Editing has begun!

The editing has begun! I didn't do a lot of editing today, it was more so organizing all the footage into different folders so when it came to Final Cut Pro, I could find clips a lot faster and easier.

For the piece of editing I did do, I started to think about the close ups shots of the women and how we start seeing what they are knitting and then we reveal who the person is that is knitting it. I feel for this piece of the documentary, it will be a lot slower than I would like. I wanted to have some quick shots but I don't think I'll be able to achieve the effect I want, with doing quick shots.

I was looking at one of the shots today and we started off looking at one of the woman's wool and her actually knitting out of focus, it then comes into focus and we slowly pan up and zoom out to reveal who is knitting the piece. I really liked the fact that we started off with the shot out of focus but because I don't want to sit on the same shot for forty five seconds, if I want to keep the out of focus look, I'll have to switch between shots. I'll have to look at this in more detail though, while editing, to make sure it all fits together smoothly.

Magazine Letters.

Knitting isn't only in social groups; it has always had a huge following in magazine and is now taking off from the internet too. "Knit Today" is one of the knitting magazines that my Mum gets sometimes and when she finished the Christmas jumper that she knit me (It's in this post), she wrote a small post into this magazine and this month she was featured in the magazine!

Even though magazines like this have been around a lot longer than the internet, I think it's something that it can be connected to the social groups we have been focusing on more. The people reading the magazine aren't all in the same room together, but they are all reading the exact same thing all over the world and that in itself, is a very big community. 

This magazine and many others have their own community forums online so everyone reading the magazine can go online and talk to others about the projects featured, what they liked, what they didn't like or what they would like to see in the future. 

Reshooting and Production Photographs.

We had our re-shoot on Wednesday at our afternoon group in the library. I wasn't sure what to think when going into this shoot; on the one hand I was really looking forward to getting more footage and getting stuck into the editing; but on the other hand I was quite nervous too, but I think that's only natural before any shoot.

It went even better than the first shoot, I was a lot more relaxed around the group because we had been there before, and because we had looked over the previous footage, I knew what shots worked and didn't work. This meant that I knew what type of shots I wanted this time around. The group we go to isn't very big, there's only around six people in it but I personally like this type of number because you can feel more intimate with them, and are able to work around them a lot easier than a bigger group. I did like the big group we went to, but I felt there was too much choice of people and in filming a smaller group; we didn't have loads of people but we can't concentrate more on a few people but get shots from a number of different angles.

Below are some screen shots that I have taken from the re-shot footage, that we looked at today: 

(One of the girls arrived late but this is a group shot from above, which showed that it's quite a tight knit *excuse the pun* group.)

 (I really liked this shot and even though it's just of tea and biscuits, I wanted to bring across that it's not just knitting that brings this group together, it's a social side too.)

(A two-shot of two of the ladies knitting and chatting away.)

(This shot will be cut down to start with this frame and it slowly glides up to the woman's face to show who is knitting.)

(Another shot of another one of the women knitting)

(Some close ups of the wool my Mum was knitting with as well as a glimpse of small Christmas presents one of the other ladies handed out to everyone.)

(I really love this shot; it may seem very simple but it brings together the social side and the craft side of knitting all in one shot.)

Overall, I'm really happy with our re-shoot footage; we used our tripod this time (Lesson? Always, always, always use a tripod or a steady cam) and the shots came out so much more beautifully. I wasn't able to get some of the more close-up shots I wanted to; this was due to the tripod not being able to get close enough, but after all at all the footage, I don't think we actually need them now. I feel like we have more than enough footage for our documentary (This is excluding the interview which I haven't filmed yet but we will be including it) and I think we also got a good variety of shots compared to last time too.

"Stories We Tell"

In last Thursday's class, we watched another documentary. This documentary was by Sarah Polley, a Canadian actress and director; having starred in "Dawn of the Dead" and "Mr. Nobody" as well as also directing "Away from Her". This documentary was very eye opening, especially when it came to interview techniques because it was unlike any documentary I had seen before. I recently spoke about "The Conversation with Amanda De Cadanet" and not only about the topics she discusses but how she interviews. A link to that post can be found here (x).

"Stories We Tell" is about Sarah Polley's family, mainly concentrating on their mother and father's relationship. My favourite piece of information that I found out about this documentary is that Sarah doesn't call her interviewees, interviewees; she calls them "storytellers" and in all honesty, I had never thought about this until now, and it's absolutely true. If something happened and you ask five people what happened; you're more than likely going to get a alternative version of the situation, you will never get the one hundred percent truth to what happened because it always have a little differently depending on each person. So the same can be said for any type of family situations, including the ones Sarah's family talk about in the film. The same names are mentioned and certain situations are talked about but with a slight variation. 

