Throughout my research I have created the hypothesis that the use of a narrator, in particular a voice of god, within film is to create and/or encourage storytelling. Before audio recording, in films such as Coeur Fidèle (Jean Epstein,1923) intertitles were used to link narrative together and create a story. Now technology has advanced, diegetic audio from actors or non-diegetic soundtracks, created in post production, can be used to convey stories. As stated by Bill Nichols’s “Storytelling also elaborated the many ways in which an action or event could be told from different perspectives (from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, the perspective of a third-person observer, or the points of view of different characters)” (Nichols, B, 2017)

These examples stated by Nichols, are apparent in the first film I will be analysing “Exit through the gift shop”. The first example of narration comes from Banksy himself. The diegetic interview audio has been distorted to hide his identity, we hear a “1,2,1,2” microphone check which creates a informal scene that serves to construct the stage for the film. Visually we are presented with a montage of street artists creating, which Banksy is not commenting on, rather describing Thierry Guetta, our second narrator.

Theirry Guetta is a French-born film enthusiast and street artist that becomes the protagonist of Exit through the gift shop. Theirry has similar scenes to banksy where his diegetic interview audio is voiced-over found footage. The difference is Theirry is often heard within the found footage, narrating. This diegetic audio adds no importance or significance to the overall story, rather it serves to build upon Thierry’s character.

If we take these two example as their own layer, Thierry’s narrations creates a home-video style of movie, uninformative and lacking narrative. Banksy’s interview add a layer of information but still lacks the ability to string a story.

The third and most important narrator, Rhys Ifans, is easily forgettable in Exit through the gift shop but essential for the creation of a story line. He acts as the soft but authoritative “voice of god”that ties these scenes together with information not available in the interview and found footage. This allows the film to become cohesive, crossing a timespan of 20 years without confusing its audience, whilst also creating a story which is informative and entertaining. These layers stacked upon one another creates not only a story but reaffirms the idea of  “the voice of documentary as a framework for delivering a social or political point of view” (Roe, H, 2019)

The second documentary I will be analysing is Planet Earth II which is presented and narrated by David Attenborough. This is an example of much more traditional narration. The use of a non-diegetic voice of god, which directly links to the images, creates story within the documentary. Attenborough’s voice is used to create the ‘journey’ behind the animals behaviour. Without it, there would be no story, just animal videos with little to no visible development. He acts as an investigator, dissecting the “truth” and conveys meaning to the images we see.

Something that is important to consider when talking about a famous narrator such as David Attenborough are the connotations and expectations that come with his voice. In this example, a level of trust and an assumption on the content will become probable due to Attenborough’s previous work. Alongside this, “we may also find vocal commentary attractive for it felicitous language, appealing verbal rhythms, or fresh expression of familiar sentiments.” (Wolfe, C 1997) which is feel is very clear when consider David Attenborough’s style of narration.

Bibliography:

Cœur fidèle. (1923). [film] Directed by J. Epstein. France: Pathé.

Nichols, B. (2017). Introduction to documentary. 3rd ed. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, p.97.

Exit Through the Gift Shop. (2010). [DVD] Directed by Banksy. UK: Revolver Entertainment.

Honess Roe, A. and Pramaggiore, M. (2019). ‘Introduction: Documentary’s Vocal Projections’,Vocal projections. 1st ed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, p.6.

Planet Earth 2. (2016). [TV] Presented by David Attenborough. UK: BBC

Wolfe, C. (1997), ‘Historicising the ‘Voice of God’: The Place of Vocal Narration in Classical Documentary’, Film History, Vol. 9, No. 2, p.153.

This week we focused on tidying up the two video edits. This included playing with the audio to make sure it was clear and understandable, colour grading and cutting down anything that wasn’t needed. After showing these edits to Kim, it was suggested that we should incorporate more silences and play with the arrangement of B-roll and see if we could find a format that worked better. We decided to place long takes of the interview, then cut to B-roll with an audioscape, to allow the viewer to ‘digest’ what they had just watched.  At first, I felt this would cause the viewer to become bored due to the amount of time viewing a static interview shot, but after re-watching and cutting out more dialogue, I felt the interview as a whole was much more poignant.

