Documentary unit - pre- production prep

We have now decided on roles and will be filming about tackling homophobia in football focusing on why there are no premiership players that are openly gay.

Roles:

Jack

Camera Op, Co- editor, Narrator




Melisa

Editor, transcripter, script writer




Callum 

Director, Camera Op

Documentary research

I will look at 3 different BBC 3 documentaries and be discussing things they have in common, different styles they use and some of the advantages/ disadvantages of using them.

Weight Cut - Can i lose 10% of my body weight overnight?

In the opening couple of minutes after explaining what the documentary is about, there is an establishing shot as shown below. When i first saw this it reminded me of the title sequence at the start of the 2002 film Panic Room. 

As you can see there is a resemblance between the two shots however the documentary uses this "graphics hidden in the shot" style of throughout the entire piece whereas in Panic Room it is only used for the introduction of the lead actors and the title of the film.

The use of graphics throughout the documentary is an interesting approach to giving narrative and extra information that the audience are not being shown/ told, however there is a risk that the person watching will be distracted by reading the graphic they they do not pay attention the the interview/ GV etc. which may be more important than the graphic.

Young and Sterile: My Choice

This documentary focuses on young men and women who are permanently sterilising themselves due to them not wanting to have any children, however the question being posed is should they be aloud to do this so early on in their lives and should the NHS be supporting it? This is very much like our documentary in the sense that it touches sensitive subjects and is trying to find the answer to a "why question"  e.g. why are these people doing this to their body. Compared to our documentary which is posing the questio "why are thier no openly gay premiere league football players". They also make use of a presenter for the documentary, which seems quite a BB3 trait. This is a good approach if your documentary is very interview heavy, however if it is more of an observatory camera style e.g. fly on the wall a voice of god approach is more appropriate. 

documentary - morning lecture

3 lessons you have learnt so far about setting up your film in terms of:

• Casting - ask long time before the shoot, meeting face to face before shoot, get a contract
• Locations - make this one of your first factors, be clear about what your filming, phone call
• Scheduling - establish clear shot list, establish secured dates for filming, establish shoot times
• Organisation - make sure all actors know where and when, make sure travel is covered, 
• Paperwork - child actor permissions, public insurance

Research

• Begin researching online and relevant journals, publications and newspapers.
• Acquaint yourself with the broader picture and background to your story 
• Establish key contacts
• Never make a call to any of these contacts until you understand the basis of the story you wish to tell and have an appreciation of the remit 

Relevant background info

• Legislation/ regulations
• Organisations and experts
• Existing research - up to date as possible, if unpublished, better - exclusive
• Case studies
• Previous coverage on TV/ archive as appropriate 

Factual Films require a "journalists nose"

• What makes your story interesting
• What is your angle

Research prior to pitching

• Enough to answer the basic questions about the story and to form your proposal
• Who/what/where/when/how
• Find your USP (Unique serving point)

Pitch

• Email Helen with summery of my pitch idea (working title, topline, and one paragraph synopsis) by 3 pm 21st of march

Ethics and representation

It is not just a topic for a project, consider how it will affect people with disabilities etc.

Disability

Income/ class

Values/ culture

Ethnicity 

Race

Sexuality

Issues e.g. crime

Tokenism

Youth, middle aged, old aged

Representation

• A fair representation of the wider context
• Fairly treated and represented honestly
• Avoid stereotypes and reinforcing prejudice
• Avoid lazy journalism
• Treat people with respect

Finding characters/ case studies

• people who best illustrate your story and who are the best talkers/ characters
• Via relevant organisations - usually the press office
• Via experts - e.g doctors, police etc

Contextual Studies - sex and sexuality

Sexuality - The expression of sexual identity through internal feelings and external behaviour. Can
also refer to sexual activity (in particular visual representation)

Sexuality in the media - visual presentations of sexual expression (eroticism, pornography). Identity representations of sexual expression (LGBT, asexualisation, pansexualisation)

Eroticism - aesthetic depiction of sexuality; may not involve nudity

Pornography - explicit depiction of sexuality; usually via nudity and  graphic sexual activity

Media Censorship

• Depictions of sex and sexuality in media traditionally mediated by external censors
• UK - broadcasting legislation, watchdogs (Ofcom)
• US - FCC (Federal Communications Commission)

Sexual representation in TV and Film historically tightly controlled until the 70's liberalisation, when we saw the first portrayals of nudity and gay characters.

