My aim for this film was to showcase a multi-layered landscape that not only relied on the verbalisation of my subjects’ story and life to paint a picture. My goal was to also, bring forward the present moment while the interview was happening, which saw my subjects’ personality shine through. However, with this goal in mind, my rough-cut contained a little to much information that strayed too far from the base idea and story. The goal to base this film heavily on my subject as a person and not just solely on his story, did result in a long interview with a lot of information that didn’t sit in the main plan and act structure of the piece. Following the changes I made in the rough-cut, I was able to base everything around a solid structure, while still allowing room for the interviewees’ personality to show. This was a goal of mine because I didn’t want the participants story to overshadow them as a person. Personally, I find interviews more engaging when it is not just based on spoken information, but also allows room for a more personal experience, through knowing a little more about the participant as a person. My two favourite sections in the piece, was when Paul was talking about the moments before the incident. I allowed him to explain it in a way that came natural to him, I let the camera roll with no interference and asked him a leading question, which he ran with and responded in a way that very much showed his personality at the same time. Another favourite of mine was the interactions between Paul and Fabs. I think I captured their quirky friendship as best I could in only a few minutes.

The use of archival imagery and footage also assisted in bringing forward the reality of the participant’s life. By having what is said supported by footage that correlates with the information, it paints a much more clear image of the subject in front of camera. I was lucky enough to have access to a solid library of archival material supplied to me by the participant.

Looking back at this project, I think my aims would have benefited a lot more if  had taken a more observational/fly-on the wall approach. As shown in week three’s lecture slides about Wiseman’s observational rhythms, observational documentary filmmaking is ‘Is often categorised by long takes where refocus and reframing occurs in real time’  (Spong 2020, slide 13). This would have allowed me to show my participants in realtime, with minimals edits, for full view of their most interesting personal qualities. Especially during their interaction with each other. Though my interview involvement was needed to link in the elements that spoke on Paul’s incident, the rest of the piece would have been better shown in an observational style, which would not limit the interviewees, by allowing them to be in their element. If I was to make something like this again, a longer time duration of the piece would be needed.

reference:

Spong, S 2020, ‘Topic 3: Wiseman’s observational rhythms’ PowerPoint slides, BP221, RMIT University, Melbourne.

As mentioned in my previous post, there were some issues surrounding ethics during the pre-production stage of my film. This was largely due to a lack of proper planning and communication. Before proceeding with this film, I didn’t have the appropriate equipment to properly conduct the interview. A lot of effort was placed on making sure the technical aspect of the production was sound enough. This heavy focus on the technicalities took up most of the planning stage. This saw communication between myself and participant minimal until last minute. Though my interview subject was a close friend, I found myself being complacent at the communication front. This later saw, my initial plan needing further review and interrogation by myself.

After making amendments to my interview questions and plan, it allowed the interview to be more centred around another aspect of the participant’s story. However, these changes were made rather last minute, so my found myself struggling to conduct the interview and keep it structured. By the end of the two interviews I had a total of 45 minutes of footage. A majority of the footage was long bits of my subject speaking. I felt myself needing to steer my interviewee away from going on tangents.

Looking back at this, I think it would have been a lot better if I had taken more control of the interview, instead of focusing more on the amount info I was receiving. There was a lot of useful info shared in this interview. However, there was also a lot of irrelevant detail shared, which made sifting through the footage a very tedious job. Upon rewatching the footage there was almost 3 times as much information than what I needed. This could have been avoided if I had structured my plan in correspondence with the act structure of the piece. The role of interviewer would have been much easier if the role of camera, sound and lighting had been distributed amongst multiple individuals. This would have allowed more time to plan the interview better, tie up loose-ends and take control of the interview, without other distractions.

When deciding my general topic, I was very specific in my vision. This saw me very fixated on the sort of scope that I wanted my work to be seen though. I spent a few days think about, how best to showcase my work, with deep consideration to my spotlighted participant. However my level enthusiasm, had me ignore the restrictions, parameters and ethics of this assignment. The amount of information that I was aiming to show within a 5 minute piece was not possible. Though, I ignored that and proceeded with the intention to incorporate everything in to this five minute documentary. My initial enthusiasm overshadowed my technical consideration to the piece, which could have played a role in the quality of work.

Being able to tell somebody else’s story is a great honour, which should see documentary film makers maintain a great level of respect and care when conveying these stories. Before conducting my interview, I had confirmed my subject, who was very willing to share parts of his story. However my initial brief for him was unintentionally quite basic, as I only gave him a general overview of what I hoped we could chat about. This was due to my overly ambitious desire to add more information than what was possible. So my planning was very centred around the structure of the piece, technicalities and what archival footage I could attain.

A day before the shoot I was going over the specifics to make sure everything was in order and had been thinking about the values I wanted to carry while making this piece. I thought about how much of an honour it was to be allowed the opportunity to convey someone else’s  story and then realised, that I had not given my participant a detailed enough brief. It was when I gave him another call to go over the specifics of the interview content, it was flagged that he was not happy to share particular aspects of his story. At this point I realised that I had not followed a proper code of ethics. Luckily I was able to redesign the interview and make it more specific in a few hours. Though it changed a lot about the final product, I was happy that I was able to conduct the interview and not have my participant feeling uncomfortable or on the spot.  Molly Dineen on making documentaries (2012) mentions that it’s important to remember you cannot expect somebody to give you parts of their story and do what you desire with it. My expectation did not consider my code of ethics and saw a lack of transparency at my end. However, this was corrected before I conducted this interview.

Reference:

The Economist 2012, Molly Dineen on making documentaries, YouTube, 4 April, The Economist, viewed 14 December 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iweXyqBY82U&feature=emb_title>.