Once we were comfortable with the video edits, it was time to focus on the audio interviews and construct a website that would be used to display our work at the exhibition. Georgia and Antonia had completed a lot of the audio work already, we as a group listened to them and suggested points that could be focused on or tweaked.  The website was something we focused a lot of time on as it would showcase all of our work, and with this in mind we wanted to create a seamless experience that guided the viewer chronologically through the timeline we originally set out to achieve.  After playing with a few different formats and having some difficulty creating a symmetrical aesthetic it was just time to fill the page with our content.

After reading one of this weeks reading; From Media to Movement: Distribution, Outreach, and Engagement, Fox, B 2017. Something that really resonated with me was the chapter on community. This whole studio was discussing the community of the West. One quote that really spoke to me within this reading was “The success of independent documentary hinges on accessing communities as collaborators and audiences and mobilizing communities to engage with projects and their central issues in generative ways” . This quote couldn’t be more accurate when considering our production.  We put a lot of hard work into production, filming and editing but without the support of the museum and the members of the community surrounding the West Gate bridge, this production wouldn’t be what it is today.  We were very lucky to have such willing participants to be involved in our production and because of the diligent communication between my group and responsive nature of our interviewee’s, I feel we have created something that will be enjoyed by an audience as well as useful resource to the Living Museum of the West.

This week was a short week because of the grand final weekend, but by no means does that imply little was done on the production. Things are beginning to take shape as we now have two completed rough edits of our interviews with Danny Gardiner and Donna Jackson. I personally took charge of editing Donna’s interview together, one major task that was crucial to create a immersive and interesting production was to gain B-roll for the video. This was needed so that the audience would have some context for the audio, as well as to create more entertaining visuals. I decided to go to the West Gate Bridge memorial, as it was discusses frequently in Donna’s interview, take some long shots of the bridge, time lapses of the bridge and surrounding areas to gain B-roll of the memorial itself that could be used for this interview and other edits within the group.

Another difficulty of the editing was to cut down the interview itself. We spoke to Donna for just over thirty minutes, which gave us an abundance of great content, of which most could be used without actually having to cut out much due to Donna’s confident and assured performance. This meant that focusing the interview on elements we thought were the strongest and cutting the interview down appropriately, whilst also creating a linear production was quite a large job. I decided it was best to focus Donna on her creative approach to the West Gate play and briefly talk on some of the difficulties she had whilst researching the bridge and some social issues around discussing tragedies such as this.

Next week we will be tidying up and completing the video edits, we also have an interview booked with Enza who wrote a fictional book about the collapse of the bridge. In all my time at RMIT I have never worked in a group production that has been so lucky when gaining access to resources and the fact we have been able to interview four individuals that have all been heavily involved in our research topic amazes me. I wasn’t able to find a reading for this week on the modules tab on canvas (sorry Kim)

This week we have made great progress with our production. As mentioned in last weeks blog post, we had organised a video interview with Donna Jackson at the Living Museum of the West. Donna asked to go through the materials she had donated to the museum prior to the interview which allowed us ample time to set up the scene and make sure all the lighting and sound was good. I feel this was a key element to the success of the interview. In previous productions, I have not had this allowance of time and the results are very visible in the quality of footage and sound we have gained. I feel the time Donna took also allowed her to reflect on what she wanted to share which has lead to a very in depth and detailed interview which covered many of the topics we wanted to discuss without having to provoke dialogue through questioning.

Its now time to start thinking about the editing process and creating the website/platform we are going to display our content on.  Looking at this weeks readings, in particular ’12 Video Editing Tips for Cutting a Documentary’ it has been nice to reflect on some of the habits I’ve fallen into that a good, but also think about some new techniques that will be helpful in the post production process. Just to put it out there, I am a methodical folder maker. As I’ve had a personal computer since I was 9 and a father in the tech industry, it has been drilled into me the importance of correct file naming and folder creation. This also goes for backing up, there’s nothing scarier than the idea of getting to week 11 and your computer decides to not turn on.. We as a group are very responsible in the respect, we all have copies of each interview and B-roll,  also, everything is backed it up to google drive. Something I really want to keep considering when creating these productions is the story arc.  Because we have been lucky enough to gather great, detailed interviews, I feel we have the opportunity to create a production that is engaging and allows the audience to be brought into a subject where they might have minimal existing knowledge and inform them about such a important event.

