After we created our 2 minute poetic documentary piece, we began thinking about the approach to putting together a 10 minute film. We were keen to begin our extended project focussing on the demolition of the Devonshire Green independent shops, as we could now include footage and personal contributors voicing their own opinions of the plans. Overall, I am pleased with the film that we created as it sends out the message that we initially planned to put across through a film platform. We wanted viewers, in this case our class and tutors, to hear about the impact that the demolition has on the small community that most people wouldn't notice most of the time as they rush by to work or university. The aim was to create an empathetic theme where audiences feel on the side of the independent traders; wanting the shops to stay where they are, rather than replacing them with mundane buildings also found in the city centre.
I believe a strength of our film is the empathetic and slight vintage theme when the story focusses on the Devonshire Quarter. I feel this is shown successfully in a positive light in comparison to the mundane, grey-brick city centre; described as a 'Legoland' by our contributor, Lucy. Another strength of the film would be some of the footage that was shot; mainly by Sarah the cinematographer. Even though we all pitched in at times to film some of the shots, Sarah's shots in Syd and Mallory I personally think was very attractive and well shot. I love the colours and angles that she filmed and I feel it gave the film a very appealing look when representing the Devonshire traders. Another strength I believe we have in our film is the music we gained from a busker, Tom Rowe, who had been playing one day as we were filming around the city. We heard his music and instantly imagined it in our film and although he seemed slightly reluctant at first, we finally convinced him to allow us to use his music as long as we credited him. I feel the style of his music fits perfectly with the Devonshire Street themes in the film and even find myself listening to his music in my own time.
However, a weakness of the film would be the structure of the editing as we found it difficult how to set the story. Another weakness would be the amount of footage we filmed for the city scenes was not as much as we thought when it came to the edit sessions, whereas we had a lot for the Devonshire scenes. Due to timing we couldn't film any more for the city; after already revisiting the same location after tutorials and the last poetic presentation, However, we worked with the footage we had and just extended the Devonshire sections to last slightly longer than the narrative where we see the city footage.
We planned to have the film comparing both the upbeat and attractive side to the Devonshire Independent Quarter against the repetitive, mundane city centre. There were a couple of times when I wasn't able to attend an edit session with everyone so others edited a few parts of the storyline but we spent almost all of our editing time at Hannah's house rather than university. This allowed us to concentrate more but we still found it difficult to create a certain narrative order. We created three separate sections for our narrative order; first introducing the audience with the subject of the film, the plans of demolition, second was the mundane representation of the city and finally the last part of the narrative was the upbeat representation of the Devonshire Quarter. Therefore, our narrative structure wasn't as strong as we had hoped but we feel that the film still gives the same message that we initially intended.
Throughout this process I have definitely learnt a few lessons; from how to deal with timing and interviews not going to plan as well as editing lessons. At the beginning of the project we decided to create a Facebook group in order to keep on top of our plans and be organised throughout the semester. We started out organised with our contributors and gaining their approval for becmoing involved in defending the Devonshire area. However, at times these contributors were unable to attend some interview sessions, out of our control and had to rearrange a time despite it being near to our deadline. In various tutorials with Debbie providing a lot of helpful support and advice, we found that we had to keep re-filming certain areas to our film if we wanted a higher mark. This created some stress on our part as the deadlines approached and our contributors kept failing to keep to planned dates. However, we tried to remain calm throughout the process and this was one of the lessons I had learnt; trying to remain calm/not stressing out so that it doesn't affect the project. We also managed to still work great as a team despite this stress; rather than turning on each other as some groups under stress may do at times during filming problems. As we were close at the beginning and bounced off each other's strengths and found it easy working together, we didn't allow the stress to get inbetween our group. I also learnt more editing skills and becoming comfortable with Adobe Premiere Pro; with various techniques such as using keyframes rather than transitions for effects such as layering and fading. I also learnt how to include screengrabs of websites collectively onto a frame and felt comfortable being shown certain skills by Hannah on this program while at her house, rather than at university with someone I didn't know as well.
