Alternative Documentary

As we have documented our film process, we have been discussing our seperate edits.

Here is my version of the documentary.



The decision not to show this doc in class for the final pitch was down to Harry and Amy, who we allowed to make the decision as they would not be biased towards any of our edits.

My understanding is that, they thought that the film was not in keeping with the brief and wasnt as Cinema Verite as Dans. I could see more elements of cinema verite in Dans work, but thought mine was technically & aesthetically better.

It was difficult to seperate which one would get us a better mark, content wise. The decision was made that Dans documentary showed more of the content they wanted to see.

I was disheartened by the decision initially because I had put a lot of work into the concept that I had came up with. However, this was a group project and I cant take plaudits as we all put a lot of effort into each production. I had spent hours in the edit suite making sure it looked professional, so I was sad it didnt get chosen given the good reaction it had got in my editing class but you have to take these things in your stride. Also, I was happy with the passion on display from the other group members as they really "sunk their teeth" into my idea, and it couldnt have been achieved without them.

To conclude, I feel both documentaries get the point across, but in different ways. Ideally, I feel we should of got an outsiders view on which documentary was to be chosen, but we had decided early on in the process that the decision should be from Amy and Harry who didnt edit the piece and they seemed to be clued up on what the teacher would be looking for. I think Dan has produced a great documentary and I hope he posts it on here aswell.

Today's finalities and decisions

After tweaking their edits, both Dan and Jonathan burnt their versions of the films to disc and presented them to myself and Amy. Having seen Dan's more recently than Jonathan's I knew more or less what to expect from his version but Jonathan, clearly having put a lot of work into his edit since I last viewed it two days ago, was radically different. It was a much tighter edit with interesting and relevant cutaways, the music ran more or less all the way through the film and overall the new version kept my attention more than Jonathan's previous edit.

Having given Dan and Jonathan some final improvements to tweak their edits, it fell to Amy and I to decide which of their edits we would submit as the finished item. This was a difficult decision to make as we felt both pieces had strong elements and where one lacked the other made up for. Dan’s edit includes more footage of the interviews which we were worried would contribute to the audience losing interest whereas Jonathan’s piece has the same relevant material but it had been intercut with more cutaways and music to fit the mood of the voiceovers. However, in the end we chose Dan’s edit of the film simply because we thought that his footage combined with the voiceover made for a more solid conclusion to our findings. This was an extremely difficult decision for myself and Amy and we talked at length about the pros and cons of each version of the film. If I was to produce this film again I would suggest that all four of us have a greater group input into a single edit of the film in order to incorporate everyone’s ideas and opinions more fully.

I have enjoyed working on this film more than any other I have made to date as it has taught me more about the importance of organisation and group discussions than I could ever have imagined before I had made it. All members of the group have been as equally hard working and we have worked brilliantly together on all aspects of production. I think that group communication is a huge part of achieving a good end result and though we have encountered a few communication issues in some areas, we have overcome these to make a piece of work that I am immensely proud of.

Voiceover Explanation for my edit

I wrote the voiceover ideas together with Harry awhile ago.

I think it was important that we colloborated on this as the voiceover was produced after the edit was in place. I found I could give good guidelines as to what I wanted to be said and we scripted the documentary together. Below I will set out which shots were coupled with the script we had wrote.

"Media students. We decided to make a documentary to find out what Sheffield has to offer them by way of a career. First we asked the public".


"People in the industry"

"And found out what it takes to get a foot in the door in an industry that's increasingly difficult to break into."

So with over 25 media related courses in Sheffield alone, surely the public have some idea of what a media student actually does? We ventured into the city centre to find out.

This was the opening for the montage presenting the findings in short highlights. I felt I maintained a decent pace to this opening, but also took myself away from the more truthful verite approach here, because I misconstrued the context behind what the people in these short snippets were talking about to make it sound like they were slanderising media students- which wasnt the case for some people.

This was so the audience could maintain interest in the documentary and want to know the truth behind what was being said in the highlights.

Further, this helped live up to the title "making trouble for public good", as I later corrected the wrongs during the main segment of the documentary, when the actual truthful interviews were presented.



No one really had an opinion. Until we met this man.

Here, I wanted to draw attention to the individual with strong opinions on media students. I feel he is a real character and provides the negative connotations I suspected would come out during my research. This was the whole reason I was making the documentary, to try to educate and inform individuals like this. I added a bit of humour to the film by using the Jaws music in the build up to his interview.

It was beginning to look like no one had anything positive to say about media students.

