Filming: Day 1

Set and Shot Design

Before filming, I wanted to have a reasonable idea of the set I would be working with and where I wanted various cameras and lights to give the best results to my footage. I therefore designed the following set plans for the main bulk of my footage which will star Harry either being inteviewed or playing instruments.

Set and shot designs for Harry's performing scenes in the Garage studio

Interview set up for Harry's interview scene

Location for filming

Storyboard

This is the basic storyboard for my documentary. I like to draw a basic storyboard to get my ideas on what I want the piece to look like but then work more from a shot list and my head (if that makes any sense at all) so, here's my storyboard:

Costume, Hair & Makeup

A Small Update

Script Update

After thinking that Harry's twin sister Olivia should have a part in the documentary, I wrote the following lines for her towards the end:

Cut to shot of HARRY playing an instrument.

HARRY (VO):

If it gets too much I just pick up a guitar or my drumsticks and play something. You know, sometimes you’ve just gotta get on with things.

Cut to shot of OLIVIA.

OLIVIA:

What Harry’s going through is scary. Imagine being sixteen and being told you’ve got months left to live. Most of us would sit in the corner and cry and get depressed. And, as horrible as the tumour is, I feel like it’s inspired Harry to do what he wants in life. Since being diagnosed with the tumour he’s produced an album, got signed, done gigs, had singles in the top 20 and earnt a huge fan base. How many sixteen year olds can say that?

Cut to fairly close up shot of HARRY.

HARRY:

I know I’ve not got long left but I don’t want to spend my time moping around, I want to do what makes me happy.

Casting

Harry:

After considering several options for actors to play the character of Harry (and a few people declining due to exams) I have chosen my younger brother Harrison to play the character of Harry. Not only does he fit the character biography I came up with fairly well, but he is very musical and can play guitar and drums, as well as edit music together. This will hopefully give me a lot of different kinds of shot that I can work with and I may be able to work with Harrison to create a soundtrack for the documentary too, as he produces all his own music. He also did part of the soundtrack for my film opening last year.
Having Harrison as my main actor is also benificial because It means that getting footage of 'the baby Harry' will be very easy to acquire as I have lots of DVDs that my dad recorded when myself and my brother were younger and has given to me to use.

Jane (Harry's mum):
After choosing my brother to play the protagonist, it seemed almost logical for my mum to play the mum in this story. Not only do my brother and my mum kind of look alike, my mum can also be a pretty good actress and can connect with the emotional pain of the fear of losing her son. She is also a nurse and therefore has a good understanding of how horrific brain tumours can be. She is in some of the archive footage too.



Olivia (Harry's twin sister): 
The character of Olivia is not written into the original script but after reviewing it, I feel that it is not long enough. Olivia is mentioned in Harry's character biography and so I thought that a small part for olivia would be a good idea to add to the realism of the documentary. At the moment, I do not have an actress to play Olivia however if I cannot find one soon, I will play her as I am running out of time to find actresses and obviously, myself and my brother look fairly similar. Also, Olivia's part in the documentary is very small so it shouldn't bee too big of a deal.
 

Character: Harry

General details:

Name: Harry Cadden

Gender: Male

Age: 16

Weight: 11 stone

Height: Just under 6ft

Build: Skinny

Hair colour: Fairly dark brown

Eye colour: Dark brown - almost black

Right or left handed: Right handed

Nationality: British

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Disabilities: In operable brain tumour

Glasses: Fairly large, black rimmed glasses for reading

Smoker: No

Marital Status: Single

Favourite colour: Blue

Star sign: Libra

Birth stone: Opal

Life:

Habits: Nail biting, finger drumming and humming

Religion: None - atheist

Morals: Never give up. Live in the moment. No dream is too big or too small when one works hard to live it.

Phobia(s): Altophobia- Fear of heights.

Personality:

Description of voice: Fairly deep sounding voice, doesn't speak too quickly. Says 'like' and 'you know' too much, uses a lot of colloquialisms in day-to-day speech. When with his friends, he will swear a little but not around family or in a more formal situation.

