Poetic Sound

screen shot of garage band work

So as my role was cinematographer for this project so i let Danny get on with it helping him where ever he needed. Where he most needed help was with the poetic, using the small quotes layered over the found footage we had worked really nicely but it felt very empty and we had to find a solution. We decide that we would go with creating our atmos track and as I had done something similar before and new how to use garage band and soundtrack pro the best in the group i went ahead with attempting to create something. 

Knowing that Acid House/ House music waited 8 bars of 8 beats before adding anything in i wanted to keep to this style and using the track at the begging of our documentary as inspiration i set about creating something. I wanted it to be more of an atmospheric thing than a song so thats why the kind of beat that is there only come's in at the end and  was there to carry you onto the actually documentary. 

In the end i was surprisingly pleased with what i made and i think that it ties the whole poetic piece together.   

Screenshot of working in soundtrack pro 

Shot list

Screen shot of the Shot list from day 2

We kept a shot list of all the shots that we did around manchester and of the interviews to that when it came to editing the footage danny had a better idea of what he was looking at. unfortunately we had to do this on Tonys phone as we had no paper to hand a the time. 

Tghe shot list also meant that through out the day we had an idea of what shots we had and what we needed to get as especially on the second day of filming there was   of shots that had to get.

Storyville: The Black Fish - The Whale That Killed

image of killer whale at Sea-world

This documentary was a actually suggested to me and i thought I would give it a watch. I have never watched a Storyville documentary before but this makes me want to watch more of them. 

This was a documentary about the killer whales at Seaworld and others it looks into the attacks and sometimes killings by the whales. It tries to explore how it was dealt with and who was at fault. It starts from the begging showing the audience how they originally got the whales  to Seaworld centre which was a big shock to me as they were captured as babies from the wild which is a shocking thing for the audience to see.  The documentary then goes on to explore the reported attacks and the efforts that went into covering them up.

This documentary is all talking heads and interviews with ex-trainers and environmentalists with found footage of the shows and sometimes of the attacks which i was not expecting. Although it is very much talking heads the found footage that they had was good. This documentary is very moving both for the people that died or got attacked and also the whales that are in captivity and clearly not happy. 

Although this documentary is very thought provoking and very much worth a watch. it is very one sided its hard to see it not being the right side but it is very much one sided. There was no interviews from a current trainer or anyone from Seaworld itself.    

Filming day Two

Image of factory on filming day two

We have just completed our second day of filming. The aims of this day of filming was to get shots around Manchester of all the places that they used to go before they started these illegal parities. Then also to get the interview with Chris which was planned to be at the Ritz in Manchester as he was sound checking for the happy mondays. 

Most of the places that we visited are still night clubs which was surprising to me as I thought that we would be looking at mostly derelict buildings. This was still a hard thing to shoot as most of these buildings were not nice to look at for example to the building above, to combat this I shot them from different angles focusing on small features of the building. For example with this building i went and focused on the Factory name engraved into the door which made a much better shot than this wide. we did have trouble finding a few of the places for example the green olive we had to follow worded directions from a random page on the internet and it was just a shuttered up door that lead to a basement club so it was really difficult to find. 

Once we had gotten all of these shots that we wanted it was time to go to film the interview with Chris which had to change location to their office as the Mondays were running behind schedule. I think this was a good thing as he was there for just our interview and wouldn't be worrying about everything else that was going on. With this interview we had the space and ability to do a two camera set up so with the DSLR set up closer I set up the Cannon 305 as a wide as i thought that it looked like a nice shot and we had the close up with the other camera. I wanted the audience to feel the power that he had and the way that people were scared of him. 

I think this day of filming was very productive and believe  that we have covered  every aspect of this documentary meaning that we hopefully wont have to come back to reshoot anything.  

Filming First Day

This was the first day that we would get to go and meet Anthony and his sister Tracy we would have to come back another day to get footage of manchester and an interview with Chris as he was busy this week.

So upon getting to the office we realised how busy that were! there was people everywhere and all sorts of noise and this is where we hit our first problem of where to film. 

Our first interview was with Tracy we had to go downstairs into an area that was cramped and still quite noisy because of the traffic this time. This wasn't an ideal situation to film in but we had no choice. We opted for just the one camera as there was not very much room to film. The shot was very tight in because there was lots of distractions  behind her. 