This was directly after the man with the strong views had labelled media students as "frauds". I feel it helped convey a negative more depressing mood to the film (which started quite optimistically). This was a bit of a metaphor for the ups and downs we encountered in our investigation- the success stories and the media students who hadnt achieved anything and had been left £10,000 in the red having finished the course.

So with all this negativity hanging over us we decided to head to the Workstation, home to several cultural and media companies all supporting each other. We spoke to Tom Gatis former Media student and currently working as a Project Co-Ordinator for the Sheffield DocFest about his experiences.

This was an introduction to Tom Gatis. Tom was pretty informative but I felt his interview dragged on initially which was why I cut him from 2:30 to 1 minute. This was because some of the things he was talking about was not relevant to the investigation into how worthwhile university courses are.


The message was coming through loud and clear, work experience is the key to success in the Film and Media industries and we could see the struggle facing media graduates. With that in mind we packed up for the day and headed back the next morning to meet Hussain, film programmer for the International Doc Fest held every autumn.

Introduction to Hussain. Hussain had very strong views, he sympathised a lot for students undertaking media degrees and we learnt that work experience was key to the industry. He informed us of success stories which I used in my edit as I found it would be interesting side story to some of the issues being discussed about success in the industry.

Stylistic changes from first concept.. My edit.

My first concept of the film was to have a presenter throughout the film coupled with voiceover, to suit the need for the documentary to be Cinema Verite.

However, when consilidating the footage I realised that it didnt have the same impact this way, and that the documentary would merely drag on.

I found influence in a dispatches documentary (below). I think this style maintains the audiences interest, and allows the seriousness of the issue to come across better than if, say, I produced a film which followed every meanial detail into the documentary process. I decided I would make use of music and voiceover to guide the narrative rather than rely on a presenter.


In keeping with the brief, I found I still used some cinema verite techniques, in particular, the use of the narrator in shot- rather than have the narrator talking to camera, however, he looks at the camera whilst the voiceover of his own voice discusses what he had learnt in his investigation. I liked this as it kept a bit of seperation between the audience and the viewer, which might be seen as being quite observational in a sense and thus being more like Direct Cinema.

More Cinema Verite techniques can be seen in the shots where the group is seen on camera, whilst the narrator acknowledges that they are the crew making the documentary.

Use of text in my edit

I have decided to emphasize some of the dialogue in the opening sequence.

To do this, I made a text layer and added my text. I then inserted it over the top of the video, then went into controls. I then positioned my text where I wanted. Each bit of text from the dialogue will flash up in the opening sequence.

Below I have screen shots of how this looks:

I will continue this theme in my edit, to make particular words stand out.

Music. My Edit

Music is important in all film. For my documentary I want the music to help convey a mood at a particular moment. There are parts of my edit that are optimistic, inquisitive, pessimistic, jovial and sombre.

Here is the music I have selected for each part of the edit.

Optimistic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQtfntyVTNU

This song sounds quite upbeat and optimistic. This juxtaposes the negativity conveyed in the film which helps to match the module title I produced the documentary for entitled "Making Trouble for the Public Good".

Inquisitive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFhJGwjfDBk

This song will help the feeling of trying to find out something. I feel that when the beat kicks in I will be able to time the visuals to match this, before delving into the public voice-box. The music will cut once the man with strong opinions starts talking as he is important to the narrative and I want to keep the tone of the documentary serious.

Pessimistic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rl1qbz5_nI&feature=related

This song is very depressing and melodramatic and follows on from an interview from someone who was fairly negative about the chances of Media Students breaking into the industry. I feel it will match the rainy drab shot of the Sheffield wheel and show a sign of things to come, when we interview the rather disheartening character of Hussain.

Jovial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-2H4-OGmpE

This songs bass line is quite jovial and melodic. I feel this will match the character being interviewed in the film quite well as I found him to be light hearted and laid back. I feel this shows elements of positivity which is important for this particular sequence.

Sombre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vslbQNkFLl8

The songs mood is quite sombre, which helps to create feelings of rest and reassurance but not entirely positive. I feel this will be quite important to the concluding montage and help the documentary go out with a bit of a bang.

Influence. My edit.

I have been watching the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, I really enjoyed the film 'Ivans Childhood'.

I particularly enjoyed the opening, it conveys a very positive mood. I wish to convey positive feelings in my own work. I felt the music played a big part, it also used visually stunning shots.

In the article (link posted below), the writer talks about the rejection of montage in the work of Tarkovsky.

I intend to use montage but I still found Tarkovsky to be quite an interesting film maker.