Hobbies: Music - it is his life, video games, regular Tweeter.

Emotions: Never been in a relationship but generally a calm and collected individal. Doesn't get stressy as when he starts to feel under stress, he has methods to calm himself down. Also, he is usually reserved about whether anything is wrong in his life.

Likability: Admired and respected as he is determined and goes for his goals.

Dependant or independent: Independant of people. Dependant on music.

Life goal(s): To live his dream of being a musician until he dies.

Funeral plans: Wants to be cremated, says that he's not scared of death but secretly worried about what will happen t his family and friends after he dies.

Background:

Living arrangements: Lives at home with his parents and twin sister.

Occupation: Famous musician. Loves what he does, earning millions from it too.

Family: Parents and twin sister live with him at home. Extended family all live within the country.

Education: Currently in last year of high school and preparing for GCSE exams. Despite his music career, he still goes to the same school he's been at for the past five years.

New film, new script

FADE IN – Footage of a baby smiling and laughing. Sound of a voice over a speaker system with faint cheering in the background.

HARRY (VO):

This next song is for you guys. Thanks for making it number one.

Audio fades into a rock song remnant of rock songs from the early 70s. At the same time, footage changes to the baby in a paddling pool in the summer, he is giggling.

JANE (VO):

He was always a happy little boy.

As JANE talks, an array of footage from when HARRY was a baby is played.

JANE (VO):

He only really cried if he fell over.

Transition to see JANE sitting and facing the camera.

JANE:

Harry always loved music. We used to put the Star Wars soundtrack on for him and he used to sing us little songs so we were never surprised about how much music influenced him growing up.

FADE IN – footage of HARRY singing as a child.

Transition to HARRY.

HARRY:

I started learning guitar four years ago, drums nearly two years ago.

Transition to HARRY playing drums or guitar in his studio.

HARRY (VO):

I just like how I can escape with music. Just kinda, forget everything else for a while and go and have a jam or whatever.

Transition back to HARRY.

HARRY:

I managed to write and record an album last year. I managed to get it put on iTunes and then things just went mental.

Transition to HARRY doing some editing on his computer. Audio of a radio show.

DJ (VO):

And it’s time to reveal this week’s number one single! So, from the self-titled debut album, here’s Paradox by 16 year old sensation, Harry.C!

Audio of the song ‘Paradox’.

HARRY (VO):

I don’t want any special treatment or anything though. I still go to that same school and carry on like normal except I get a little more attention now…

Cross-fade with shot of JANE.

JANE:

I was so proud of him when his single reached number one – I always knew he’d do well. But not long after that, doctors discovered a tumour in his brain that they couldn’t remove and… because of the growth rate, they don’t think that Harry’s got long left.

Cut to shot of HARRY.

HARRY:

I’m not scared of dying. I’m not really scared about the tumour; I try not to think about it really. I just focus on music really.

Cut to shot of HARRY playing an instrument.

HARRY (VO):

If it gets too much I just pick up a guitar or my drumsticks and play something. You know, sometimes you’ve just gotta get on with things.

Cut to shot of HARRY.

HARRY:

I know I’ve not got long left but I don’t want to spend my time moping around, I want to do what makes me happy.

Analysing Documentary Posters

After looking at the conventions of a documentary, and earlier in the year looking at general film posters like 'The Dark Knight' and 'Cyrus' (See Here), I decided that I would look into and research documentary posters to discover the conventions which I could follow to create my own film poster. I looked at 'Supersize Me', 'An Inconvenient Truth' and 'March of the Penguins'.

 

 

 

 

After looking at these three posters, it is evident that there are certain codes and conventions to producing a poster for a documentary:

1) One main image - this large, main image is used to capture the attention of your viewers and usually conveys the main subject of the documentary. It is the first thing that the audience of your poster will see when they glance at your poster.

2) A large title - the title, along with the main image is probably the main thing that a viewer will see when glancing at your film poster so you have to make it stand out. The three above posters have achieved this by having large titles which contrast in colour to the rest of the poster.