4 typical sexual stereotypes:

• Libertine
  
• Camp/ gay
  
• "Butch"
  
• Asexual
  

Queer Theory - Queer Theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women's studies. Queer theoryincludes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself. ...Queer theory "focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire."

Directions - afternoon lecture

Key Elements of a Story 

A strong central character - Eye witnesses or personal testimony. Whose story is it? Who is the character or characters, that will lead and guide your story? What's driving them emotionally?

Universal themes/ relatable - every great story has to either your mind, heart or wallet. Does your story make the audience happy or angry or play on our fears.

A strong narrative and structure - a beginning middle and end and sustain the duration - normally you need some conflict, a decision to be made, a turning point.

Finally the best stories are simply told with a great characters, human emotion and beautiful pictures. 

Documentary - Dreams of a Life

Purpose of factual programmes:

• Revelation - revealing to us something new
• Entertainment - Whether they make us laugh, cry or shout, still need to entertain us
• Storytelling - portrayal of "real" life as accurately as possible
• Style and Content - varied styles used, but style should never be relied on over content

Narrative Structure:

• Interview testimony
• Timeline structure 
• gives sense of investigation style from film maker- post it notes, forensic boi-suit actors in flat
• Dramatised tastefully, especially death at end

Challenges:

• Has to investigate into it
• Permission from family etc
• Sub Judice - public domain
• Access

Documentary Ideas - "Teen Spirit"

My idea for the topic of our 10 minute Documentary is finding out what life would be like as a teenager working at the Chatham Dockyard in the 1800's. However, especially surrounding child labour, if another time period would be more interesting to research about and present then i may change it from 1800's.

The Chatham Dockyard is a very accessible location both in the literal sense and in the sense of filming. There will be some areas that you can not film for example I would imagine the Commissioners House would be out of bounds to camera crew due to the valuable items inside and strict privacy rules.

Furthermore I know a Film Liaison who works at the Dockyard whom i also shadowed during the filming of Call The Midwife. The point of this documentary would be to compare teenage working conditions nowadays to the historic records of youths at work.

08/03/2017 - After This mornings lecture with Helen, i have decided that my topic about work for teens in the historic dockyard would not be quite as interesting as it needs to be to keep the audience engaged. I think that i will contact the dockyard and explain my plans for a documentary and ask them if their are any really outstanding stories about young men at the dockyard for example paranormal activity etc.

Directors Statement

My shoot for my Directions Unit six minute piece was more successful than my first attempt at organising a shoot, however not everything went to plan. To begin with, I had managed to obtain 6 Actors through facebook acting groups/ acting agencies and another 4 that were friends, however they would be required at different times for different roles as they were in different scenes. With this in mind I decided to use the contracted agency actors first so that i didn't accidentally break the legal contract by changing shoot times etc.

I decided to cast relatively young looking men for the suspect roles and older men for the two main interrogators so that symbolically it would be like young vs old, good vs bad, polar opposites. I also chose to cast my characters differently to Love's when looking at the character "George". In the film he is a young man, early to mid 20's. However i wanted both George and Jack to look of similar age so that if someone was to read between the lines, they may think that the two characters go back a long time, sort of brotherly bond as partners not an apprentice and his master style of relationship.

Another change I made was with costume, all of the interrogators are wearing suits and ties apart from Jack. I wanted this to imply that his attire reflects his messy and disorganised life as well as his manor of conduct. Also something to note is that no other interrogators swear apart from the "bad guys" and Jack. Perhaps this could reflect on his morality and shady back hand dealings you would see later in the film? Regardless of their morals though I kept the same tense underscore of music playing throughout every characters scene as to maintain the tension.

I arranged to pick crew and actors up myself and due to traffic, instead of starting at 4 we were starting at just after 5. This didn't matter too much though as all the equipment had been set up from 3:30 onwards. The first scene went quite well, the lighting was quickly agreed on and the actors (one of which was my friend as i thought he suited the role very well) knew thier lines and performed them well. After about an hour I offered for the cast to have a break for a smoke etc and they obliged, then we re-convened after about 15 mins and continued with filming. Not long after we wrapped that scene and prepared the actors that were in the next scene. they all had their costumes on and the props had been put in place, but it became clear the actor playing the main suspect hadn't learnt his lines. This caused extremely long delays as we had to keep stopping the recording as he stumbled over his lines. Instead of it taking and hour to an hour and a half it took us until 9:30 pm.  Of course being a director you could not just yell at the actor for getting his lines wrong, you had to comfort and encourage him in the hopes that after repeating his lines several times he will start to remember them.

