Reflection 3 – People To People Completion…

After completion of the final edit of our people to people piece I am happy with the outcome.

During the editing process it became apparent that planning what was going to be used in the final edit before hand helped a lot. This is because when we began to cut up the interview we found that picking good parts out of an interview wasn’t easy. However when we began to cut the shots, we found that the original plan of dialogue we would use was in fact still 15 minutes long.

Therefore we took a step back and realised we were going to have to take a slightly different angle on the piece and focus on one or two specific parts of Flori’s life, to fit the video into the allotted three minutes. Therefore we focused more on the troubles Flori has had within her family and the positive stage her life is at now.

Looking at the piece now, I am happy that we made this creative decision because it allows the audience to relate to her story in a more simple format, and doesn’t confuse them by jumping from one story to the next.

The one issue when editing that I was most worried about was making sure that we didn’t “cover over the cracks” and instead used relevant sequences to back up what she was saying. Therefore I think we succeeded with that as the external footage outside of the interview only reinforces what she is saying on a visual level.

The overall finished edit I believe interacts with the audience on an emotional level as the subject is being very honest and open, talking about stories in her life which are very personal to her. I think being students on this piece worked to our advantage, because the impression we got when Flori was talking to us, was that she wouldn’t want the whole world knowing about her business, but she was happy to help for educational purposes, and I think with her knowing this, she became more open and honest about what emotions she went through during these stages of her life.

I think I have defiantly learnt not to think that the editing process is going to be a straight forward one, and to take extra time and care to make sure the piece flows and that the audience allow themselves to emphasise with the subject.

Overall I am really happy with our finished piece, and I find that the story is engaging and informative.

Planning For The Edit…

After viewing Kens post about planning your edit., I sat down for over 2 hours and typed up what Flori had said during the 30 minute interview. The task became tedious and at the time, quite annoying. Then I printed of the document and highlighted all the points that are interesting and go with the story we are trying to tell. I had planned that this dialogue would be the one used when we were editing.

However when I began to cut the dialogue from the footage, the dialogue I had originally highlighted was in fact still 15 minutes long. I have put this down to it being a learning curve, and partly me being naïve enough to not take notes on how long each sentence/section of story took.

Therefore we then had to go back through the transcript and extract all the points, which we didn’t necessarily need. We found that we had to be quite ruthless when doing this. We finally got the footage down to five minutes and at this point decided that we had to take a slightly different angle on Floris life and just focus on a couple of specific parts.  Although the final edit still sticks to the angle we had originally aimed for, being how Floris life has took a positive turn, we just had to focus on small parts of her very interesting life story.

However once we had decided this, we found that we had a clear view of how we wanted to put the piece together and after this the edit was a lot more straight forward, and we only had to focus on the technicalities of editing.

Overall the planning that I did for the edit was most helpful and I found that having a script in front of us saved time, but also gave us a clear indication of what external sequences we could put where, to make sure that what we used is relevant on a visual platform to the dialogue coming from Flori.

Below are the scripts and the annotations I did in preparation for the edit:

Reflection 2 – People To People Progress…

As a whole the People To People project is going well and very smoothly. This is the first time Im working with the people in our group and im finding that we are working together very well.
When we first began to discuss everyone’s ideas on who their subjects were. We found that everyone had very interesting characters. However it was the practicalities that influenced our opinions of who to film. This was due to Myroslava’s Granddad being not with us anymore, therefore we would have had to have spoken to her father and also my Nan being to emotional to interview as she cried every thirty seconds. Therefore we went with Shelley’s subject, which was Flori, the Romanian girl who hasn’t had the easiest life.

As the project went on, and we found out more about Flori via Shelley, we all felt that this was a very interesting character with a very good story to make a piece about. As time progressed we asked Shelley to speak to Flori about certain topics of her life that we wanted to know about. Shelley then came back with feedback on what she had said and we found that this character had a lot of depth and interesting stories.