3) A small tagline - a tagline allows the reader to learn of the contents of the documentary in one simple sentence and is a key selling point as to whether a person decides if they want to see your documentary.

4) A simple colour scheme - this applies to most film posters as they tend to stick to a simple colour scheme so as to look professional and not too busy to look at.

5) A block of credits - this simply details a lot of the people involved in the production and distribution of the documentary. It is usually made up of a small font and is located at the bottom of a poster. There may also be details of awards the documentary has won.

Film Poster Audience Research

1) Do you take notice of posters?
Harrison Calaby (16) Yes

Ben Thorpe (18) Yes

Robert Watts (44) Yes

Linda Goddard (47) Yes

John Seaman (62) Yes

Alice Calaby (92) Yes

Jack Latoy (18) Yes

Sam Hitchins (17) Yes

Fletcher Watts (11) Yes

Beth Calaby (12) Yes

- Out of my sample, all ten say that they take notice of film posters so with so much ‘competition’,. I have to make sure that mine really stands out.

2) What would you expect a film poster to have on it?
Harrison Calaby (16) At least one big picture and a large title.

Ben Thorpe (18) An eye-catching image.

Robert Watts (44) One or two pictures but not much text.

Linda Goddard (47) Main picture, big title and a slogan/tagline.

John Seaman (62) A big, eye-catching title.

Alice Calaby (92) A big title and the names of the actors in it.

Jack Latoy (18) A grabbing image and bold title.

Sam Hitchins (17) A big title and the names of the cast.

Fletcher Watts (11) Lots of colours!

Beth Calaby (12) The name of the title to be big and lots of colours.

- Lots of my sample mentioned images and a large title. A couple said about colour and naming the cast but they were not said by the majority so I wouldn’t class those as essential factors.

 3) Do you have a favourite poster? If so what is it?
Harrison Calaby (16) The Dark Knight poster with the joker on it.

Ben Thorpe (18) Pretty much any Batman poster.

Robert Watts (44) Forrest Gump.

Linda Goddard (47) I don’t really have one.

John Seaman (62) Casablanca.

Alice Calaby (92) Gone with the Wind.

Jack Latoy (18) Jurassic Park.

Sam Hitchins (17) Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

Fletcher Watts (11) Wall.E

Beth Calaby (12) Any of the Harry Potter posters.

- Most people have said that their favourite posters are those posters that people consider to be ‘iconic’ like Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump so I may try to imitate these styles while still putting my own spin on it.

4) Do you have any posters on your bedroom wall, do you consider them art?
Harrison Calaby (16) No but I think they are artwork.

Ben Thorpe (18) I’ve got the Dark Knight ‘why so serious’ in my room and I guess it can be considered art.

Robert Watts (44) I did when I was younger but not anymore but I think that film posters are pieces of art.

Linda Goddard (47) I used to have the Breakfast Club poster on my bedroom wall when I was younger but I don’t think that posters count as art.

John Seaman (62) No and I think that the old, hand drawn posters can be considered art – not the newer modern ones though, as they’re all done on a computer – that, to me, isn’t art.

Alice Calaby (92) Not in my room but I have a Gone With The Wind poster in my study. For me, it’s art.

Jack Latoy (18) I don’t have posters in my room but I’d quite like to get some. I think that some posters are works of art, others don’t take much effort.

Sam Hitchins (17) I don’t have film posters in my room but I had a Ponyo poster when I was younger. Yeah I guess they can be considered as art.

Fletcher Watts (11) I’ve got a Ben 10 and Spongebob movie poster in my bedroom. They’re not art though.

Beth Calaby (12) I’ve got a Harry Potter poster in my bedroom. I don’t really know if a poster is art.

- From my sample, not many have film posters on their walls. However, I think from a marketing point of view, it is good to create a prominent and effective poster to gain recognition for a film.