Reading the article I have established that Tarkovsky tends to use long sequences, repeating shots to show the character trying to achieve his goals but without using a 3minute montage to glue together the 'struggle' of the character and how he/she eventually solves his/ her problems.

Instead Tarkovsky chooses to show the clip over and over again until the character solved the problem, even if this means playing the same clip over a 15 minute duration.

Unfortunately because of my time restrictions I will have to make use of montage but I agree in a sense that montage isn't truthful because it covers a vast array of information in a short time scale, wheras a struggle could take a long period of time.

An interesting quote on Tarkovskys distaste for montage from the man himself.

"The idea of "montage cinema"—that editing brings together two concepts and thus engenders a new, third one—again seems to me to be incompatible with the nature of cinema. Art can never have the interplay of concepts as its ultimate goal. The image is tied to the concrete and the material, yet reaches out along mysterious paths to regions beyond the spirit..."

http://www.ce-review.org/00/39/kinoeye39_halligan.html

Degrees of Seperation. My edit.

I have been reading a magazine article about engagement of the audience entitled, 'point of view'. The bit that interested me was the discussion of 'subjectivity' . We have shots of Mark Herbert talking almost directly at camera.

I think after reading the article it is clear that when the subject looks directly at camera it seems more personal.

I intend to use this for effect in my film. In my opening montage I will have some of the characters talk to the camera. Coupled with his dialogue, the shots of Hussain will aim to shock the audience in order to keep them interested for the rest of the doc.

Here Hussain looks directly at camera and says "Its crap, its going to be crap, youre just going to die crap". This was taken out of context for the purposes of shocking the viewer and served as a memorable quote which inspired the title of the documentary.

To have an acclaimed producer speaking almost directly to camera helps to show a more personal point of view. Mark is extremely informative in his answer and I feel this is best as my documentary serves to educate as well as entertain.

Presentation tomorrow

Having completed my edit and presented it today, it received a good response, similar to the one I believe Jonathan to have had with his cut. Steve didn't have any criticism really, other than that it seemed to suggest an underlying message that money is important for us media students, and that this 'success' is what we're looking for. I disagree of course, but can see where he is coming from, in my edit anyway.

It seems like we have got two very strong cuts to go with tomorrow, and today is the day we decide which one we choose. Either way I am very pleased with our progress on this film.

Editing improved.

Yesterday I received some useful suggestions from Jonathan to improve my edit. The majority of the improvements were made to the sound.

The first general improvement I made was using the pen tool to make the sound fade in and out to a more professional standard, rather than using the cross fade effect.

The screenshot shows how, especially with the voiceover sections, I faded the sound in and out with the pen tool to clear it up and give it a more professional standard. I also dipped the audio levels of the sound track where necessary, to give more emphasis on the voiceover. As Jonathan also pointed out, some of the audio levels were peaking into red and so I had to alter these slightly which meant adjusting some of the other levels also. Quite a few of his other suggestions on the audio were also to move some of the songs to start a bit earlier. I feel this has worked really well in parts where it overlaps the end of the interview, and the beginning of the next voiceover.

He had suggested to use some cutaways at certain parts of the film. Below shows one attempt at doing so.


However, I felt that the use of cutaways in this part felt lost because they weren't really relevant to what Hussain the interviewee was saying, and the only one I could find that remotely seemed relevant just seemed pointless on its own. Furthermore, I wanted to keep a Cinema Verite feel to the interviews, and this was the same with the Tom Gatis interview. Not only that but in terms of his suggestion with cutting parts out, although I did want to also, I felt that with all the information being given by the interview itself, it was too important to cut any out. In the end I decided to remove the cutaway attempt, and rather than go back to using a cross dissolve effect like before hand, I didn't insert anything and left it how it was. I was pleased with the end result and felt it is somewhat of a compromise. I haven't changed any other parts in the interview as I felt they worked better.

However I did have some slight problems with the soundtrack of 'Air France - No excuses' because when I tried to use the pen tool, it would insist on cutting the beginning of the song out, which was the section of the song I wanted.

This screenshot shows how I ended up keeping the cross fade at the beginning of the song because it had the correct result I was wanting.

Final Meeting

Meet at 11:30 at the downstairs cafe tomorrow. Harry suggested planning the presentation for Friday, so we'll definitely spend an hour or so on this. I also want everybody to have a last look through the group folder and see if I have missed anything.

See you then!

Group Folder - Research Materials

If anybody has any research materials, even a few notes on anything you've seen that might have influenced the documentary at all, could I have them for the group folder please?

Also Dan/Jonathan, if you have any notes on editing styles/influences I will need these too.

I'll need everything for the group folder by Wednesday at the latest! Thanks