(A shot taken from the set of Sarah setting up for her interviews with her family)

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I was blown away by her interview techniques especially. The beginning of the film shows Sarah setting up her interviews, and this shows how nervous her family members are. Normally in anything, be it documentary or television show, we never normally see the beginning before the beginning of the interview. Sarah sits behind the camera and you can hear her ask the questions in the film, but most interview tend to take out their questions and have the questions be told in such a way that it is asked through the videos and photographs on screen. Although this use of question asking is quite visual, it's always refreshing to hear the question from the director or interviewer themselves. What I found extraordinary, was when her family sat down, Sarah asked them to essentially tell their full life story and they were surprised that they would have to tell the entire story, but they didn't seem to know this before the interview. 

We see boom mics, the setting up of the camera, the storytellers are sitting down and everything they said from the moment they sit down, is all recorded. As well as the interviews, some of the home footage shots are actually dramatized and grains are added to give the impression that these shots are old footage. An example of this is shown below, and it is very well done, because until I researched this film further, I didn't pick up on the dramatization at all. The footage of Michael (Sarah's non-biological father) being told that he isn't her biological father, you can tell that it has been dramatized, but the older looking footage is harder to recognize. 

(One of the dramatized shots made to look like home footage)

I was also fascinated by some of the interview environments and the shots used throughout the film. With the interviews, the home environment was used for the majority of them along with shots of her father recording their story in the recording studio, as Sarah sits on the other side of the booth listening in and adjusting his levels. The recording that her father does is used throughout the film to put over footage or photographs, when the interviews with her family aren't being shown. 

Looking at "The Conversation"

After thinking over the options I could explore having one less knitting group to film, I came to the decision to add interviews into my documentary. We had briefly considered this but it was one of our Plan B options for the time being. (Lesson? Always plan for a Plan B, C, and even D). One of the interviews I wanted to conduct was with my Mum. She doesn't like being on camera too much but she said she didn't mind doing it for this production.

Over the past week I have been looking at different techniques of interviews, and as well as the research we done in our research module, I looked at "The Conversation with Amanda De Cadanet" and "Stories We Tell". I have already spoken about "Stories We Tell" in a separate post, which will be linked here (x).

"The Conversation with Amanda De Cadanet" explores women's lives with everything from sex and love, to self acceptance and being your own motivation. Amanda's interview techniques is very unlike any other interviewer I have ever watched; the interview is always very relaxed and they will often be in very relaxed clothing.

(Caitlin Moran and Amanda De Cadanet on "The Conversation")

In this interview, the interviewer Amanda is clearly in front of the camera along with her guest Caitlin Moran. They're both dressed very casually, with Amanda in a black lacy dress but making it not as formal by having no shoes or socks on. The interviewee, Caitlin, is also going for something very similar with dark coloured leggings, a country style boot and a long blue t-shirt style dress. Many of the shots are very intimate, with two of the shots being mid shots of the woman along with the two shot of them sitting together (which you can see above). Choosing to use these shots show that the woman are close and not afraid to talk about anything.

The interview topics are always something you think about afterwards. Unfortunately because of the way society still looks at women, if men were to watch they may not feel the same way a woman would. They talk about a wide range of topics including: self-reflection, love and divorce, changing the world one woman at a time, parenting, wellness and sexuality, to name a few. In my interview with my Mum, we won't be exploring those topics but I wanted to talk about Amanda's interview techniques because she makes her guests feel so comfortable and that's something that every interviewer strives for, but may not necessarily get, depending on their own interview style.

If you haven't seen "The Conversation", I've added a YouTube video of one of the shorter versions of the show that have been taken from the longer episodes and split up for YouTube. In this interview, Amanda De Cadanet talks to Zoe Saldana about not being defined by anything, how she actually likes her mistakes because she learns from them every time and growing up with that close bond with her two sisters.

This isn't a documentary, it is a "totally different interview series" but I feel like these techniques can be used all over various mediums from actual interviews to comparing them to other documentaries. 

My Latest Meeting.

Following my meeting with our tutor on Thursday (5th December), my mind is truly at ease. The previous day I was made aware that we couldn't go re-shoot at the evening group because they had finished for Christmas; this was a huge blow because I felt like over this entire week, it was just one thing after another. As I explained in a few posts back, we have to do a complete re-shoot but now that I have seen the footage; I completely understand why and this will help advance our documentary, and make it the best it can be. I realize that this type of back and forth happens every single day on big and small productions in the media industry, but it all became a little overwhelming for a while.

