Matt's Individual Analysis

I undertook a series of research ideas for our documentary. The first was an idea for a documentary on redundancies in the Police Service. This would have been informing as not many people realize that Police Officers cannot be made redundant so all the cuts and redundancies have to come from the Civilian Core of the Police. However upon advice from others and on my own reflection, this idea seemed more like a Channel 4 TV Documentary rather than one for competition. You can link to the page by clicking here. I had two other ideas: the ‘issue’ or immigration - whether it is an issue or not – and one documentary following areas such as Long Distance Haulers, Graffiti artists or Scrap Metal artists. However, I had to dismiss these do to various reasons concerning practicality and legal issues.

The other achievable idea I had was a documentary concerning LARPing. LARPing is a sport/activity that stands for Live Action Role Playing. In which people dress as fantasy characters and act out PvP (Player vs Player) battles in competition with each other. My plan was to have two primaries: someone just starting to LARP and a veteran LARPer. Furthermore, we intend to create our own character in order to delve deeper into the world of LARPing, this would make the documentary a participatory mode. We could provide and expert on the subject by interviewing one of the members of a LARPing council or a veteran LARPer. To see the synopsis of this idea and the others, click the link here.

I also undertook research into other documentary films and photojournalists in order to better understand the area we were intending to create a film in. I will detail and analyse my work below. I researched several pieces of media in order to gain better insight and to create a better documentary. The specific pieces of media can be viewed here.

I tried to review a larger range of documentaries that use different documentary modes to better understand the differences between modes, and the importance of those differences. Researching Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred Leuchter, Jr. made me realize just how important and worthwhile meticulous research can be. Furthermore research into the Director led to a better understanding of effective ways to interview a subject and getting them to say what you want. The Men Who Jump Off Buildings was good for my research in other ways, mainly as an example of things to avoid. The Men Who Jump Off Buildings is a TV documentary and therefore has a certain list of genre conventions that differ to a documentary built for competition. Waltz With Bashir was my main influence for wanting to include animation in my documentary and hugely influenced the idea for blending escapism and reality. The Cost of a Coke is an extremely low-budget political documentary. This was incredibly interesting, seeing the gritty real side of documentary however and researching this doc taught me that overwhelming content could provide enough of an impact that the technical aspects of a film can suffer. This is no reason to get bad footage, but did teach me the importance of dynamic and emotive content. I read The Documentary Handbook and found a list of ten pointers to take into account when interviewing a primary, this was extremely helpful as it gives a reliable and professional structure of an interview to follow and apply to our own documentary, meaning that our interviews will not only be professional but productive. You can view the page here.

 My main roles in the group at first were D.O.P. and Promotions, however as the project developed into an anima-doc I also assumed the role of animator. The role of D.O.P takes place mainly during filming so I dedicated my time this semester to Animation, Promotion and Technical Operation of kit, so that when I am filming as D.O.P. I know my kit inside and out. Below I have deconstructed my thoughts and actions concerning this work.

As animator for our documentary it was my job to draw and animate the animated sequences for our film. As well as doing the physical work, I also considered the theoretical reasons for implementing the animated segments. The reasons for including animation in our documentary are three-fold. Firstly, blending escapism with reality is a key theme in our documentary and animation helps with this. The animation will complement the subjects split state of mind, spending half their time in the real world and the other half in the world of fantasy. I intend to animate over the top of real footage in order to portray this. Perhaps doing it during an interview when the subject starts getting passionate about his superhero alter-ego. Furthermore we could use the animations to have a visual signifier for segments that we may not be able to film. For example rather than having reconstructions, we could animate anything that the primary describes. Much like in Waltz With Bashir, but with real-life footage too. You can view the animations that I created for the trailer here.

Promotion-wise, the workload was shared between myself, Michael Dunningham and John Bird. We conversed about the ideas frequently in order to maximize our efficiency. Below I list the main promotion and marketing ideas and their deconstruction.

As well as the basic posters and flyers, which we will be placing in general areas but also specialised areas such as comic book stores, we well be implementing a number of promotional works. Firstly we are creating our own superhero, dressing him up and going around all our home towns and offering flyers in the style of HELP! Posters, asking people if they need a superhero’s help. This will spark an audience interest and the flyers will come equipped with links and QR codes which would lead the audience to further information. Secondly, we will be utilizing the social networking sites as more than just ‘like and share’ ideas. Our audience will name our superhero, this will be done through a poll on facebook, and seeing if we can get any ideas ‘trending’ on Twitter. This makes the audience feel like the film is more personal, we may also offer a price such as a copy of the DVD or a free t-shirt. Also, we will be creating a number of miniature ‘webisodes’ of our hero (or other real life heroes if they send us the videos we have requested) helping out citizens and performing interesting stunts.  These will reach a large online audience and would also link back to all the relevant information needed. You can see the link to all of the new media application ideas here, and the link to the workbook here.

Finally as DOP it was my job to make sure I was completely familiar with all of the technology we will be using, you could argue it is more important for me to know the technology of the camera than it is for the Director. In order to this I deconstructed the pros and cons of both a DSLR camera and a Son V1e.I also deconstructed how a DSLR camera works created and a complete breakdown of a Flycam 3000. For DSLR I went into detail of how aperture, shutter speed and ISO work, as well as the deconstruction of a CMOS Sensor. The Flycam 3000 researched helped me understand the importance of such an incredible peace of equipment, and how I will be able to utilize this in our documentary. I believe this will be most useful in the scenes where we follow our primary around on the streets and interview him/her. These should would be impossible without some kind of mount and impractical with a shoulder mount as these can be cumbersome. Researching into the deconstruction of these pieces of equipment has not only increased my knowledge of how this kit works, but also has helped in in taking better photographs and videos due to my ability to deconstruct what I am seeing through the lens and allow for quicker, more accurate and more informed decisions. This makes me more confident in dealing with the camera and has made the project of creating this documentary seem less daunting. You can view the link to the DSLR breakdown here. The link to the Flycam 3000 breakdown here, and the comparison between DSLR and Sony V1e here.

My role in the presentation was to discuss visual design of the superhero and posters, as well as discussing our unique selling points of Escapism vs Reality and the explanation and implementation of the animation in the trailer and documentary.

Decisions were made in the group in a democratic format, most of the time we would discuss an idea and if the majority of the group agreed then we would run with an idea. However as the later weeks rolled on John Bird assumed the role of Producer and final choices were dictated by him, but still with taking the rest of the group’s opinions into account. In terms of group dynamic I was very happy with the group apart from one member, Toby Shepherd. He produced very little work throughout the semester despite the fact that he was supposed to be producing the project. John Bird took the initiative and ran the group allocating roles and making sure the website, and work were kept up to date and to a satisfactory degree despite this not being his job. Toby did very little work on the trailer: which we entrusted to him after him claiming he could create a great trailer. However all he did was use two different templates, which as far as we can tell he didn’t edit at all, to which I added my animations and John’s Photoshop manipulations. He also lied to the entire group saying he created the trailer from scratch. Apart from this the group dynamic was excellent and we have all slotted neatly into our natural roles. I truly believe we will be able to make a winning documentary next semester.