Week 10

Voice over / Soundtrack


This week we learnt about voiceovers. in the workshop we went down to the recording booths and using Adobe Audition we recorded a voiceover for a 1 minute clip of footage. 
When creating a voiceover, one must consider - 


This task taught us how to use audition, especially when wanting to do a voice over. As well as exporting the sound and then taking it into Premiere pro to edit. 

Style - natural voice/ accent etc

Delivery

Match the style of film

Avoid slang

Emotion, character, tone and pace

  

Voice-over content used for narrative.

Don't describe what's on screen.

Match the style of film.

Record the voice over a few times.

J-cut - showing the video of the first clip but playing audio from the next. 

L-Cut - opposite of a J-cut.

Our 4 min documentary will not have any voiceovers, however we might use some J and L-cuts.
Dragging the voice of one interview over some B roll or even the next interview shot. 

Week 9

Filming 

This week we set aside 2 days for filming.

The first day we managed to get one interview and a couple of b roll shots.
We were quite surprised from this first interview,  as we were expecting the people to say negative things but it turned out they chose to live there and really enjoyed it.

It wasn't the best day for filming. as it was slightly overcast. However we thought getting a couple of 'gloomy' b roll establishing shots might work well. As in the edit we could place it over the interviewees talking about how they loved living at east slope. Creating a contradiction.

The 2nd day we got 3 interviews. We filmed the interviews first and used natural light as it was a nice sunny day. Once we had filmed the interviews, we filmed some B roll shots that would link up to what they said in the interviews.
















Below are the interviewee release forms.

 

Reading - Rabiger, M. (2004) Directing the Documentary, London: Focal Press. 34 Editing: The End Game

Its important to make a flowchart of your first edit. Analyse what each sequence contributes to the film as a whole will give it a fresh, objective perspective on what might need to be improved and what you've done well. Show a group of people a rough cut and get feedback. Don't explain your intentions as you don't want to affect the audiences views and opinions.

Start with a broader question and lead your documentary into a more specific topic/point.

It's important to not be offended by criticism and remember that not everyone will be pleased.

Consider getting legal advice on what could incriminate you or anyone involved in the film before a showing. Inform the people involved in advance if they are shown in a critical light.

It's good to take a break from working, so you can start with a fresh perspective.

"film is really created in the editing process. [...] Not even crewmembers know what really happens in the cutting room unless they have edited themselves. It is an alchemy unknown and unguessed by those who have not lived through it."

Week 8

Preparing for filming

Interview questions

• Did you choose East slope?
• How did you feel at first?
• Favourite / least favourite thing about ES?
• What are your thought on accommodation prices?
• How will you feel when it its knocked down?
• How do you want ES to be remembered?
• Memorable anecdotes?

Shotlist 

Interview shots - Film interviews twice - mid shot + closeup

B Roll - 

Establishing shots / panning

• from East slope car park
• down the 'pathways' of east slope
• the doors/windows of the flat

Closeups

• kitchen - kettle/hobs etc
• mess
• broken glass?

We emailed someone regarding getting access to film in East slope bar however we couldn't find a suitable time for both us and them and therefore was unable to film in the bar or at any of the events. Below are screenshots of the email.

 

We also contacted in regards of getting permission for the filming of the construction site. The screenshot of the response giving us permission is below. 

Reading - Rabiger, M. (2004) Directing the Documentary, London: Focal Press. Ch.32 Editing: The Process of Refinement

In the early stages of editing it can be difficult to achieve a specific flow. When in conversation, people tend to only make eye contact at certain points, this effect can be created through cuts.

Editing can inform the audience which point of view to take

What one hears can be complimented by what is shown, or it could contradict. This creates a more active participation from the viewer as they interpret what they see and hear.

Editing two different shots of a conversation together, overlapping dialogue, cutaways to one person listening while another speaks.

A sound bridge can be helpful in these transitions, making them feel more natural.

Anticipatory sound - when the sound from the next scene is heard before the cut. This makes the audience curious and wondering what the sound is, awaiting the next clip.

Holdover sound - sound from the previous scene is heard event after the cut, making the clip/scene lingers over the current scene, creating a subtext.

Week 7

The above film, Everything is Incredible (2012) we watched in one of workshops.
I liked the beginning, as it set the film up, with  timelapse establishing shots. I thought we could use this as inspiration for our film, and get a few shots around East Slope. As this would create the setting for the film and introduce the audience to the surroundings the interviewees will be talking about. 

Similar to this film, we would get a range of interviews and cut back and forth in order to create the pace and movement of the film. 


Reading - Susan Kerrigan & Phillip McIntyre (2010) The ‘creative treatment of actuality’: Rationalizing and reconceptualizing the notion of creativity for documentary practice

The phrase ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ has become a standard definition

of documentary. never fully explained meaning of the phrase, his omission has led to significant discussion from within the area/field of documentary studies.

  

'Documentary, or the creative treatment of actuality, is a new art with no

such background in the story and the stage as the studio product so glibly

possesses.' (Grierson 1933: 8)

Creativity is perceived as allowing humans ‘the ability to act spontaneously, to freely form ends and choose between means’ (Petrie 1991: 1). The assumption here is that art and creativity are equivalent. However, research shows that this may be misleading.

‘Creativity’ and ‘Art’ are terms that popular culture has coupled with

the Romantic ideal. Margaret Boden points out that this is a problem because, ‘romanticism provides no understanding of creativity’ (Boden 2004: 15).

This perspective, insinuates that artist work through a mysterious process. Creating the artist as superior or a ‘divinely inspired creator’. (Zolberg 1990: 116)

Psychologist Sternberg (1999) and sociologist Wolff (1981) don’t believe the Romantic notions of Art and instead argue that ‘art’ is a social product.

Multiple factors that contribute to creativity are implicitly contained within Aristotle’s

early claim that: 'whatever comes to be is generated by the agency of something, out of

something, and comes to be something.' (Aristotle 1960: 142)

Keith Sawyer (2006) argues Art, like the activities of science and business, forms one subset of the phenomenon of creativity.

THE SYSTEMS MODEL OF CREATIVITY

Creativity research-  emerged through late 21stCentury identifying that individually focused approaches to creativity didn’t explain why some skilled individuals became well known for a bad quality, while others didn’t. Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Gardner 1993; Sternberg 1988, 1994;

Weisberg 1993).

From this, researchers developed a hypothesis ‘that multiple components

must converge for creativity to occur’ (Sternberg and Lubart in Sternberg 1999: 10) which brought about the confluence approach to creativity.

This led researchers to investigate the social and cultural aspect to creativity.  Creativity being seen as ‘social systems making judgments about individuals’ products’ and not the product of single individuals.(Csikszentmihalyi in Sternberg 1999: 314).

The above, shows how an individual draws on knowledge from specific subjects and uses it to interact with a social organization. Using this knowledge when creating ideas and products.

This makes it possible to map out creativity when it comes to the documentary film practice. As documentary is a practice that follows specific social and cultural contexts.

The above system model can help documentary scholars in showing how filmmakers use social and cultural conventions to gain knowledge and showcase their creative understandings through the films they make.

CREATIVITY AS A COLLABORATIVE PROCESS

Even with the advance in technology, most documentary film-makers would find it hard to make a film by themselves.

'a film is created both by the single inspiration of the director and by the

collective activity and enthusiasm of a diverse group of experts who pool

their skill to the agreed purpose.' (Wright 1972: 20)

The above map, is quite different to the systems model of creativity, but is similar, as it also identifies individual and field necessary to produce. Offers a more rational and research-supportable understanding of creativity to the understanding of documentary creativity, than that supplied through the Romantic perspective.