Week 7 | Jwhiteual132024

Week 7: 18th-22nd March

Monday

The image below shows my current situation in regards to the preproduction work I need to complete.

I am still waiting upon Tom’s response to my request for days to film on which means there a few things I can’t do. Furthermore, I am also still waiting on Erin’s response to confirm a date for our interview. I was able to learn last week that Friday 29th March is good Friday, meaning the meeting rooms would not be open, and therefore, I cannot do Toms meeting on this day. I had waited on confirming Friday because of the possibility of filming with Tom on this day, but now I know this knowledge, I am just waiting on a response. Once I am able to confirm a date with Erin I will then create her consent form, call sheet and production schedule. In the meantime, today I will finalise all risk/location assessments that I can do + finalise producing the required storyboards that will help me plan and understand how my shots are going to look.

For the rest of the day, I continued on with the preproduction work that I was able to complete, including the documentary storyboards, Eddie's bedroom’s risk assessment, etc…

Tuesday

On Tuesday there were two main events that occurred – one being a problem to overcome, and the other some good news! To begin with, I will look at the problem I had to overcome.

Jolene had sent me some archive footage to use with the documentary – an old image of her with her mum and some festival/concerts videos. She had sent these over to me at 14:52 today, this can be seen in the image below.

It is evidently clear that the images she sent over were great quality, and these would be a perfect addition to the documentary. The reason I am using digital copies of the images instead of shooting b-roll footage of photos in her house is because she is currently in the period of moving house, so there are no photos around, they have all been packed away. Despite the images being great quality, the videos on the other hand were quite compressed and the video appeared blotchy and not very clear. This was the problem I had to overcome.

I decided upon using google drive as the way in which Jolene should transfer me the files. I decided upon this because I am aware that google drive will not compress the videos if not asked to and it is a very common and universal storage drive system. There’s a high likelihood that Jolene has used this before and therefore should be an easy way for her to send me video files.

I set up a shared drive, allowing her access to it using the email she had given me. Later that evening, she put all of the videos in the shared drive, with an additional video that I had asked for too (another video facing her face rather than the performers).

In fact, what I have been able to learn here may even come in useful with Erin too, as I have also been discussing with her about the potential for her to shoot some simple b-roll for me as we are not able to meet in person. I have directed the shots I was looking for, so depending on how good of a job they come out, I may or may not use the shots she shoots too. For this to happen, she is going to have to send me video files, similar to this situation.

She was able to confirm a date that also works for me, which is perfect as I am now able to move forward with her preproduction paper, knowing that a date is set in stone.

Wednesday

On Monday I had sent a message to the producer of a student documentary I had used in my research, Left. Left has a similar tone/mood to my documentary. I had messaged to ask them for advice on how you find music for the documentary. This is because I have had a look in the past few days and I have really struggled to find anything that resembles what I want. Despite understanding that I will not know the exact music I want until I cut the documentary together, I was interested in this. I received a response from her today where she states that she had the exact same problem and actually had a music friend compose music for her to suit the documentary. This is unfortunately not the ideal response I was looking for as I personally don’t have any way of composing my own music. However, what it does show me is that it will be hard to find music, so that I shouldn’t get frustrated if I am struggling to find it. With this knowledge, it may be worth dedicating a far amount of time once the rough cut is complete to finding and applying music that suits the requirements and needs of the production.

I decided that before preparing the production schedule for the Scene 1 filming, and in particular, the post production schedule, it would be best to create a Gantt chart. The Gantt chart is a more brief, overall view of the entire production process, allowing me to see what general task I should be doing at each date. This will specifically help me to create the post production schedule because of the amount of different tasks I have over such a large volume of time. Within the schedule, I can use these dates listed and then hone in on them, creating a more detailed action list. I am aware that this Gantt chart is not the final version, as I still do not have Tom’s filming date set in stone. I will update this as soon as I know.

After the I finalised all (except Tom’s) production schedules. I was able to find a technique that allowed me to more efficiently produce one for the 1st April production day. The technique included having the production schedule and script up on the screen, and checking off a list in my notepad. I used the script as a way to see what shots I needed to shoot. I found that the script was quite hard to digest in terms of the most efficient way to shoot the shots, so I noted down the amount of shots in the scene (21) and added a box next to them. I then colour coded the numbers to show me what actors are required for each of the shots. This was important as it meant that I could lay the production schedule out so that the actors are having to act for as little time as possible. I ordered it so that Oliver was first, Judith and Paul do their shots together, Judith does her last shot, then Paul does his last shots. This is the fairest way in terms of keeping the actors on set for as little time as possible, and the most efficient way in terms of ensuring that I am not having to constantly move location or equipment between each shot. The image below show my technique being used.

Thursday

For the duration of this day, I dedicated a lot time formatting and inserting all preproduction documents onto the preproduction page on my website. It was vital I did this as this has allowed me to now move onwards, with the last step to write up around all of my work. Tom has still not responded to me, despite having sent him a follow up email on Tuesday, so I’m in a really awkward position where I am not able to finalise the preproduction stage because I am waiting on him. I have done all I can without the confirmation on date and location, but this is definitely causing me problems. It seems to me, the way things are going, that we are likely to be filming after Easter break. This is okay, obviously not ideal as I would have liked to have done it on the Wednesday or Thursday next week, but is just a problem I will have to overcome. As I have written in my production schedule, I will focus my efforts towards creating a rough cut of scene 1 before cutting the documentary scene, as I would not have Tom’s footage. All I can do is hope that he responds soon and prepare for scenarios where we are filming later than originally intended.

I will continue to check up on my emails every day to ensure I am not missing an email from Tom.

Today I also collected all of my equipment from the production stage, which is very exciting. I had a lot of kit that I wanted/needed for my production. Despite the college having the most amount of equipment they’ve had before, I was limited with my selection of equipment. This is totally as I understand that everyone needs equipment at roughly the same time, it is just a problem I am having to overcome. I was able to get at least 1 piece of equipment for each that I asked for (e.g. 1 camera, 1 tripod and 1 light). This is not ideal because I need 2 cameras for the style of interview that I was after and have planned. Additionally, having only 1 light means I cannot create a conventional 3 point lighting set up. Despite this set back, I had to think positively about the situation. My peers also have equipment, so I was able to speak with them and plan dates that one or the other is filming on. This means that we can combine our equipment to ensure that everyone is able to get what they need to produce what they want. Therefore, luckily, I have been able to get 2 cameras, 2 tripods, 2 spare batteries, 1 LAV mic, 1 shotgun mic, 1 sound recorder, 1 light and 1 light stand. The list is quite extensive and shows that I have a lot of equipment to play with. Despite this, I do have the same problem with lighting: I was not able to get any more lights. Therefore, to overcome the problem, during the production stage, I am going to have to think about how I can use natural lighting or lighting embedded within the scene (such as a lamp) to act as another light source. As of writing this, I am aware of the large windows in the Hemel Hempstead meeting rooms, so I definitely think that this should be my key light for Tom’s interview. Furthermore, I also think that I should use the lamp in the living room for Judith’s interview, as I am looking for a warmer, moodier feel from her interview.

To further prepare myself for the production stage, I formatted all of my SD cards, freeing up all storage availably on them. I did this to ensure that I do not run into an issue with SD cards being too full and I cannot film any footage I need/want filmed in the moment. The image below shows proof of this.

Friday

For the rest of the week I spent my time focusing on completing as much preproduction paper work that I could get done. This was vital as in two days time I was beginning production – which is nerve-wracking but also very exciting!