The Hope Box.

Not only did I conduct my Mum's interview over the Christmas period, I also did the hope box sequence too. She spoke about the hope drawer or hope box in her interview and since I'm looking at a more personal side, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to show the audience inside her box. 

Inside her hope box she had hats, booties, jumpers and baby blankets that I did many extreme close up shots of, because I wanted to really show the detail that was going into each of these small pieces of clothing. 

I also created a small montage of throwing the jumpers on top of each other through a small part of the interview. I didn't want to add all the baby clothes into one sequence and I think it looks a lot better split up.

My Mum's interview.

Over the Christmas period I conducted the interview with my Mum. She brought a lot to the interview with funny stories, childhood memories and being quite comfortable in front of the camera, despite being very nervous beforehand.

Once I had asked her all her interview questions, I got a number of close ups of her knitting and with her tea. The tea element was important to me because tea often relates to being sociable and this is what her knitting group is about, as well as knitting of course.

I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to interview my Mum. Some would say I have an advantage interviewing someone I know so well, but I was still nervous at the prospect. The only thing I would have changed about this is I would have worked more on sorting out the lighting problems. Everything looked fine on the camera at the time but as I put it on the big Mac screen, it turned out that it was quite yellow. With this happening, I spent a good majority of my editing time trying to colour correct the interview. In the end, there is only so much you can do unfortunately but I don't think it ended up being too bad or at least I don't think it would be too overly obvious to anyone who wasn't a film student.

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.

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. 

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.