Neutralised
I hope the final work communicates that we upheld ethical boundaries throughout our project. We wanted to engage our audience by fostering a connection between them and the band members, through their interviews and moments within their personal spaces, specifically the scenes within Tessa’s house. However, we wanted to create a space while filming that was comfortable for our participants and maintain informed consent with out participants. We achieved this by continuously checking in with them once a week leading up to the shooting days and as I was the one with the personal connection to each of them, I would check in to let them know if they had any personal questions they could ask me privately. On the day of filming, before each interview we let them know that if there were any questions they didn’t want to answer they didn’t have to and at any moment we could stop filming. Furthermore, we had to uphold documentary ethics when discussing how they had been challenged in the live music industry by avoiding naming the venues that had underpaid them or turned them down. I was reminded of the documentary ‘Wildness’ in which participants in the documentary were put at risk by expressing their queerness publicly. I didn’t want to put the participants in my documentary in any sort of jeopardy of losing future gigs, so we opted to cut that section from the final edit. In the end, I think it was clear that we made the environment comfortable for our participants as the interviews felt very natural and their personalities shone through the screen.
I believe the most successful aspect of our process was our group’s ability to manage our time/schedule. From the beginning we outlined what weeks would work best for our shooting days so we could all organise our work schedules in advance, and then contacted the band members about the possible weekends we would film. We organised two shooting days over a Saturday and Sunday and allowed for extra time, however we wrapped early on both days and even had time to shoot extra scenes and B-roll. We were also ahead in our editing schedule as we communicated well what was to be done and when, and then quickly communicated our notes and changes to be made.
On the other hand, I believe the least successful part of both our process and our final product was our technical skills. None of us had used the audio equipment in previous projects before our shoot day, which meant when we put the audio into the editing software we notices a fair few issues. For example, when filming Tessa she turned her back to the camera and I didn’t move the microphone with her so we couldn’t hear what she was saying. Furthermore, the audio levels across different scene was quite different as we weren’t making sure the microphone was the same distance each time. In the future I would book the equipment and practise so I didn’t make the same mistakes, or find a YouTube video to have handy on the day of filming that I could refer back to.
If we were to keep working on this media piece I would want to delve further into the specific funding Neutraliser has received from the government, such as going to the Decibels recording studio in Reservoir and interview with someone who works in the space explore how useful it is for young musicians. Additionally, I would like to extend upon how challenging it is for bands to book gigs in Melbourne by following Neutraliser to a gig and possibly interviewing the manager/owner of the location. I think this would really flesh out our exploration of just how challenging it is for young musicians and provide a bit of credibility to our documentary through the third party interviews.
One thing I have learnt from the studio experience that I will take into my future practise is the importance of quality equipment. In my opinion another successful aspect of our documentary was the quality of the filming, which made it feel much more professional even when the shots themselves weren’t very creative or visually interesting. Before this studio the quality of equipment had not truly been emphasised to me, and many of the classes allowed us to use our phones, and I was never quite happy with the pieces I was creating because the technical aspect brought the pieces quality down. In this studio, the importance of good equipment, specifically cameras and microphones, was emphasised from the beginning and I will take this with me into future media making because the difference was extremely noticeable.
One key takeaway about working collaboratively is that is can sometimes be hard to give feedback to one another. As the work we were doing was so collaborative it was important to all of us that we would all work on every stage of the project, specifically the final edit of the documentary. However, when giving feedback there were a couple times where someone would by a little hurt the feedback or would not take it onboard at all. This was quite hard to overcome because giving feedback to each other was really important in making sure that the work was something we were all proud of and all had input toward. Furthermore, there were times when all four of us made mistakes and being able to openly give feedback or advise was important to make sure everything was as perfect as possible. In the future, before each stage of the process I would have a conversation with my group where we outlined that the intention of the feedback was not to hurt anyone’s feelings. Additionally, I think spending more time working on things together, such as the final edit, as opposed to only one member working on it and then sending it back to us, meant there would have been less need for feedback as we would all be there to give input through every stage.
References
Chapman, J. (2007). Documentary in practice : filmmakers and production choices. Ma.
Oishi, E. (2015). Reading Realness: Paris Is Burning, Wildness, and Queer and Transgender Documentary Practice. Reading Realness: Paris Is Burning, Wildness, and Queer and Transgender Documentary Practice.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118884584.ch12
Rosenthal, A., & Corner, J. (2005). New challenges for documentary. Manchester University Press.