This semester for moving image production
project I chose the Documentary strand, where I learned about the basics of
producing and filming a documentary. The brief required us to create a 2 minute
poetic documentary that informed our main documentary, which meant a technique
or style my group want to use for the main film had to be shown in the poetic
film. For this project my role in the group was the cinematographer, Hannah
Grencis was the director/producer, Emily Spokes was sound recorder/sound editor
and Heather Hall was the editor. I think that as a group we worked well and all
got along, it was easy to talk to each other and any input was appreciated. One
problem I do think we had was that at times, especially during the editing
stages, it was left down to me and Hannah to get things completed due to other
priorities like work or travelling home, however I do understand that Emily had
a legitimate reason for not being able to be there for some things towards the
end of the project and instead she got a lot of the paperwork side of things
completed for us. This all put a lot of stress on me and Hannah though as it
just doubled our workload when there were other modules that we still had work
to be completed for deadlines that needed to be focused on too.
We found things difficult to start off with
in terms of finding a story to create a documentary from that would be
interesting enough to not be just a general documentary. We all looked around
Sheffield’s news websites to try and find something interesting, which is
harder than it seems as even though there is a lot of news, being able to carve
a storyline out of it with enough content for a 5-10 minute documentary is a
difficult thing to do at first. Eventually Hannah found a story about the
demolition of a row of independent shops along Devonshire Street, where the
council has plans to knock them down in order to replace them with mainstream
coffee shops and student flats above, even with the huge West One student
accommodation just across the road. We decided this was an interesting story as
there were a lot of different articles about the plans and it was being backed
by a petition and the drummer from Arctic Monkeys. We still needed to come up
with a back-up plan in case we couldn’t go ahead with filming the independent
shops so we carried on looking for more news. Hannah suggested that she wanted
to make a film about the homeless people who sell the Big Issue magazine, but
we were a bit unsure about filming homeless people just because we weren’t sure
we could trust them around the equipment and we weren’t confident enough to be
able to deal with that. However it did make me think of another idea where we
could do a day in the life documentary of the charity street workers who stop
people in the street or work door-to-door. I also knew someone who comes into
my work all the time who runs a company that distributes these workers, who is
friendly and would have been up for letting us follow some of his workers. We
wanted to show a side to these people that no one really considers when saying
no or ignoring them passing them in the street, or who shut the door in their
faces. We found a few articles where charity workers would talk about how they
think the people who walk down the street almost forget that they are human
too, and how degrading it is to be constantly avoided or have rude people
shutting doors in their face. I think it’s an interesting side of this kind of
work and would have been a good documentary if we couldn’t have gone along with
the independent shops documentary.
At first we wanted to focus the documentary
on the book and record shop ‘Rare n Racy’ that has been there since the 60’s
and is well known around the community. Before we had to present our pitch
Hannah and Heather went in to the store to ask about filming in there but he
said no and that he didn’t want anything to do with it in case he says
something he shouldn’t have. They decided to try next door instead in another
one of the shops being affected called ‘Syd and Mallory’ which is an
independent clothes shop. These were more enthusiastic about the film and
wanted to be a part of it and were happy for us to just come in whenever we
wanted with the camera and get what we need. This definitely made us more
confident that people did actually want to be involved in this so we started
thinking about other people who could be possible contributors. At first for
the poetic documentary we wanted to create something that was sort of like John
Smiths film ‘Blight’ (1996) where the film would tell a story through the
repetition and rhythm of the interviewee’s words and stories. We thought that
this would have been an effective technique to show shots of the difference
between the high street and Devonshire Street, with vox pops of the public’s
opinions on both of these areas. We did manage to get quite a few vox pops,
however we had the trouble that a lot of people we stopped on Devonshire Street
weren’t from Sheffield so didn’t know much about the area but did say a few
words about their first impressions and what they think of independent shops.