I have learnt a lot since the start of this module, such as the styles of documentary pieces and that researching characters is key. This is because it would be very naive of a production team, going in to interview a character and not knowing much about them. Therefore I am really happy that we found out a lot of in depth information about our subject, before going to speak to her.

As mentioned in a previous post, luckily with the feedback on Ken, for a mock interview I did with my Nan, I was informed on what I shouldn’t do when framing a shot. This was because in my previous interview, the subject was to far to the left of the shot and the lighting was coming from one source to the left, therefore causing uneven lighting. This time when I was setting up the shot for the Interview with Flori, I made sure that I wasn’t making any of these mistakes again.

Bowling For Columbine Reflection & Editing Style…

For research into editing styles, I decided to watch the 2003 documentary “Bowling For Columbine”, a film by Michael Moore.

This film focuses on the relaxed gun laws in America and how easily accessible it is to get your hands on a firearm. But it also focus’s strongly on the Columbine massacre, where two students open fired in a school, killing six people and injuring countless.

The way the piece has been put together is an interesting one, as although you get the sense that it is against the relaxed gun laws, it gives both view points of the for and against.

From the beginning the film uses a lot of archive footage, illustrating Americas relationship with guns and often shows the devastation that weapons have caused. It also shows archive footage of the CCTV footage taken from inside the school when the massacre took place, showing graphic images of bullets being fired, students being killed and the fear of the people fleeing for their lives.

One thing the film has defiantly succeeded to do is to make the audience feel something. Watching the devastation the massacre caused, really does make the viewer feel anger and sadness and makes you question, why this is allowed to happen?

When I think about it though, I feel that this film would have a different effect on the UK audience than the American one. Because although both parties will feel sadness, in America owning a gun is a part of day-to-day life. Whereas being a teenager in the UK, I have never seen a real gun out side of a museum, first hand in my whole life and probably never will.

The way the piece has been put together it a very typical feature length documentary style, it consists of archive footage, interviews with people involved and various factual information.

All that is shown in the piece is Relevant and cut together tightly. When creating my piece I feel that I will have to take these points on board to gain the most emotional and informative impact on my audience. Bowling For Columbine in my opinion is a very good factual piece, which is well edited together. After expanding my knowledge of documentary pieces which isn’t a piece of war or nature on the BBC, im a happy ive done this and will take inspiration from it.

How Filming Went…

After filming the interview part of our piece last week I am very happy with the outcome. Our subject (Flori) was a very interesting character to interview and spoke well in front of the camera and equipment. Initially I was a bit weary of this, as although someone is a confident person, when a camera is stuck in their face, they sometimes freeze up and don’t speak as openly as normal. Fortunately this wasn’t the case.

Flori spoke about the key points of her life, from birth to present day, and divulged information about herself that we didn’t know about when doing the initial research.

The technical side of the interview went well too. Since importing the footage, I am happy with the way the sound has come out. But also I am happy with the framing. When I first did an interview on my Nan, Ken gave me feedback on the way I framed the shot. Because I had framed the shot of my nan so she was slightly to the left of the shot, Ken commented saying that she needed to be more in the center and that the lighting wasn’t very good, due to it all coming from a window directly to the left of the shot. Therefore im glad I had this initial feedback, because when shooting the interview for Flori, I learnt from my mistakes and spent some time making sure that the shot had been set up correctly.
On the day we also filmed one of the sequences, of Flori studying, to represent the education part of her life. Although we still need to shoot a couple more of the sequences, we have the majority of the piece filmed, and the extra parts shouldn’t take long at all, and can be slotted into the edit where appropriate and a later stage. As a whole I am happy with how the shooting of the interview went and all in all we filmed around 35 minutes of interview footage, so we have a lot to work with and only have to use the key points she discus’s.

