Ollie Tristram

Wednesday 26th November

We captured the footage to the computer and watched through it all. It came out as 4.5GB and 21 minutes in length, which according to Jules is about the right ratio for a 4 minute film. We didn't get time to do any work on it but Tom offered to cut up all the footage into individual clips at home, so it was easier to rearrange them for our editing.


Thursday 27th November

Today started with us imported all the separated clips, Tom had kindly spliced last night, into Adobe Premiere. It was very hand for him to have done that because it made life so much easier to just scroll through a list of clips and pick out the ones we wanted in a particular order.

Next, we simply began choosing clips, placing them in a provisional order and then began cutting them up - very straight-forward.

After doing so, and getting over 1 minutes worth of footage on the timeline, we began to take a look at the audio files we had recorded during the shooting. The live recording of the busker playing is fine, but we don't want to settle for second best, and we would be doing so if we kept our interview audio file. We have decided that there is too much hustle and bustle in the background, and not only does it make the interview more unclear, but there are sudden cuts between each section of speech. Anyway, we have booked out a sound booth and will be rerecording the interview on Monday.

Wednesday 3rd December

Today Jason was off ill with a cold so Tom and I continued with some of the editing ourselves.

We applied some visual effects to the footage in order to try and get that urban, gritty city look to our film. We did this by applying high contrast and lowering the saturation of the clips.

Also today, the other groups came to look at our edit. The general feedback was that it looked nice and the shots were well framed, but they thought because of our effects that the shot looked over-exposed.

Thursday 4th December

With Jason back in we showed him our new visual style and he liked it a lot. We didn't really do much else to the edit today because Debs came round to give constructive criticism. Generally I think she was quite impressed and the overall tips to take away from her feedback was to rearrange some of the clips as not to mislead the audience (for example, introducing the busker at the right time) and to go all or nothing with the effects so that nobody thinks its over-exposed and knows that we have applied effects.

Also, some filming tips I learnt was that one performing a pan, it counts as 3 shots: still, move, still. This way any still clips that come after it fit nicely. The other tip was to make sure in the future to always use manual controls - exposure in particular. We remembered white balance and manual focus but a couple of the shots that go from light to dark see the auto exposure kick in and the white colour fades in and out making it look more unprofessional.

Our main aim for today was to rerecord the interview with Sam and we booked out a sound booth and Edirol R-09 to redo this today. At 16.30 Sam turned up and we began interviewing. Compared the interview on the street we got a lot more audio, 17 minutes worth in fact, and we got everything we wanted out of him except him talking about other buskers, which was one of the main things we wanted for the voice over of our film!

When I got home that night I spliced up the interview into bite size segments with only the best and most clear parts of the interview. This cut down the 17 minutes into around 6 minutes of roughly 25 clips. This way the edit the next day will be easier to pick and choose each audio file we want.

Friday 5th December

Today our aim was to rearrange some of the clips, but most importantly to put the new audio on the film.

It started off kind of slow, picking the most related audio clips to go with their video counterparts, but once that was sorted we trawled through the rest of the interview/voice-over clips, picked out the best and placed them in the gaps where they fitted best.

When we were happy with the order the main thing to do now was to sort out the levels for the three audio tracks: the live recording, interview and city ambiance. One technique which was important for us to do was the use of ducking the live recording whenever Sam spoke during the voice-over, to make him clearly and more prominent in the audio mix. I spent a good hour or so going through the timeline and fluctuating the audio levels via use of automation at the appropriate parts.

FINISHED! Well not quite. But we were for the day. All that is left is for Tom to put the text on screen when the busker says the important stand-out lines.

Monday 8th December

Today we heard some more feedback from Jools and we learnt of a couple of tweaks we needed to make to our film. The first thing was to rearrange some more clips, most notably the second shot was too dark following the first, bright shot. This was deleted completely. We even added in a new shot we forgot we had of Sam waving at a passer-by. It works because it shows Sam's pleasant attitude and the effect he has on the people.

