Documentary pitch and progress

After pitching our two ideas on Monday, we have had quite a difficult decision as a group to make as to which idea to go ahead with for the documentary. For now, we have kept both options open; we have contacts who have agreed to help us out in Liverpool for each idea, who we contacted to make aware of the pitch prior to Monday.

As a group, we all agree that although we like our Change The Record documentary concept, we feel that it would be hard given the time we have left before production to track down a location for us to shoot in, now that the record store no longer exists. With 'City Canvas' - the street art concept - we definitely have access to the ZAP Graffiti studio, as well as other key locations that we have researched where there are recognised pieces of art around the city, which will enable us to gather further footage outside of the studio space too. For this definite access reason, we have decided to focus on developing our 'City Canvas' concept. We have arranged an interview with Kieran from ZAP Graffiti at midday next Wednesday.


Pitch 1 - 'Change The Record'

























Pitch 2 - 'City Canvas'

 























After holding another production group meeting today, we discussed that the timing of this is not ideal in terms of making best use of the three days production time that we have whilst in Liverpool. I contacted ZAP Graffiti and they have since put up a Facebook status update, asking if anyone would like to get involved with our documentary. Although this is still scheduled for the same time on Wednesday, it will ensure that on the day we have enough participants. The response to this has provided us with new contacts, who I have been in touch with to check their availability and level of interest on the Monday and Tuesday of next week as well as Wednesday. I have also sent an e-mail to Urban Canvas Liverpool, a group of professional visual artists who provide street art projects, and they have also contacted me back since expressing their interest and have agreed to stay in touch over the next few days.

Update on Documentary progress

Yesterday we spent some time putting together the final touches to both pitches and treatments; Change The Record - the independent record store to internet sales documentary, and City Canvas - the documentary exploring and challenging misconceptions about street art. We managed to speak to both Spike (our contact for the record store idea, who owns the Music Consortium in Liverpool) as well as Kieran (our contact from Liverpool organisation ZapGraffiti) via phone calls,  who have both agreed to keep in touch and have shown interest in our ideas at this stage.

Due to the university strike today, unfortunately we were unable to pitch today, despite having everything in place as a group. We have managed to use today as an opportunity to make further contact with our possible contributors to make them aware of this change, and have agreed to contact them further on Monday after our pitch to discuss the chosen idea further.

We have arranged to meet up again tomorrow as a group to adapt our pitches slightly, based on the information that our contributors have given us and to practice timing our pitch to the 10 minutes we will be given on Monday. At this stage, we feel quite confident as a group that we have two strong ideas and are organised, but have agreed that after Monday it should be a lot easier for us to progress once we have found out which concept gets chosen, as then we can really focus in on spending our time making arrangements and planning for one key idea instead of splitting our time between organising the separate two that we currently have.

Documentary group update

Since last week, as a group we have been meeting every day to keep up to date with the production progress. After speaking to Spike on the phone on Monday, he expressed a level of interest and said that in principle he was agreeing to being involved with our documentary, however was keen to find out more about the exact angle and approach to the documentary that we are taking. We agreed to stay in touch, and after meeting again with the rest of the production team on Monday, I have since written up a clear outline and treatment and sent this via e-mail to Spike, along with a list of questions for him which he also suggested on the phone might be something he could further help us out with.

The group have discussed this concept further and we have all agreed that it seems like an interesting and unique subject matter that if we can follow through with and keep the interest there between both us and the contributors, will be good to work with and produce an informative documentary. We have also discussed our other idea which will also be pitched on Thursday, focusing in on the topic of Street Art and challenging misconceptions associated with it. Oliver has successfully managed to research and contact local Liverpool organisation  ZapGraffiti, who promote graffiti as a positive art form, and they have also shown a level of further interest in working alongside us with this documentary film project. We discussed as a group the importance of keeping in contact with people from backgrounds relating to both of these separate ideas, as for now it is a good idea to keep our options open in terms of which idea we will choose to go ahead with for the final production.

I tried to book out a room for the group to meet and spend some time creating a pitch and discussing our ideas further, however due to the library being busy a problem I encountered was that all of the rooms were booked up for most of the afternoon. We still arranged to meet up and luckily we got around this by finding a free table in the library with a large computer screen which we used to create the pitch for the record concept together. We also came up with the working title for now as 'Change The Record', which can be interpreted in two ways; changing the record as something is getting old/boring and a new change is required, or as in change the record into a CD, in terms of the comparison between old and new times and changing technology in the music industry.

I have completed the treatment for the 'Change The Record' documentary idea, whilst Oliver and Alex Kentfield have been working on the treatment for the Street Art concept. We have arranged another group meeting for tomorrow at 2p.m, where we aim to get the Street Art concept pitch completed, so that we have the rest of tomorrow evening, as well as another final group meeting held on Thursday morning to run through our pitches and make sure that everything is put into place and fits within the given 10 minute time slot ready for our two pitches on Thursday.

Documentary Project

For the documentary project we are required to work in groups of six. For this project, I will be working as Producer, with Noah Chebouli as Director, Alex Kentfield as Camera Operator, Alex Potter as Sound - Recordist, Oliver Guy as Sound- Editor and Saul Allerton as Editor.