Poetic Eyes Reflection…

Overall I am happy with my poetic eyes outcome. At first I was unsure whether to do it, as ive never really discussed my sexuality very openly to a room full of people of which I don’t all know. However I thought id just let my video speak on my behalf. It was defiantly something I feel passionate about, and I felt that I put a lot of myself into it.  The main issue I had with the video was finding archive. I found that homophobic events hadn’t been largely document, and had to rely quite heavily on pictures. Although they got my point across, I felt it wasn’t as visually stimulating as I had hoped. I would also try and link my poem more with the images on screen, to make both the audio and visual more interlinked. Creatively i wanted to create something that would discuss a taboo subject, but would have an emotional effect on the audience to make them feel angry. After the presentation of my video, I feel like I succeeded in that, as many people in the room had quite an in depth discussion about it. To a certain extent I wish more footage was available to extend my cut.

People To People Treatment and Progress…

We all shared our ideas; Myroslava’s pitch was on her granddad, as he fought for the Ukraine army. However because her grandfather had recently passed away, the interview was going to be her dad talking about his father’s experiences. But we found that talking to her father would not have the same meaning and effect than if we spoke to her grandfather.

I then pitched my idea, which is on my Nan becoming a full time career after my granddads stroke, and how she is coping with how her life has changed so much. Although the group found this a strong idea, we all agreed that the subject was still to upsetting for my Nan to talk about. I know this because when doing the mock interview with my Nan, for our own independent research, it is clear that she got very upset talking about it. Please see the link, to understand what I mean: http://vimeo.com/35643582.

Shelley then pitched her idea, which was about her friend Flori, and how she is originally from a run down area in Romania. Flori has now moved over to England and now studies full time as well as working two jobs to send money home to Romania to support her family. As a group we decided that this was the strongest pitch and also the most practical.

Although Flori is a close personally friend of Shelley’s and the rest of the group don’t know her, Shelley meets up with her every week and for the past month has been asking her in depth conversations about her life. Even though the rest of the group have not been in direct contact with the subject, we have all put ideas to Shelley to ask Flori questions about her life, so that we have enough research on the subject to all feel confident enough on the matter.

With the questions that we all put forward to ask, we have begun to gather a wider picture on Flori’s life and her stories are becoming more interesting.

The issue that we faced when in the group meeting was what area on her life to focus on. The reason this is an issue is because she has had such an eventful life, that it was initially difficult to pin point an exact topic on which to focus on.

Events in Flori’s life consist of:

• Her life of poverty in Romania
• Her struggles moving to a different country on here own
• The pressure of having to earn money to stop her family from starving
• Her abusive father

We feel that all these elements will make up a very interesting piece, however we will have to focus more on one specific element. This is because in the three minutes we got, we don’t want to bombard the audience with loads of information, because they’ll get confused and I don’t think it will have the emotional impact that we are hoping for.

The angle we have decided to go with is to show the audience how Flori’s life was a struggle growing up and how she has not turned her life around. This was we can start of with the negative parts of her life allowing the audience to feel empathy with her, and the progress to how she has succeeded to then make the audience feel that there has been a positive outcome.

In a group discussion we looked at 5 photographs from Flori’s life and discussed what we could say about all of them.

This picture shows Flori and her relative when they were children. Flori has told Shelley she thinks she was about 10 years old at this time. They are in Romania near the flat they lived. This picture is to support what we want to show in the beginning of the documentary, we want to interview Flori and ask her about her childhood in Romania, about her relationships with her family, the struggles she went through when she was growing up in poverty. How she had to live with her grandmother from the age of 13 because her father used to beat her mother. Little details like her mother used to make one big stew for the whole family and deliver it to all of the houses at dinnertime otherwise they would go hungry. We really want to show the hardship of her younger life before she got into school and before she got the ambition to go to university. I want an audience to realise how different some people grow up. In the documentary we will show this by asking Flori questions and showing her answers, hopefully Flori can also provide us with some photos of her childhood like this one.

This is a picture of Flori, which was taken not long after she got the job at the Royal Oak pub. This currently is Floris only source of income as student finance is not supporting her education this year.  We want to show in the documentary footage of Flori working in the pub, this is because this is her lively hood. This is how she survives and how she helps her family to survive. We want to show in the documentary how Flori began working her 7 days a week in the pub when she moved to England, as well as studying Law at university, and she currently works there now for 5 days a week. This is where she earns the money to not only keep herself alive but also to send to her family in Romania so they can survive. This is key to show in the documentary because it shows Floris selflessness as a character, and how she is surviving on a minimum amount of money to help her family.

This is a picture of Flori’s brothers children, so her niece and nephew. The picture   is great for showing her relationship with her family and puts a face to what Flori will be explaining in her story. This is a really important image to include explaining Floris story, the background gives you an idea of the poverty her family are living in. It is really important for us to show Flori’s relationship with her family in the documentary and the importance of it. These are the people who she is supporting financially and in the documentary we want her to explain her relationship she has with them and explain how difficult it is to provide for herself and her family on a part time wage.

This is a picture of Flori on Christmas day taken by her roommate Karina. It is important to show this because this is where the majority of the interview we film will be set. Also it shows where she lives, which gives the documentary an authentic personal feel. However you can read this picture in both a positive and negative way. It is sad that she is not spending Christmas with her family as neither can afford to fly over and spend it with the other. However it is also nice to see what Flori has now, where she is living, she is living in a nice house near work and uni and it is important to show this in the documentary, just how much of a better way of life she has here.

                                                                                                                                                                                  This is a picture of Flori, which was taken before one of her competitions in her law degree. This is a very important image because it offers a resolution to Flori’s story and it shows the real positives of her life here in England. I felt this is the most important image to include last as it shows where she is today. It shows her journey from struggling in poverty in Romania to making something of her life here in England, it also shows her passion and her ambition and we want this to come across to an audience.

I then drew up Five segments of storyboards to illustrate, how we will set up the shot and what locations we will film in to represent best Flori’s Life. Please excuse the drawings as im not an artist.

The first storyboard shows a close up of Floris face. We plan to interview her in her home, to illustrate to the audience where she now calls home. This shot will be a close up. I think close ups are key when people are talking about their personal life, as it captures all their emotions and facial expressions and gives the audience a more one to one feeling. The interview section of the piece will be key part as the documentary will keep cutting back to her talking about her life, intercut shots of her going about he key daily routines will be intercut in with it, and her voice will still be heard over the top. The reason were going to do this is to re-enforce what she is saying with visual stimuli.

This shot is just going to be another angle in which we will shoot Flori. This shot will be key when the audiences are connecting to her as they will be able to see her surrounding and where she lives. Many people have said in history that people’s objects say a lot about a person, and that is why we will shoot from a long to medium shot perspective. The other plus point by doing this will be to show her body language when she talks.

This storyboard shows the audience where she works, we plan to film her working at the pub she works at. This will interlink to the moments she talks about working to help herself and her family live. Therefore the audience will not just hear her talk about it, but will also see he doing it. We have permission to film in the pub, as Shelley also works here; therefore she has already sorted it out with the management.

   This shot will show Flori studying for her Law degree, which takes up a lot of her time. Once again this shot will be used to back up what she is saying when she discusses her education. The reason why we know when we will be able to use these exterior shots other than the interview is because we will ask her questions regarding each section of her life that we want to look at, and then with some planning, they will all link up well.

This final shot will show Flori in a courtroom, for Floris course she has to practice doing mock court cases and coincidently she has one coming up next Friday, therefore as long as we can get permition to film. (Which shouldn’t be a problem) we will film her taking part in this activity. She will be wearing all the traditional robing and as a group we think it will be an exciting aspect of her life to capture. This will then be a good end to the piece, as they are quiet positive visual images, which contrast to her negative stories at the beginning of the interview.

Overall as a group we are very happy with the direction the project is going in. The only issue we may have is focusing on one small aspect of a very eventful life, however as we progress with the project im sure it will become clear which of Floris stories we can focus on more, that will link to the angle we wish to take, being how she has turned her life around.

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My Poetic Eyes Final Piece…

For my Poetic Eyes piece I decided to base the subject on Homophobia. We were asked to choose a subject we felt strongly about, and I initially felt that I could find a wide range of archive on the subject. However finding the archive wasn’t as easy as I had first anticipated, as not many homophobic events have been documented on a visual platform.

I didn’t give up that easily and persisted to trawl the Internet for many hours finding clips and images that I could use in my piece. I found that the majority of the clips I did find, depended heavily on the audio they contained, as it is a subject that is talked about more than anything else and seeing as we were going to put our poem over the top of the videos, audio couldn’t be relied on.

I wanted to find media that was going to shock the audience and create an emotional impact on them. I found that the most shocking visuals were actually pictures of young children holding signs against homosexuality.  After seeing these images, it made me realise that if the youth of today are being brought up with these out dated views, then is anything really going to change in the future?

Finding video clips was actually interesting as I found a very old piece of archive, where a man Is discussing homosexuality as “a mental illness”, and when contrasted with the way people perceive homosexuality today, it defiantly does show that there has been change, but on the other hand, the other medias show that prejudice does still exist.

I am happy with the outcome of my piece, the way they video has been put together, and happy with the overall piece. The one aspect I did struggle on, probably along everyone else was the poetry. I did decide to make it rhyme, because I felt that it just sounded more emotional and heartfelt and as an overall im happy with the poetry.

My Poetic Eyes Preparation…

After debating what subject i would like to base my “Poetic Eyes” project on, i decided to pick a subject that i feel strongly about, a subject that isn’t often talked about, Homophobia. This week i have began collecting archive materials such as photographs and videos. Writing the poetry is the part i have found the most difficult as it defiantly isn’t a natural talent of mine. I keep writing lines and then going back to it with a fresh pair of eyes, this is what i have so far, (However I’m not quite sure whether making it rhyme will make the piece quite cheesy):

Prejudice has always engulfed the world, 

Objects have often been thrown and hurled,

 

Opinions continue to alter and change,

But some of them remain the same,

 

Homophobia is something that seems to remain,

Often causing hurt and pain,

 

To change the world the key is the youth,

But are people willing to hear the truth,

 

Collecting archive material has proven quite difficult, but not impossible, these two examples are types of archive i have collected so far.

 

People To People Treatment & Mock Interview…

The idea behind my people to people piece is to talk to my Nan who has always been a very independent woman, who has been happily married for many years. Recently her husband (my granddad) had a stroke and it has affected their life in a dramatic way, changing their whole daily routine. My Nan has now become a full time carer for the person who always cared for her. Therefore in my project I would aim to discuss with her, how her daily routine of so many years has been turned on its head.

My Nan and Granddad live in a two-bedroom bungalow, which is were I would shoot the interview. The reason I would shoot it here is because, this is now, where they spend the majority of the days, as he is currently house bound.

I have had two ideas of how to film the piece, either have my Grandparents sitting together while my Nan speaks to me, or do the interview with just my Nan in the room. I think the second idea is what I will do because if I shot the piece with my granddad their, my Nan may hold back on some of her answers, hoping not to make my Granddad feel guilty for how her life has changed.

 Intercutting shots would take place throughout the interview, implementing the idea of my Granddads struggle with day-to-day life, such as getting up from the sofa and moving to his wheel chair, which sounds simple, but is a task in itself.

The types of questions that I will ask are: “How has your life changed since your husbands stroke?” and “What can you see happening with your life in the foreseeable future?”.

Overall my aim for the piece is to inform the audience, how someone who instantly becomes a full time career, copes with the stress’s and also copes with how their world gets turned upside down.