Documentary and Drama Evaluation

     For my Creative Media Practice, this semester I have worked on firstly a short documentary and secondly a drama piece we have been asked to create. For my short documentary I was sound recordist and my role for drama was sound editor so I have spent the majority of the semester working purely on sound. I have recorded a lot of sound for similar projects such as documentaries, drama pieces and experimental films in the past so I felt very confident for my first project but I had never done much sound editing so I was quite concerned for my second project.

     My group for my short documentary consisted of Heather Kelland as Director, Isabel Wells as Producer, Beth Elston as Camera Operator, myself as Sound Operator, Jamie Wiffen as Editor and Bronte Schoonen as Sound Editor. I was happy with my group as everyone seemed very confident with their role. We were told that our short documentary was to be filmed in Liverpool between three days which meant we had to research a topic based in Liverpool that would make an interesting subject matter to investigate within our short documentary. After group research we had come up with two ideas for a documentary we felt we could accomplish with the time we had there. 

     Our first idea was to make a short documentary on a dead man called William Mackenzie who lived in Liverpool and by myth was buried only 5 minutes away from our hostel in a tomb above ground. We were fascinated by this idea as there is a myth that William Mackenzie was a drinker but a successful gambler by playing poker but one day he met his match with a mysterious character. He lost all of his money to this man but the strange man asks him to play one last hand even thou he has nothing to gamble with. The strange character suggests betting his soul and therefore loses his soul to what appears to be the devil. We felt this would be an interesting documentary that we could make into the length of 5 minutes with a couple of interviewees who are aware of the myth and have anything to say on the topic. With shots of his tomb with the interviews and shows of perhaps graves and churches nearby we felt this could be done.

     Our second idea was to make a short documentary on the Jacobs Biscuit Factory based and created in Liverpool. We had two approaches to this idea as we felt we could make a easy straight forward short documentary on the history, present and perhaps the future this Liverpool local factory and has given huge amounts of jobs for locals of the city. We also in our research found that recently there had been conflict between works and the bosses at the factory over new rules that had been tried to be made such as workers had to have permission to go to the toilet. As interesting as we felt this situation was we felt that we would be making things harder for us trying to get interviews on the matter especially off any mangers or bosses. Either way we felt that it would be an interesting documentary to make that locals of Liverpool may be intrigued to watch as it is a place they may see in close to everyday life.

     We were interested in both ideas but the William Mackenzie idea was a lot more fascinating and when we pitched our ideas to our seminar group, they agreed that our first idea would be more eye catching. Personally I wanted to do the William Mackenzie idea because I knew it would be more fun and more of a challenge since the main character in our documentary is already dead. It appears this was the same way the whole group felt and therefore we decided to go along with our first idea.

     I prepared for my role by writing down a list of sounds I would record for our documentary and I wrote down a list of equipment I would need to get the best of the sound I desired. For this I booked out a zoom, headphones, boom mic, boom pole, XLR cables and a dead cat (wind protector).

     Once we arrived at Liverpool, the first thing we shot took place at an old book shop owned by our interviewee who was called Bryan. In this interview my director and editor asked Bryan questions on dark tales of Liverpool and then gradually began to focus the interview on William Mackenzie. Bryan gave us a good 20 minutes of great material of him discussing William Mackenzie and other strange myths from Liverpool's past. Overall I felt the interview went very well but I felt the sound on my part could have been improved as he spoke very quietly but I didn't want to ask him to speak up.

     Afterwards, we then moved on to gather different footage of Liverpool that could fit well with our short documentary. Firstly we went to the harbour to get indicative shots of Liverpool so it’s obvious it’s a documentary based in Liverpool and to also set the scene as well. I therefore recorded atmospheric sounds of the city and also of the Mersey River as we had some shots of the water to go with it.

     We were a little windswept at this point near the river and after a short break for fish and chips  we then moved on to record shots of William Mackenzie's tomb and a graveyard nearby to get some chilling shots to represent the ghost story we were investigating within our documentary. We later got the same shots at night time as well to have a contrast of the two that we could play with in edit to see which day time to what shot suits the most. We also shot in the cathedral next to the graveyard which was very interesting, especially when we went to the roof which allowed us to see across the whole of Liverpool and more. I took some more atmospheric at the cathedral and graveyard just encase in edit we felt that we needed some.