I haven't had a lot of contact from my partner but I'm going to continue to film what I need to film, get all my documents together and continue to bring our idea to life, regardless.

Some of my favourite shots.

While we were going through the footage yesterday (Tuesday 3rd December), I took a few screen shots of some of my favourite clips to show what type of shots we got at last week's shoot.

We're ripping out a few rows and knitting them again.

If I sat and here and told you that I wasn't worried about an early meeting with our tutor, I would be lying. I had a feeling that we had done something wrong, or something just wasn't right. My partner and I were unable to go to the meeting together so we went individually instead.

After talking through with our tutor, we have decided to do a re-shoot of both knitting groups. When I first realized that this may be the case (the day before the meeting), I have to admit, my confidence took a good kicking. At this point, I didn't know what was going on but I knew something was wrong, and everything I had done up until that point (with the documentary production), I had zero confidence in it at this point. A part of that is obviously something that is in my head where everything has to be perfect, and of course, nothing is ever perfect but that's something I have been working on the past few years.

Our tutor and I looked through the footage together (which I hadn't been able to watch yet due to other projects production work taking over) and everything she explained she didn't think worked, she was completely right. For example, the second group we went to at night; we tried to do a wide shot of the entire group, and because there was so many people in the group, the shot simply didn't work because of numbers. Another problem we had was we tried to shot it handheld instead of using our tripod (which we had on both trips). On the camera when looking back over a good majority of the shots, the footage looked great, but when we looked at it on the Macs, you could see the shakiness of the camera and it didn't look like it would blend together as well as we had hoped. We also have a number of focusing and framing issues; we needed to capture more of the knitting and then capture who the person was that was knitting the project. The biggest problem we had was the time of each clips; the shortest one was nine seconds so for our next shoot, we are aiming for a minimum of thirty seconds for each clips and even try for two minute shots at a time.

During and after the meeting, I didn't feel as bad about having to do a re shoot. I still blame myself to a certain degree but this happening, it will help us in the end make a better documentary, which is our goal of course. This is a huge learning curve for us both, and this experience will help us in the future no matter what type of film or television work we do. 

"Searching for Sugar Man"

I can honestly say that this documentary is one of the most fascinating stories I've ever watched, even heard. "Searching for Sugar Man" is a documentary about Sixto Rodriguez who was an American musician in the 1970's who's music took off greatly in South Africa but never in his native America. Rumours for years had gone around about him killing himself and this story follows the journey of two of his biggest fans to find out the truth about his death, or if there even was a death. To them, it was like he just disappeared off the face of the earth and they wanted to know more about this mysterious musician. 

I'll not spoil the film for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but it's a must see in my eyes. Not only story wise of course, but shot wise too. The beginning of the films starts out with a high wide shot of the city, these shots are my absolutely favourite camera shots; the buildings with all the lights lit up as well as the car lights; at night especially it's a beautiful view. When we move to Cape Town, it's very carefully played with the camera driving along with the car and it slowly pulls into a wide shot to see the car driving away in the distance but you can see how tall the cliffs and hills truly are. It's an amazing shot and I can only imagine how much time and patience went into getting that exact shot. 

Towards the beginning of the film, there was an animated drawing of "The Sewer" and over a few seconds, this turned into a photograph which then changed to real camera shots. It was a stunning panning shot, almost two minutes worth, and again, I can only imagine how long that took to set up and direct.

Other shots throughout the documentary included black and white photographs made into slow motion camera movement montages that all blended together so well that you wouldn't even realize you were watching a group of photographs; you felt as though you were watching a mini story unfold. When interviews were taking place, the background to these were very interesting; for example the interviews with Clarence takes place in a  recording studio and a number of gold discs are behind him on the wall.

Sixto's music is played throughout the film and they added an extra touch to make it easier to find his music online. Every time a different song played, the title of the track and the year it was made, was put on the left hand side on the screen.

If you're looking for a documentary with catchy music throughout, a story that will keep you compelled from start to finish as well as visually beautiful cinematography, then this is one of those films that you need to see.

Production Photographs!

I believe our shoot day was a success! We had both our schedules planned out, and all our release forms ready to give out to everyone at both groups.

I was the camera operator for the group I had organized while Jamie was done the sound. We then swapped roles when we got to his group later on that night.

