Thursday, 10 November 2011

Pre-Production

Once we had executed all our research we then put together a short list of locations which included:
- The Old Nags Head Inn
- The Post Office
- The Penny Pot Cafe
- The Ramblers Inn

We contacted each of the above to ask for permission and all of them agreed after we then rang them back to give them a rough time that we would be visiting them at.

We then went on to draw up a Shot List and Inventory of the Kit.

Shot List
  1. Medium Shot; following rambler
  2. OTS; rambler walking
  3. POv of rambler;walking through edale
  4. Medium CU; rambler; from front
  5. Wide shot; rambler heads towards the hills
  6. Wide hot x 3;edale
  7. Medium CU x 3;actions of residents
  8. CU x 3; actions of residents
  9. Insert Shots
Inventory of Kit
  • Camera/Tripod
  • apes
  • Dolly
  • Rain Cover
  • Cast (Rambler)
  • Costume
  • Props (costume, map,walking gear,rucksack)

Research for Edale

We did lots of online research, Alex had never visited Edale before but I had some knowledge of edale and had ridden on horseback some the routes and trails shown on an OS map. However we looked at various wesbistes for different information
including:

- http://www.edale-valley.co.uk/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edale
- http://www.yha.org.uk/find-accommodation/peak-district-sherwood/hostels/Edale/index.aspx
- http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/edl/details.html
- http://www.derbyshireuk.net/edale.html
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/353

from these websites we took information such as:
- When trains would be going through Edale so we could time filming them from a good location
- A look at the various facilities that were available to us
- Different locations that could potentially be open for to us to film in/at
- What the weather was going to be like for the day so we could prepare ourselves, our actor and the equipment

one tool that was very helpful to us was the google maps street view becuase then we cold begin to think about the types of shots and the camera angles we wanted to use.







Edale - Portait of Place Project

For this assignment i worked with Alex Withers and we talked over a couple of ideas but quickly settled on one idea which basically was the following:

A rambler arrives in edale and the camera follows them through the village, exploring and capturing small glimpses of everyday life and then moves from the village to explore the big open space that is the Hope Valley. Great contrast is depicted from the great outdoors to the inside cafes and pubs.

Initially the idea was to just show the residents however we decided to bring an actress in so that we could achieve the shots we wanted and build a narrative. We were specific about costume and it was clear the chararcter was a rambler as she was wearing waterproof trousers, coat and rucksack.

Analysing Docu-Shorts

When analysing the short films we used a series of questions in order to distinguish whether we liked the films or not, what effects we found effective and what themes were coming through.
1. Identify the themes of the film, what were the directors primary aims?
2. Describe what you consider to be the main focus?
3. Did you like/dislike the film and why?
4. Was the film successful/unsuccessful in dealing with its subject matter and why?


Steel Homes, Eva Weber 2008



This is a still taken from the short "Steel Homes" the spider diargram below shows the analysis that I interpreted.


this all brings about the

Strange Lights 2010 Joe King & Rosie Pedlow

This was a different kind of Docu Short as it featured pretty much no script or speaking at all apart from the non diagetic sound after which was talking on the radio

PaperBoys Mike Mills 2001

This was an american short about Paperboys in america i liked it and felt it was interesting,



below is my analysis this is in more detail this time:

Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Documentary Experimental Approaches

The spider diagram below explains what the class definition of a documentary was. Part of this opinion and definition changed after we watched a number of short Docu-Films.