Post - Production update

After having a group tutorial yesterday, although we all feel confident with where our film is going and that we will be able to manage our time well up until next week's presentation deadline, there are a few areas as a group that we feel we need to focus further on. One of the main issues is trying to fit all of the strongest interview footage into a documentary of 5 minutes in length.

We sat down as a team after this tutorial and discussed what we could do to make the workload more manageable with the week that we have left to complete the project, as well as how we could further narrow down our large amount of  interview footage to a few key areas and clips.  I agreed with Alex Potter that a good task to start this with would be for us all to listen back to and the full interviews that we gathered and each make notes on key phrases/quotes that are standout and we feel express our positive expressionism idea well, as give the viewer an insight into individuals own perspectives. We discovered by doing this that our interviews seem to be adapting the angle of our documentary slightly, as some of our contributors make viewers aware of elements of Street Art that we had never considered before, meaning that our documentary also seems to be taking on more of an informative style.

We all sat down in an edit suite and after listening to all of our interviews back, individually taking notes of key quotes and soundbites, we compared our notes and discussed which ones really held up the theme and angle that our film is taking. We then compiled a new list of narrowed down , more specific  soundbites to pass on to Oliver (Sound Editor) and Saul (Editor), that can then be included on a new audio timeline to see how this fits within our current piece. We are hoping that by doing this, the project will not seem so overwhelming in terms of the large amount of footage and audio that we have gathered, as we can now focus in on these key soundbites/interviews and still be staying within the 5 minute running time length.

 

Production Notes

Whilst we were in Liverpool, I kept notes of unexpected opportunities that came along and any updates to the production that were happening, as  well as things to consider for each of these.

We found as a group that a lot of our strongest footage came from having discovered a community of artists around a certain area of Liverpool (The Baltic Quarter) whilst we were filming, who were all keen to pass us on further contact details of artists and become involved, which provided us with unexpected and sometimes unplanned, but positive and further opportunities whilst there to capture a documentary which felt quite real to the area.

LIVERPOOL PRODUCTION DAY 3

After meeting up at the end of our second production day as well as in the morning, we discussed as a group what has been going well with the project so far, and what final footage we needed to gather on our last day in the city.

• On Tuesday (18th February) evening, I received an e-mail from Catherine from the Urban Canvas organisation that we interviewed earlier on in the afternoon, saying that they enjoyed being a part of our film and that they have passed our details onto an artist called Adam who they think may also be interested in helping us out with the project. I since e-mailed him back with our up to date production schedule, in case we might have been able to fit in arranging to meet and interview him at a similar time to our other interviews taking place at ZAP Graffiti studios in the afternoon.

• We discussed as a group what we needed to focus on filming wise in the ZAP Graffiti studio, in terms of making best use of the open space made available to us for a few hours. We decided that capturing close up shots of key items within the studio such as spray paint cans, splatters on the floor etc. as well as clear audio from single items within the studio will be productive to our documentary, as the more footage we gather the better, and that we would like to focus on gathering a selection of close up footage to go alongside sound bites taken from the interviews that will be held inside the studio.

Wednesday's outcome

The studio did not open until midday, so we made use of the morning by revisiting a place that we had previously noticed and gathered some basic footage around, and added to this by experimenting and exploring with different creative shot types and angles, as well as use of the tracks.

 

We met and interviewed Kieran at the ZAP Graffiti studio as scheduled, but whilst here we also gained further interest in our documentary from a number of artists working within the studio space. We managed to gain some interesting footage of the artists creating their work, as well as some extra interviews and audio during the time we were there. One of the artists also kindly agreed to spray paint the title of our documentary (City Canvas) on one of the walls for us, which we thought would be an interesting way to open up the documentary and introduce the subject matter from the beginning to the viewer.
Through covering different areas and corners of the studio space with a few different cameras, we managed to collect both video as well as audio of key objects, such as the shaking of spray paint cans, as we aimed to achieve capturing the excitement and energy of the general working studio environment that was all around us.

LIVERPOOL PRODUCTION DAY 2

On Tuesday morning, we held another production group meeting and decided on the following aims for our second production day:

• During the morning, we decided to use our time wisely by splitting into two groups again. We followed Noah's (Director's) suggestion that half of the group collected general city shots to gather a wider range of footage Liverpool as a city, in order to create the sense of place within our film, whilst the other half of the group focused more on revisiting some of the key places of interest that we discovered on the previous day and experimenting further with different creative shot types of the same places.
• We also discussed the possibility of contacting another place recommended to us on Tuesday (18th February), which was an arts based café on Roscoe Street. We wouldn't want to turn up unplanned, so could potentially contact them during the morning. However, we came to the decision as a group to not go ahead with this and instead focus on gathering our interview as well as city footage today, as we weren't sure of the exact details of the location and if it would be steering away from our original concept in relation to what we could actually get whilst there. This was also partially due to one of our aims being to try to get away from general voxpop interview styles and indoor footage, and instead aim to stick to more of an overall celebratory theme from the artists perspectives, using sound bites taken from interviews alongside outdoor footage. 

• We planned out our first scheduled interview with  arts organisation Urban Canvas , held at 2pm in the Old Bank Room at Hatters Hostel. We discussed the group organisation and job roles for this, and decided on splitting into two groups during the time that this will be taking place, based on which members of the team needed to be present during the interview and what else the rest of the team could be gathering in the meantime. It was decided that four of us will be present during this - Noah (Director), Alex K (Camera), Alex P (Sound) and myself as Producer. This was to solve the possible issue surrounding not wanting to overcrowd the interview space and to also make best use of the time available to us as a group; half of the group can be gathering outdoor footage for extra coverage whilst the interview takes place. We planned to complete all of our outdoor footage and return to the hostel by 12.30 in order to leave sufficient time for us to arrange and practice the set up for the interview, including checking the sound and camera settings.
• After this interview, we scheduled our second meet up with Tristan Brady Jacobs, a community arts worker, filmmaker and street art festival organiser at the Baltic Quarter area. We discussed the arrangements at present, which were that we would meet Tristan at the Unit 51 café around 3pm, but would be updating him via phone contact throughout the day.
• We discussed another potential place of interest  to look into called The Contemporary Urban Centre that when we split into our two groups previously we all noticed. We discussed the timing for the project and decided that if we had enough time tomorrow morning this is something we could look into, but at the time we didn't think it would be feasible with all of our other interviews scheduled being our main point of focus and priority at this stage.

Tuesday's outcome

• We discovered an area called Tunnage Square, where there was a lot of street art and spent a few hours here with a couple of cameras, capturing as much creative footage as well as many images as we could taken from different angles. We also experimented with different ways to shoot some of the artwork creatively, such as gathering a selection of handheld shots, GorillaPod Tripod shots and some standard set up tripod shots.

• During the morning, we visited the Bluecoat Gallery to ask about further street art sights around the city centre area that they may be aware of. We exchanged contact details and were directed to a few well known sights by other members of the public as well.
• Oliver and Saul kept in contact with our half of the group by phone throughout the morning, and did face the production problem at one stage of being asked not to film by the Albert Dock area as this was a restricted area. However, we managed to get around this by them moving on from this area and focusing on gaining further city coverage then arranging to meet us back at the hostel in the afternoon.
  
   
• We met with artists Catherine McMahon and Philip Battle from Urban Canvas in the afternoon, and interviewed both of them, as well as gained permission to use some stock images of their artwork which they can send us directly from their website. We also had a chat about the possibilities for the video in the future as they were keen to share it amongst Liverpool artists, and we agreed to keep in contact and send them updates with the production, as well as two final links to both of the completed versions of the videos. We have decided to create these two separate versions as we feel that the amount of footage we have gathered on the trip, as well as the interest and response from the artists community in the area that have become involved with the film would create a good opportunity for us to expand upon our documentary outside of our university project and create a longer version to share with the contributors.

Contact with Urban Canvas on day of interviews









 

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 As planned, we also met up with Tristan Brady Jacobs at the Baltic Quarter area of the city in the afternoon. We found this interview to be really productive and useful for our documentary, as Tristan is currently organising and trying to spread the word about the first ever street art festival to be held in Liverpool in the summer of 2014, and was passionate about our subject matter and the fact that we are trying to show a theme of celebration. He has agreed to keep in touch with us and has invited us back in June/July for this festival.

Contact made with Tristan on day of interview

Through talking to our contributors, we discovered that there was quite a close connection between all of the people we have managed to contact and have been interested in becoming involved with our documentary. There seems to be a community of artists around the Baltic Quarter area of the city that we have managed to get involved with our film. Through discussing the project and it's aims further with them, we managed to secure an interview with TOMO, the artist that we had previously gained interest from, for later on in the same afternoon. Initially, gaining contributor consent was quite difficult, due to the identity of the street artist wanting to be kept unknown. However, we managed to gain consent in form of an audio recording and he did agree to be filmed as long as we could blank out his face in the edit or could cover it up during the filming process. This interview, although last minute, has really helped our production to develop, as TOMO is one of the most current and upcoming street artists in Liverpool and capturing his story and thoughts on art on the streets from a first hand account has been insightful to add as an element to our documentary. We exchanged email contact details and agreed to keep in contact during the editing progress as well as send a copy over of the final film once completed.

LIVERPOOL PRODUCTION DAY 1

After holding two production group meetings on Sunday evening and Monday morning, we came up with the following plan for our first day in Liverpool. The main things that we aimed to get out of the day were:

• Spend most of the day exploring the city and getting to know some of the key areas of interest to our documentary, taking notes of specific street names that have interesting artwork.
• Follow the printed map route below, stopping at the places which have researched Street Art sights, on the way to a key location (Wolstenholme Square area)
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Possibly gain some voxpop interviews as a back up with members of the public whilst we are out. These will not necessarily be included in our final edited documentary, however will form as a back up and will ensure that we have gained more than enough footage to work with in the edit.

• Confirm with hostel staff that filming the interview in the building tomorrow is fine, discuss the best area for this to take place in and get location release form signed.

Monday's outcome

At the end of Monday, we held another production group meeting to discuss what we had achieved and the aims for the following day. We achieved the following on our first day of production:

 

• After initially starting the day out as a full group, we discovered that splitting into two groups worked more effectively, as we were then able to gather twice the amount of footage and cover more ground with our limited time, whilst exploring different areas of the city. For this reason, we split into two groups of three; Saul, Oliver and myself- and Alex K, Alex P and Noah. We collected stills and videos from a variety of different angles and experimented with creative shot types, capturing key pieces of street art around the outskirts of the city centre.

 

 

 

Making further contacts

Whilst Oliver, Saul and I were discussing some artwork we found interesting and gathering some footage and images of this, we were approached by a member of the public who happened to know the artist who produced the work we were recording. After discussing what we were doing and explaining the project and what we were trying to achieve with this, we were given contact details for the artist, who goes by the name of TOMO.

 

After talking on the phone to him and explaining a little bit about our project, initially he seemed a bit reluctant to the filming and audio recording process, due to the nature of his work and also not wanting his identity to be known. Although this was the case, he was still interested in the idea and did give us details of locations to film in and other contacts who may be interested in our idea and helping us out. Throughout the evening, some of the people who we had exchanged our contact details with and had put us in touch with TOMO earlier in the day texted us some further key location details, and called us back to inform us that he was actually happy to be interviewed as long as his face was not shown during filming, or could be blanked out in editing. We discussed our schedule for the next few days and agreed to keep in contact during the next day (Wednesday 19th), as the other person we are interviewing is a close friend of theirs and will be based within the same area of the city, meaning that we could potentially arrange an interview to take place around a similar time to this.

TOMO's artwork:

 

 

Evening production meeting

•  We also confirmed the suggested location and key arrangements with reception staff at the hostel for our interview with Urban Canvas to take place in on Tuesday.
  
• We discussed the options for sound that are available to us with our project being mostly an outdoor themed one. We agreed that it would be interesting if we could gather some sounds of close up items, such as spray paint cans and sounds of the finer details of the streets. Alex Potter (sound recordist) agreed that it would be ag good idea to generally focus on exploring the possibilities of capturing audio of close up details, rather than recording standard street atmos sounds for the full length of the documentary.

• We also had a look through the list of questions for the interviewees for Tuesday, and agreed upon the key questions and areas to cover, which will be focusing on a celebration of art on the streets, why outside is more appealing to artists and why people should take more notice of the art that they pass on a daily basis.

 

 

Street Art Photographer inspiration

http://fauxreel.ca/

After researching some other street art based documentaries, I also came across some street art photographer's and their work, which I found interesting in terms of the framing and range of camera angles used. We have already as a group discussed the possibility of adding still images into a montage like sequence into the opening of our documentary, alongside sound bites of key positive quotes gathered from our various interviewees, so I found researching photographers as well as street artists and films to be useful in providing us with a wider range of sources for inspiration and influences from various forms of media.

Through researching further into street art photography, I found one photography based street artist, Dan Bergeron (known as Fauxreel) who focuses on exploring themes such as the community and homelessness. I initially read the following interview as a starting point, as I became interested in finding out more about his work and how he chooses to portray street art through photography. 
http://www.unurth.com/The-Fauxreel-Interview#ixzz2v8WmzkyO

I find his work interesting and think that although his work is stills photography based, we could take inspiration from this for our own film project, as his perspective on the subject of street art being acknowledged as a positive art form seems to be similar to what we are trying to achieve and the angle and approach that we are aiming to take with our film.

 

Camera Logging Sheets

 

PRODUCTION FOLDER: Location Stills

Here are some of the key location shots from our production. Some of our interviews were arranged whilst we were in Liverpool, and so were filmed outdoors, and our interview with artist TOMO was filmed inside a workshop area where the owners didn't want too many photos taken.

 

PRODUCTION FOLDER: Equipment List

PRODUCTION FOLDER : Call Sheet - Day 3 - Wednesday 19th February 2014

PRODUCTION FOLDER: Call Sheet - Day 2- Tuesday 18th February 2014

PRODUCTION FOLDER: Location Consent Form - Wednesday 19th February 2014

DAY 3 - Location Consent Form: Artists Interviews and Filming inside studio space

ZAP Graffiti, Grand Central, Liverpool:

PRODUCTION FOLDER: Location Consent Form - Tuesday 18th February 2014

DAY 2 - Location Consent Form - Interview at 2 p.m (with Catherine McMahon and Philip Battle from Urban Canvas)

Hatters Hostel, Liverpool: