Ollie Tristram

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

Networking, as defined by my Mac's dictionary is 'to interact with other people to exchange information and develop contacts, especially to further one's career'. Now this would agree with the title statement. But to break the statement down further, here is what I think about networking.