Final Documentary

Editing the Documentary

There was a lot of work to do in the post production process of our documentary. To start my group and I decided what order we wanted to have the shots in, using the shooting schedule as a general template. We decided to open the clip with a panning shot which leads to a cut to the sign for the club. From there we edited the shot of a disco ball fading out of focus into a a shot of people dancing from out of focus to in. As this happens we start to hear Noma's voice over of him introducing himself. Throughout the rest of the documentary we constantly cut between interview shots of Noma and cutaway shots of the nightclub, bathroom and shots of nature. We have edited it so that the shots continuously change and aren't the same type of shot the whole way through. For example, we have a cutaway establishing shot which is closely followed by a close up shot of plants. We also chose chilled ambient music for the beginning with a meditation style music choice to close on.

Relating our documentary to inspiration: Long Live the Kings

After looking at Long Live the Kings for inspiration in our documentary, I knew What sort of cutaway shots that I wanted to capture when my group and I was filming. From watching such a visually appealing short documentary I found that shooting a range of shots from different angles and using various techniques was the way forward. Therefore, whilst shooting our cutaway shots I made sure that we would shoot the majority of shots in different ways so that we could choose which one worked best when editing. We took shots from different angles, zooming from in to out from out of focus to in focus and visa versa. After looking back at the footage we were very happy with the end result and now are just yet to choose which shot worked best for each piece of footage.

Relating our documentary to inspiration: Louis Theroux

After looking at Louis Theroux for inspiration in our documentary, I kept in mind what we found to be successful in his work whilst we were shooting ours. As Theroux's documentaries fall under the participatory genre, we see him whilst actually interviewing, this is where I gained inspiration from. Theroux always takes control of the interviews and never seems to be afraid to ask any questions no matter how uneasy they may be. He also gathered the exact information by pushing for answers by asking a follow up question such as "But what if it were in the case of..". He also often forms a good bond with his interviewees by starting with normal discussions, making it easier to ask difficult questions. Keeping his interviewing techniques in mind whilst interviewing helped very much, for example when Noma was answering questions and going off on tangents I was able to take control of the interview by asking another question more relevant before too much time was wasted. My group and I have also formed a good bond with him making questions easier to ask, for example, when asking about an obviously unappealing job. Personally, I believe that we were very successful in our interviews and gathered a lot of information that may have been hard to get if asked using a different approach.

Shooting: Day 2

On our second day of shooting we aimed to capture the remaining footage needed for our documentary. This included interview shots of Noma revolving around his actual job and whatever else he had to say as well as cutaway shots inside the nightclub. We decided to take the documentary shots on Brighton beach as it was an appealing place for this shot and is opposite from the nightclub (which we made clear through one of our shots). When we got to the beach we found that the microphone we were planning to use wasn't working which left us worried about getting the sound properly. However, we decided to record the sound through my phone and continued with the interview as we could. On first listen the quality sounded good but we will wait until we start the editing process whether or not we will need to reshoot this interview. After shooting the interview shoots we headed over to Patterns nightclub to set up for shooting our cutaway shots. We started with establishing shots of the outside of the club whilst we waited for it to become busy. Before long it was crowded and we captured some very appealing shots, however, we had to shoot a lot of it freehand as it was difficult to use a tripod in such a busy environment. I fell though that having the shots free hand will add to the nightclub feel that I am hoping we have portrayed in these shots.

Music For the documentary

After recording our footage for the documentary we started to think about the post production process and realised that we needed some music to play over our opening sequence of clubbing shots.We decided that the typical music played on that night would work quite well with the footage. This music tends to fall under the house and funk genres. Below are a few songs that we thought would work well but unfortunately are copyrighted. However, one of our friends produces music and said that it would be fine to use one of his songs of the same genre.

After Trying to use this type of music we found that it just didn't fit with what Noma was saying and so we found some royalty free ambient music to open the documentary and meditation music to close it.

Adobe Premiere Pro cs6 tutorial video

I am not familiar with editing on the software Adobe Premiere Pro cs6 as I have always used iMovie when editing my work in the past. However, Premiere Pro is a much more professional software and allows for users to use more tools during post production. The other members of my group were also unfamiliar with this software but we decided to use it in order for our final piece to be edited better. Therefore, I have studied the tutorial video below and practiced on the software to help me get used to using Premiere Pro.

