CRITICAL EVALUATION

I think our finished film was good but could have been much better. I think what it had going for it was the subject matter and because the person we chose to base it on Paul Gregory (Tango) was such a larger than life character (at football matches) this made it entertaining and amusing. I think we gave ourselves a very hard task and we picked what could have been a very interesting topic but I think we failed to realise this potential fully within the final piece. We had so much stuff to work with including Tango’s interviews, Tango at football matches, at home and work and then the other interviewees John (band member) and Steve, that I got a bit lost and wasn't sure of the best way to interpret all this information and give a clear and concise argument or view on Tango. In the end I think the film seemed very one sided towards Tango and that it lacked opposition views to go against him being just a passionate fan. Due to this I think we maybe should have taken a different spin on it and done something a bit more similar to the film I saw on The Shooting Gallery ‘The Smell of Football’, which simply followed a very passionate football fans transformation from working at his job in the library to a completely dressed up intensely passionate fan and above that was him talking about football and what he thought about it etc.

What I would've liked to have done if we had had the opportunity and time is to have included vox-pops from other Wednesday fans to get an all round view on him which I think would have been nice to put in-between Tango’s interviews. When we were filming we went to Wolverhampton to try and capture him at work and home but despite being organised I don’t think we planned enough for what we’d actually film when there. We got more interviews but didn't get much observational footage of him and I think if we could have got him doing more natural things it would have looked better in showing the non-football side to him which is ultimately what I wanted to do. My main aim was to show the contrast between his rowdy football persona and then show this completely different hard-working family man side to him but I think that got lost somewhere along the way. I think what might have been an obstacle for us is that none of us wanted to intrude into his life that much and didn't want to ask too much of him and I guess that is something that comes with time especially if you have been following a subject and getting to know them for a while whereas we were just in and out. I think confidence is definitely something I need to work on because if you don’t ask you don’t get in filming. I really liked the shot that we used towards the end of the film with him on the sofa looking at the dog, which is something I asked him to do. In hindsight I wish I had asked him if we could have filmed more of this sort of thing but I felt a bit of pressure from the rest of the group who didn't want to upset him by asking too much of him plus on that day he had left work early just so we could film him at home and after he was going back to work - this is maybe something we could have included in the filming to show how dedicated he was to his job. There are lots of things I felt we could've done but I think if you start to get too many ideas it begins to get complicated especially when you’re only making a 5-10 minute film, if we were making a longer piece, observational style filming is certainly something I would have pushed for more.

I feel I have learnt a lot during our time making this film. We have encountered so many problems which I think can sometimes be a good thing because next time you will give more consideration to things before they happen and you know how to deal with things better and ultimately more professionally. I felt as a group we were very organised at the beginning we had an idea, we had permission to do our idea and we had also planned when and where we were going to film. The first problem that occurred was the footage for the two minute because we went out with our minds set on trying to get Tango footage that we didn't think about things like cutaways that would set the scene and provide the background for it all. This was something I set out to rectify straight away as I found out when the next game would be and I wrote down a list of lots of different shots we could get from around the football stadium. This is an idea I got from watching ‘The smell of Football’ documentary because that had very nice use of cutaways which built up a football match really well. There was also use of this technique in 'There's Only One Barry Fry' where at the beginning they used cutaways of the empty changing rooms and the empty ground and then you heard the crowds and it built up to an actual match which was cut at a much quicker pace.

I learnt that with documentary filming you can’t always plan for every shot sometimes you just have to use your initiative and work with what you've got when you get there. I also thought about the shot list itself when you’re doing it, and that sometimes you can think too much of the overview of the actual film and miss out detail shots that will provide cutaways and non-obvious but essential information and sometimes you can think too much about these and then lose what the actual film structure and story is going to be and both are integral.

