Documentary Evaluation

The documentary style I chose to produce was observational. The reason I chose this is because it is my personal favourite style of documentary and out of the examples of documentaries that we were shown in class, High School (1968), an observational documentary made by Frederick Wiseman, was the most interesting and entertaining to me.

The topic I chose to make a film about was; the opening night of Romeo and Juliet which was a play that I was in. I wanted to film people backstage whilst they were preparing to go on, to try and film any nervousness and to see how each individual reacted to the pressure of the opening night of a production. Also the situation, lighting and scenery was good to film for me.

When filming, I wanted to make sure that it was unobtrusive and comepletely like a 'fly on the wall'. Before I started filming any of the shots I would either say, pretend 'I'm not here' or 'just carry on what you're doing' if it was a shot that is focusing of a set of individuals, OR I would just start filming in a place that was not very noticable.
In the scene where most of the group are warming up whilst playing of 'Have It' (basically, throwing a shout from either left or right). I chose to stand in the middle of the circle and follow where ever they threw their 'have it'. The quick panning of the camera is a convention of observational documentary filmmaking, it is called a 'whip pan'.
Most of the filming was hand-held, but occasinally I did use the tri-pod. For example the very first shot of the theatre is filmed using a tri-pod.

I wanted the sound to be as natural as possible, so if people were shouting in the background, for example, I would keep that in. Though I did try to editing one part where I wanted a piece of dialogue to be a bit more audible, but it made it sound tinny. Also occasionally I used a few L-cuts to make sound bridges, for example when one of the actors shouts "Ricky" I made her saying it start just before the actual clip started. Another example where I used an L-cut was where during the actual show; One of the actors is folding a piece of material, and their is music playing in the background, and to make the sudden stop of music less apparent, I slightly faded it whilst I started speech from the next clip (which you can hear from what is going on on-stage and not see) at the end of the folding clip before it ended. I also faded up the speech from the clip after the folding shot.
All of the sound is ambient, there is no non-diagetic sound.

The editing is not very apparent (other than the titles) as I wanted it to flow as naturally as possible. Though I did edit two clips together that where not originally not related to eachother to give a tiny bit of narrative to the film. This is where the group are playing 'have it' and it cuts to some of the older actors backstage looking bored, in silence. I carried on the sound from the 'have it' clip and put it over the bored older actors clip, but just lowered the volume to make it sound like they bored people can hear what they are playing too and are a bit fed up of it. I did this twice to that scene.

I made sure that the way the film looks during the 'preparation' and 'showtime' were different. The first half is much brighter than the second half, the second half is very dark in some shots and this was a conscious decision. It is also much quieter and has more close-ups. This is because people off-stage during the show would/should have been silent, or atleast very quiet whilst they were waiting to go on. Whereas during the preparation, people are much more excited and have more nervous energy that they needed to 'get out'. Everybody seems much more 'in-the-zone' during the second half of the film. Then when the shot of the bowing comes up everybody on stage looks much more releaved, which is highlighted by the "well done" in the background. I think calmness is also shown when people are getting up and leaving after the show has finished. I think the regaining of light in the room, and ending of the film in light, is a good, round-off ending.

Overall I am very happy with the finished product and am proud of it. I like the colours and the style of filming. I am going to re-edit some of it, for example the tinnyness of the dialogue which I highlighted earlier and the blackout between the preparation scenes and showtime scenes could be a beat or so longer. I would also like the edit the remaining footage that I got for the project (around another 15 minutes or so) into a longer film.

This is some of the feedback that I recieved (in note form):

"all good"
"I really like this one"
"Abstract"
"whip-pan worked well"
"pure fly-on-the-wall"

(things to improve)
"tinny audio on one clip"
"more following of characters in the group, but this is difficult because it's only 3 minutes long"


Hopefully when I do make the longer version, I will be able to follow some of the people in the group more tightly, creating more narrative.