Post Poetic Documentary.

After showing our poetic documentary i was pleased with the results, we got a good reception and good feedback, people thought our shots were interesting and well composed, one of the only negative comments was about the pull focus which we were already aware of. We went away happy but wondering what else we could add into our documentary, we have arranged interviews with a local radio DJ that specialises in mod music, we have also secured an interview with a local mod that runs a night at the 'Green room' in Sheffield, the manager of 'Green room' has courteously allowed us to film inside the venue, and have said that if we should need a quieter space for the interview we can use the kitchen. As the director its up to me to decide how we should structure these interviews into the film, i had the idea to do a transition from day to night early on, our subject calls for an abundance of image as mod culture spans so many areas such as fashion and music, we only have 10 minutes for the entire documentary which could prove to be a problem, this problem can only really be tackled through the concise planning of interview questions, i will try to avoid getting the same answer twice. The only downfall is because of our limited knowledge so far of the overall mod genre it is difficult to predict an answer  

Poetic Sequence.

For our poetic sequence we filmed in 'Okeh Cafe', we arranged to meet at nine o'clock in the morning, we met Dee and explained that this was a preliminary shoot and that we would be back for the full documentary soon, thankfully this was okay with her and she even agreed to ask her husband to be in the documentary which was useful for us. For my inspiration we watched the documentary 'Prime'by Ben Wu and David Usui.

http://vimeo.com/35965635

The pictures below are stills from the documentary, i think this shows the style we are trying to achieve, i would like to emphasise strong camera work and use of colour, achieving clean crisp focus on images will give our piece a more professional look. I like the use of interesting compositions in this film, it has inspired me to think more creatively in my cinematography. 

During the filming i feel we achieved some really well composed shots, we had a few hiccups in the beginning as we couldn't get the aperture to match up with the ISO, so five of our first shots were unusable which we didn't realise until we got the footage into the edit, it was slightly dissapointing but we have learnt for next time. We began by trying to thing of interesting ways to open the poetic sequence, as we didn't want to just get a typical frontal shot of the cafe, we wanted the space to feel enclosed and warm. In many ways our first year production sense's of space may have influenced this theme, as the cafe seems to really have a life of its own and we wanted to portray this aspect of the Mod lifestyle in sheffield in our poetic. It helped us practice ways in which to create a sense of space using image and sound, and this will be helpful for some of our other locations as they won't be as easy for us to create this.

One of our major downfalls was the inability to use the tripod on location, we would have been able to use one of the smaller tripods with less difficulty but unfortunately the tripod we booked out was too large for us to use inside the cafe. Again this is one of the things we are aware of now, we did have a shoulder rig which did help but we found it quite difficult to keep the camera steady on high angle shots. 

We captured some really interesting shots, some of my favorite's i have screen grabbed below.

I think from this you can see how we have taken inspiration from 'Prime' but the dark and earthy tones that come across in the documentary didn't suit the vibrancy of our subject for our documentary so we accentuated colour, while still playing around with angles and composition. 

The Pitch

Our pitch went well and both of our ideas were well received. But the majority of the class preferred the Mod documentary idea, myself included. We have made contact with the cafe and have spoken to Dee, one of the owners of the cafe who is more than happy for us to film there. We are making plans for our poetic sequence, we have the idea to centre our sequence around the cafe's day to day life. Showing it as a bustling hub of social importance to 21st centrury Mods. The Cafe is family run and is extremely local with many regulars, there is great potential for characters and exploring other areas of this lifestyle through them. We are hoping to get in and film with them later on this week.

Academic Texts.

Film Art an introduction - David Bordwell, Kristen Thompson 10th edition

p352.

This chapter outlines the difference between documentary and fiction, it says that the fact a film is fictional, does not mean that it is not tied to reality, for example the 'Godfather' takes place within historical events and the Locations are real, the story is not abstract, it remains true enough to represent the real world, while holding a fictional narrative within. It states that fictional films may also comment on the state of the real world with messages in the narrative. Michael Haneke's 'Hidden' is a good example of this, as he uses film as a medium to try and construct a non biased piece about some of the problems surrounding race. His use of world issues, in a fictional style leads the audience to wonder why he didn't make a documentary. Many documentary films blur the lines,  'The thin blue line', is noted for its use of reconstruction, the film is fully constructed using  actors and sets throughout.

Plan B

During the time between our last tutorial we had a group meeting to discuss our pitch, we decided to have a look at our other options again, we looked at one of our previously discussed idea's which was Charlotte's idea to do a documentary about MOD culture in sheffield, she knew a cafe on london road that was MOD themed. 

Okeh's Cafe Photgraphs.

We did a little bit of research into Mod culture and found out more about what it actually is as we had no idea.

Mod (or, to use its full name, Modernism or sometimes Modism) was a lifestyle based around fashion and music that developed in London, England in the late 1950s and reached its peak in the early to mid 1960s. People who followed this lifestyle were known as Mods, and were mainly to be found in Southern England.

Mods were obsessed with clothes and music, including Black American R&B and Soul, Jamaican Ska, and Bluebeat and a select few British groups such as the Small Faces, the Kinks, The Spencer Davis Group and The Who.

Mods would gather at all-night clubs to show off their clothes and dance. They would typically choose scooters as their mode of transportation, either the Lambretta or the Vespa. These were sometimes adorned with many lights and mirrors and were intended to gain attention.

Mods are sometimes seen as an outgrowth of the Teddy Boy movement, and the most obvious similarity might be their love of suits. However, their emphasis was more on England than the Teddy Boys, and perhaps this is part of the reason why they did not appear on a big scale in other parts of the world.

This is a good definition that i found on the internet, that encompasses the many aspects of this British trend. 

We became more interested in this as a subject for our documentary, as there would be a wide range of things to cover from the fashion to the music, and obviously the transport, using the cafe as our base for the documentary and showing it as the hub of mod life in sheffield. Our pitch will be going up against our previous pitch for the Castle market and it will be useful to gauge some feedback from other classmates. 

I am now leaning much further towards this idea and i feel that we can do something fresh that hasn't been done by previous students, as we found out our first idea had been done before.

Documentary

During the seminar we established roles for the documentary, i am the director for the project, i feel that this will be a challenging role for me as i usually like to be the editor, but it fits well with my other module as i am doing creative project realisation, so i will be using my creative directing skills in both modules, which i feel will strengthen my confidence and assertiveness this semester. I am looking forward to. In our first meeting with the module leader we found that another group in a previous year had done a similar documentary on castle market. We discussed whether we still wanted to do the documentary and we decided that because of the timing of the market shutting down and the opening of the new market being within our time frame we would like to give the project a go regardless.  

Documentary planning

For our documentary project we are making a 5- 10 minute poetic documentary, as a group in our first meeting we talked about different themes that we wanted to explore, we first cancelled out themes that didn't appeal to us, we wanted to steer clear of mental health as we thought it would be too difficult ethically and because of our age we didn't think we would be able to get the interviews necessary to do the subject any justice. We originally wanted to steer clear of any subject that was quintessentially Sheffield, but the Sheffield market that has been standing for over 100 years is closing down, and reopening on the moor, and the dates in which the change over happens are within the time frame for the documentary, so we can capture the decline of the original market as for many years now it has been considered a bit of an eyesore in Sheffield. The opening of the new one. I think what attracted us to this idea most is that there is a vast amount of resources available to us about the market, it gives us a lot of scope to have our own creative stamp on the piece and we will hopefully have a wide range of filmic texts at our disposal, such as archive footage, newspaper articles, interviews with the various stall owners and customers to the markets. there is also a wide range of sounds available to use for the piece. And because of the timing between old and new market we will be able to create a rhythm and flow that resonates with the context.