Documentary Video

Now that I finished my documentary video; Thought to Form and handed in all my work and production portfolio I just have to wait and see what mark I get. Personally I'm hoping for a distinction. In the mean time however here is my documentary... Enjoy.

Reflective Essay

Now that we are approaching the end of our documentary project, I have the time to sit and reflect on how I feel we did and how the finished project feels.

Initially on the first edit; I feel the film failed to suck the audience in, even though it was just trying to place the documentary in the form of a narrative story that we could build on, it wasn't exciting and it didn't make you want to keep watching.

Once our tutor seen it and gave me and my project partner notes on how to improve it, we all agreed on the best course of action. We needed to be drawn in from the start by getting straight into the action, with shots of the artists working away to concrete the thought that 'Yes, this is an artist’s studio.'

We made the narrative pace a little bit faster if you will; more exciting; we used footage of actual artwork to bring a bit of colour and dynamic visuals.

Picking a sound track is a hard thing to usually but luckily I already knew what music I wanted to accompany the video, the classical piece of orchestral music Clar DeLunn by Debussy. I felt this would go well with the editing pace and the orchestral sound would go well with the artistic style of the documentary and have a soothing calming effect; which I believe it did.

Then we showed the latest version of the edit to our teacher. The overall feedback was really good, which I was pleased with; especially after having worked so hard on it. However we did get a sheet of feedback which we could use to improve the documentary. Some of the ideas were:

1.      To add work shop sounds

2.      Too many shots are repeated

3.      Make your shots correspond to what’s being said.

With the atmosphere sound for the classroom I tried putting the volume up but the sound wasn’t quite right; there was a constant high pitched drone which destroyed the atmosphere created by the soundtrack I added and I felt it was important to keep that in the documentary. I then tried searching up sound effects of construction work etc. I could add into the film for the same purpose (to give the classroom feel a little bit more dimension) and once I added the sound FX I thought suited the best I had trouble syncing the sound along with the video and after a while of tweaking I just couldn’t get it.

With the shots that were repeated, they were of the same subject but at a different angle, I also loved the framing of the shots and the fact that the documentary came back to their unfinished work. For the sake of the documentary though it was a bit repetitive and thought it would be better to add different shots. The shots were kind of similar but had camera movement which I felt kept the documentary interesting and made it a good choice to add them, also I had run out of footage to use.

Even though I didn't make all the suggested changes I am very happy with my documentary. If I could make any changes it would be to start shooting earlier so that I have more time to get any pick up shots that may be needed in the future.

Over all I am happy with the end product, my intent was to make a short artistic documentary; and even though it didn't turn out exactly as I thought it would,  it did turn out to be a success and something I am very proud of, as well as being an artistic documentary that at the start of this blog was something I aimed for and feel I achieved.

Edit Second Draft

Coming up with a style that feels organic to your film is a bit hard, even with inspiration from other documentaries. 

You need to make something that feels right for you that also won't bore the audience.

Music is another important factor, it makes the audience feel how you want them to feel, it's almost like the soul of the film.

Also I edited a rough cut to get an idea of the narrative of the story but after a discussion with my tutor we decided we need to make the documentary pull you in more, so we changed the edit.

The second draft of the edit is more inviting and aesthetically pleasing and over all a better documentary and adding music really transformed the film

Editing Inspiration #2

This is part II of the previous post 'Editing Inspiration'...

This next clip is from the short documentary 'Virginia Leonard', this short a lot more colourful while hosting her own art in the background. The artist is in the foreground explaining her artistic process (like telling a story) while there is no interaction with interviewer or no voice over (like ours). Artistic cutaways are shown throughout the documentary along with music playing for the whole of the short.

Editing Inspiration

Currently I have been watching short artistic films for inspiration on the editing process of my short art film. Our documentary is a lot more observational; about how the artist gets from their thought process in their mind or on page to an actual piece of art.


I have to think what story our film is telling and how I want it to be told, through pace, music cuts etc.


This clip from YouTube, 'Tarran the Tailor' is a black and white short, not about an artist or art but shot quite artistically like my intended idea. It has a voiceover but not quite like a 'voice of god'  and it gives Tarran’s views/opinions/ideas like in our documentary.

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!