Both groups were lovely to work with and were very accommodating to us filming around them. They let us listen in on their conversations, record them having a chat as well as knitting their own projects; and were very welcoming to Jamie and I.

Here is just a few of the production photographs we took on the night:

(A few of the ladies in the afternoon group in the library)

(Some knitted items at the evening group in the Church)

(Extreme close up of one of the already knitted items at the evening group)

Shooting Day!

Today is shooting day!

We're heading to our first group after class this afternoon; I picked up our equipment yesterday afternoon to make sure we weren't running about like headless chickens this afternoon. All release forms are printed out and signed in the appropriate places by myself, and then the ladies in the groups will sign them themselves later on, just to give us their permission to film then and use the footage for our college project.

I haven't heard from my partner since last week (despite trying to contact him) so he isn't up to speed with exact plans; but none the less, the shoot will be going ahead as planned.

I'll try and add some production photographs on the blog tonight (:

Testing Shots.

Over the past few days, I've been going through my Mum's selection of wool and her collection of knitting pieces that she has knit herself. This is everything from dishcloths made from special cotton (especially for dishcloths) right up to jumpers that she has knit for herself.

I took a wide range of shots from very extreme close ups to medium shots; I didn't think it was necessary to do wide shots on wool and knitting projects. My favourite type of shots have definitely been the extreme close ups; I was shooting these on my camera phone so they won't be the same quality as a digital SLR, but I feel like I was able to capture the effect I was looking for. This effect was essentially looking at knitting projects and the wool; and being able to go very close to it to see every stitch, if the wool changed colour, if the stitch changed, and how it all came together to go from stitches on a needle to a completed project.

 (An ombre scarf)

 (A multi coloured cowl)

 (Balls of wool still in their package)

 (Dark ball of wool with a striking red through it)

 (A hat that I myself, am currently knitting)

 (A small number of knitting books)

 (Three knitted pillows with all different wool and
stitches used)

 (A coloured range of dishcloths)

 (An extreme close up of these dishcloths)

(Showing the different stitching used in the dishcloths) 

(A pair of socks) 

(A small number of jumpers that my Mum has knit) 

(An extreme close up of the amount of colours that she used
throughout one of the jumpers) 

(A pair of baby booties) 

(A range of baby jumpers)

While taking the photographs, I was very surprised at how much a project could bring out something so much more than just a few strands of wool. Depending on the type of stitch that was used, as well as the type of wool; if you just focus your eye very closely into any part of the project, it could almost be anything. While working on my own knitting projects and studying more about knitting, it has made me appreciate the time and the effort that goes into knitting things like these even more.

Confirming and Booking.

I went today and booked us a digital SLR camera from the Media Department in college because we have confirmed that we will be going to the Wednesday afternoon group in Dundonald and the Wednesday night group in East Belfast. I will be collecting the camera on Tuesday afternoon after another meeting then bringing it back on Thursday afternoon just before documentary class. We're also hoping to visit a wool shop to take some shots, but this is still to be confirmed. If we were to do this; it would be done on the Thursday morning.

Possible questions, stories and situations.

Now that we have our subject matter pinned down, we wanted to explore the types of stories and situations we could show in our documentary; these are listed below:

• Talk about the stereotypes (Ie. when people hear 'knitting' they think of old women usually).
• A beginner starting out.
• How it is a generational thing (Ie. passing it onto a child or grandchild).
• End results of knitting.

We knew that we wouldn't be able to have sit down interviews on screen with the owners of the shops (if we decide to visit the shops) because we aren't allowed to use that element of documentary film making; we did however just want to have a few questions written out to ask to find out if anyone had an interesting story or experience while they have been knitting and/or while working in a wool shop. These questions are listed below:

• When did you start knitting?
• How do you think the big businesses have taken over small independent shops?
• What is your customer range like? Older people, younger or a bit of both?
• Do you think the world of knitting is changing and attracting young people?

Researching older documentaries.

We watched a handful of older documentaries in class to try and get a feel of how our own documentaries may turn out because we have to use the same method of storytelling (No voice over and no interviews).

Terminus (1961)
No voice over or narrator; a couple of the scenes were clearly staged (Later research confirmed our predictions), the songs played throughout were made specifically for the documentary, voices weren't always synced up with people's mouths, graph cuts were used to edit shots together, no interview took place and there was overlayed sound.

Launch
No interviews, no dialogue, no voice over or narrator, impressionist and outside sound was used.

Drifters (1929)
Completely silent film wth no sound, music, voice over or dialogue.

We See... We Hear...