Overall the process of this project has been successful and with no major problems; apart from a couple of timing/availability issues and the odd import problem with Premiere Pro. Apart from that, I believe we got through this project with hard work and ensuring that any issues were seen to as soon as possible; in order to create the desired film we were aiming towards.
From the beginning of this project we were a close knit team and got on very well, helping each other out with any problems we came across during the project. Our roles reflected the skills we felt most comfortable in and wanted to expand our knowledge of; hence why I was keen to be editor as I am doing the Editing strand next semester. Although an editor wouldn't have a major role on set during production, I was able to be the 'stand-in' sound recordist while Emily unfortunately was not able to attend for a few interviews. Through this, I felt a lot more comfortable using a Zoom and as Hannah, the producer, would ask me to record sound for a certain interview, I would happily take on the role with ease. I also asked to help film a few shots with Sarah and found it very fun exploring different ways of filming around the city. There was a lot of interesting signs and images around the Devonshire area; from signs for new record shops, plasticine instruments on building roofs and decorations in shop windows. There was so many things to film that I asked Sarah to help with filming and she was happy to, as we all had a go with each role throughout the whole project. As I was filming certain shots I was happy to hear Hannah and Sarah complimenting me on how still I was holding all of my shots; as they were finding some of their footage slightly shaky in the editing process. This built my confidence up a lot as I also have a passion to expand my skills with cinematography and has made me confident enough to offer to be cinematographer in my Drama strand next term; depending on what roles others want to be too.
We didn't come across any group problems, apart from the small problem of everyone not always being available for every single meeting/interview but this didn't cause any stress or fallout between anyone in the group. One of the days however, we were meeting up and I did feel terrible as I was on my way back to Sheffield so arranged to meet Sarah and Hannah after my train before visiting the Green Room. Unfortunately as I got to there before them, I got a call from Hannah saying the Zoom she had been given from Stores didn't have a memory card in and they thought I had one with me, while I thought they only had one and didn't think I had one. So while we were panicking I rushed back to Stores and by the time I got back to the Devonshire Area and we went into the Green Room we found out the man we were gong to go talk to left a few minutes before we got there. It wasn't an official interview, only a time that someone suggested he would be in, but I still felt terrible as miscommunication meant the others assumed I had equipment with me but they assured me it wasn't anyone's fault.
I believe this process has improved my employability from before as I have learnt communication skills with potential contributors and how to ask interview questions in a way that gets them to answer by telling the story; rather than it sounding like them just giving short answers. I also expanded my editing, cinematographic and sound recording skills by experimenting with the equipment. My confidence has also grown with these skills, which led me to speaking up about my desire to help out with the specific roles and people were happy to let me experiment.
For our film, we had researched various Documentary techniques in our seminars including Introduction to Documentary by Bill Nichols. According to his sex modes of documentary, our film would fall under both the Poetic mode and the Participatory mode. In terms of the poetic mode, we structure the film in a way that signifies the mundane city centre through shots of grey/similar buildings and contrast these with brightly lit and colourful shots of Devonshire Street. We also placed the contributors' voiceovers describing the repetitive city structure while the footage of these high street chains are shown. Then, as the structure moves onto Devonshire Street we hear a mixture of the contributors as well as music from Tom Rowe, the busker we came across while filming one day, and his quirky and upbeat music style fit perfectly with our representation of the area. We also used a series of close up shots of vintage items in shops such as Syd and Mallory, as well as timing some of the shots with the music to go along with this Poetic approach. Learning about the poetic approach helped us to decide what type of documentary film we wanted to create and felt the poetic mode was a creative and interesting way of presenting a story about such an independent and vintage area.
Another mode introduced by Nichols that we took on for our film, was the Participatory mode and this was included in our documentary as we felt it was very important to get the personal opinions of those affected by the demolition plans. We couldn't make our film solely on poetic imagery without any input from those in business becoming affected and this also helped to create an empathetic link between viewers and contributors. Although we can't hear the interviewers in the film, we are still seen to be engaging with the contributor as they are looking at a direction; supposedly where the interviewer is, rather than straight at the camera. This is also a powerful way to give viewers the chance to see a certain event from the perspective of someone other than the filmmaker; as many people are aware that filmmakers have the ability to present a film in their own desired way.
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