Another problem we seemed to encounter a couple of times was the interviews; we just couldn't seem to get either the framing, lighting, setting/background right for any of them. I've got a keen eye for framing and setting but I must admit at first I didn't really think about whether they should be sitting down or standing up but then afterwards we got told that people tend to speak better when stood up and can look not very nice if they’re slouching when sitting. After I found this out I made sure that for our last interview our interviewee was standing up which did come across a lot better on camera because he spoke in a more animated way and used his hands a lot whereas sitting down he probably would not have done so or we would have cut it out with the framing. With regards to lighting that’s something I still need to brush up on because we made a few mistakes with that as well with natural light from the sun being in interviewees eyes and also lighting we’d set up ourselves being too harsh, I'm not doing cinematography though so this is not something I have learnt about in depth. 
When we were filming and something interrupted our subject, Tango, I kept telling the camera and sound operators to carry on filming because I think that when people are being natural e.g. talking to a mate or on the phone that’s when you capture the real gems and learn things about the people you can’t learn from interviews. I think if you do the camera role that you sometimes have to take charge for yourself and have some initiative with what you film because with a documentary you don’t want to miss anything and sometimes the camera man might spot something the director hasn't.

I put a lot of effort into making the film which is rightly so as I did come up with the idea and was very excited about doing it and hoped the rest of the group would be too since they all voted for it. I think me and Paul worked well as a team because a lot of the time I would come up with the idea to film Tango, interview someone, go somewhere and then he would do his best to make sure it happened. Due to this we ended up being one of the most organised groups I’d worked with and Jacob and Luke were always on hand to do the camera and sound when we needed it. I was obviously at every shoot and also on hand if the editor wanted any help and me and Paul arranged frequent meetings so the group always knew where we were at and notified of any future plans. 

I think most of the problems struck when it came to the editing because it wasn't happening at the speed were were expecting and when it came to the two minute piece we were practically doing most of the edit on the last day which meant the editor was getting very stressed and ultimately effected the quality of our piece. We did most of our filming prior to the two minute screening so the editor had pretty much all the footage to carry on editing straight away and because of this I was hoping it would get finished at least a week maybe two weeks before the deadline. Then giving our sound editor plenty of time to sort the sound out and also give us time to put more effort into the music rather than just putting something that wasn't that great over the top and also enable us to see if anything else was needed or required re-filming. This did not happen though and without going into too much detail there was many excuses and the group started to get very dismayed with this. 

We also had problems with the footage as I asked the editor for a copy of it many times and so did the Producer, who in the industry actually owns it, but we kept getting fobbed off with yet more excuses. I also got accused of wanting the footage so I could go off and do my own edit and not put effort into ours which annoyed me quite a bit as I had put a lot of effort into this project and even the rest of the group could see that. 

Due to this and other factors it came to it that me, the Producer and Sound editor had to re-edit the two minute ourselves as we wanted to re-submit it and with just over a day to go also had to re-do the ten minute as it was not a piece that anyone of us would have shown at the screening. 

This involved us having to log the footage, locate missing footage/tapes and pretty much start from scratch with the whole thing as we found much better footage for most of it. I learnt from this that you can’t control what others do but sometimes you need to have the confidence to confront them, I did try this a couple of times despite hating confrontation but found that I wasn't really being listened to with regards to anything, even the title of the film, so by the end I didn't really have the energy to get into an argument about us having to re-edit the film so we all decided to just get on with it. 

It is a difficult situation when you’re working with other students because no one has the power to tell anyone what to do really so it can be a very fine balancing act and although you can’t always do their work for them at the same time everyone’s marks a riding on the group project and nobody wants to get a mark that doesn't reflect their effort towards the project. I understand that this is what the blog is for but sometimes it is very disheartening to keep doing well in the blog but not so well in the project and then that also drags your mark down.





'The Smell of Football', 2012 (Daniel Musty for Millstream Productions)
http://vimeo.com/60172032 - video link

 'There's Only One Barry Fry', 1997 (Ron Trickett)

Ten Minute Feedback

For our ten minute feedback I wasn’t expecting a smooth ride because of everything that had gone on and the fact that in the end we had to do a completely new edit in just over a day.

