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)