I only had 200 pounds to pay for actors services, their travel and their food. I also had to consider petrol money to taxi them to and from the trains stations to location. I also was slightly playing with fire as all of the actors were on different amounts of pay (my friends were on nothing) so if i wanted them to stay my friends then i politely and privately asked all the actors individually not to mention pay as some people are doing it for free. Thankfully this did work however it came quite close when some of the actors were starting to ask about when they get paid so i just quickly and quietly told them that i would speak to them in a second in private. All in all i stayed within budget and obtained usable footage so I feel pleased with the overall experience.

Directions - 2 Other directors

Director 1 - Christopher Nolan

In the second of the Batman Trilogy "Batman Dark Knight" there is a violent interrogation between Health ledger's Joker and Christian Bale's Batman. The scene starts with The Joker illuminated by over head lighting in a prison room.

But then the lights are tuned on and you can see a figure behind the Joker in a close up his face, then follows his head being slammed on the table. I didn't want to directly copy this light transition so i decided i might try and merge the two. 

I wanted to take a shot similar to the one below and try to block light on the interrogator so that it seemed he was in darkness compared to the suspect so to create the impression that the interrogator has dark morals/ personality. 

Director 2 - Guy Ritchie 

When looking at a list of all the films Ritchie has directed there seems to be a general pattern that emerges. Similar themes to Love's films, guns, violence, and gangs. Oh and a lot of cockney accents. Ritchie's scripts especially translate all the narrative through this rough tough way of speaking but it seems so natural, where as it seems in places in some of Loves films, especially Sweeney, the London lingo seems forced. I love the humour in Ritchie's films, but it never seems to be so scripted that they are trying to make you laugh, for example in lock stock and two smoking barrels as Vinnie Jones' Character tells a little boy to "wrap up those guns, count the money.... put your seat belt on!". 

Originally I was going to include some humour in the script however after discussing it with my crew I decided that it wouldn't have fitted in with the scene as the intention of the lighting and camera angles wewre to create tension and fear, these would be counter-acted if humour had been involved.

Directions - Directing Research beyond the classroom

I believe Directing is very much like making a cup of tea. Everyone does it differently, and different people like different types, however everyone can agree that their is nothing better than a good cup of tea! This way of thinking is demonstrated at the very start of Harold Clurman's "On Directing". He starts the book by telling you how he did not call it "The Art of Directing" as he did not want people to believe that by calling it this there was "only one art of directing, one method, one correct way". He goes on to elaborate on the point i made at the start of this paragraph, how directing is different for literally every single person, you do not learn how to direct you just learn how to be more bossy. I found that the key for me to being a successful Director is keeping to a schedule, being organised and not giving in to what other people say/ suggest most of the time but co-operation is imperative. 

 As Director Jon G. Avilsden proves in "Film Directors on Directing"  when he recalls directing the fight scenes in the 1982 film Karate Kid. He said "I was very lucky and got Pat Johnson, a martial artist and master of karate. Robert Kamen is a black belt and knows about it. I listened and said 'that's a nice step. Can you do this and still be true to it? Would it be a nicer picture if you did that ?' We worked together closely and rehearsed every blow for weeks". 

Directions - TV Drama research

Shameless - This is a TV Series that gives an insiders look into life living on the fictional council area Chatsworth estate. The TV Series is mostly hand held and gives a kind of documentary feel especially when you are following a character/ group of characters. Also this TV Series in the first episode has a voice over by the main character, which one of Love's choices for most of his films if not all the way through he uses it to supply the audience with narrative they would not have had from the screen. Also by how the narrator sounds you can guess what kind of film/ character it will be. Love's latest film American Hero uses Narration all the way through and like Shameless, has a very rugged hand held "in - the - field" documentary style of filming.

Trapped - Trapped is an Icelandic murder mystery television series set in Seyðisfjörður and created by Baltasar Kormákur and produced by RVK Studios. What i can draw as a compairson when looking at choices of filming style, is the coloration of this TV Series and The Sweeney. Both deal with dark/ shady topics and they both present cold blue light/ colour in every frame. This is a choice maybe not made direcly by the director but the Director will tell the DP what effect or "look" he wants.