Documentary Practice

For the session, we were asked to experiment with movement when it came to interview, as we know that our subject within our documentary won't always necessarily be stationary. Firstly we went through some questions we could ask for our actual work, and then went on to film mobility.

Unfortunately, we hired faulty equipment and therefore was unable to record any sound for this session, however we were able to have a little practice with hand held movement within an interview. However, I plan to experiment (slightly with sound, as I am cinematography and do not have many skills or knowledge when it comes to sound) further in my own time before our next shoot.

Here is a little video from the practice today. We used the Workstation 101 to film, as this was where our session was. The room contained a green screen and props from other works.

This video was mainly working on the idea of a subject moving during an interview. Since our documentary is about dancers, we maybe interviewing people who are dancing or warming up beforehand, therefore we need to be able to move with them. For this, I followed Alice twice. One time, she talks about her Creative Project Realisation (Art Direction). And the other she discussed the use of the sound equipment whilst packing it away. The video contains a range of shots, as I feel staying the same distance from the subject throughout would become boring for the audience, whereas if we get up and personal as well as wide shots to reveal the scene/location of the interview, we're given a more 'whole' feeling, that as an audience, we understand the full picture and therefore are being presented with all the information, and there's nothing hiding off-screen. 

To us, this session was just a re-visit to previous works and styles we'd already looked at, however it was nice to revisit them and refresh the styles in our minds whilst we're filming, because it allows us to offer a range of techniques and visual appreciations throughout our work, rather than setting up interviews all in the same way - where they would almost become robotic and therefore boring to follow. 

This session allowed us also to organise our questions for our main works. We wrote down (shown in previous post) Vox Pops questions, which we would ask to the public watching the festival, as well as the interview questions for the people involved. We also discussed gaining access to copyright/archive footage, and therefore add more of a personal/shock factor to the work, rather than working towards a more stereotypical documentary. 

We also got to view what other people had managed to film, which I liked because I like to see the different styles people work in and how they choose to composition their shots, some works were good but nobody else worked on mobile interviewing, so I hope to do some practice work myself in my own time to work on my camera work, and hopefully sound designer may do the same.