Liverpool Day 2

A planned track of Liverpool dock

Setting up our interview with Tristan. 1st location

Oli setting up a city shot

As per our plan from our day 1 meeting me and Oli went down to Dunnett Street to get more footage of Tomo's work to make the most of our time as a whole team. What we didn't realise until we were half way was that the walk down there was roughly 2 hours. We got a decent amount of footage of the docks on the way but a lot of it was private land and we had a couple of workers come to tell us we couldn't film certain areas so some of that footage is useless. We also went past quite a few other pieces of graffiti so we got a decent amount of extra cut away footage, which from an editing perspective is very helpful because the more I have to work with in post the better.

The team walking to the next interview

Tomo interview

Despite not wanting 6 people for the interview yesterday, our interview with Tristan (second of the day) was outside so we needed an extra couple of people to help set everything up quickly etc. Tristans interview it's self went extremely well, he was a really good character that had a lot of good things to say about street art, moreover he was passionate in expressing it all. He is setting up a street art festival and said the main focus of it would probably be around Tomo showing the importance of him and how that would be an extremely good interview to get for the project. 
Since we didn't have a set location for the Tristan interview we did it on the street near a big mural to provide some visuals to explore for the viewers. However once we got into it the problem became imminently clear, the cars going past in the background were being picked up by the mic even though it was being boomed, so we had to move to another location to get better audio. This also provided more variety of things to talk about since Tristan new the local area so well.

Tristan interview location 2

Also after Tristans interview we got a call saying the people from yesterday had got Tomo to agree to be interviewed.When we got to the interview we met Tomo and due to the nature of what he does he said he'd be filmed but wouldn't show his face and if we did see his face we'd have to blur it. He was OK with his voice being used so the interview was still quite good and it was nice to get an opinion from an actual established street artist.

Despite this being an exhausting long day it was an extremely useful one. I listened back over what the people from Urban Canvas said from the morning interviews and it was useful, that along with what Tristan and Tomo said was enough to fill the documentary in its self. Tristan when we were talking to him praised Kieran from Zap, who we were to interview the next day, since they all seemed to know each other we seem to have got the best people to interview to cover our doc subject as thoroughly as possible.

   

Brief notes from day 2

Brief notes of Tristan interview

Brief notes of Tomo interview

1 of 2 bits of Dunnett St. Graffiti

Liverpool Day 1

As it was our first day we wanted to give ourselves somewhat of a head start so we tried to shoot as much as we could of graffiti we came across. Day 1 was just as much a recce so we could properly get to know our surroundings and how to get to certain places the quickest

 

Team helping set up shots

When we were shooting one piece a woman came out and explained the piece to us and who did it, an apparently well known street artist from Liverpool called Tomo. To cut a long story short we actually got in contact with Tomo through the people that owned the building he was tagging, they were friends of him. After Hannah talked to him on the phone he was still reluctant for an interview, since he is a graffiti artist so has tagged a lot of illegal spots so the police are to a degree looking out for him. The owners said they'd try to convince him by the time we left though.  

Day 1 was also a good day to try and get to grips with the dolly tracks we booked out, since no one in the team had ever actually used them before, but working together we sorted them so we got quite quick at setting up and dismantling them.  

For the whole day we flirted with the idea of getting vox pop interviews with the public like our intial idea, simply as a back up, but when we discussed it I said it would just be a waste of our time. Since I'd been thinking of my own structure for the story as editor I couldn't see any place for vox pops in the new style we were going for, and everyone else agreed after the discussion.

Alex doing sound tests for atmos'

Setting up dolly tracks

At our first meeting when we got back to the hostel we decided to scrap our originally planned 6 man interview setup idea. This is because we concluded 6 people around the interviewee would be very intimidating and make them much more nervous, thus making it a worse interview. Instead me and Oli (both the editors, so therefore assisstants) would go out and get more shots of the City and graffiti as that would benefit the production much more. We also heard of a new location with more of Tomo's graffiti in and since we had potential contact with him this would be a good thing to match as a cutaway with his interview when we edit, since I'm editing too I thought it'd be more important to get this than simply log which sound clips and video are what, something that could be done later. 

Also in the meeting we ran over the questions to ask the interviewees and tweaked them slightly so that the questions aren't closed yes/no and instead would give them a chance to elaborate. We also wanted to make sure they definitely fitted the idea of prompting the subjects to talk about a celebration of street art and not dwell on any negatives.

Example of Tomo's art we came across

First team meeting in the hostel

Alex bought his laptop to Liverpool to make sure we could backup footage from each day so it was all in one safe place.  This first day also confirmed how well we all worked as a team, everyone helped each other out in their specific sections. 3 different people bought their DSLR's with them so there was a lot of footage captured, which is helpful as we want as much footage as possible to help the edit. 

Brief notes from Day 1

Interview and General Liverpool Planning

When we had our meeting with him we eventually decided that we were more passionate about the street art idea. We worked out that it could be a better idea if we didn't go for the approach of getting people's opinions of street art (since its been done many times) and rather went for a full on celebration of street art in Liverpool.

This also helped because around this time Zap Graffiti who we were in contact with posted on their Facebook wall about our visit, and it got a great response from a lot of people meaning we had a lot of potential interviews to set up when we went to the workshop.

Zap Graffiti mentioning us on their FB page and getting positive response

Furthermore over the next few days we gained two more definite interviews. One from a pavement art company called Urban Canvas, since they do chalk drawings and similar art on the floor for the temporary time it stays there it gives us a nice different view from just graffiti, and therefore a more rounded celebration of all street art.

The crew, working hard.

 Our final seminar before going to Liverpool was based around interviewing our contacts and how to best go about it. We decided to have two units per interview so that we could have cut-aways of the same interview so we don't just watch it in one shot, it'll also make it seem more informal if we have handheld shots. I have been given the role of public director making sure people don't walk through the shot and start talking loudly behind the camera ruining the interview.

Job roles for the interview 

The detailed position interview plan 

Notes from Lee tutorial and interview plan

The Pitch

We originally had our pitch all completely ready for 6th Feb until Hallam went on strike that day postponing it until Mon 10th.

The pitch its self went well, we got across the enthusiasm for both ideas very well in my opinion. The problem came when it came down to the vote to decide which idea we should go with. This is because all of the students voted for the City Canvas idea, but the two tutors (Lee and Debbie) voted for the Change the Record idea, and since it is them who will be marking the piece their votes hold a lot of merit.

Idea 1

Idea 2

One of the things that made me quite proud was we were one of the few groups out of everyone that had two very solid ideas and had contacts for them both, we seemed most prepared in my eyes. Everyone else seemed to have one very good strong idea and one they slapped together and weren't really committed to since they liked the other one more. Which in a way would have been more helpful for us if we had done that, since we as a group were split about which idea we liked most; personally at the time I thought the story of the Change the Record idea was the best and therefore the one we should have stuck to. We decided to leave it a day until our tutorial with Lee the next day.

My notes for my slides in the pitch

Ideas Development

Spike Beecham, our contact.

Hannah took on the role of Producer and thus was the one to contact the person in charge of the record shop. We got contacted back by a man (named Spike) who wasn't actually the owner, but was the one in charge of the selling of the records on eBay, and was the only point of contact now, we also later found out we couldn't get put in touch with the old owner of the record shop since they fell out and there was bad blood between the two of them. He was reluctant to go along with the idea at first as he said he didn't really like publicity much.

However once we sent him a proper treatment of our idea he became more on board with it and more interested in the idea.

The shop when it was around.

One of the problems we came across was that the shop its self was now not there anymore and only a handful of records had been set aside from the 15,000 strong collection for a special day, therefore a simple matter of what we would film was an issue. One major positive of this idea was that Spike told us we could screen our film at a special record shop day if we were to make it successfully, this kind of exposure would be an extremely positive.

Since he was not in contact with the original owner and is more the latest person responsible for the records in a chain we wouldn't be able to do our idea of focussing on the story of the record shop and its importance in the Liverpool scene. Therefore we tweaked our treatment to instead use the story of the shop having to be sold online as an example of the modernisation of the high street and how independent shops are really struggling in modern times and are forced to evolve to survive. There also seems to be a bit of irony in the story since it shows how one of the oldest forms of music has to resort to the newest form of shopping in order to survive still.

Our influences for this one come from The Archive (Dir. Sean Dunne) which we watched in our doc screening seminar, not only because it looks at vinyls and shares a similar subject matter but because visually it's the kind of engaging while still being conventional look we want to be going for. Furthermore one of the films I rewatched thinking about this idea was Side By Side (Dir: Christopher Kenneally) this is because it follows a similar subject matter of a medium moving from an analogue age into a digital one. Despite being about film the debate of holding onto the past form vs embracing the future is one that is very much at the forefront of this documentary idea.
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Since the graffiti idea was predominately Oli's he was the one that made the phone calls, since getting Hannah to correspond with both contacts would be a lot of work, an unfair amount to put on one person. We found a company Zap Graffiti that Oli contacted that were very happy to get involved, the only problem was the man we got in contact with (named Kieron) was a bit too casual and instead of wanting to know when to meet etc he took more of a 'call me on the day' approach, meaning we couldn't set up anything concrete.

The companies logo

The company as its self says is all about engaging people in the 'positive' art form of graffiti, so immediately you can tell they are very pro street art, setting up a lot of leverage for a counter argument. It is also quite a good company to look at since in its list of previous clients there are names of quite big companies such as Virgin Media, The Ministry of Sound and The Tate.

We have also been allowed to film in the actual studio where the people do their graffiti pieces this will allow first of all for a very nice setting for our interview to take place, and furthermore give us more of a chance to meet different people and set up potentially more interviews, thus getting more opinions for our debate. The debate is key to the documentary since the whole idea of it is around the debate of is graffiti a positive thing  obviously at Zap Graffiti they will have very much one side of the argument covered, whereas hopefully some of the public we talk to will provide some counter to that and different thoughts.

In terms of this doc one of my main influences when thinking about it was one of my favourite documentaries, Exit Through The Gift Shop (Dir. Banksy) this is because it is also about graffiti and the idea of what is going too far and what is definite art. But in terms of this film it is at the complete opposite side of the spectrum, since it is around Banksy and other renowned street artist names. Our film would much more be about amateur graffiti artists and more their impact on the community rather than just a character study of how these people go about their work, which is what 'Exit' is more like. Another one from the doc screening session that we had that I think about in terms of this idea is Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul (Dir: Orlando von Einsiedel) since it focusses (like graffiti) on something that can often be seen as a nuisance but when channeled in a certain way can be used to benefit everyone and help the community. This is something that is very true about graffiti as it is about skating and is something I think we plan to cover in this documentary.

First Batch Of Meeting Write Up

As a group we decided to meet daily to try and sort out our ideas as soon as possible. Our first meeting was purely coming up with ideas. 

One of our first meetings at Wetherspoons

Oli had an idea that he always wanted to do as a documentary to show graffiti and street art and tackle the idea as to whether it is a positive art from or just mindless vandalism. Our initial idea was to counter views from the two different sides of graffiti/art, to do this we were going to try to talk to a gallery to see their side then an up and coming independent street artist and compare and contrast opinions. We ultimately scrapped this idea since we realised it would be very tough 

Meeting editing the treatments

The second idea we came up with was the idea of looking at people on Public Transport and how they interact with one another in the small micro climate that is created once you get onto a bus or tram. However once we started to discuss this idea further we decided it was much too generic and didn't fit with the brief which specified it had to be 'Liverpool Stories'. This idea is one we would have to consider doing another time and also access would be a big problem getting to be allowed to film on the busses, and even then we would have to be subtle as people will behave differently if they see a camera thus ruining the point of the documentary anyway.

Original meeting notes of which 2 doc ideas to choose

While looking at the Liverpool Echo online I came across this news story (http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-record-shop-music-consortium-6647913) which I thought fitted the brief very well. Furthermore it got across a feel of Liverpool's prominent music scene without making it too much of a main point, something we wanted to avoid as we thought it would be done a lot. This also felt a lot more like a story than our other ideas, which is why it was my favourite, I felt like we could get a real sense of place and connection with the history of the record store and the famous people that have been in it over the time, which as the article says are the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Dave McCabe from The Zutons and Noel Gallagher amongst others.

There were a few brief other ideas thrown around but none that came together as much as these, so we decided the record shop idea and the graffiti idea would be the ones we pitch and develop.

Documentary Screening

In our first session introducing the new documentary module we watched a variety of different documentaries to try and get an idea of how the term documentary doesn't just mean one specific way of presenting a story, and how the style of the finished film is almost dictated by the story you're following.

The two that stood out most for me and I feel are sort of connected since they both focus (primarily) on only one individual; that is The Archive (Dir: Dean Dunne) and Erics Secrets (Dir: Lucia Ashmore). I like the idea of focussing on one individual a lot because I find it essential in film, not just documentary, that you need a central character and that is what both these documentaries do very well. Through standard simple interviews you manage to get a well rounded view of both the characters and get to like them in such a short period of time. Eric's Secrets is particularly very much a character study of Eric, as it is him talking about him, his wife and his house for a lot of it.

Both films also utilise the idea of revealing something as the doc develops. We get to know both the characters as they talk about themselves and their situations, then about two thirds of the way through in the archive we find out that the subject Paul Mawhinney is legally blind to add to the problems the documentary has always discussed. Furthermore in Eric's Secrets we find out late in the doc that his wife that he has been talking about is dead, adding a very melancholy side to the documentary especially as it ends with the quote 'she died in my arms' an overtly emotional quote to finish on. This idea of having a reveal to act as almost a twist within the stories is a very effective thing and something I will definitely try to do when it comes to making our own documentary.

'The Archive'

'Eric's Secrets'

Pockets (Dir: James Lees) was another one that interested me, I like the idea of seeing something strange about certain individuals to give you a brief portrait of what a person is like with just a couple of items. However I have seen a lot of different things like this in my A-Level Photography so I found it to be more of an art instillation than a well made documentary. So I like the idea but I've seen it done before and the novelty of the idea has worn off.

'Pockets'

The final documentary that I liked quite a lot was The Apology Line (Dir: James Lees) because the main focus of the story is not on an individual but an individual thing, namely the phone number people call to apologise. This obviously means that just audio makes up the main bulk of the story and it is obviously all anonymous phone calls, Lees created the visuals to perfectly accompany it though. The screen shows people undressing to represent how they're baring themselves to the camera like the people on the phone are baring their secrets to an anonymous line, but moreover the people in the visuals faces are not often seen to show the anonymity of it all too. This was a very clever way to get across the whole idea of the phone calls through a simple visual idea. However despite working I think if the visuals had not been there the effect would have been the same, so although they work well the visuals are almost redundant.

Despite being an anonymous it also feels like a very personal piece due to the kind of things people are willing to admit to something just to get it of their conscience. It also mixed the calls up very well with a variety of comedy and shocking ones that work together very well, it furthermore finished on the strongest story to create a lasting impression of how much people need to get things off their chest to resonate in the viewers mind most.

'The Apology Line'

My notes from the documentary screenings