We were asked to make a general list of what type of shots we would like to see, and what sounds we would like to hear, in our documentary. The list below demonstrates that even though I wasn't exactly sure of the direction we were necessarily going with knitting idea; I had a variety of fresh visions in my head of how I wanted the documentary to look and sound.

We see a woman knitting a jumper.
We see the woman's knitting pattern.
We see the woman's knitting notes.
We hear the woman talk about how and when she started.
We see shots of the woman's wool collection.
We see the woman knit a small piece (eg. a hat, booties or a dishcloth) and possibly speed it up in post-production.
We see the inside of a wool shop.
We hear the owner of the shop talk about how they first started.
We see projects that the owner themselves have done.
We see a knitting group in action and showing each other their projects.
We hear the people in the group talking about everyday things.
We see the inside of another wool shop.
We hear the owner talk about how they first started and how they have seen the change in the attitude of knitting since then.
We hear the clatter of knitting needles.
We see the line of knitting books in the home.
We see the woman searching YouTube for help and as she watches, she knits along.
We see old knitting patterns.
We see new knitting patterns.

Learning an important lesson.

As Jamie and I discussed over the next few weeks what subject matter we were going to choose, we kept adding pieces to each idea and building them up further. Even though this led to more confusion over what idea we should go with, I believe we learnt a lesson in doing so. 

The range of ideas we had were so vast that we couldn't sit and compare them altogether; but they weren't the type of ideas to have a pros and cons list about either. While we were building up our ideas, we should have taken a step back, slept on it for a few nights and made our decision then. I personally don't like to sit in class and think of ideas right then and there; I prefer to be at home and let ideas flow then go back the next week or even a number of days later and lay my plans out on the table along with my partner's. The next time I am going through the idea or story planning process, I will be conscience of how much longer the choosing of our subject took in this project, and make sure that there is a small time frame for thinking, building upon and choosing the final project plan.

Nailing down our subject matter.

After a number of weeks of trying to decide what subject matter to choose for our documentary, we choose to go with my idea of knitting. My partner and I were both able to relate to knitting because members of both our families knit and they are in some community knitting groups held in and around East Belfast during the week. This made the suggestion of going to local knitting group easier because we knew people who were involved in these groups, and I had been to one of the groups before a handful of times, so a majority of people who attended, already know who I am.

Brainstorming Session!

On Thursday (26th September) we got placed into pairs to work on our documentary. Jamie and I got placed together, and like the rest of the class, got thinking of ideas from the get-go. I wanted to sleep on our ideas before we made a final decision, just in case we thought of anything else we would like to try out. Below are the ideas that we thought of on Thursday.

The Opposable Thumb

Our first idea was to research the opposable thumb and how we would live our lives without it. We had thought of doing a day in the life without our thumbs; we didn't necessarily know anyone who doesn't have a thumb but if we were able to tape up our thumbs for the day and pretend we didn't have one, then we could see the challenges that we would face without them. The use of archive material could be used, maybe from news stories or something very similar and a visit to the Zoo was also suggested to go and look at the monkey's specifically for the fact that they use their hands more than most zoo animals. I also threw in the idea of having a short stop motion animation, just to have a different take on the documentary. We're not exactly sure what we would have the stop motion piece be yet, but it's on the cards.

The Future of Technology

Our second idea is a mix of two ideas; not only the world of technology that seems to be growing every day but we also wanted to see the effects that this new technology seems to be having on people. Not mentally but more physically; we wanted to look at carpal tunnel syndrome in terms of video games particularly and how technology has had an impact on this condition. We also wanted to look at sensors, keypads and touch screens and how they are becoming more and more, a part of every day life for many people. Again, I suggested the idea of a stop motion piece but we hadn't decided how we would incorporate that into the documentary. 

Exploring Knitting

Our third idea was to look into the craft of knitting. Over the past decade or so, knitting has become more popular in younger people, as well as celebrities being open about taking up the craft. We wanted to know the type of people who knit, what they knit, and how they all get together; as well as some information on people who actually sell wool and yarn, to ask them if they have seen a difference in the type of customer bases over the years. I suggested we talk to a number of knitting groups to get their input of knitting and why they think it is becoming popular; but also to talk to every day people from different background and various age ranges and how knitting connects them together with the variety of skill levels too.

Introduction to Documenting Victoria's Documentary

I'm Victoria Wilson and I'm in the second year of the HND Media Production at Belfast Metropolitan College. I'll be using this blog to document my entire journey through the documentary making process from first initial ideas, mind mapping right up to the final editing process and finally, putting the documentary online.