As a fan of documentaries, I was very excited to start this unit but I was also nervous as this would be our first ever group project. This meant everyone would need to take on roles within the group and pull their weight. I was worried that I would get left with the boring, tedious roles, however, we all communicated well and ended up dividing up the roles fairly.
Coming up with an idea at first seemed very difficult. We all had different ideas about what to do the documentary on, so I was worried that someone in the group may end up being disappointed if their idea wasn't chosen. We all individually came up with ideas and presented them to each other in our ideas support meetings with Zoe. We quite quickly settled on the idea of doing a documentary revolving around driving and the problems / issues young drivers face. I think the reason we were all interested in doing this documentary was because the topic is very relevant to us as we are all young drivers in the group. As the subject relates to us (as a young group) we were also pretty confident that it would relate to the 'BBC Three' young target audience of the documentary.
Once we had settled on the idea, we then had to decide what to include in our documentary. We decided on trying to get in contact with some experts, people learning to drive and people who had learnt to drive in the past. Although we had many issues finding contributors, we eventually found some people who were happy to be a part of our documentary. We pitched our idea to Zoe and Helen and they both gave us tips and advice on how to improve our idea.
Our final interview subjects were:
- Yvonne and Tony - Alex's grandparents
- Aidan - a learner driver
- Samantha Joslin - an insurance broker
As well as our lectures we also had different workshops including the interview workshop and the location workshop at Chatham Dockyard. These workshops helped us to understand how to film the different parts of our documentary. The interview workshop allowed us to practice interviewing a subject. We had to use questions that would give us self contained answers such as "Can you describe your morning for me?" The dockyard workshop helped us to understand what it is like to film actuality and sequences. My group was based in the rope factory. We were lucky enough to get to film their demonstration of making rope. This gave us some practice of filming actuality and trying to capture everything that was going on. When filming actuality, you have to prioritise which shots you want as everything is occurring naturally. When filming sequences, you can re shoot them again and again if you need to.
The pre production was a lot more work than we anticipated. So again, we split up the roles in order to make the workload a bit lighter. We all helped with the pitch and contacting the people to be in the documentary, Alex wrote the scripts and I filled out the risk assessments. Once we had our script sorted and our equipment booked out, we could then schedule our shoot days and plan out what needed to be filmed and when.
We scheduled our shoots using google docs as this was the easiest thing to do.
1st shoot day: Interviewing Alex's grandparents - Alex, Katie, Jason
2nd shoot day: Filming opening sequence and GVs - Alex, Jason Sonia
3rd shoot day: Filming more pieces to camera and sequences - Alex, Katie
Filming insurance broker - Katie
4th shoot day: Filming the interview with Aidan - Alex
Filming more of the opening sequence - Alex, Sonia, Katie
Filming GVs - Alex, Katie
Overall, our shoot days went okay. My main role was camera operator, I helped to film the interview with Alex's grandparents, GVs, pieces-to-camera, the interview with the insurance broker and some establishing shots. We did encounter several problems which are detailed in the separate blog posts but we found solutions to these and were able to edit around these problems in the post production.
The post production process had more steps than we realised. First of all we had to transcribe and time code the interviews - myself and Alex split this job equally between us. We then had to create a sync assembly of the interviews using the time codes of the bits of footage we wanted to include in our documentary. I did the sync assembly for the insurance broker interview and began the sync assembly for the interview with Alex's grandparents. Further into the edit, I also helped to add in GVs and cutaways over the interview with Aidan. By splitting up the jobs for editing, we were able to get a lot more work done. Alex did the majority of the editing as this is really his strong point but we all did our fair share as well. We did have to re shoot a few bits during the edit due to not having enough GVs or any establishing shots - myself and Alex did this. We also had an issue with the grainy footage of the closing shot. However, with the help of Gavin and the programme 'Neat Video' we managed to reduce the grain. Throughout the editing process, we had feedback from Zoe and Sam. We took their advice on board and implemented it in our edit. The main piece of feedback was to make the documentary less linear, this is clear in our final cut where the interviews merge together.
What worked?
- I really liked the GVs we managed to capture. We decided to film GVs during most of the shoots and on some separate days - giving us a lot to work with in the edit. Filming a lot of GVs allowed us to have footage to cover any jump cuts that were apparent during the interviews. My favourite GV / sequence is the low angle shot I captured of Alex's car driving away.
- I also like the sound in our documentary. Sound has always been an issue before for me in my projects, but the sound in this project was fine (despite filming a lot of footage in cars with the sound of the engine / the road surface). To capture the sound we mainly used clip mics - these were used in Alex's pieces to camera, the interview with Aidan, the interview with his grandparent's (on Alex) and the interview with the insurance broker. We also used a directional mic for the interview with Alex's grandparents and as a back up on some of Alex's pieces to camera.
- I also really liked the locations used in this documentary. The interview with Alex's grandparents was a casual chat so had to take place somewhere cosy and casual - Alex's house was perfect for this. Most shots were shot in Alex's car or Eastgate car park which is relevant to the documentary subject. The interview with the insurance broker was filmed at Eastgate in an office setting with a large window displaying a car park behind the interview subject. All of our locations really suited the documentary and its subject - following conventions of documentaries.
What didn't work?
- We initially planned to have a driving instructor feature in our documentary as well to talk about young drivers on the road. To start off with we did have 2 potential instructors lined up, however, both of them became unavailable. Sonia then found Paul - a driving instructor is Maidstone who appeared to be willing to be in the documentary. However, a week or two before filming, he stopped replying to messages. We were then left with no driving instructor - leaving it down to our insurance broker as the only expert in our documentary. Instead of having a driving instructor, we managed to find a learner driver.
- The opening sequence seemed quite long but this is necessary in order to introduce the subjects within the documentary. We did cut it down significantly due to the feedback from Zoe but it is still longer than the opening sequence of a conventional documentary.
What did I learn?
- I learnt how to work efficiently in a group. We managed to divide up the roles fairly so that everyone played their part. We did have areas where one group member was more 'in charge' than others. For example, I felt like on some of the shoot days I was in charge of the camera operations, on other shoot days Jason was in charge of operating the camera and during the edit Alex was in charge. Even though at points certain people were in charge, we still all worked as a group and did our fair share of the workload.
- I also learnt that the importance of transcribing and time coding. When beginning the sync assembly for the interview with Alex's grandparents, I noticed the time codes didn't match up. This made doing the sync assembly a lot longer compared to when I did the sync assembly for the insurance broker where the time codes did match up.
What could I develop?
- Our scheduling could have been better. There were a couple of shoots where there were only two of us out of the group, or in the case of the interview with the insurance broker, I was the only one available. We just needed to communicate better within the group, although we still got all the footage we needed.
Conclusion:
I am very happy with the overall outcome. A lot of work went into the post production in order to make all the footage fit together. Even once we had finished filming, it didn't feel complete. We didn't feel like we had enough footage, but when it came to editing we realised we had more than enough in some places and just needed to get a few extra shots in others. It is disappointing that we had so many contributors drop out as it would have been really good to get the opinion of a driving instructor. I am really happy with the sequences in the documentary, they really help to set the scene so that the audience is clear on where the documentary is taking place. I am also happy with the sound in the documentary as this has been a problem in my past projects, so it is a relief to have a project which sounds good. Our scheduling / communication with each other wasn't great which made some parts of this project stressful, but I am really happy with the end result and feel that everyone in the group pulled their weight.
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