Inspirations

The archive was about a man who has a catalogue of vinyls which went into its thousands. I liked some elements of the documentary but I felt that it was kept on the same tone and pace. this is an example of how i don't want the documentary I am producing to have this vibe to it. i feel that it wouldn't engage our target audience and considering that its about music i would have like more of a upbeat tempo.

The subject matter of this documentary is the same as my groups own. It keeps the pace up and has a range of different clips to keep the viewer interested. One ting I dont like is the presenter because it gives the documentary that news feel and i think when it comes to documentaries that should be avoided simply because news is always related bad news. But i don think they were successful in their approach and becuase of the length of the whole documentary this first sequence certainly does set the tone.

Treatment

Jen and I put together the treatments and researched some information on sites that could help with the editing of the project.

screen grab 2

We has alot of stills of old Beatles pictures. They were all different colours and made our work look amateurish, so we desaturated them to make them all black and white. In some of our footage  the white balance was off so we used colour corrector which took out some of the prominent colour in the clip and made it a more neutral colour balance.

we did have problems with some of the aspect ratios of the pictures so some of them looked stretched and pixelated. So even though the pictures looked great they didn't fit into the 16:9 framing.

screen grabs

On this screen grab we were adjusting the audio for the clips to make them run smoother. this was a problem within our edit because we found out that some of our interviewees had big dynamic changes in their voices. We also had to merge music tracks together so we used the audio transition effect to merge them smoothly.

Locations

We went to the Liverpool Museum and interviewed a tour guide in the Beatles exhibition. Clarice had got in contact with the Museum educational department before hand so we could film in the museum. It was a bit a of a challenge because of the strict rules about not getting in small children and not being able to use a tri-pod in the museum. it was quite dark and noisy too, but we managed to get some good information on the Beatles as well as an opinion from the tour guide, who actually didn't like the Beatles until just recently. We filmed in the museum on our second day of the trip.    

We didn't have a lot of time to plan and get in contact with certain locations. The Beatles story needed more notice if we wanted to film and have interviews in the museum. But what they did do was allow us to take photos of the museum contents and use it in our documentary. If we had to film this again I would contact them much earlier than before this is because they have a press procedure set up. Where they arrange interviews and set up certain parts of the museum to make it more film crew friendly. 

After going to the museums we went to the Cavern Club which is where when the Beatles first started to play and were founded. We interviewed two people from there one being the events manager and a performer. Throughout ll the locations we found that they were dark which affected the Song PD170 as it struggles to adjust in low light. Despite this we recorded some cover songs which we also used as bedding music for the documentary. It helped with the pace of certain scenes and are copy right free to an extent. The interviews we got definitely were helpful because one interview  answered one our most improtant questions "what's Liverpool doing to celebrate the Beatles 50th anniversary".  We also got footage of people dancing aswell as the performances.

The manager of the Beatles shop gave some interesting information about the Beatles as-well as his shop. We went there the day before to ask for permission and they agreed, so the following day we set up an interview with him and we got some great information and subject matter. This is one of the main interviews that makes our documentary  interesting, he makes some valid points as-well as providing information that even we didn't know about the Beatles. This was definitely one of our strongest interviews. We had all access to the store and to film it was one of our smoothest interviews. 

Production crew

 Albert docks

 Albert Docks

Hannah and the Merance.

I was on camera while Jen directed the Interviews and instructed certain camera movements that were needed for the documentary. Clarice was the Producer getting in contact with potential interviewees and asking for permission to film from the locations we were visiting. Hannah was the sound engineer for the  interviews, she also dubbed the sound in post as well. Sophie was are head editor but the rest of us inputted alot of hours into the post production.

schedule

Date Time Person Section

12/03/2012 AM Alex Uploading footage

13/03/2012 PM Jen Uploading footage/Edit

14/03/2012 AM/PM Jen, Alex, Hannah Working on intro/General structure

14/03/2012 PM Alex, Hannah Intro/Sections for tutorial

15/03/2012 AM Jen, Alex, Hannah Working on tutorial feedback

15/03/2012 PM Sophie, Clarice Sorting usable pictures

16/03/2012 AM Jen, Alex, Hannah Continuing intro/ structure

16/03/2012 PM Sophie, Clarice Starting Cavern Interview

17/03/2012 AM/PM Jen Sorting usable interview footage/ Cavern and Beatles Shop Sequence

19/03/2012 PM Jen, Hannah, Clarice, Sophie Going over what was done so far and proceeding

20/03/2012 AM Jen, Hannah Fine cutting interviews

20/03/2012 PM Sophie, Clarice Adding Text/Transitions

21/03/2012 AM Jen, Hannah, Alex Finishing the piece

21/03/2012 PM Jen, Hannah, Alex, Sophie, Clarice Final Run through and burning onto disk

here was our schedule  of how we were going to divide the work load between us from logging the footage to editing sequences. even though we had a designated editor we decided to all chip in since we had no other jobs to do around the post production bar two of the members of the group. This was done before hand so we all had a rough idea of what we had to do in-order of us to have a smooth production process.

Documnetary hand out

In the handout that was given David Bordwell and Kristin  Thompson discuss the main elements of a documentary and what points are raised when the topic of documentary is explored. They mention as moviegoers we tend to sum up whether a film is a documentary or fiction, in my opinion this can be sometimes wrong because some films will merge fiction and fact together to get their point across. A documentary is based on information that we as viewers may already know, but would like further insight into the subject or features real places that exist. this will determine whether we trust the film to be a documentary or an urban myth.

People don't normally trust documentaries simply because it "manipulates  the events  that are filmed". This is done so all the relevant information is documented in a controlled way so that the viewer wont be struggling to identify what the director is communicating. This will be done in my documentary in the interviews so that we get the interviewees reaction to questions and opinions on the subject matter.

In documentary there are genres, the genre can be the decider to the success or failure of the film. One of these genres are "direct-cinema documentary" this is  a camera crew follow an event as it unfolds this typical genre emerged in the 1950's and 60's. Originally the documentary i was doing about the Beatles was going to do this. by following how Liverpool was preparing for the 50th anniversary for the making of the group.

documentary and film have strict boundaries, these boundaries are normally pushed to its limits when directors don't have all the right information or make up places or scenarios to make the subject matter more interesting. This exaggerates the facts and makes the viewer think whether what is portrayed on the film is correct and could cause them to form an opinion that can make the film not as effective.