After taking in the feedback that I received from the class in week nine, I set off to make plans with Ethan to reshoot. This time the main focus for this session was to capture good quality audio and also to ponder more onto his personal life, his brother and his mother in particular. From there I was able to form a baseline for myself to build the documentary using Ethan’s voice over to frame it all up.

The two main issues for the poor audio quality was the recording environment and the recording equipment. For the reshoot, I tackled these problems by moving in a quiet location, which was an isolated park and recorded in my car, where it was almost dead silent. For the audio equipment, I upgraded to my friend’s studio quality microphone,which I hooked up to my laptop. The combination of the location and the better equipment, I was able to achieve better sound quality. From this experience, I really felt the dramatic difference between this shoot and the first. I also appreciated how effective good sound quality had and how it can raise the potential of the documentary.

In terms of the interview, I ran through the first edit of the previous shoot with Ethan. I told him what I like and did not like using the feedback from week nine as a guideline. I asked Ethan to talk more about his brother and mother, and how he felt about them and why they were so important to him and his success.

Once the shoot had finished, I was able to compile the recordings and started to develop my structure:

Introduction >Wrestling > Motivation > Brother > Basketball > Hardships > Mother > Resolution > Final message

As week 12 approached, I showed my tutor the recordings I had and how I was going to structure the documentary. I wanted feedback on the content – what was good and what needed to be left out. I also wanted advice on the way I should shoot the video.

Image Link: http://tvtonight.com.au/2017/08/airdate-heroes-2.html

This image comes from the documentary – Heroes. I really like the way this was shot and I will draw a lot of inspiration from this documentary into my own work, especially the cinematography.