For starters the feedback we received was quite varied as some tutors liked it and thought it was amusing but some didn’t think we had achieved what we’d set out to.

One of the main things we wanted feedback on was the YouTube video clip we'd used because at first we had it broken up into smaller clips and dotted about in the film which we thought looked a bit weird then we decided to have it as one long clip but we thought it might be a bit too long. The reason I left it long is because I felt it was good for showing Tango's antics that we didn't manage to film and you also saw him getting into trouble and being walked out by the stewards. In the end the consensus was that it was too long which I agreed with and I think I should have started it later and finished it earlier because it still would have got the same message across. 

Another main point for consideration was that we didn't show enough of Tango being controversial and we didn't hear enough negative views on him it all seemed to be quite good things being said about him. I agreed with this but was a bit annoyed because I did keep saying that I wanted to get vox-pops of Sheffield Wednesday fans and  another rival team like Sheffield Utd or maybe even Wolverhampton (where he's actually from). I had already tweeted Sheffield Weds fans on twitter and got back quite a few negative responses so I knew we would get a mixed bag if we were to go out there and record them either with the camera or just sound.
Something that got mentioned when screening our film was the fact we'd taken a swear word out, which was actually not deliberately done because I agreed with Joe that it was a good thing to have in there because it showed him at his worse and would've been quite controversial. I think when me, Paul and Luke re-edited it it must have been left out but we did not do it deliberately to self-censor ourselves or anything like that. 

I think that if we had followed Tango for a few months like Chris said, we would have been maybe able to get more footage of him acting up but the matches we went to he was just shouting and singing so there's nothing we could've done about that. I did hear that he was more boisterous at away games and I actually managed to get permission to film at my home town of Peterborough when they played Wednesday but it was the weekend before the deadline so would have been pushing it, especially now knowing how up against it we were. When I first planned the schedule in my head I was hoping for a fine cut to be done about a week-2 weeks before the deadline giving the sound editor/designer plenty of time to edit and also if we got any better/more footage we could've easily put it in but this did not happen.

Some tutors pointed out we didn't show enough basic information about Tango like for instance why did he support Sheffield Wednesday and not his home town of Wolverhampton. We did actually interview him saying this and I can only say that we either didn't use it because he was saying it in a very unclear way (which he did a lot) or because the fact that we had to re-edit the whole ten minute in about a day we just simply missed it out which would be a shame if this is the case.

Another problem was with the sound for the Steve Lambarth (Wednesday fan) interview. On the day of filming I did the Marantz recording for it but for some reason the camera sound was used instead and I think this is because we maybe didn't know where it was, possibly it was on Joe's hard drive or Jacob had it I'm not sure but this is disappointing because we definitely had good usable sound for it so I hope it won't affect the sound operators marks.

Overall most of the feedback given didn't come as much of a shock to me I just think it's a bit of a shame we got such a lot of negative criticism when actually at the beginning and pretty much most of the way through we were very organised. We did have obvious problems with the editor but I don't think everything can be blamed on that because I think as a director I should have thought more about what we needed to include in the film to get across a more stronger view of Tango and also made sure we went and got it. Me and Paul would like to continue with this project though as we have been very passionate about it so we go out and try to get vox-pops and possibly more interviews including from a voice of authority and we will also re-edit it taking into account the feedback we got.

Ten Minute - Editing

After watching the 'final' ten minute edit and seeing how rushed it was to get to that point me, Paul and Luke all made the decision that we couldn't show it as our final piece at the screening so we decided to all re-edit it together. We maybe should have let our editor know but because of all the problems we had had up until this point we all felt that we didn't have time to get into an argument about it and that he probably wouldn't have come in to sort it out anyway due to work and social commitments that seem to have been taking precedence up until that point.