Readings notes: J. Chapman 'Issues in contemporary documentary'

Below are notes from a reading by J. Chapman called 'Issues in contemporary documentary'.

-Documentary is fast changing with the digital revolution and with the enormous increase in internet usage, the range of outlets for distribution continues to become more diverse.
-Today documentary is so diverse and diffuse that the genre is hard to define.
-Chapman argues that contextual factors, including historical consciousness, institutional influences such as that of documentary on television, can help our understanding of what documentary is.
-Many people seem to feel that documentary brings us closer to the truth for two reasons: 1) because of documentary's feature an absence of fictionalised elements 2) because of the commonplace illusion that events as depicted in a documentary have not been controlled by the filmmaker.
-A filmmaker does indeed focus on events that are out of their control, however, they can present these events in anyway they choose.

Problems overcome whilst filming

Whilst filming, there were a few hurdles that got in the way, however we found a way to overcome each one without affecting the overall outcome  of our documentary. Below are the problems that we faced and how we dealt with them:

Our interviewee would often go off topic when answering questionsWe would ask another question that was more relatable linked to what he was saying

The mic stopped working whilst interviewingWe used our phones to record the interview which will be edited with the film

There was not much space in the club for the tripod
We worked with what we had and decided to shoot free hand trying make it seem like the viewer is in the club whilst watching

There were obvious problems with shooting in the toilets with people thereWe took a few photos before hand and waited until the end of the night so that we were allowed access to take a few shots of the aftermath

We could not interview Noma in the actual toilet as people were in and out
We did this half of the interview shots on Brighton beach as it is opposite from the night club and an appealing shot to film an interview at

Shooting: Day 1

On our first day of shooting my group and I decided to film half of our footage, this included interview questions and answers that revolved around Noma's beliefs and spiritual side as well as the cut away shots (mainly of nature) that would be edited around these shots. It was a very sunny day and so was perfect to get some good shots of nature to complement the answers Noma was given. I feel like we were very successful in our filming of cutaway shots as we used a range of different filming techniques of visually appealing shots. Also, we gathered very interesting answers from Noma which we were hoping for. However, he often went off in irrelevant tangents that didn't relate to the questions meaning that we have a lot of footage to cut out in the editing process. Overall it was a successful day filming where we captured some very good footage that will fit perfectly into the documentary. Below are screenshots from some of our footage:

Reading Notes: Sheila Curran Bernard 'Documentary Storytelling'

Below are notes from a reading by Sheila Curran Bernard called 'Documentary Storytelling'. The notes explain different story terms which are apparent in successful stories and therefore documentaries. I will keep this in mind throughout the time I spend creating my own documentary.

-A story has compelling characters, rising tension, and conflict that reaches some sort of resolution. It also engages an audience on an emotional and intellectual level, motivating viewers to know what happens next.
-Exposition is the information that grounds you in a story: who, what, where, when, and why. The trick to exposition is to not give too much away too soon and not to withhold information that is necessary.
-Theme is the general underlying subject of a specific story, a recurring idea that often illuminates an aspect of the human condition. Themes may emerge from the questions that initially drove the filmmaker.
-The Arc refers to the way or ways in which the events of the story transforms the character(s). In pursuing a goal, the protagonist learns something about themselves and their place in the world and those lessons change them.
-Plot and character are very important to stories and documentaries and they are what drive the narrative. A character driven film is one in which the action of the film emerges from the wants and needs of the character(s). In a plot-driven film, the characters are  secondary to the events that make up the plot.
-Point of View describes the perspective from which a story is told, for documentaries the filmmaker is the storyteller with their own point of view- they can tell the story in whatever way they choose.
-What the protagonist wants often drives a good story, the protagonist, much like an Arc of the story, has a goal that they want to achieve and there is a journey that they have to pursue to reach this- an audience will feel empathy for the protagonist and go on this journey with them to reach their goal.
-A satisfactory ending is often one that feels both unexpected and inevitable. It must resolve the one story you set out to tell. The ending of a documentary must be factual though, it would be unethical to manipulate facts to create a more emotional and happy ending. However, ending a film in a way that is satisfying does not necessitate wrapping up all loose ends or resolving things in a way that's upbeat and happy.