Im not overly happy with this footage but i think that what we ended up with wasn't a great image to look at but what we have is useable and will fit into the documentary if we choose to use it. 

We then went onto filming Anthony's interview and this is where we had our biggest problem and that was he didn't want to be filmed. We eventually managed to get an audio interview with him which hopefully with the use of found footage we will be able to put him over that. This was a shame as he did say a lot of things that we would have like to put into the  documentary.  

Hospital!

After finally having our idea finalised and just getting into the final organisation of when we are going to get on with shooting and everything else we hit a big problem!

Both Tony and Danny got admitted to hospital which is obviously a major set back to our project. Hopefully they get better soon and that we can get a extension to our poetic as i dont think we will be able to get it done before the deadline now.

Acid house Idea and Treatment

So after hitting these problems we managed to hit some luck and gain access to Chris and Anthony Donnelly who were responsible to introducing the acid house scene into Manchester. They also own and run two clothing companies in the form of Geo-Goi and YO.

This was a perfect opportunity for us to touch on a subject that we have never thought about before and we knew that there wasn't a group that would be doing anything similar to ours. Getting them to agree to being filmed would be a challenge that we would face later on but knowing their God daughter will help us with that 

Treatment

Born in Manchester, brothers Anthony and Christopher Donnelly soon became infamous in their hometown and across the UK for organising some of the biggest raves the North and South had ever seen.  Introduced to the world-renowned nightclub, The Hacienda by their sister Tracey (who worked for Factory Records) the brothers were soon under the guidance of owner Tony H. Wilson.

The notorious “Sweat it Out” was Manchester’s first illegal warehouse party, going down in folklore. Attendees included 

The brothers put on the largest rave the North had ever witnessed called “Joy” in Ashworth Valley. With tens of thousands of people in attendance the phrase 24-hour party people came about as it carried on for 24 hours.

After their status for throwing the best parties garnered police and parliament attention where a new bill was passed to tackle the Donnelly’s and Acid House Scene, the brothers had to move on to other ventures.

Gio-Goi was born a brand that is still linked between fashion and music today, worn by current artists: Calvin Harris, Pete Doherty, Deadmau5 and Lily Allen amongst others. To recently announcing a new underground brand Y.O. (yourownclothing.com)

For our short documentary we will be interviewing The Donnelly brothers, we will ask questions about their growing up experiences and how they got involved into the Acid House Scene and became infamous for organising the biggest raves of that time. With a huge amount of stories to tell, we will have to plan the questions so we have a good amount of detail that can fit into a short documentary.

We will also try to interview their sister Tracey to get information on her time at Factory Records under owner Tony Wilson, which was also featured in 2002 film 24 Hour Party People (directed by Michael Winterbottom).

We will also get footage and a walking interview on the site of the first rave organised by the brothers which is owned by their father, called Whitehouse Farm.

Manchester will provide us with numerous locations to film, such as the old site where the Hacienda Club use to stand before being demolished in 2002.

The documentary will be informative yet engaging, with the contributors offering information that is interesting and exciting and should be relatable with young and older people around during the 1980’s and familiar with this scene. I would like to mix interview footage with, photos from the time and footage from today with the possibility of getting archive footage from the raves. 

We will also look at using some music that is from the time and scene which will give the piece a real lively and vibrant feel. Obviously we will have to be wary of any copyright issues but I feel we can make a strong piece that really brings alive the essence of the Acid House Scene and the raves that the Donnelly brothers orchestrated.

Parkour Final treatment

So we decided to go for the parkour idea as we felt like it would give us the most scope and we would be able to produce the best documentary from it. we felt like we could make it look good and had an idea to take forward for the poetic also which we didn't for the other ideas we had.

Final Treatment 

For our short documentary we all came together and brainstormed a few ideas for what we wanted to do. We wanted to do something that was different and would still invoke a reaction. We thought about looking into video games and how playing on them a lot over a long period of time makes people but we didn't think we could take this further. We then looked at Extreme sports as one member of the group has a knowledge of this area and has done film work involving this. We then started to think outside the box and looked at Parkour (free running/ jumping).