Blog Posts:

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

PROPOSAL

You will design and deliver a proposal outlining your major project. Your proposal should demonstrate:

• a clear and distinctive concept/idea/story

Our project will be a history of the Westgate bridge. Similar to the values of the living museum of the west, our group wants to uncover stories and history surrounding the Westgate bridge and preserve them. Through interviews we’ve done with the public, it has come to light that not that many people know about the bridge’s history and it’s story.

• research into participants, locations and other material

Through looking through the archives at the museum we’ve come across other documentaries on the bridge which look heavily into the collapse in 1970. These documentaries have information about the people interviewed who we would be able to get in contact with. One documentary filmmaker included in the museum is Donna Jackson. She has worked with the museum as well which means getting in contact with her will be quite easy. Being able to contact her would also help us find other leads for potential interviewees.

• evidence of research into other projects that have inspired you and/or theory

Through the videos we’ve already made we discuss information uncovered by the museum and Donna Jackson. Especially in the documentary interviews we found we got an understanding of first-hand experiences of some of the workers during the collapse of the bridge.

• production schedule with timeline

Working title:

Westgate

Form and medium:

Our major project will be a series of chaptered videos. This will be done using an interactive platform like verse where each video can be selected according to the viewer’s preference. This will be available online as well as at the living museum of the west. We aim for each video to be three to five minutes in length.

Short synopsis:

Our project will be a video collection which chronicles the history of the Westgate bridge, from before its creation to what it is today and how it has shaped Melbourne and affected the construction industry.

Longer synopsis:

1. Bridge Overview

This will involve a general, welcoming introduction to give the audience a sense of where we are in relation to Melbourne’s history and the importance of the structure in today’s society. This will act as a bit of a short timeline to bring the audience up to speed and allow them to gain the necessary knowledge to understand where we are up to in our chapters so they can easily follow along and enjoy the pieces we create.

2. Life before the bridge

This video will consider the political agenda of the time and setting up our film in a formal, structured manner would depict a fair recount of the time period before the bridge was built. We will look at why the need for a bridge existed at all and other possible options that were available. We will look at how life existed without the bridge, how people got on with their lives and why the bridge took so long to initially get permission to build. Then, how and why people were involved with its construction and possibly the indigenous music they listened to during their breaks.

3. Collapse/Aftermath

This section will use a lot of archival footage and material we have already dealt with. We will look at workers who were involved with the bridge at the time and what happened to make the bridge physically fall. We will rework a lot of our footage we already gathered and made videos of. This will hopefully be a poetic / artistic depiction as we need to sensitively handle such dire circumstances and show some variation in our videos.

4. Completion

This chapter would involve an interview with Danny who worked on the bridge after the collapse and we will focus on how it was built to be secure and sturdy. We can look at the important aspects of the bridge that make in successful in today’s society and how they went about dealing with the pressure to build such an important structure.

5. The bridge today

In this chapter we aim to cover and follow the real life use of the bridge in today’s society. By incorporating written texts and contributions from the community, we can showcase a plethora of people’s experiences and general thoughts on the iconic structure. Using modern archival footage from packages made by news companies focussing on the unsturdy structure as it stands, what the bridge looks like with two Australian flags, the continued use of cars driving along it, people’s lives who evolve alongside the bridge and those who work on it or see it often by fishing or walking underneath it. With Donna’s help, we can look at the way we see the bridge and how the memory of the collapse is being kept alive by the play production and the union’s involvement.

What is your individual role or component of this project?

Visualisation:

We will produce a website that guides the audience through a video timeline. These videos will consist of talking head interviews, audio recordings coupled with mise-en-scene shots and archival material. We will be focusing on video production so essential skills will be production and post-production knowledge will be needed. We will use WordPress to create the website so an existing knowledge of this is needed.

Rationale:

The premise is to create a video timeline of the bridge through chapters due to the lack of knowledge about the bridge’s history. We will look into experiences that cover pre & post collapse and also contemporary, personal accounts of audience’s experiences of the westgate bridge.  