5 Simple Mistakes Documentary Filmmakers Make

Courtesy of Col Spector at http://www.raindance.org/blog/5-simple-mistakes-documentary-filmmakers-make/ :-

Documentary makers know that there’s more to the art then just letting the camera roll. There are strategies to employ, and in choosing the right ones, there are mistakes to be made. Don’t get stuck in one (or more!) of the 5 mistakes documentary makers make:

1) Not asking a question or choosing a theme

I think the biggest mistake people make is going ahead with making a documentary just on the basis that they have found a subject that interests them. This can sometimes result in a great film, but rarely. A documentary has to ask a question or have a big theme. By “big theme” I don’t mean it’s got to be worthy – another documentary no-no that I’ll get to later—I just mean its got to have a driving force of some sort. Before filming, ask yourself, what question am I asking and how does this film express my worldview?

2) Choosing a ‘worthy’ subject

People who decide to go off and make a documentary on the basis that the subject is ‘worthy’ get themselves into a tricky spot. You might find that a righteous topic is so widely researched that there aren’t many new upheavals to make. You also might find that the footage doesn’t create an entertaining feature. Interesting, worthy documentaries might work for a TV insert or news piece but are unlikely to make a great film.

3) Using poor technique to recreate events

When watching TV documentaries, one of my biggest Room 101s is when directors try to portray a past event by going all low-resolution and throwing the camera around or wheeling in bad actors and making them go out of focus. There’s more to drama reconstruction than the blurry, home movie look.

For great drama reconstruction watch Man On Wire (which also benefits from some extraordinary archive film footage).

4) Using bad music

The soundtrack of your documentary can really make or break its mood. Don’t trust the guy that you just met who offers to write an entire score for your film. You, the director, should have your own strong ideas of how the music will function in the film. From there, it’s your responsibility to choose the right person for the job, someone who understands your ideas and has the knowledge and talent to make those ideas come to life.

5) Filming without a vision

At the end of a day a great documentary has to have a strong vision, and that vision informs every creative and editorial step along the way. Like mentioned before, your music guy has to share your vision; so does everyone else in the process. Only when everyone is on the same page can the documentary achieve its intended goals.

The Conventions of a Documentary

After researching the history of Documentaries, I thought that it would make sense to research the typical conventions to get a basic grip on the guidelines for what I should include in my documentary and whether there is any room to be original and different. I discovered that there are a fair few conventions but below are the most prominent and, I think, important:

Archival Footage and Photographs
Archival materials include old photographs and videos, newsreel footage, and even shots from fiction films. For example, 'The Atomic Cafe' makes exclusive use of archival footage from the 1940s and 1950s to spoof Americans’ Cold War fear of an atomic bomb, and Feed culls footage from the 1992 primaries coverage and outtakes to show presidential hopefuls being anything but presidential. This convention is something that I really hope to include in my documentary as I believe that it will add more realism to the story.

Talking Heads
Talking heads are people interviewed to explain or comment on the text’s subject. These people usually are shown in their offices (sometimes with a wall of books behind them) or in their homes. For example, 'Hearts and Mind's includes interviews with both American and Vietnamese people to offer their perspectives on the war. This is a convention I definitely want to include in my documentary but I will have to think about how I am going to make the interviews interesting to watch.

Jiggly Camera
A wobbly camera is often attributed to documentary. As cameras became more portable and more affordable, filmmakers did more on-location shooting, and keeping the camera steady was somewhat difficult when it came to following the action. Steadicam, a camera stabilizing system, aids in correcting what some perceive as a problem. The fiction film 'The Blair Witch Project' makes use of the jiggly camera as a means of reinforcing its documentary-like style. I will more likely than not include this convention in my documentary.

Voiceover Narration
Voiceover narration occurs when a voice is heard on the soundtrack without a matching source in the image. In other words we hear the voice speak but we cannot see the speaker utter the words. The voice often explains or comments on the visuals. Early documentary made extensive use of this convention, including Pare Lorentz’s 'When the Plow Broke the Plains' and 'The River'. I'm not sure whether to include this in my documentary but it could make it more interesting to watch.

