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!

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. 

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.

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.