At this point we were still working on re-editing the two minute so we could resubmit that and I admit that maybe we got a bit too bogged down with that one when we should've given more time to the ten minute as soon as we realised it would need sorting out.
I still think that our re-done ten minute was much better than the original one so I stand by our decision to start again. After he watched it I heard that even the editor agreed it was better than his cut.

Our reasons for changing it were that firstly it had two different titles throughout it, at the beginning it said 'Tango' which is what I said I wanted it to be called all along but then as the title slide came up during the film it said 'Just a fan?' and then at the end it said Tango again. I think this carelessness and lack of attention to detail was the problem with the whole film to be honest and it did not reflect the organisation and effort me and Paul had put in to the filming of this piece. 
Not only that but it made our camera operator and sound person look bad because he used footage that was out of focus, shaky and just generally not very nice visually and this was not necessary because if he had taken the time to watch and log everything (and not get us to do most of it) he would have found usable footage amongst the many clips we had. 
He had also used interview stuff in which we had better interview footage to be used. When me and Paul sat down to do the edit I said that I wanted to look at all the interview stuff we had instead of just using the clips our editor had pulled out because I knew we had better stuff in there somewhere. When we watched it we were surprised to find that he had not used any of the pub scene interview which we felt was the best and just looked more typical of a football fan as he was sat at a pub bench with a pint and I liked this because it looked more natural. I assumed he hadn't used it because there was something wrong with it but when we watched it the things he said were actually a lot clearer and better put than the ones he chose it was also framed better because the lounge scene that was used was not lit very well and Tango was quite slumped in his chair.

As I mentioned before there was also a whole tape load of footage that the editor had not even been interested in using because when Jacob brought me the tape he asked if he wanted it and he said no Hannah wants it which surprised me as there was very good cutaways on it. It was very obvious at this point that he didn't want anything else that would make his job take longer as he was itching to get off. We ended up using  clips from it for the two and ten minute in the end because it had quite a bit of stuff on it.

Paul had told the editor the structure for the film but it followed it very loosely so this was one of the main tasks for us when doing it again. We had decided we wanted it to start off with general info about Tango so we were getting to know him - why he takes his top off etc, then we wanted to go into more negative territory about him getting into trouble, we then wanted it to end on a more positive note about how he is an asset to the club and that he sees himself as nothing special just a passionate fan and not someone who goes out to cause trouble. I think we achieved this much better than before but we didn't really have enough negative stuff and we ended up using a YouTube clip which was a bit long. We also struggled a bit with the Tango interview because we did ask him a lot of things but as much as we reminded him too he would forget to put the question in the answer (and I didn't want to keep stopping him in mid-flow of the interview) also he had a bit of a West Midlands accent and would talk quite mumbly.  

We tried to use the other interviews as a guide because John Hemmingham from the band and Steve Lambarth both talked about Tango as they knew him, the negative press Tango had got and also why Tango was good for the club. We intertwined them with the Tango interviews to help build a story or view of him throughout the film.

Re-Editing the Two Minute Poetic Piece

The first thing me, Paul and Luke did was go through all the footage and log it so we knew every piece of footage that we had. While doing this I noticed there were some shots I wanted to use that we hadn’t come across and I knew that these had been taken by Jacob on the Z1 so I asked Joe to bring in the tapes but after checking them all I couldn’t find it so I asked Jacob if he had any tapes still and luckily he had one which was the tape from the 16^th which is when we got lots of different cutaways of around the outside of the ground.

We all decided that for the two minute we wanted to build up the match day atmosphere and then introduce Tango into that later on in the piece. The point of this was to build the foundations for showing what football matches are like and how passionate people get about them and then show a man who takes that passion one step further than most other fans.

For the original 2 minute I had wanted to use split screens and make it a very sharp piece but because of the fact it was pretty much edited on the day of the screening we didn’t have time for anything like that. With the re-submitted one we made sure we did this so I put in a split screen for each section of the film so for the building up part at the beginning, the crowd warming up once in the ground and then the band playing when the game was in full swing. For the last part we decided to have a montage of Tango rather than another split screen. The reason for the split screen was to firstly make it look more interesting visually and also highlight different aspects of a football match and help build up the pace of it.