Another main issue was hearing the sound of some speakers other than headphones. The mixing was fairly bad because there were times when Sam's interview could not be heard over the backing track. We had to get this sorted and we did so by altering the ducking of the backing track more severely.

A third thing to change was to add more text from what Sam says during the voice-over. This keeps in the style more and also helps the audience follow the narrative easier.

Tuesday 18th November

Picked up the camera at Waverley building at 11am. The sun was shining and the air was clear - a perfect day for filming.

Our aim for the day was to film creative and artistic shots around the city to represent an image of where Sam, the busker, plays his music. This would include shots of the architecture, the grimey parts, and also all the people that live in the city.

We started off by walking to John Lewis to buy a Mini DV tape because we forgot to provide our own (oops) and then set out onto the streets of Nottingham. As we walked around we got a shot of the Cornerhouse, down alley-ways and down Clumber Street to show all the people walking the busy street.

We experimented with the manual focus and the zoom throughout the day to really try and show-off Nottingham in a fresh and unique way.

Along our travels we came across a couple of other buskers: a violinist and saxophonist. Although not planned, we thought getting shots of these two other buskers would work well in the documentary as they will also show the audience that Nottingham and it's society has some personality to it and of course, mainly that it would run along the same theme of busking.

As the day came to a close and the sun began to set we had gathered a variety of interesting shots which I am personally proud of and looked forward to Thursday to gather more city shots and interview and film Sam.


Thursday 20th November

After Tuesdays rather successful day shooting we were all looking forward to today, especially because we would be filming our main section.

On our way down to where Sam usually plays (outside River Island) we took some more stock footage of the surroundings of Nottingham, keeping in mind all the rules of taking a well framed shot, such as rule of thirds.

As we got down to Sam we said hello and told him our plans for the day that involved him. These were to get some angles of him playing, do an interview using an Edirol R-09, and do an audio recording of him playing live.

Over the next hour or so we got as many interesting shots as we could, focusing on his face, hands and wide shots. We also filmed creative shots like of the money he'd earned on his guitar case and of his amp. All which we plan to use in a montage effect.

After we began conducting the interview. I asked him questions on his busking, on Nottingham and on the people. With the recording the plan was to cut out all the sections where I am asking questions and use only the bits of Sam talking as if to get him telling a story. The only problem with this approach is that doing it in the street leaves you with sudden cuts as the background noise drops out. We will see how it sounds in the edit otherwise we will have to go and record some more city ambience to fill in the gaps.

Finally, after buying Sam a cup of coffee and giving him some change for his time, I set about getting a live recording of him playing and did so by laying the mic close to his amp as to reduce background noise to a minimal and only pic up his playing.

With footage and audio in hand, it's off to the editing!

This is our proposal for our documentary film taken from a powerpoint presentation we did last week.

Story

• Focusing on a Nottingham busker called Sam. He is known colloquially and mistakenly as “the jazz man”. 
  
• He commonly plays blues and gospel music around Nottingham city centre
  
• We want to focus on his relationship with people and society hearing his opinions about the city and the people themselves 
  
• One of the key underlying questions is to ask why he chooses to do this for himself and the others around him.
  
• The documentary will be 4 mins long
  

How it will unfold

• Quick background on the busker
  
• Starting slightly negative – society and the city will be portrayed negatively with general stereotyping
  
• This is to be proved wrong by our subject with an increasing positivity throughout the documentary with his views.
  
• His positivty shines through the grimness of busking life, with his music falling on un-caring ears.
  
• The Idea of putting a spin on the documentary comes from the likes of other documentary makers such as Michael Moore
  

Style/Visual approach

• Artistic and creative shots throughout to emphasise the scale of the city and its character. For example, wide shots of busy city streets and close-ups of general city grime.
  
• Shots of the busker performing – mostly close-ups. Example ‘Susan and Susan’ from research post below.
  
• Camera techniques will include pull focus, canted angles, ambiguous shots to make the documentary a good visual experience.
  
• Editing techniques will include contrast variance, a colour tint – to emphasise the filth aspect. 
  
• Also text will fade in and out to reinforce particular words and sentences of interest.
  

