Reflective Essay on my Experience.

As I reflect over my documentary experience, I have had both ups and downs. Now naturally, this happens in every single production because nothing will ever run smoothly, that’s not how life works.

I feel like my partner and I didn’t connect as much as I had hoped. While this has its disadvantages, it also had its advantages. We were able to create two completely different edits; Jamie’s focused more on a montage piece of the knitting group whereas mine dove into a more personal element with my Mother along with the knitting group as well. I personally prefer working alone on the editing side of film making and with us both having two very different views on how we wanted our projects to turn out, I think the editing process was a lot easier working separately.

The disadvantages outweigh the advantages however; pre-production meetings were few and far between (despite them being regularly organized for certain days and times) and a large majority of our communication was done over Facebook. In my past experience, using Facebook as a primary source to communicate with a group hasn’t always worked out well, so I wasn’t a huge fan of using it this time around. I feel my partner and I had very different ideas from the start and it took us a few weeks longer than other groups to actually choose our subject. Both having different ideas isn’t necessarily a bad thing but when one has to compromise for the other, I feel like the other person will always have more of a passion for the subject than the other. Even when we first started speaking about knitting, it was clear that we both had different visions for what we wanted our documentary to be and because we are both inspiring editors, we both wanted to edit as well. I’m very glad that we had the opportunity to do our own edits because I didn’t want my favourite stage of the process to be dampened with questioning and debating each shot with each other.

Going into the knitting groups, I was very nervous about walking into a part of these people’s lives and having a camera sitting in front of their faces. I was worried that they wouldn’t want us to film, or we were getting too close to them or that they would be very uncomfortable in our presence, which is something I definitely didn’t want to happen. I know being a part of a documentary is that you stage reality to a certain degree but before the subject was knitting, I didn’t want to walk in and have to ask some-one to knit that again or distract them, causing them to make a mistake. We didn’t have to stage any shots in the knitting group and maybe we should have done it for one or two shots, just to have something extra but I honestly don’t think we needed it, which made me very happy.  

For me, my disappointment happened when we came to the realization that we would have to re-shoot the knitting groups again. At the time, I thought I had done something wrong but I came to learn that there aren’t many film shoots that don’t have re-shoots so that made me feel a little better. As we finished our re-shoot and looked over the footage, I was shocked at how much better the re-shoot footage was compared to the first. Our main mistake was not using a tripod and we should have used one from the start; we didn’t think we would need one because we wanted to do a lot of moving and close up shots, and using a tripod, this is a lot tougher. So the second time around, even though I wasn’t able to get as close as I wanted to the wool, especially at the knitting group, the footage came out clearer and more smoother, so I didn’t mind compromising on moving shots so much.

I have played a small part in documentary film making before but it was very unstructured and I didn’t like the end result. This was a lot more structured than my previous work but I feel like for this documentary, it could have been more structured than it was. I would have liked to work as a team more but I fear that our edit and both our visions would have been compromised if we had to do one single edit because of the different ways we wanted to go. I’m very happy with my edit and how it turned out; I gave colour correction my best shot when it came to the interview stage but that was a small problem with the lighting in the room so I don’t feel it takes away from the documentary. My music is quite quirky and could be called cheesy at times but that was the style I was going for because of the subject matters, and I think it fits the shots, the vibe and the story well.

Overall, I enjoyed the majority of the documentary experience and I would say the only large negative I have is the lack of communication at times. I find it very stressful when I don’t know where projects are headed, and meetings help me get through that struggle.

I don’t feel like my documentary is just your average short documentary; I believe it has character, as well as being insightful and entertaining about a hobby that everyone has heard of but doesn’t know much about. 

Knit One Film One.

My documentary is finished! After reflecting on my documentary experience (in my next post), here is a link to "Knit One Film One". Enjoy!

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.

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.

"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.