Inspirational Documentaries: Long Live the Kings

From looking at Louis Theroux I had found inspiration in terms of interviewing however, I was not a fan of the cinematography and editing in these documentaries therefore I looked at some short documentaries to help me. Above is a short documentary called 'Long Live the kings' and is about motorcycles and good-company on the road. The visuals of this piece are very appealing to the eye and have given me an insight into the sort of shoots I should be aiming for in my documentary. There are a lot of cutaway shots from different angles and shot in different ways, this is what I think makes this piece so attractive. Below are some shots that I believe are very successful and will try to replicate in my own documentary.

Establisihing shots

Out to in focus shots

















                                                                                     

Similar shots but from different angles

Close Ups

Varying shots (in terms of brightness etc.)

Inspirational Documentary's: Louis Theroux

In preparation of creating my own documentary I researched existing work to gain inspiration from. Whilst researching I came across Louis Theroux, a British documentary filmmaker working for the BBC. He is best known for his documentary series 'Louie Theroux's weird weekend' and 'When Louis met'. I had been recommended watching these documentaries before but never got around to it, therefore when I heard that I was to create my own documentary I saw a perfect opportunity to do so. Watching his some of his documentaries have given me ideas of how to interview. Theroux's style of interviewing is very captivating; he is smart in the way that he goes about asking difficult questions which often have personal answers to them. He is very persistent in getting the answers to his questions and takes control of the interviews. However, he can sometimes be too persistent in his questioning, to the extent that he in fact offends his interviewees leading to them not wanting to contribute. Although this makes the interviews more entertaining and does often lead to information that may not have been gathered if asked in another way, I am going to avoid being over persistent whilst interviewing. I am however going to replicate his questioning in the sense that he is not afraid to ask difficult questions and takes control of his interviews.

Above is a clip from one of his documentaries about crime in Philadelphia. As shown in this clip, Theroux isn't scared to ask difficult questions and is persistent with getting an answer that is interesting to his viewers. Also, he gains as much information as possible, for example when he was asking whether they would point out a shooter, he then asked why they gave no as their answer by asking it in another way: "What if..". Putting a question in another form such as this is likely to gather more information, in this case the interviewee's hesitate, insinuating that they would potentially in another situation. When interviewing in my documentary, if I do not have what I believe to be a significant amount of information I will use this technique of asking it in a different way (As an analogy for example).

Another thing that watching Louis Theroux documentaries has taught me is that when shooting, I need to be steady whilst using the camera. The cinematography in a lot of his early documentaries looks very amateur due to shaky recording and bad interview shots where the camera moves from interviewer to interviewee. I will avoid these type of shots in my documentary by interviewing whilst sitting next to the camera so that it looks like the interviewee is looking at the camera when really he is making eye-contact.

Practice documetary

Above is the practice documentary that my group and I shot to prepare ourselves for when we shoot or final piece. Creating this interview has allowed us to see mistakes that we made and enable us to try and avoid them when producing the final documentary. As you can see in the video, there are a few mistakes that we need to avoid next time, these include capturing the cameras shadow in shot, being out of focus at times and us being able to hear the questions being asked due to both poor editing and poor interviewing. We will keep this mistakes in mind when filming our final piece.

Documentary Shooting Schedule

Before shooting our documentary I created a shooting schedule which will enable my group to know what we are planning to shoot before actually filming it. Below is the schedule which shows what sound will be alongside each shot that we are going to take.

Interviewing techniques

In preparation for when I am conducting my own interview for my final project, I read 'Directing, The Documentary' by Michael Rabiger where I found many things to keep in mind when interviewing. Below are key points from this reading that I will make sure I follow in the production of my piece:
-Plan interview questions before hand in order to cover all areas that need to be discussed
-Must get comprehensive cover as the audience has no prior knowledge
-Maintain eye-contact to make the interviewee relaxed
-Keep questions on a piece of paper that can be referred back to if they are forgotten
-Take control as the interviewer and give instruction
-Keep the interview going until you have full understanding- factual and emotional
-Never settle for generalities, always push for an example or story
-Offer the opportunity to add anything that's missing at the end of the interview

Documentary Plan

In preparation of shooting the documentary, I have created a plan of what I aim to capture in the documentary with my group. First of all we have decided on what we are basing the documentary around; a man named Enoma (or Noma for short) who works as a night club toilet attendant.

