Searching for Sugarman

So today in documentary class I watched an incredible documentary - 'Searching for Sugarman'. 

It was a tale about a young up incoming artist, Sixto Rodreqize, from Detroit. He was discovered by a record label, Sussex Records and the creator of Mowtown; who was thought for big things. His album Cold Fact was given a rare review from Bilboard and given four stars but both his albums were flops. (Cold Fact and Coming from Reality)

In one of his heart hitting songs the lyrics read: "Fired from my job two weeks before Christmas". We'll that was kind if like a bizarre premonition because after his second album flopped, he was dropped from his label 2 weeks before Christmas - despite the producers he worked with saying he was in the top 5 artists they ever worked with. (And they worked with the likes of: Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Marvn Gaye and the Surpremes).

His album however got round to South Africa and pirated and sold as boot leg albums…and it captured the hearts of the entire contanint! The people however soon realised about how little they knew of the mysterious artist, and what with being dropped from his label he was proven impossible to track down. 

Rumors started circulating of his death; a suicide on stage, from pulling a gun and shooting himself on stage after a gig went wrong, to pouring gasoline on himself and setting himself a light on stage.

This caught the eye of a fan who done some detective work, since his album had been estimated to have sold 500 million and had been selling for 25 years after it made its way to the contanint. He was officially bigger than Elvs! Anyway after years of investigating a star they believed to be dead…they found him…living in the house he'd liven in for 40 years. 

He was then taken to South Afrca where he was unaware he was so popular because he was dropped from the label so didn't see a penny of it and was living in poverty. He done 6 sellout shows to 20,000 people a night. 

The documentry was artistic and insightful and a must see not just for any film-maker but of all audiences

Shot, Done and Dusted

So on Tuesday (19 November) we shot our documentary on 'Art: Thought to Page' (title not definite). It had to be a sort of cinematic style documentary which I have never seen previous, so to prepare we watched a few in class, such as: Nostalgia for light, tuc tuc and the train station.

The documentary took more of an artistic style than I originally intended; but it's not that surprising as the subject matter was on art and there was so much of interesting pieces of art to shoot, and I did think that a documentary about art would probably be taken better if it was shot more artistically.

One problem we encountered while shooting the documentary was; people we planed to interview pulled out on the last minute, which can only be expected. We got over this by shooting some extra footage and interviewing the art teacher (Alan Cargo)

We thought it would be good to interview him because of his experience, insight and passion for the subject…all that's left now is to edit!

Treatment

I had to complete a treatment for my documentary showing how I intend to shoot it (TREAT it basically).

I have how long it will be, the style I intend to shoot it in, the intended audience and the research I've done etc.

This is important because it will help prepare me for the day and stop me from scrambling for something to do

Filming Next Week

So next week (Tuesday 19 November) is our shoot date for our documentary and today my partner and I went to the location we'd be shooting.

We told the students that we would be filming them and they were all ok about it. We handed them question we'd be asking them, just so they are prepared.

We thought it was important to talk to them so we could build a working relationship with them to see who and how we get along as that relationship is crucial to the filming of the documentary.