     I was worried that even with all my recorded sound that the ghostly them and feel to the film might not be achieved and therefore I came up with an idea of someone doing a voiceover. I decided that parts of the book Jamie had purchased, from the book shop we shot in, would be interesting as it was a book of old tales and myths of Liverpool. Jamie had a granddad called Carl that lived nearby Sheffield and had a great spooky voice which led to us recording him reading small parts from the book at his home. It sounded really good and not only made more of a range of voices within the documentary it also build up our theme In post-production I watched Jamie and Bronte mix together Beth's recorded footage and my recorded sound. Everything came together very smoothly but we knew that we should had collected more interviews in Liverpool, to mix together in edit, other than Bryan. The style of cutting the clips together and the effects added to it were very interesting for us and our fellow peers we showed it to. Effects such as contrasting the footage together and fading it together to give it that kind of surreal element we found fascinating. The major part of our documentary we decided to edit was the sound clip of Carl as we noticed as a group the Bryan and Carl sounded quite similar and could make confusion. Bronte therefore added slight echo effects to not only change the feel of his voice but to make it not as recognisable to Bryan's.

     Overall I was satisfied with our final outcome as I felt everything came together to make quite a grim, interesting short documentary about not just Liverpool but about that every city has its dark little secrets.

     For my second project I had to re-join a different group and choose a different role to make a 5 minute drama piece that was based on the theme of “journey”. I found a new group and we choose the roles to be myself as sound editor, Oliver Guy as director, Louise Bailey as Producer, Rose Ryke as cinematographer, Hannah Grencis as sound operator and Sarah Cooper as editor.  

     After the roles were discussed and agreed on we jumped straight into planning and idea developing. Oliver and Hannah shared with the group a very interesting story that Oliver in particular seemed very passionate about. We therefore agreed on this idea and that’s why it was decided Oliver would be the best director as he had a clear idea what he was after and was most confident with the job. Everyone else except for Rose was quite new to their given roles so therefore it would be challenging but also very educational. I felt confident though as Oliver had worked with sound editing a lot before and said he would help me if I needed it.

     Our drama piece is to be called “A View”. It will be a 5 minute drama piece featuring one character and would consist of no dialogue, which follows the journey of their personal progression in a single space whilst suffering from agoraphobia which is the fear of being outside. We hope to create a true and realistic account of the fear from the sufferers perspective and therefore to show this we will film the entirely in the space of the room in which the character feels trapped in. As the film runs through, we hope by using the image and sound to create a feeling for the viewer to have claustrophobia to really sympathise with the character.

 

     The idea “journey” will be shown in a simplistic way as the film will focus on the inner progression the character has to overcome a part of his fear. The character will be a male adult (early twenties) who will visit the location more than once before the shoot to get a good idea of the space and a feel for the character.

     Since there was to be no dialogue and how serious the character was, I knew that sound was going to be extremely important within the film. With discussing sound plans and lists with Oliver and Hannah we decided to add a lot of outside sounds into the room so that the sense of the character being obsessed with the outside world is more powerful for the viewer.

 

     Our inspiration for this is the film Apocalypse Now as the opening to the film has a man in a hotel room who is mentally scarred by the Vietnam War and all he can hear is sounds from the jungle and sounds such as helicopters. Once we were confident with our idea we pitched our idea and received feedback. It seemed they really liked it and could understand our intensions within the film. We had a tutorial and discussed in further detail our plans and ideas. We received great feedback but for my role my most important feedback was the discussion of there being any score throughout the film or to just let the sounds, themselves, me the music for the film.  

     We found an actor who fit the part called Johnathan who was happy to act for and we found our location which was an old people’s home that had a whole floor of rooms empty for us to use but we only required one. We decorated the room with plants, books, framed pictures of Johnathan and such as, to create his little world.

 

     I felt that the shoot went great all together and to see Johnathan actor was quite overwhelming as I couldn’t believe we managed to work with him. He was very patient with us as well which was good as we are only students. I helped as much as I could with the shoot by doing a lot of lighting work. This led to the sunlight through the window becoming my enemy of course but some shots I felt look interesting with the exposure. I have recorded a lot of sound in the past and therefore offered by help to Hannah whenever she wanted it but she knew what she was doing and did a good job on her own. The only problem she faced was that the zoom kept going through batteries after every couple of takes which was strange. I though Oliver did an amazing job as a director since it was his first time directing like that and I thought Rose came out with some amazing and quite inventive shots I instantly looked forward to editing sound with in post-production.

     I faced some problems in post-production as Sound Pro editing software was not working the way it should as the wavelengths on the clips of sounds were not appearing and therefore the editing process was to be twice as difficult. This was eventually solved as a technician installed an earlier version of Sound Pro, to my MAC, that did show the wavelengths. Also it was hard to match the sound files to the footage as Oliver would repeat the same scene and shot numerous of times.  

     Overall even with the struggles at the beginning of my role I found it quite enjoyable and understood more than before on how important sound is to film as noticing that even a couple seconds of a sound can change the film massively.

 

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