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.
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)
'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)
