Reflection for both Drama and Documentary

CMP Project

The processes used to create the documentary

In the documentary project I was sound recordist and camera operator. My initial role was sound editor, however due to circumstances I had no opportunities to edit sound. This module enabled me to develop my communication and team skills.

Lecturers initially got us creatively thinking by showcasing experimental productions such as Pockets, Skateizan, Eric’s Secrets and The Archive. These films focused on a particular subject and provided interesting information. The structure of the films segmented information to allow the audience digest key information and to keep the audience interested. The key to the documentaries was to not overwhelm audience with information, but to present information in a diegetic format that is aesthetically pleasing.

Following these showcases and seminar analyses, we needed to liaise with other students of the course to identify each other targets and methods of achieving them. My personal target was to develop my experience in the sound field. Though this proved difficult from time to time as students hold different commitments and are in different circumstances, the majority of students managed to cope and find groups to work in. The group I joined was founded based on our interests. We all had different aims and skills we wanted to develop, specific roles would allow us to develop these roles.

Another skill that I developed whilst in this production was idea development, this group had many ideas, some that would conflict with each other. We discussed for weeks the idea we would like to follow and some of our ideas when presented didn’t appeal as much as we thought it would. Our final idea, which me and Emily had sourced out almost at the same time seemed to be the most agreeable and interesting of the batch. This did not mean we would completely dissipate our previous ideas. As a group, we took the most outstanding and complimentary thoughts from our previous ideas and used them to assist bringing our final idea to fruition. This meant that everyone, even if not directly got to contribute in some way or another. By this time, we had just had Marcus join and we brought him up to speed with the progress of our idea.

In my opinion, too much time was spent on the idea of the project and not on the pre-production. This is debatably wrong as the idea development would fall under pre-production, however I do feel too much time was centred on the idea and this led to gaps in other segments of pre-production.

I had watched a few films to analyse how sound contributed and sound techniques that were deployed to produce specific reactions from the audience. One is the use of atmos to create a naturalistic scene. Others included the build up to a climax or change.

The production experience was incredible, on the first day of arriving in Liverpool we met with manager and coach of LHFC to negotiate terms of our production. We (Emily) communicated in such a way that both parties found beneficial factors from the end product.

Our documentary was aimed at people who could relate to the interviewees of the documentary. This means anybody who had been threatened or experience homelessness. Our secondary audience was the people who are still homeless, this would be people who fall below F on the socio economic scale. Our tertiary audience are football lovers and people who hold football as an interest. This documentary would serve as an inspiring story to enjoy hearing about football.

The finished piece reaches its goals. We wanted a documentary that provided key information about the homeless football club. The documentary was well received by our peers and the football club were happy with the end result.

The pros are that the group came together and completed a product we were all happy with. We worked to each other’s strengths and if there were any concerns, a member of the team would communicate it over to the rest of the team to attempt to resolve the problem as soon as possible. The days of production went well as we travelled to different locations to interview different participants that had come forward. The film is shot and looks really nice and pleasing to the viewers.

The cons are the production took a little while to get onto its feet. That time could have been spent getting in contact with more people in relation to the subject to create a more objective view. Once I had been away for a little while the crew had stopped communicating regularly to keep myself up to date with what was going on, so I was unaware of the progress of the production. Some ideas at the beginning were pushed too hard and I found previous declined ideas were being reinvented to make them acceptable. The sound editing could have been a lot better on the end product, I fear less adherence was made for it once I had left, even though there was more than one sound editor.

Along the course of this production I developed my skills into researching. Being given limited amount of time to find a subject that fits the assignment criteria and brief, forced the group into a situation that require ourselves to deploy effective search techniques to find a suitable subject. This included

The processes used to create the drama

Creating groups for this project proved to be the most difficult. I had personally noticed that people had started creating circles on the course and this made it hard for people who were not part of a circle. Personally I was not part of any circle, I was comfortable around the people I had worked with previously, but I had not created a social circle.