Archival Material:

We will be using archival photographs from the museum and may reference other resources found. We will be focusing on creating most of the content for our production which will create a resource for the museum, which can be explored though the Living Museum of the West’s website.

Main participants:

Our main focus being the bridge as a whole means our participants will come from many areas of the bridge and its story. We’ve contacted Danny Gardiner who’s involved in the westgate memorial committee. He and Tom Watson had worked on the bridge, Tom working on the bridge during the collapse and Danny after it. Being so heavily involved in the bridge during it’s disaster period will help give us a good insight into that part of the bridges timeline and a first hand experience of these events. Enza Gandolfo has written a book on the Westgate titled The Bridge about the impact the collapse had made on the city and people/families who were involved in the collapse of the bridge in a really moving book. Donna Jackson, is someone we’ve been really interested in talking to since looking at the work she’s done at the museum and her research. The fact that she’s been involved in researching this topic for so long means her knowledge of the bridge and its story is quite in depth and we think this makes her an important character to telling the story of the bridge. We also thought talking to “Local Fisherman” or people who work on the river would help give us an idea of what the bridge means to them today and how it’s past events have sculpted their opinion of the bridge and its impact to the west and melbourne as a whole.

Setting:

The Living Museum of the West, West Gate Bridge, Under the Westgate bridge, homes/living rooms

Research video/photos/audio: 

Interview test shots:

Resources

Recorded meeting with Danny Gardiner:

https://soundcloud.com/nolan-howard-1/sets/danny-gardiner-meeting

Test footage of museum, vox pop and editing style:

https://youtu.be/KG5CQqVJlPs

Åkesson, B. (2008). Understanding bridge collapses. London: Taylor & Francis. Available at: EBSCOHost eBooks. [Accessed 8th September 2018]

Hitchings, B. (1979). West Gate. Victoria, Australia: Outback Press. Available at: State Library of Victoria. [Accessed 9th September 2018]

Gandolfo, E. 2018. The Bridge. Brunswick, Victoria: Scribe Publications. [Accessed 1st September 2018]

Westgatebridge.org. (2018). The West Gate Bridge Memorial . [online] Available at: http://www.westgatebridge.org/

This week we have really dug out feet into assignment 4 and have made good progress with leads and interviews that will be used to form our production.

On Tuesday we organised a video interview with Donna Jackson who will be discussing her involvement with the West Gate bridge next Friday. This will be a great chance to look at some contemporary history of the bridge, whilst looking at Donna as a resource where she can talk about the work she has produced surrounding the bridge and discuss the production that is coming November this year. We also had a meeting/interview with Danny Gardiner who is a founding member of the of the West Gate Bridge Memorial Committee, which organises the memorial each year. He also worked on the bridge after the collapse and has been heavily involved in the unions surrounding the bridge. Danny has also had a lasting impact on health and safety measures in Victoria and Australia and a  is a proud member of the CFMEU.  Danny was able to put us in touch with Tom Watson who was a worker on the bridge when it collapsed and has also been heavily involved in the Memorial Committee, as I write this I am waiting on a call back from Tom to schedule a time where we can conduct an interview.

This weeks reading, which is chapter 6: Capturing Reality: Production Strategies, Fox. B, Documentary Media : History, Theory, Practice, Routledge, 2017 talks a lot about scope and techniques that can be used to capture and audience whilst briefly touching on ethics of film making. These ideas have been quite relevant when considering our production as one of our interviewee’s was quite concerned about the use of their materials within our production.  There have been other comments regarding the ability to cover such a large topic, in such a small time frame, that  of the assignment and the length of videos we wish to produce. With this in mind we have rethought our approach of the production, instead of focusing predominantly on  the timeline of the bridge we will focusing on personal accounts from individuals that have a relationship with the bridge at different points in its history. This way we can create much more original content without the scares of plagiarism or becoming insensitive.

This weeks class we focused on what open space documentaries are and were asked to complete a creative writing task. This was a great chance to see how we could incorporate open space features into our productions. Open space documentary differs from conventional documentary as to be created it is dependent on the audience’s involvement, to create content. A phrase  from this weeks reading,“Documentary as an Open Space.” The Documentary Film Book, Palgrave Macmillan, that has resonated with me, the idea that when discussing open space documentary makers, they are “context givers” and don’t “create content”. With this in mind as media practitioners, when attempting to create open space documentaries we have to consider the tools needed to enable the audience to create the content, and this content may be never ending.