Re-enactments
A re-enactment stages real events that already have occurred. Sometimes they include the people who experienced the events orginally, but more often they incorporate actors playing parts. 'The Thin Blue Line' makes extensive use of this convention to assist in making its argument. However, most documentary makers prefer shoot events when and where they actually occur. I would like to include some re-enactment footage in my documentary but I'm not really sure how to go about it.

Real People
For the most part, the people we see in a documentary are real people. We can assume that if we went to Flint, Michigan, we may meet the “Pets or Meat” lady from 'Roger & Me'. Or if we went to Texas, we may meet the people participating in the content to win a new truck in 'Hands on a Hard Body'. While my documentary won't be completely real, I aim to use a real family who have real connections and chemistry on screen.

The History of the Documentary

Because I have had a complete change of plan with my short film, I thought it fitting to do some research into documentaries so that I have a better understanding of them when it comes to filming and editing my short documentary. I started off by looking at the history of the documentary:

 

(From: http://www.slideshare.net/jontowlson/a-short-history-of-documentary#btnNext)

 



The Lumiere Brothers

Documentary began when the first films were invented by the Lumière brothers in 1895. The Lumières created a camera that could only hold 50 feet of film stock and their films were short unedited clips capturing the life around them. These were called ‘Actualites’.

 

‘Un Train Arrivée’ (1895) Their most famous film simply shows a train pulling into a station, however audiences were fascinated by these first moving photographs as they were able to see the detail of movement captured by a film camera for the first time.

 

Documentary, as we know it today, began with ‘Nanook of The North’, made by Robert Flaherty in 1922. In fact the word ‘documentary’ was invented by John Grierson to describe this film. ‘Nanook’ was the first feature length factual film and the first to use what Grierson described as ‘the creative interpretation of reality’ . This meant that Flaherty had staged most of the scenes for the camera in order to make the film more dramatic and exciting for the audience.

John Grierson

Grierson went on to head the GPO film unit in England in the 1930s and he became a major exponent of this poetic-realist approach to documentary. ‘Nightmail’ (1936) began as an informational film about the mail train from London to Edinburgh but the filming and editing emphasised the poetic elements of film form: movement, rhythm, light and sound. Critics of Grierson accused him of neglecting the social and political issues in his films in favour of a modernist approach that celebrated machinery more than human beings.

 

It was this backlash that led to the next major development of documentaries in the 1950s and 1960s. Direct Cinema, a movement that began in the United States, aimed to present social and political issues in a direct, unmediated way giving the impression that events are recorded exactly as they happened without the involvement of the film-maker. The development of smaller lighter film cameras using smaller film stock (16mm as opposed to 35mm film which is used in feature films and in documentaries up to that time) pioneered by news camera men allowed the camera to be held on the shoulder (hand-held) and to film in a more spontaneous manner.

Key names in this movement are D.A. Pennebaker, The Mayles Brothers and Fred Wiseman . The modern social issue documentary such as Supersize Me has its origins in Direct Cinema. The filmmaker usually has a political and/or social agenda and seeks to present the events as ‘real’ even though they are in full control of the editing process.

At the same time as Direct Cinema was being developed in America, a similar movement was happening in France called Cinema Vérité (‘cinema truth’). Cinema Vérité is a minimalist style of film making that conveys the sense that the viewer is given a direct view of what was actually happening in front of the camera without the artifice usually incorporated in the film-making process. Cinema Vérité favours hand-held camera, natural lighting, location filming, and direct sound.

Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch was an important documentarian working in this style in the 1960s. However Cinema Vérité techniques have also been used by drama film-makers such as Ken Loach leading to the term ‘drama-documentary’ being used to describe films like ‘Cathy Come Home’.

The use of cinema vérité techniques can make a film seems more ‘real’ and truthful to an audience and in recent time film-makers have used the codes and conventions of the documentary to fool audiences into thinking a programme or film is factual when it isn’t. This form of film-making is called mockumentary.

Because mockumentaries demonstrate how easily the codes and conventions of documentary can be faked, they can often cause us as viewers to consider why we place so much faith in documentary itself. 

Examples of mockumentaries: 'The Majestic Plastic Bag' and my favourite mockumentary, 'This is Spinal Tap'