Audio

• Voice over of Sam through majority of film which will come from questions we ask. This is what will tell the story. Example ‘Three Cherries’.
  
• Soundtrack will be recordings of the busker playing live and also general city ambience.
  
• We will record all sound using Edirol R-09 recorders.
  

Why

• It will be interesting to find out why someone has made a conscious decision to sit on the cold, busy, dirty streets with the main objective of performing his music and meeting new people
  
• He is obviously somewhat religious so we want to know why his religion drives him to perform this act.
  

Shot 1


There is not much to say about this shot other than the man in the foreground is obviously in focus and more important to the other man. The brown clothes and background probably represent supression and a poor, dirty surrounding.

Shot 2

From the website that Adam gave us in the lecture last week I have just picked out the most important parts for when we come to write out our treatment/proposal this week.

"There are several key elements that make a treatment good and worth reading. The first is keeping it relatively brief."

"Another key is to keep the treatment user-friendly and straightforward."

"The purpose of the treatment is to describe the events of the story so that it can be visualized and brought to life. This should be done using the least amount of words possible."

"...the writer should highlight the major points of the story, the necessary details that are essential for the story to make sense...The writer should use it to urge the reader into asking for more..."

"The treatment focuses on the story's backbone, allowing it to be seen clearly..."

"include a solid opening that takes hold of the reader from the very beginning. There must also be a climax to the film that strikes and satisfies them. In between, there must be a protagonist (or main character) that the reader can relate to in some way."

"The story must also contain a central conflict around which all the action in the story revolves."

The other day after the lecture me and Tom Pearson went out around the town to take some shots of the surrounding location that our documentary will be set. There are still more to come but this is the general area.




Here also is a photograph of the busker we will be using in our documentary. His name is Sam also known more colloquially as 'The Jazz Man'.



Finally we took a quick video of him playing just so you can get an idea of his sound and style and probably gather a little about his personality from his musical tastes.



More to come.

A 4 minute short from FourDocs called 'The Garage Wars' about a couple who have very opposite views on the man's layout of all the old bits and bobs in his garage.

My Opinion:

I love the way the two people have such contrasting views on the 'mess' in the garage and how serious they are when they try to explain why they do or do not like the state the garage is in. In terms of how the film has been edited, it was a clever, if not obvious idea to inter-cut both separate takes from the man and woman because it keeps the pace up hearing the opposite opinions so frequently. The camera is very straight forward, mixing in a standard handheld shot with an occasional low-angle shot through a couple of bikes - so simple, yet so effective. The general concept of the documentary is really original and it is interesting for the viewer to not only see all the weird and wonderful things in the garage but how the couple bounce off each other - they are like a comedy duo!



A 3 minute 20 second short which is completely different from the video above about a woman who found comfort in playing with snails.

My Opinion:

A 4 minute 30 second documentary about a chef who also performs street magic for pleasure as well as business.

My Opinion:

This is a much more traditional documentary, but what sells the idea is that this person at first seems like just a flamboyant magician, but we see that his actual day job is as a chef. It is an unusual mix that grabs the audiences attention as we want to find out why this guy wants to juggle these two passions. I think in places it slightly loses track and has some more irrelevant sections like in the nightclub for example, its not really related to either of his jobs, but in terms of interviewing and using the public as side-characters it is a good solid short documentary.

To do: In groups of 4 or 5 plan and produce a 4 min non fictional “character study” that entertains and informs the audience of one interesting character.
Presentation: Your group will present all the work you have done at the end of this non fictional study. To evidence your work every student will be expected to provide:

1. In your Journal: A Character study on your chosen subject, (research of subject) Research
carried out for film script project - (Stage 2).
3. A production file (group copy) containing production research and paperwork treatment ,
photographs, locations, script, storyboard, call sheets, schedules, VO, paper edit, book references
etc.)
4. On a CD: a 4 minute DV documentary with title and credits. [720x576 DVAVI 25fps none
compressed PAL].
6. In your journal - entries that document and reflect upon the work done during this module.
7. Completed group peer assessment form