In terms of Robbie Muller’s cinematography he does a great job at capturing scenery. Even when the guy is in the car you can still see clear landscape through the rear window.  

  

The scenery is so perfect that it almost looks like a back drop with the clear blue sky he does a clear job of capturing the climate in the desert. Through out the film i can feel the heat of the desert i get a sense of hotness because Muller uses very strong bright blues and at night he makes the sky look really red.

 In Paris Texas the landscape shots worked really well for me Muller was able to separate the character from the back ground to show alienation which worked well with the film. However there were a lot of long distance shots where the character would walk towards the camera and then walk out of shot but Muller doesn’t pan to follow them. Which didn’t work well for me because i got bored with the camera just concentrated on one spot.What I liked about Chapman’s work was the home made video which was shot in colour I thought it was really nice to show the transition in time and I thought form then onwards it would be shown in colour but it went back to black and white and I would have liked to of seen the rest of the film in colour. However it was a bloody flim so maybe it’s better to watch it in black and white.

If the cinematography was exchanged it would be a disaster for me because Muller hardly moves the camera and Raging Bull is a very fast paste film so if the camera stayed still in the ring it would become a boring film to watch.

The style of Michael Chapman’s work could relate to my ‘real lives’ assignment because I could use black and white stills of my subject Josephine to show her in the past before she got into head shaving. So I would have to find photos of her in the past and then photo shop them black and white, and then I would film the rest in colour to represent the now.

William Burroughs

William Burroughs was born in St. Louis Missouri and he is famously known for his cut up technique. H e would make new stories by taking three or four other stories and putting them together to create another story.

I’ve been looking into his work and to be honest I find it quite confusing and none of it makes sense to me. I watched a clip on youtube called Antony Blach 1966 and it was practically 3 minutes of a voice over  saying ‘yes hello’ over and over again  with the constant repeat of the same images over and over again. There was also varying camera speeds it was fast then slow then normal past  and what made it even more confusing was that the voice over did not match up to the images at all. There was a guy walking, some random spinning thing, but i noticed as the time goes on he adds new images but still repeats them.

I also watched another one of his cut ups and from 2:11 min you can see him sliding to different stories together and then the confusion starts again for me.  I watched the clip from 2:11 and I turned down the sound. What I saw on screen was normal imagery nothing unusual just various different scenes and camera angles like long distance shots, mid angle close ups, extreme close ups.   But when I watched it with Audio it just didn’t add up at all and his voice over is really dual and boring which matches the lighting because the lighting is very dim. But to me the moving image just doesn’t seem to fit in.

Narrative for images

I’ve taken 10 random pictures of an empty space, I didn’t think about what I was taken at all I just simply snapped away, without concisely thinking. To be honest I found it quite challenging taking random photos and then trying to put a story to it. Normally I would have my story in my head and then I would go out and find images to fit with my story. I went to a subway which I have to walk through every day to get to uni, and I just snapped scenery of what was in the subway. I’m now going to forget about the images which I have taken and just make up my own Story.

Almost every day i leave my student halls to begin my chaotic day walking through the subway.This place is so packed busy with life people passing in and out give me space to breathe. It’s just to packed in this area I feel so uncomfortable with this constant busyness of people walking in totally different directions. Some go this way some go that way. This under pass is buzzing with people I have to squeeze my way through. Sorry a stranger shouts they stepped on my shoe.  Every corner I turn someone’s there chatting on the phone. Every stair way has someone or a group sitting on it .People clogging up the path way by sitting on the grass or dropping litter on the concrete. I get so confused I feel so isolated and so trapped in this dark narrow space. I just need space I’m off to the city centre where I’m sure no one will be around, I’m bound to find space.

I’ve written about being in a busy environment packed with lots of people, which is completely different from the photos I have taken because the images I have taken show a lot of space with no one around. Similar to William Burroughs work my story doesn’t not match up to my images

 I’m now going to select a few lines and put them under my images to create a story.

Images

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Almost every day i leave my student halls to begin my chaotic day walking through the subway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I feel so uncomfortable with this constant busyness of people walking in totally different directions. Some go this way some go that way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This under pass is buzzing with people I have to squeeze my way through. Sorry a stranger shouts they stepped on my shoe.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Every corner I turn someone’s there chatting on the phone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Every stair way has someone or a group sitting on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

People clogging up the path way by sitting on the grass or dropping litter on the concrete. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I get so confused I feel so isolated and so trapped in this dark narrow space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I just need space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I’m off to the city centre where I’m sure no one will be around, I’m bound to find space.