Play-back!

On Thursday me and my documentary partner watched through all our footage we shot. Over all we were very happy with the footage and the framing etc. however, one thing we did notice was the colour didn't appear on screen as it did on camera.

We planned to reshoot some of the scenes we need to reshoot. We made a list of things to reshoot and start Tuesday.

Something Different

Not that long ago I did a two minute documentary in collaboration with Cancer Trust UK and Belfast Metropolitan College (BMC) to help promote their work. I shot, directed and edited it myself with the help of Yvonne Wall and Aidan Johnston, who are also doing some documentary work (If you click on their names it will bring you to their blogs for the documentaries they're working on now)

Here is a link to the documentary we made, it's called 'Something Different'...Enjoy!

Re-shooting

So I may have been a little naïve when thinking I was finished my documentary. It has come to my attention that it will take a few shoots to get what you need and what you want, and that is all natural when it comes to filming, especially a documentary.

So I have got in contact with my filming partner, and we have been discussing possible film times but we're waiting until we have a meeting before anything is set in stone...but hopefully we'll film sometime starting this week coming.

Stories We Tell

(SPOILERS--DUH!)

http://youtu.be/ytq4VZ2Nyxg

In class this week we watched the biographical documentary 'Stories We Tell' by actor/directer Sarah Polley. It was a beautiful documentary about her family life, which featured family videos artistically combined with reinactments that seemed more real life than dramatized.

I thought it was a creative way of filling the documentary and taking the audience on a journey which made you feel like part of the family.

The documentary shone a spotlight on her free-spirit to a mother, Diane, with insights of her mother told by her children, family, friends and people who knew her. It featured a voice over by her father, who was an actor/writer/creative type.

The documentary followed how their father met their mother and how they fell in love but; as a twist to the audience it took us on a discovery we were not expecting from this insight into family life. Growing up Sarah was part of an inside family joke of who her real father - that was all to real as the audience would soon find out.

Sarah's mother had a brief affair while she was on the road while she was on stage, and to Sarah and the rest if the family's knowledge it was (jokingly) between three men who performed on stage with Sarah's mother. The documentary takes us along as Sarah tries to discover if there is any truth to these light rumors.

We then find out that it is not between the three they expected but another man to much surprise of the family.

What I loved about this documentary was  the journey it takes you on while making you feel part of their family; while giving you each person involved's perspective of the series of events, which expanded over 28 years!

I also loved the techniques used in the documentary; which I talked about above, such as the artistic and seamless way she blended home video footage with reinactments that, if you weren't told, you wouldn't notice. I also loved how they showed the set up of the documentary with the equipment, like the microphones, the cameras, lights and the sound booth for ADR for the voice over on screen. It was both techniqual and artistic and showed the audience how a documentary is shot.

It was a new and exciting way to do a documentary and I think that's what kept your attention.