I started to ask around to see who wasn’t in a group and it seemed only the people who people found most difficult to work with before were free to work with. This was a similar scenario for the CMP Production Skills module. Out of sheer luck I managed to locate a few students who were looking for group members.

The first group meeting I had missed, because I had a presentation for the CMP Production Skills module, this left me at a disadvantage at idea development as an idea had been decided in this meeting. The meeting that I met the whole group was catch up for myself, as I needed to understand the concept of the idea. This proved to be very difficult. I was confused by the explanation of the idea and the concept. After a few group meetings I finally managed to get on the same page as other group members.

Having a session with floor plans helped me slightly. The production session was quite useful, I got to see an actor. The main problem was the communication. Relating back to what I was saying about social circles on the course, this only made it tense to communicate with people on the course in seminars and workshops. Sometimes people would want to discuss ideas and other days they would not or the feeling of segregation would slip in. This made the workshop session beyond awkward and indigestible, in the end I requested to leave. The post-production follow workshop really helped. I got to edit the recorded footage from the day with the actor and the main objective was to create a sequence that didn’t emphasise the problems that happened in production. It was very difficult as I faced different problems such as: the actor saying the wrong lines or the white balance being incorrectly set. Since there was no ADR or re-recordings of takes the sound limited the sequence. In the end I decided to edit around the sound also to make the sequence fit. I inserted pans to support position and darkened the majority of the shot to conceal unnecessary objects.

As I wasn’t editor for this project it was less useful in comparison to the actual editor, however it did aid me to picturing how the drama could look. The sound editing helped me to understand how the sound editor could piece together the sound. Certain parts of the sequence I would draw upon sounds from other clips of captured footage to make it flow smoother.

Once the group had drafted a first draft script and met actors this really helped. The group hadn’t planned on using the actors from the seminar prior to it, however it seemed that they were most suited for what we required. The actor who read our voice over dialogue seemed more than willing to feature in our film so we gave her the role. We got the other actors to act the argument scene that would feature in the film and it worked out really well. We offered the male actor the role as we needed an actor for the scene, however the main character is who he would have an argument so we did not require the remaining actor.

Our schedule was quite loose, most of the production did not require definite dates as we had access to most of the locations and facilities we required. Shooting on the bus required us to get in contact with the bus provider and ask for clearance. No contact was made and the group had just randomly set up on a bus we had got on, then recorded. I recorded atmos from the bus we had boarded. The sound editor had not outlined any specific sounds they had wanted, so I thought to record anything that peaked my interest and would be an asset to the production.

One difficulty we had with this production was finding a pole dancer who could act. The university has a pole dancer society luckily and members of group were getting contact with people from the society, however when the days of production approached, the reliability of the pole dancers decreased and eventually we had to use one of the crew. She was a pole dancer and actor so it worked, however without her in the group, this would have been a hard project to commit too.

The pole dancing studio and the living room were easily accessible. Amy was a part of the society, so this worked in our favour and we decorated Izzy’s living room to get the look we desired. Whilst sound recording in the pole dancing studio, I had thoughts about alternative ways recording the sound of pole dancing. One idea that came to was using the hydrophone with an end piece whilst Amy was performing on the pole. We only recorded once in the pole dancing studio, so unfortunately I did not get to experiment with this idea.

The last hiccup I personally made was with the recording of the monologue, I had connected the shotgun microphone to Marrantz recorder, however had forgotten to set it to the microphone. This meant that the majority of the recording I made were in stereo and only a few were in mono.

To conclude, I have enjoyed creating this product, from the current progress of the rough draft, not enough adherences have been paid to the sound. The planning for sound was to eliminate it, which left the group at a disadvantage. The powerful use of silence will most likely not be utilised. The film looks nice so far and I believe the final cut will be nice. Communication was pretty poor, our main point of communication was Facebook and though the majority of society uses it today, it still isn’t professional or completely reliable. Important information was either received late or received at all, because of Facebook. The editor has not kept the group up to date with edit and as I write this, I have still not seen the final edit.