The Litter Documentary
Following on from my last post on DSLR training, this was the training task that we were set to complete as practise for our main product. Myself and my group (Cameron Hargreaves, Daniel Springthorpe and Charlotte Smith) and the class (2 other groups) were set the task of creating a documentary about litter. My group chose to focus on Great Wyrley High School and went out on different shooting sessions to film it: in a week.
The documentary needed certain elements within it:
- Interview
- B-Roll
- Talking Heads
- Establishing Shot
- Soundtrack
- Voice Over
The original documentary
Feedback/Evaluation:
Our Litter Documentary and the peer assessment.
The main problem we discovered while filming was that myself and my group had trouble with focusing the Cameras. Many of the shots we thought were fine actually were slightly out of focus, normally highlighting objects in the picture not needed. One main error that was pointed out by our peers was the interview with Mrs Kearsey. We hadn't noticed whilst filming, but it was the penguin behind her that was in focus, while she was slightly blurred out.
Another piece of feedback given was that the music didn't actually go with the documentary - it was too morbid. We had thought of this whilst we were searching for the soundtrack, but we decided to test it out just in case; trial and error. However there were some in the room that enjoyed the soundtrack, causing a clash of opinion.
The creativity of our documentary was one of it's shining aspects. Our peers thought we had many good ideas within it but the focusing and the length of the documentary in itself let it down. Some of the photos taken they really liked, however there was a downside to the fact that one person thought they were not necessary to the documentary as she hadn't seen them in other documentaries.
Overall we see our documentary as a success because there were a few positives about it and it was a complete failure, however I do feel there is plenty of room for development and improvement for us to be ready to film our final product.
Shooting Sessions:
Our shooting sessions went well. We split up the filming between the four of us - one day was for myself and Cameron to go out taking photos and filming pieces of litter whilst the next it was Daniel and Charlotte that went out to film Mrs Kearsey and other pieces of litter and bins.
We booked an appointment with Mrs Kearsey on the Monday to interview her. We took a while to set up and make sure everything was ready, but we felt that once we started the interview went went apart from the small error of focusing.
The following post is about the FCP X training we did to create this document.
