Documentary filming day 1 - 30/11/14

Myself and Hannah went around Sheffield today finding building to film looking up on for us to use in the collage part of the film where Lucy talks about the city turning into a lego city. We tried to find a range of buildings to film but what we realised when waking around is that the majority of the buildings really do look the same, and are mainly big tall flats, which actually will work well in the context we are putting these shots into anyway. We managed to get some interesting shapes with some of the buildings and collected quite a few shots that I think should be enough to fill out the screen as a collage. If not we decided we could always just film some buildings when we're out filming at other times for the rest of this week. 

Planning for main documentary

This week we had a tutorial with Debbie to review some of the footage we have for our main documentary 'Made in Sheffield'. Because the past couple weeks have been heavily focused on poetic we haven't had a chance to film anything else for the documentary, so all we have is the interview with Lucy and the cutaway shots from inside Syd and Mallory. Because of this we just discussed how we can structure the film and what things could make it different to any normal documentary. We've been given a target to try and film the whole documentary in this week so that we leave ourselves with nearly 2 weeks to edit since it's going to be difficult to find a narrative structure from the interviews that is going to be effective. Debbie has told us to split the film into 3 parts with the first being an introduction to Devonshire street and the issues that we will be facing in the rest of the documentary and the contrast with the high streets, the second showing all the legal terms to it and explaining what is actually going to happen and if we can we should find someone from the council to explain the reasons for the plans. And then finally the last bit will be about the people these plans are going to be affecting and we'll try to speak to some of the customers and use a lot of nice footage from around the independent areas to show it's homeliness and quirkiness compared to the rest of Sheffield. We have a interview with the management of 'The Forum', (which is a sort of indoor shopping area full of independent stores) who seems really passionate about this subject and we think he will give us some good material to help with the narrative of the film.  To make the film a bit different Debbie gave us the idea to do something with montage editing or split screens to maybe boost our marks higher. I like the idea of doing something like Jonathan Caouette does with his 2003 film 'Tarnation' and create a collage of images from a variety of building around Sheffield that all look the same and boring, but with these images also creating a skyline out of them to create a Lego effect, which links back with our poetic documentary 'Legoland City'. 

                               (still from 'Tarnation' showing the split screen effect we want to try)

'Made in Sheffield' Treatment

Made in Sheffield

Production Group: Hannah Grencis (Producer), Sarah Cooper (Cinematography), Emily Spokes (Sound) and Heather Hall (Editor).

Length: 7 minutes
Tagline: A unique area with a story to tell, before it is too late.

The Devonshire Quarter of Sheffield has always been known for its striving independence since the 1970s. Current demolition plans propose to knock down unique independent businesses in the area, leaving owners out of business and an empty, generic city in their place.
Made in Sheffield captures a community of Sheffield people; independent business owners who have grown up in the city and whose venues allow visitors and residents alike to experience a different and unique side to the city. They are the ones directly affected if these proposed plans for demolition get the go ahead. They are the ones who believe in their businesses and are passionate about doing something different and bringing it to a city that is creative and benefits from an independent sector. The film allows the people of Sheffield to voice their opinion and gives them a chance to openly express how much they care about the issue; how much the city benefits from these businesses and the truthfulness of the impact that it will have if the proposed plans do in fact go ahead. The film goes behind closed doors and delves into the smaller details of the stores affected, showcasing the unique work that they do on a daily basis, and the passion that they put into it.

Our contributors tell us their own stories, expressing their passionate opinions, but they also show us. Lucy has worked at independent vintage clothing store Syd and Mallory for eight and a half years. Her business has already had to relocate three times in the city and she feels strongly about not wanting to leave, as she believes the store has ‘finally found the perfect place to stay’. Lucy found out via social media that her business was under threat of closure, and is currently fighting back by setting up an in store petition opposing the plans, in which hundreds of customers have already and are continuing to sign. The film captures Lucy creating items for her store and openly discussing how the demolition plans will negatively impact on Syd and Mallory as both a successful online label as well as a local Sheffield brand. Her passion and determination to keep her business up and running in the building which they have grown to love is clear; ‘there aren’t many shops like this are there?’, and her fight in the struggle to keep it is an emotional one – ‘everything that we do is in this building and it’s great and we don’t want to leave’.

Kane is the general director of the Forum, a small independent shopping centre, café and bar on the corner of Devonshire Street. He has grown up in Sheffield and seen his business strive in the independent quarter area, and very passionately believes that independent businesses contribute to the public’s positive perception of Sheffield. He understands and feels unhappy about Lucy’s struggle, as he holds fond memories of when Syd and Mallory was located in the Forum, before being moved across to the opposite side of Devonshire Street. He believes that the independent quarter ‘draws people into a different side to Sheffield, a side which forms part of the city and which caters for people who may not enjoy city centre life’.