Second of all, we had to choose what style of documentary we as a group wanted to shoot. The options were between an observational or participatory documentary as specified in the module guide. We have decided to shoot a participatory documentary as we plan to interview Noma which we would not be able to do if we had chose observational. We feel as though we should use interviews so that we can aim the information gathered around what we want to know about him.

After deciding on the type of documentary I thought about why we have chosen to put the focus on Noma and what we are aiming to show through the Documentary. Noma has had a very interesting life, from being born in Nigeria where he was part of a political party and owned his own timber factory to moving to the UK and working in the bathroom of a nightclub. However, as it is a short documentary that we have to film, we have decided to use his life in the UK as the main focus so that we can get a lot of information out of him. The things that we are hoping to hear from Noma is information such as how he finds the work he does, how does he cope with working a job that isn't very appealing as well as asking about his spiritual beliefs and whether the meditation that he does helps him in the workplace.

Below are a series of Questions that I believe to be relevant to ask in order to gather this information:
-How long have you been working as a bathroom attendant and how did you get into it?
-What does the job consist of you doing?
-What problems have you had to face whilst working?
-Do you find this work stressful and if so how do you deal with this stress?
-You have a website that promotes positive thinking and self empowerment, what do you mean by self empowerment and how is this achieved?
-Have you always been spiritual and does your beliefs and meditation help you with thinking positively in difficult situations?
-Do you believe that you have reached empowerment and how is it achieved?

We also discussed as a group what cutaway shots we would like to use. We have decided that we want shots from both his workplace (Bathroom) and his workstation, the actual club on a busy night, shots of him meditating and shots of where he meditates (in an open field), shots of nature (Birds flying past etc.) which can be used as a comparison to the busy night club.

Finally, we thought about the narrative of the documentary and what order we would put the shots in. There are a few ways which this could be done but we have decided to either shoot a day in the life of Noma- starting with his routine (Getting up, meditating and other things during the day and then ending with his work at the end) or opening the documentary with the nightclub scene and his workplace and as the documentary continues we come to see that he deals with his difficult work situation by meditating and thinking positively during the day. However, we will decide which one of these we will go with after we have all of our shots.

Group presentations

After being put into groups, we were told to pick an idea from a person in the group that we collectively was going to make our documentary about. After we had decided what subject the documentary was going to be based around we were instructed to make a presentation about our idea, which would be shown in class. We as a group decided to base our documentary around a man named Noma- a spiritual man who  works in the bathroom of a nightclub and believes that people should aim to reach self empowerment. Below is screenshots of the slides that we presented to our class.

Editing Practice Interview

In Week 4 we were instructed to edit together the footage that we shot in the previous week for the practice interview. For a practice interview the cinematography went quite well but there were still problems that we as a group need to work on before our final project such as editing; the editing for this piece was very basic and at times the cutaway shots looked very out of place. Also, when looking back at some of the shots there were rookie mistakes such as the shadow of the camera  being visible in shots and shaky camera work as well. Over the next few weeks we will continue to work on our editing skills and will have more time to edit our final piece meaning that it should be a lot smoother than this initial interview. Also, we will make sure that after every shot that there is no cinematography mistakes.

Practice interview

In the third week of the course, in groups we were told to do a practice interview in a documentary style about a students first day at Sussex. Using the interview techniques that we had been taught in previous weeks, my group and I went to my flat and interviewed my flatmate of his first day. I sat next to the camera opposite him and asked the questions to make it seem like he was looking into the camera even though he was making eye contact. We also used shot cutaway shots in a documentary style so that it wasn't just a constant interview. Also, before going straight into the questions that we were going to use as part of the interview, we asked general questions such as 'what did you have for breakfast' etc.so that it seemed more like a normal conversation than an interview. This helped a lot as when we started he was very aware of the camera but after a while seemed to forget about it. I feel like the shots taken were quite successful in terms of being documentary style as well as getting some good answers. We will be editing it together in next weeks class.

My Initial Idea

As our final projects are going to be done in groups, we were asked individually to present our own initial ideas for the final documentary before coming to an agreement of which idea we wanted to do. I had the idea of using a kebab shop as the main subject for the documentary staring with the opening time of the shop to the closing. The main focus would be the late night antics that go on in these shops and showing the comparison of the daytime kebab shop to the night time one. The footage that I would hope to get with this idea would be drunk customers at early hours of the morning, whether they were being rude or simply too intoxicated to order properly and how the staff deal with them. However, with this idea came problems, such as dealing with drunk customers and getting permission to film whilst the shop is very busy.