Due to our production being factual and storytelling/personal recounts of memories about an event I find it hard to imagine how we can create an open documentary style whilst also trying to leave and inform about the events surrounding the West Gate Bridge. I feel one approach on the contemporary section of our historical timeline could be to ask the viewers of our production (on the landing page of our website) about their experiences of the West Gate, what knowledge they have or just a story that that involves having to cross the bridge in it. With this information we can create the ‘contemporary history’ of the bridge in real time. As the viewer transports themselves through our website they will begin before the collapse, in a linear fashion to post collapse and be presented with their own accounts and others that have traversed the website.

This week we also organised a time to talk to Donna Jackson and will be conducting a audio interview next week with a gentleman who worked on the bridge after the collapse who has ties with the unions that are involved with the workers of the bridge.

I am currently in England attending a wedding and visiting my family so have missed both classes this week. I have been in contact with my group members and have discussed some general types of topics we will explore in assignment 3. The broad aim we wish to take is to approach this assignment through chapters, creating videos that cover several topics. This will be presented on a platform like verse or a media factory blog where the audience will be able to follow stories chronologically through time or explore at their own leisure, creating an interactive experience.

The purpose of creating this is to inform the public on its importance in Melbourne history and hopefully produce something that is useful for the museum at the same time. We feel it is critical to create this because through our research we have found there is a lack of knowledge surrounding its origins, the disaster and future stability. Through our research we found Donna Jackson’s audio documentary that discusses the cover up of issues surrounding the collapse, we wish to get in contact with Donna for her perspective but wish to create something that it more informative about the bridge as a whole, without pushing any type of agenda. We discussed as a group what topics would be most important in discussing and decided on the following:

1. Bridge Overview
2. Life before the bridge
3. Collapse/Aftermath
4. Completion
5. Bridge today

These topics will work as the titles of the production’s created but will serve as a starting point and we may find that elements through our research might take the limelight if we are able to secure great interviews or content.  Another avenue we are eager to explore is the possibility of interviewing/getting in contact with the author of  ‘The Bridge’,  Enza Gandolfo, who has undertaken significant research into the collapse and may be able to enlighten us on different elements of the collapse.

This week we submitted and conducted a short presentation on our assignment two works. It was a great chance to have a look at the work our fellow classmates have completed and what approaches they took on the topics they decided to focus on. There are so many elements of the West’s history I didn’t know about and it was nice to see so many unique approaches to this assignment. It was also a good opportunity to reflect on our work and receive feedback on our work. In general I believe our works were received well, one suggestion that we as a group agree on and something I covered in my reflection is the structure of the production. Something we will strive to achieve through the upcoming productions will be pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone and try and create more abstract and experimental productions. There were some really great examples of this presented in class and it has inspired me, due to our focus being quite factual it’ll be interesting in how we can tackle this mode in a production.

We had the opportunity in class to rearrange the group set ups, Antonia, Campbell and myself agreed we worked well together and wish to continue pursuing  the theme of the West Gate Bridge. We picked up Georgia as a group member and I am excited to see what we can all create together as assignment two went well in terms of communication and distribution of work load, I’m positive another group member will only assist in creating better content.

We have agreed we will go away from class this week and think about different topics we can discuss for assignment 3, I will be in England for the next two weeks but have made myself available via social media and will be keeping in contact throughout the holidays.

Blogposts:

Week 2 – http://www.mediafactory.org.au/nolan-howard/2018/08/03/untold-stories-week-2/

Week 3 – http://www.mediafactory.org.au/nolan-howard/2018/08/03/untold-stories-week-3/

Week 4 – http://www.mediafactory.org.au/nolan-howard/2018/08/10/untold-stories-week-4/

Reflection – http://www.mediafactory.org.au/nolan-howard/2018/08/13/reflection/

Mini Documentaries – http://www.mediafactory.org.au/nolan-howard/2018/08/13/mini-documentaries/