To get around this Debbie suggested we go out on a Saturday when more locals
are likely to be around the area. For the visual side of the poetic we wanted
to try and just use two shots, one of Fargate and one of Devonshire Street to
show the differences in the areas. For this to work well we needed to get two
really good shots of the streets, which was more difficult than we originally
thought in terms of finding a good position. When it came to seeing this in the
edit it became clear that we needed something different as the shots weren’t
the best and the vox pops just weren’t working in my opinion, plus we had no
atmos sound which made it sound messy, however it was our tutorial the next day
so we waiting to show Debbie to get some help on what we should do. She
suggested that we don’t go with the vox pops from the public and to just use
Lucy’s interview, which I agreed with as even though we occasionally recorded
something good from one of the locals it wasn’t exactly what we needed as they
went off topic a lot. A suggestion for the visuals of the poetic was that we
film a tracking shot of Fargate and cut it into a tracking shot of Devonshire
Street which I really liked the idea of. It would have been a good way to show
the differences in a bit more of a unique way instead of just static shots from
the bottom of each street. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to do this as the
Christmas market was starting to be set up on the high street which took up the
whole middle of the street, which to get a good frame would be where we would
have to put the tracks. Hannah and Emily still went with the tracks to see if
it could be possible but they couldn’t get anything from it because of lack of
space. Instead they used the day to get as many shots of Fargate and Devonshire
Street as they could and we decided to no longer have a two shot film and to
use Lucy’s voice over some atmos sound that changed to fit the area when we
move from Fargate to Devonshire. Overall I wasn’t really proud of what we had
achieved with the poetic, I think that if we really thought about it earlier
than we could have possibly filmed the tracking shots which I believe would
have put the technical side of the film at a higher standard.
For our main documentary, we knew that it
would be more suited as a campaign film as plans were still being debated and a
lot of people were still signing petitions. Hannah got in touch with 38
degrees, who put the petition online, but we never heard anything back from
them. Instead we decided to screenshot the petitions and newspaper articles to
show this side of the story since we couldn’t get an interviewee for this. For a while we only had an interview from
Lucy filmed who is the co-owner of Syd and Mallory, which in terms of what
content she covers and her emotion in how she says some things is a great
interview. However even though her framing is good and she looks good on camera
as she has a warm look to her, she was really nervous and kept fidgeting and
touching her face and her eye line was all over the place. Because of this we
couldn’t show much of her in the final film which was a shame, but we have
definitely learned from this and now know that before having an interview talk
to the interviewee a bit beforehand to help them be more comfortable around us.
Lucy was also not wanting to do anymore interviews as when we asked if we could
come back to film some more she was happy for us to come and film stuff but not
to speak on camera again, which we had to respect and just got some shots of
her working on a dress. Myself and Hannah spent a few hours one day getting as
many shots of inside Syd and Mallory as we could, as they have such a unique
shop and a lot of old vintage trinkets that add character to our film.
Character and community is what we really wanted to show through this film as
this is what you get when you go into an independent shop or in Devonshire
Streets case the whole area is basically independent. We managed to get an
interview with Kane Yeardley who is the director of The Forum, which is a bar/restaurant
with independent stores located in an indoor section next to the bar. He felt
very strongly against the plans for the demolition as he owns a big part of
where a lot of independent shops are located. Again his interview was good in
the way that he says some really good things about this area but we had some
problems with sound that messed up a few things he says that would have been
good to include but wasn’t possible. Kane wanted us to do the interview in the
restaurant area, and although that was good as you can see the bar in the
background and it looks nice inside The Forum, but for sound it was a really
bad location. Little parts of the background noise is fine as you can see whats
going on anyway, but there are some really loud bangs coming from the bar and a
man sitting near kept coughing very loudly in the middle of Kane talking, which
was annoying but we couldn’t really ask the man to leave till we were done.
However I know that what we should have done was ask Kane if there was any
other room we could have done the interview in. The same situation happened
should have happened when we interviewed Bill from The Green Room, as the
background noise was a big issue there too. It was worse with this interview
though as it was from songs being played in the pub that were well known and
could have copyright issues. We had no choice but to include Bill though as
otherwise we would only have Kane and Lucy as contributors which wouldn’t have
been enough. Bills interview is good for hearing about the memories of
Devonshire Street and what is good about it from a customer’s perspective as he
used to drink in the bar himself before working there. Overall I like the
documentary especially all the short, quick shots of the area which really
shows its difference from the high streets. However there is still things that
I think we should have done better and things we could have done to include
more footage. There was a lot of issues with interviews and I think that we
have all definitely learned from these mistakes and if I am to ever work on a
documentary again I will be sure to not make these mistakes again, but most of
it is about confidence. I also think that it would have been good to keep
trying with 38 degrees or try to get an interview with someone from the council
in order to include a bit more about the actual plans to make that more clear
to the audience, as I don’t think it is at the minute.