Parkour is really interesting and very impressive in what some people can do. We realised it's very popular in active young people and there is a big scene especially in Sheffield. But it seems that they misrepresented as vandals and people who seek to cause trouble due to the where the sport is done (public places etc.) and also what they wear. But ironically not a lot of people know what the actual term 'Parkour' means. We want the documentary to show that this is something to be admired and not something that falls in the bracket of troublemaking.


We have already contacted a group who are very interested in being filmed by us and with the idea we have put forward they are only too happy to speak about it. Our documentary will be an observant one, watching and filming the subjects as they perform Parkour, but also somewhat Participatory as we will need to ask them to share experiences and give their honest opinion about the topic at hand.

For the technical side of the documentary we want to use tricky cinematography and visually impressive shots to match the footage of the people performing Parkour. In the edit suite we would slow the footage right down and use soft gentle music to show the sport being very graceful and elegant rather than fast pace and jumpy like you would expect. We would still want to make the piece very gritty and urban as it is an urban sport so lots of blues and greys would be used.


Interviewing the subjects we would want it in the urban environment to match the footage of the Parkour elements we shoot. We would like to be informal to make it seem more real and it will make the subjects feel much more comfortable with this. We will ask them why this sport interests them and why they think they're misrepresented and given a label. We will also ask some of the general public if they know what Parkour is.


In the 2 minute Poetic documentary we will use a combination of both fast and slow footage of the Parkour and use tracking shots and spins. Also long shots of the subjects gliding through the air. Using a combination of both and fast and slow pace will make the piece seem really interesting. For example show slow motion in the air and then cut to a fast landing. We will also use the voices of the subjects in this piece.

Problems

After deciding to go with the Parkour idea we had a few problems.

The first problem we had was getting hold of people that do this sport. We had a good response from people at Hallam who were part of the society at university but we needed someone big who we were contacting but with no sort of luck.

We also encountered another problem when we were shown a similar documentary to idea by Debbie from a previous year and it looked pretty much the same as what we were planning for ours and we new that it didn't get a great mark

Having these two problems with our documentary so early on we decided that it would be wise to try and find another idea that we could possibly change to.  

Initial Ideas

Coming up with the initial ideas for this documentary was a long and hard process. We all wanted to find something that other people wouldn't be doing and something that we would all equally be enthusiastic about.

One of the ideas that we had was to go to the devils arse cave in the peak district that I went to last week. This was a inspiring place that as a tourist you could visit but not the whole cave. If we could gain access to the caving society in the town this could have given us access to the deeper part of the cave where there is a drop the size of the london eye. We decided not to go with this idea as we would struggle with the logistics and getting hold of some equipment for filming in really low light would have been difficult for us.

Another Idea that we had was to look into addiction but not what you immediately think when you think of addiction.  We wanted to look into gaming addiction this an area that not many people know about and something that we dont know much about ourselves but like to know more. This is becoming more and more prominent in younger people and we want to know why and what help people can get. we decide not to go with this idea as  although it is a good subject and intersting we think it wouyld just be to hard in the time scale we have.

Our last idea which was the idea that we would be taking forward was to do a documentary on parkour / free running. We chose this idea as we knew people that did this at a high level so we could get the access and we also thought that this would be a interesting topic. This was something that none of us had done before so we had to go away and do some research before continuing.

Project Nim

Cover for project NIM

This was a Documentary about something that i studied During my A-levels. this is a story about a monkey taken from birth to be taught by humans how to communicate via sign language. There were many problems with what they were doing. The biggest being that there was never any thought into the ethics of taking a baby chimp and what effects it would have on it. 

They had many problems along they way with changing of teachers and where he was taught and also him attacking his teachers as he got older this was obviously not the right environment for a chimp. on of my favorite things was when  NIM learnt that when he went to the toilet he didn't have to learn so he just kept signing that he needed to go. m After all of this NIM ended up in a animal testing unit where he was tested on before finally being bought by a family who were trying to 'save' him but just put him in solitude where he lived out the rest of his un happy days. 

So this documentary at the begging was very hard to follow there is no real explanation as to what you are seeing on screen so it takes a while to understand and catchup but once you do you can start to enjoy the documentary for what it is. One of the best things about this documentary is that they have found everyone who had key involvement with NIM and all the people that had made the decisions in his life. 

Another good thing was that you heard from all sides of the story and  not just ones side. All this along with the use of found all the found footage this makes a touching documentary that is both informative and great to watch.