Steve works at The Green Room, a small independent pub on Devonshire Street, which regularly holds live music nights and supports local talent. He is disappointed at hearing of the plans, as he is proud to call Sheffield his hometown and does not want the city he knows and loves to become just like any other. He worries that if the plans do go ahead, business may be affected at The Green Room, and that the community of people around the area may well change into a similar environment to the city centre – something which he believes should be firmly kept there.

The film documents how each of the businesses in this quarter of Sheffield are unique in their own way, creating an exciting atmosphere around the area. It captures memories of those who have grown up in the area and have seen it develop, and who are trying desperately hard to save it.

Made in Sheffield captures a side to Sheffield that sadly may not be around in future generations, but which needs to be captured as it positively stands today. It will celebrate the importance of independent businesses in a creative and unique city, and visually highlight why they need to stay.

Poetic Documentary 'Legoland City'

Legoland City from Emily Spokes on Vimeo.

Rough edit and feedback

Our original idea for the poetic was to have the film consist of two shots of fargate which shows all the high street shops, and then of division street which shows all the independent stores. In terms of the sound for the project we wanted to use certain words or a sentence of the vox pops we recorded from the public. We asked them what they thought of the area they were in (we done this in both fargate and division street) and if they knew about the closing of the independent shops and what were their thought on this. However putting them onto the edit I wasn't too sure on this idea anymore I thought it sounded quite messy and it didn't have the outcome I had originally expected, but it was left in to show Debbie in our tutorial. There was also an idea to not just have the two shots of the streets, and instead to include a cutaway of Lucy sewing over the clip of the independent stores and then a shot of feet walking past the camera in a dull shot over the shot of fargate. We weren't too sure on how well these really fit in with the theme of the poetic we had gone with but again we decided to get Debbie's opinion on this. We had very little sound design at this point so the sound was really basic and rough but didn't bother us too much as this was only just a rough edit to show at the tutorial. 

We received a lot of feedback from Debbie which will require us to go out and practically film completely new pieces of footage in the week before the film is due, but this didn't bother me as I completely agree with everything that was said and I think the feedback we received will help us to create a better film. First of all we need a better shot of the independent shops on devonshire street because as you can see from the image of the edit below you can't really see much of them, and it doesn't do the quirkiness of the street justice. We were also told that using the two cutaways doesn't work if the rest of the film is just the two shots of the streets, we need to go with one technique or the other. To resolve this Debbie had a good idea that I wish would be possible for us to do where we would track up fargate showing all the mainstream stores and then cut it to a track of the independent stores which I thought could work really well if we done this right. However because of the time of year the Christmas market stalls are up in fargate and fill up the majority of the street, which makes it impossible to get a position that looks good for the tracks. So instead we are going to film more shots of the mainstream shops and the independent stores from up close instead of two long shots, and use some of the cutaways we filmed in Syd and Mallory to show the quirkiness of the shop compares to the plainness of fargate. For the sound design we need to get an atmos track of fargate, and then loads of sounds you'd expect to hear there like tills and bank machines, then as we go into Devonshire we hear a busker playing and sounds of the skateboarders and general sounds around that area. We have also decided to just use Lucy's voice to make the sound design less messy, plus she talks about more relevant things with more passion than we got from the vox pops. 

Day 3 of filming 5/11/14

Today myself and Hannah went into Syd and Mallory to film some shots of the trinkets, vintage objects and clothes that they have in their store. To me this is what gives the shop it's character and there were endless things we could film and experiment with in terms of focusing. We ended up with a lot of shots, some that we could use for the main documentary, and some that we can either shoot again or put a stabiliser over in the edit, since a few were shaky as we handheld the camera. We were also able to film Lucy working on the sewing machine and get permission to go back into the shop whenever we wanted with the camera to get some more content for the documentary. Lucy didn't want to have another interview or say anything else on camera, as she was quite nervous the first time, so Hannah has sent them a message to see if it would be possible for us to interview any of the other staff as we need much more interviews to fill out the documentary.

Day 2 of filming 4/11/14

Today filming was mainly focused on getting the sound bytes and images for the poetic documentary. First we decided to go to Fargate where the main high street of well known chain shops are located. We put the camera on a tripod at both end of the street as we couldn't decide what would look better on camera for the documentary. We filmed both sides of the street for around 10 minutes as we are planning to speed the footage up in the edit if it looks right, to show the busyness of the high street. I also set the tripod to it's lowest height while we were sitting on one of the benches, so that I could film peoples lower legs and feet as they walked past. We are thinking of maybe using this for a cutaway in the poetic if we need one. We were also quite lucky with the sound bytes as we recorded around 5 people who all said something that we can use for the poetic film. There was a busker playing on the high street too who allowed us to record him while he played a couple songs on his guitar. The sound for this and all the sound bytes are really clear so won't need much tweaking in sound edit, and we think the guitar will work really well with the film. After this we walked up to Devonshire street to film the other image for the poetic documentary, which is a shot up the road where you can see the independent shops. We left it running for 10 minutes like the other two, however the street was quite empty and we're not sure if we're going to need to go back at a time we think will be more busier so that it has the same effect.