"Tightly Knit"

Here's a link to my partner Jamie's blog, and how he has progressed throughout this process too.

http://jamieshawdocumentary.blogspot.co.uk/

Looking back to the beginning.

As we tidy up our production folders ready for hand in, I look at our treatment from when we started this project, compared to our edits, it hasn't become the outcome we once wrote down in October. When you're making a film, I don't think that any treatment will match the film in the end, and I think that shows what I said in a few posts back about how 'life happens' and how things can change throughout the filming process.

The treatment is meant as an strong outline for our film and although our original intentions were interesting, exciting and had a lot of potential; we came together and made two totally different visions and it's for this reason I don't mind that the documentary went in a different direction completely. I'm glad we had the treatment as a structure of course, but I'm happy that we explored other areas and that the documentary turned out with surprising results.

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.

The Editing Process.

The editing process of film making is possibly my favourite part of creating a film. I usually edit on my own, so I can sit for hours and finely tune everything as best I can and it doesn't feel like work. I worked for a number of days on my edit, before Christmas and after Christmas, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. 

After everything had been shot, I was a lot more happier to edit because I already felt like I was closer to finishing it even though I had just started. I encountered a small number of basic problems while editing but I feel like I handled them well with my best efforts.

Colour Correction:
This was only due to either not the right white balance being set or the fact that the lights I used where normal household lights and most lights like this, do have a yellow tint to them. After spending at least two or three days on colour correction, I did what I could but there is only really so much you can do before you start going into over exposure or making it too dark. Despite this, I don't think it takes away from the documentary, which I'm very happy about.

More Footage:
Part of me doesn't want to have to say that I wanted more footage because I already spent hours deliberating what shots to use, and this wasn't because of a lack of footage by any means. The shots I took after I interviewed my Mum; I got a few shots of her knitting and if I could do it differently, I probably would have got my camera out only for a minute or so every time she was knitting something different and created a short montage piece of the various things she was knitting. I just think it would have added slightly more depth to the piece.

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.

The Title.

After not having a title for the documentary for a long time, I decided on the title, "Knit and Knatter". This was because the knitting group was called Knit and Knatter; although I soon spoke to my tutor and she suggested to try and connecting it more to the knitting side of things, rather than the group side. There is a lot of footage of the group but my version of the edit is more about my mother and the personal side to the knitting whereas my partner's edit is more of a group element. After taking this into consideration, I chose the title, "Knit One Film One". I was worried that others wouldn't get what I was referencing; in knitting there are a large number of ways to knit including the knit stitch and the purl stitch. On many knitting patterns, you have to knit one, purl one (or in the abbreviated term, K1P1) or even knit two, purl two and film sounds similar to purl, so I think it adds a little twist to not only the title but you technically learn a stitch before the film even begins.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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?

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.