I also don’t think our first two minute film built up the pace much because it went straight into lots of similar shots with cars and it had that cheesy England song over the top which I didn’t really liked (and had expressed this at the beginning). So for this one we put in a few shots at the beginning of the ground completely empty and then build it up from there. We kept with the crowd chanting and cheering though at the beginning because we all thought this would good and quite effective over an empty ground. I decided that I didn't want any music over the top of this one, except for the band playing, as it didn't need it because you already have so much noise going on at a football match with the singing, chanting, shouting, tannoy announcements and then also the band that it didn't need anything else. To help introduce Tango into the film without actually seeing him I suggested we used some of the interview where he was just talking about Sheffield Wednesday to use alongside the clips at the beginning where the crowds are building. I thought this would be a good thing to do because you're not showing him but you're starting to make the audience aware of this man and how he might be different from the rest of the fans.

I’m not sure if you get a sense of Tango much more than you did in our first two minute but we all liked the idea of building up the football mood and feeling on the day and this is definitely a much more polished edit than our first one if nothing else. I also think that we tried to fill the poetic brief more by concentrating on building up the match atmos instead.

Project update - Final Edit

We have now only got a few days until the deadline and we still don't have a rough cut done. I am quite concerned now that our ten minute project will just be another rushed job like the two minute where clips will just be plonked onto the timeline last minute and that sound or music won't really be considered at all.
Myself and other members of the group have tried our best to go in and try and help the editor by logging footage (which should've been done months ago when we first handed him the first lot of footage) we've also offered to take all the footage so we have it as a back up in case we occur any problems like unforeseen circumstance like hardrive breaking, illness etc but he refuses to give anyone the footage. Today we have had another problem (amongst many) and the editor has lost/left his hardrive cable and said he can't do any of the edit today even though Paul had scheduled in today as a full day of editing, if someone else had the footage then this wouldn't have been such an issue because we could have got on with finding clips we want to use or assembling an intro/ending to add on to the original timeline.
The group is starting to get quite disheartened now which is a shame because we all started out with such enthusiasm and have put a lot of effort into getting the footage by paying to go into the matches to capture footage, I also drove down to Wolverhampton so we could film tango at home and work also requiring the other interviews that we got as well. I think it is really disappointing that we've all worked so hard for our efforts to almost be wasted at the end as with only a few days left I know our edit will not reflect the hard work we've all put in.
I have been very passionate about this project so I hope that I will eventually acquire the footage as me and Paul wanted to do our own version of film during the Summer.

More Filming and more learning

Paul has finally managed to secure a time with Steve Lambarth (a Sheffield Weds fan) so that we can go and interview him his thoughts on Tango.
We were also hoping to get an interview with Harry Gration and I think maybe a Sheffield Wednesday official/steward but I think Paul has had difficulty contacting them and I think it is too late now as we only have just over a week left and still not much of the edit has been done anyway so we don't want to add too much more footage into the mix.

I met Paul and Jacob outside uni as they went to collect the equipment and I was driving as Steve lived just outside of Sheffield. Steve was just a Sheffield Wednesday fan and knew of Tango but they weren't really friends so I was wondering what we would get out of the interview. When we got there though and he started answering the questions he made some interesting points about Tango and the situation and was quite a good talker, not just saying one word answers. We had a few attempts at the set up as the first place they suggested I didn't like because it had a flowery wallpaper as a background and it just didn't look good through the lens. They then suggested that he sat down at the dining room table but I still thought this seemed a bit too contrived and I wanted him to look more natural  plus there was a big window in the background that was overexposed as it was a bright day. I then suggested the kitchen so he could stand up rather than be sitting down. 
There was also light coming in through the window to the side so I thought it would look good lighting up his face. As we did the interview though Paul was stood on the other side, as there wasn't a lot of room in the kitchen, so his face was facing away from the light and was quite shaded so didn't look as good. Also we wanted him facing just off the camera rather than directly into it but when we watched the footage back he was facing too much the other way so you could only see one side of his face most of the time. I didn't realise this at the time due to where I was standing and I was also operating the Marantz so was concentrating on that. I think Jacob should have maybe stopped the interview and alerted us to this, so that we could have stood Paul closer to the camera, as he would have been looking through the lens and been able to see this. 
When reviewing the footage for this interview our editor said he was quite happy because he could use this interview as a driving force behind the documentary as if covered a lot of points. As we were going to have the documentary split into sections - Intro to Tango, Intro to the other interviewees and how they know him, stories about Tango, negative things on Tango, and then a more positive conclusion at the end, the editor said that this interview would be able to lead into each section/topic because Steve talked about knowing Tango, stories about Tango and addressed the negative aspect also.