Since being introduced to the new documentary module on Thursday, as a group we have all exchanged contact details and been communicating with one another to arrange meetings. We have held two successful group meetings since, where we have been starting to discuss early ideas, researching current news articles and developing our concept.

After doing some joint group research on the Liverpool Echo website on Thursday afternoon, as a group we managed to narrow down our findings to two newspaper articles that caught our attention in terms of thinking about the benefits of creating a documentary based on their individual subject matters. We also discussed another idea that we had previously thought about and looked into, and we discussed the pros. and cons. of using each story as a main focus for our documentary.

 

 After discussing this further and researching each story again individually, we agreed as a group that the idea we felt strongest about and that seemed the most current and original was the closure of the Vinyl Emporium record store concept. As a second idea to also pitch on Thursday, we chose the Street Art concept over the Public Transport idea, as we felt as a group that more could be achieved visually with it, and that our public transport idea was heading more in the direction of a short film narrative rather than a documentary.

Taking on the role of  Producer, over the weekend I have managed to successfully get in contact with The Music Consortium, an Event Management, Event promotion, Crew Management and Artist Management company based in Liverpool, who also used to own the Vinyl Record Shop in Liverpool city centre that has now been closed down. The news article that we found discusses the fact that the store is now selling all of it's stock on eBay, which grabbed our attention as we thought about how the contrast between the age of a record, as a valuable collector's item, and online auctioning sites such as eBay could create an opportunity for an interesting documentary film to be made. I have made arrangements to speak to the previous owner of the store and The Music Consortium, Spike Beecham, on the phone on Monday, and to meet up with the rest of the group on Sunday afternoon to discuss our concept further after this. We have had a look at the news article which we originally found as a group, and I have highlighted some key facts that we discussed and found to be of interest:

 

We agreed on some questions to ask, and a few key areas to research further into, including how the store stands now and what state it is in (we discussed that if it was a completely empty and bordered up this could actually enhance our creativity and communicate our idea more strongly) and where the large collection of records is currently stored. As Producer, I am also going to discuss this with Spike on the phone tomorrow, and try and gain access to some key locations and possibly try and arrange some contributors for interviews.

We have all agreed that communicating with one another and keeping in contact is vital during our production, and so we have agreed to meet up every day this week, in order to all contribute towards our final pitches and treatments ready for Thursday and also keep updated with the latest happenings and the progress of our production.

Documentary Analysis - Pockets

Pockets (Dir.James Lees, 2008)

Pockets (Dir. James Lees) is a three minute documentary film which explores the subject of emptying different peoples pockets to see what the items they have on them mean to them. I find this short documentary interesting in terms of how visual it is within a short amount of time.

I particularly like the use of depth of field within the film; the use of focusing different areas of the shot enables the viewer to discover parts on screen that they may not have previously considered, for example, within the second shot shown below, the viewer is narratively being told something about the subject that is shown to be out of focus, however visually the background location is in clearer focus, which takes the story visually away from subject and makes viewer instead search frame and focus on the background location instead.
 I also find the choice and range of angles within the 3 minute film interesting, and feel like this is something I would like to be able to explore in a similar way within our own documentary, in terms of experimenting with creative angles and shot types as well as using focus pulls when filming the art filled walls and areas. I like how this film has such a simple concept to follow, however it still keeps the viewer engaged for the full three minutes, as it is shot creatively and the cinematography is composed well. The film also feels very real and reminds me of some independent films that I have seen, in terms of following a simple concept and narrative within a short amount of time, but still making it visually appealing enough for the viewer to be fully drawn into.



 

Documentary Analysis - The Apology Line

The Apology Line (Dir. James Lees, 2007)

I found 'The Apology Line' to be an insightful documentary film, as I thought the style and approach of the film was very interesting and different to others that I have seen, as it did not seem to follow a standard documentary structure or narrative. I enjoyed that the film did not have a strict narrative structure and instead focused on exploring a simple idea that gained different responses and that at times felt more like a short film. By watching a different type of documentary film such as this, it has given me an insight into how open documentary filmmaking can be, and the options that can be explored instead of just telling a story. I like that this documentary follows such a simple idea, but is so effective as the set up that it does have gains different responses and manages to still keep the viewer entertained throughout.

Another element to this documentary that I like  and that I feel works well to convey the mood to the viewer is the cinematography. The use of focus pulls and the composed lighting set ups help to visually set up the tone and mood of the film, and make the film look more visually appealing. As a lot of this documentary focuses on fewer shot changes and more on longer pieces of audio,the few shots that are shown on screen during this are held for a long amount of time, making it even more effective as well as fitting with the subject matter well.

 

 

Initial Ideas and Inspiration for Semester 2 - Street Art in Sheffield

Towards the end of the first semester, the early idea of creating a documentary based on Street Art was introduced to me by Alex and Oliver, who asked if I would be interested in joining them, either as a possibility for our upcoming documentary project or an outside of university film project.

I found the idea really interesting, but thought about how this could be achieved in a visually different way to how other street art and graffiti specific based documentaries and programmes have previously portrayed it, as I did initially think that it had been covered quite a lot before and wanted to create something different. I decided to take my camera out around the city centre and its outskirts, to see if I could capture any pieces of interesting street art from unusual angles, as an early visual starting point for this concept.