Reading notes: Bill Nichols 'Representing Reality'

Below are notes that I have taken from a reading by Bill Nichols called 'Representing Reality. They explain different types of documentaries which represent the subject of the film in different ways. However, my documentary has to be either observational or interactive (participatory).

-Situations and events, actions and issues may be represented in a variety of ways, there are a range of strategies that have arisen to represent text
-In documentary 4 modes of representation stand out as the dominant organisational patterns around which texts are structured: expository, observational, interactive (participatory) and reflexive
-The expository text addresses the viewer directly, with titles or voices that advance an argument about the historical world
-Observational documentaries stress the nonintervention of the filmmaker. They rely on editing to enhance the impression of lived or real time
-Interactive documentaries are where the filmmaker intervenes and interacts with the subject being filmed and illusory absence is shorn away
-Reflexive Documentaries work similarly to interactive but instead of hearing the filmmaker engage solely in an interactive fashion with the subject, we can now see or hear the filmmaker engage in commentary

Reading notes: Rabiger 'what is documentary?'

Below are notes from a reading by Rabiger called 'What is Documentary'. These notes will help me over the course of my project as I keep in mind what documentaries, especially successful ones, consist of.

-Documentary is a rare medium in which the common person takes on large, important issues and shakes up society
-Directing a documentary involves handling a certain amount of power which brings ethical issues and moral responsibility to the director
-The notions of documentaries explore the mysteries of actual people in actual situations
-Documentary always seems concerned with uncovering further dimensions to actuality and at the same time implying social criticism
-Concern for quality and justice of human life lifts the documentary from a factual world and attempts to put emphasis on moral and ethical issues, scrutinizing organisation of human life and developing a humane conscience in its audience
-Successful documentaries tell a good story, have engaging characters, narrative tension and an integrated point of view (much like fiction) whilst still displaying real life
-Successful documentaries also seem to centre around some aspect of human development, no matter how minimal, this is done to leave audiences with some degree of hope
-Filmmaking is a series of significant choices: 1) What to shoot? 2) How to shoot it 3)What to use in the film? 4)How most effectively to use it

Introduction to the camera

In week 2 of the course I was put into a group and given a Sony X70 camera to use as this is the camera we are most likely going to use for our documentaries. We were told to go and shoot some footage of whatever we chose using a range of different camera angles so that we could adapt to the camera. My group and I chose to shoot a conversation between two people and used a range of angles such as over the shoulder, mid shots, close ups and many others. At first using the settings on the camera such as the white balance setting was confusing but after trying a few buttons I seemed to adapt to the camera very quickly. We were also shown different interviewing techniques when shooting peoples answers that we then put into practice, for example, standing next to the camera and making eye contact when asking questions so that they are not distracted by the camera but still looking in the same direction. We were also given a microphone to use that was clipped to each subject interviewed so that we could hear their answers to 'What was your first day at Sussex like?'. We were also told to try left to right shooting when interviewing different subjects in the same area, this is where you have one subject standing on one side of the camera when answering and then have the following subject being on the opposite side.

Introduction to the course

In the first workshop of the course I was informed what was going to be taken place over the following weeks, shown examples of existing work and was introduced to camera angles that would be suitable for my project. It was explained that over the course I would be creating a short documentary of less than 4 minutes in a group of me a three others, consisting of either a theme of a specific place or person. I was also informed that the documentary had to be either an observational or participatory styled piece. As I haven't studied documentaries before, I was unfamiliar with these terms. However, the terms were explained in class before I was shown examples of short documentaries that fell under these genres. An observational documentary is where the camera is an 'invisible' observer  whereas a participatory documentary refers to a camera silent observer but its presence is evident to the film viewer. The examples of documentaries shown were also used to give me knowledge of camera angles that work well in documentaries and what ones don't. For example, when doing a shot of interviewing always make sure to get their whole face, as in one of the documentaries there is a shot of the subject talking and it is so close up that his chin is cut off the shot. Also, I learned that when doing an interview shot that the subject should be looking as close to the camera as possible without it looking forced or them focusing on the fact that the camera is there, in order to avoid this, when asking questions to the subject I should stand next to the camera to allow them to make eye contact with me- drawing their eyes away from being directly at the camera which could cause them to be nervous.