Interview Techniques

I think we have all learnt a lot over this project with regards to interviewing because we have made some mistakes with how and where we have placed the interviewee, where we have placed the camera and at what height etc and also the lighting set up or use of natural light.
We have learnt that it is good to interview the person standing up as they tend to talk and look better - this is why I wanted steve to stand in our last interview.
We've also learnt to consider the backdrop because our first interview didn't have a good background so I've always tried to look at what's in the background and how it's framing look through the camera. Although we all know about lighting we've always struggled to make it work for us and still have a lot to learn in setting up our own lighting and also using natural light to our advantage because some of interviewees either had too much light in their faces or not enough and this can make a difference to how they come across as well as how it looks visually on camera.

Ethics in Documentary

When reading Bill Nichols book 'Introduction To Documentary' I came across the chapter 'Why are ethical issues central to documentary filmmaking?' and it poses the question: 
is it right to have people repeat actions or conversations for the sake of the camera? 
and it got me thinking about our own documentary and how we were considering asking Tango if he would do some more outrageous stuff for the camera because we had seen him do it in the past on YouTube videos and such but he never really did anything that outlandish while we were filming him. We didn't ask him to in the end because we though that would be a bit rude and I also thought its obviously something he just does when the mood takes him, it's not something he does at every game so if you showed him doing more crazy stuff all the time you wouldnt be representing him fairly. I also thought if you don't show any of that stuff then again you're also not showing him in his entirety because then people might think what's all the fuss about he doesn't do anything that different to the rest of the fans.

Just by thinking about this and actually making my own documentary I've realised how hard it is to try and produce something completely natural and unbiased because usually someone somewhere has an agenda or a point to prove or disprove. It's also difficult to film some one behaving how they normally would do because when we were with Tango most of the times we filmed him were for the interviews and we didnt feel comfortable enough to just film him even though I'm sure for some of it he would've been fine with it, so that's something we ourselves need to overcome and not being afraid to ask.

It was also hard to film him in completely natural surroundings because his family and someone he worked with all said they din't want to be shown in it so that took that element away.
It's also hard to get people to open up because off camera Tango was telling me and Paul about a time he did actually get arrested for his antics but when i asked him to talk about it on camera he said no, even though it wasn't that bad so it became obvious to me then that he didn't want everyone to know about a certain side of him so already it's becoming biased.

When we interviewed him we had to ask some of the same questions a few times and each time I noticed he gave sometimes a slightly different answer and sometimes a completely different answer, in answer to who would you support if not Sheffield Weds firstly he said Glasgow Rangers then he said no one and then he said Sheffield Weds Youth team so each time we asked the question he'd had chance to think of maybe a better answer which wasn't necessarily the most honest. 
So before you've even got it to the camera in his own mind he's recollecting or saying things differently each time or thinking for something different to say so it's then impossible to think you can ever get a truly reliable documentary because nothing ever stays the same. 

The book certainly brings a lot of questions to the surface but whether Nichols or anyone else for that matter can really answer any of them is another matter.



Sources:

Nichols, Bill (2010) Introduction to Documentary: Second Edition. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis