This week I feel like I’ve finally solidified my idea. Instead of just focusing on the people behind the scenes in the music industry I’ll also be focusing my attention on how the music industry has become more DIY and easily accessible than it was say, 20 years ago. I’ll be comparing it to the 80’s and 90’s and interviewing people to highlight the contrast between now and then.

This week in class Pete went around the room and tested each one of us on our ideas and challenged us to think outside the square a little more. After everyone had finished speaking he said “now everything you all just said to me, that’s your essay film” and we were all just like “ohhhhhhh” and it all clicked. I’m feeling pretty good about project brief 2 now and feel like my concept is coming together. I’ve got people lined up to interview and an idea of what I want my film to look like.

In week 3 we received the outline for our second project brief which is to create a video essay based around the idea we’ve chosen. I really didn’t understand what a video essay was at first but once I’d done the readings and watched the film Kim showed us in class it became clearer. A video essay is basically a collection of images, footage, text, music and even narration all put together to convey an idea or opinion.

In one of the readings, Lopate describes what constitutes an essay film in a clear and coherent manner. Lopate breaks down the essay film into 5 main points; these being 1) An essay film must incorporate words or text, 2) The text must be the voice of a singular person or represent one opinion, 3) The essay must portray the speaker’s want to resolve an issue or uncover and decode this issue, 4) The essay must deliver a strong point of view and 5) The format and text of the essay should be eloquent, coherent and sophisticated.

It can also be considered as a sort of trailer for your final piece of work. For my video essay I plan to compile a bunch of stock footage and images of the people I have lined up to interview and do a voice over as the film runs outlining my concept and the aim of the final product. I’ll also incorporate music which I will either make myself or source from one of my interviewees. Im treating my video essay as a sort of collage of all my ideas, so it will be slightly hectic in places but still coherent.

In the second half of week 2 we had to present three main ideas that we could potentially base our documentaries on. My concepts were 1) The faces behind the modern day music industry, focusing not on bands but on the young people that make music a possibility such as publicists, managers, booking agents etc. 2) The phenomenon of Pokemon Go and how technology has made a virtual game into a social activity. I still wasn’t entirely sold on either of these ideas and was really struggling to pick an idea that I was passionate about. But by the end of the class i think I had pretty much decided to go with the music industry concept as I play music and know a lot of people in that world meaning that it would be easy to find interviewees and information that I needed. Plus it’s an area that I am inevitably interested in.

The first week of our studio saw us running over what we could expect from this class over the course of the semester. From this we gathered that we would be making short documentaries about a topic of our choice, but that topic has to be something that fits in with the brief of the studio; which is “to go out into the world and do great things”. I had absolutely zero ideas of what I wanted my documentary to be about.

We were also shown a bunch of clips to spark ideas about the sort of work we can produce ourselves this semester. One video that stuck with me was a clip about the legend of shoes hanging over the telephone wires. The video compiled a bunch of audio recordings, stock footage, pictures and more to collect answers as to what the legend of these flying kicks meant to different people. The overall result was really interesting to watch and hear and everyone seemed to have a different interpretation of what it meant to them.

We also spent a bit of time using the zoom recorders and other equipment to practise our vox pop skills. Kim sent us out to go and interview pedestrians and passerbys with the aim of starting a surface level conversation and by asking a series of questions, have the conversation take a deeper turn. I think I failed at this because nerves got the better of me and I ended up just asking people what they ate for lunch and that was it. So this is probably something I need to work on if I’m going to deliver a quality documentary.