Month: September 2017

This week we went back to Good Shepherd for our final session with the women who attend the Sew Much More sewing class. This was the final week of the class, and emotions were definitely high for the women who have been involved in sewing classes at Good Shepherd together for around about a year.

This time we were much more prepared for our shooting, as we knew what to expect and knew exactly what holes in our shooting we needed to film. During our last session, we filmed the four women completing their interview together, and we weren’t overly happy with the end result. The room we completed the interview in was quite small so we needed to film on two cameras to get all of the women in the shot, and it did not look overly cohesive. Besides this, the women also did not speak as freely as we hoped, with some questions gaining an answer from one woman, and the rest responding with ‘I think she covered it all’

Because of this, we decided to try out doing some individual interviews with the women sitting in the same position as their tutor Wendy did during our interview with her. We found that interview came out very well both sound wise and quality wise, so we hoped to emulate this.

We arrived at 12pm and gave ourselves time to set up. During our last session we had to spend a lot of time familiarising ourselves with the camera and the settings, and therefore wasted a lot of time. This time, we learnt from our mistakes and spent half an hour setting up while the women enjoyed their lunch with their children. We were initially planning on shooting during this lunch, however there were many children around, and as it was their last session we did want to allow them some space. From the lunch we went it to record the women getting their certificates. There were a lot of noises in the background because of the kids, and because of this we may only be able to use this footage as b-roll, however there are certainly things we can use.

From here, we took each of the women out of the room while they sewed and captured the individual interviews. Some of the women were more detailed than others, however we got a lot more footage than last week and I now feel much more confident that we have enough interview footage to put together a detailed portrayal of the women and the class. We also gained some interviews from the volunteers and head of the Community House that we can use either within the documentary or in a micro piece.

The next stage of the process for us is going through our footage, sorting it out, and deciding exactly what content we are going to use and exactly what things we are going to create. This will be a very long process and I am a little nervous about getting through all of the footage and picking what we are going to use. We did get so much good stuff, so I truly hope we are able to find the best way to structure it all and put it together!

This week in documentary as action was the first week of the ‘week in progress’ presentations. Matt and myself chose this week to present as we knew previously one session of our shooting would be done, however the other would not of, making this the perfect opportunity for us to find out exactly what people thought of our work so far, and what other things we could aim to film in our next session at Good Shepherd.

We very quickly put together our best interview footage, this being of the sewing tutor Wendy, and added some b-roll to give the class an idea of what we were planning to create from our shooting. We both already knew that the footage needed some work. There was a lot of sewing talk that needed to be cut out, and some music and smoother editing could have been used.

I was happy overall with the reception we received from the class about what we had put together so far. Some people said they really enjoyed what we had been able to produce which was fantastic to hear, as it showed there was genuine interest in our topic and the story itself. I was a little concerned the piece could be boring so to get this feedback was very important.

A lot of the improvement feedback we received was expected from our own viewings of the piece so far, although some of the things we did not pick up in our first viewing.

First of all, Wendy very early on mentions a woman named ‘Hilary’ which she then ends up doing a number of times throughout the interview without ever really clarifying who she is. For Matt and myself, and Wendy and the other Good Shepherd members, it is very obvious who she is referring to, however, for those who have never met her before or for those who not know anything about Good Shepherd, the mention of her name might be confusing, and may cause the audience to wonder who she is and if she is important to the story they are watching. We will need to find a way in the editing process to clear this up, whether we remove sections where she is mentioned, or potentially use some footage of her that shows off her position or the way she interacts with the group to introduce her properly to the audience.

Some other comments we received was that we should try and use some archival or past photos to try and highlight the group and the overall time of the class, which is something Matt and myself will definitely take into account. I personally enjoy documentaries that show past photos and how things have changed, so I would be very interested in at least showing some images of the women when the class started and Wendy during the three years she has been part of the class. I would also be interested in potentially showing some images of Wendy completing her own sewing, as she highlights throughout her interview that sewing is her passion.

It was also suggested that we use some music within the piece, which was definitely our plan, particularly in the end to heighten that raw emotion that the audience will see throughout Wendy herself. We will look through the creative commons music online and play around with some tracks to find the one that suits the mood of the documentary. We may even decide further down the track that a number of songs are needed throughout, however we won’t know this until we start editing.

B-roll is something else that came up that we would definitely like to extend. At this point the piece is made up of many minutes of simple talking from Wendy. We did not have much time to edit, and seeing as we do want to go back and get more b-roll, we only wanted to put small slices in so we could show what our basic plan was. In our initial shoot we did capture a lot of b-roll we are happy with, however, now we have the interview and our feedback, we will film some more to fill in what we see as the gaps and build ourselves a cohesive piece.

We finally discussed the length on the piece. The current piece sits at around four and a half minutes in length, however when watching it I did notice there were certain bits that were far too dragged out or unnecessary to the piece. A lot of the sewing talk and the actual structure of the class needs to be removed. Certain parts of the interview could also be moved around, and the beginning needs to be worked on to drag the audience in from the beginning.

In terms of our own progress, we will be heading into Good Shepherd this coming Thursday to continue to complete some filming. This is the final week that the class will run, so we need to try and capture as much footage of the women as we can on this day, that way, if we do need to go back, its more so to speak with the Good Shepherd volunteers and workers as they will be more accessible. The women will be receiving a certificate for completing the class, so incorporating this as b-roll into our piece about the women could be interesting. From our last shooting day, we found that the interview with all four women did not work as well as we hoped. With many of the questions, one of the women would answer and the others would not elaborate on what the other said. Because of this, we will try to do some more one on one interviews in this session to gain some more interview footage and voice over pieces to use. We hope to get some more ‘gold’ footage from the women, as well as structure some more open conversations between the women to use as b-roll footage. In our next session, or possibly at a later date, we may also interview Hilary from the community house and possibly some volunteers who know the women to add an extra layer. We hope to fill most of the gaps our film has, and begin editing to see how we can put all the feedback we received into practice.

As a whole, I am very happy with the feedback we received, and think that it mostly matches the path we plan to take with our documentary. We will keep this feedback in mind during our shooting this coming week, and also as we edit and make the other sections of our documentary series!

This week has been the biggest week so far of Documentary as Action, and it’s actually getting very exciting to see some actual content coming together.

This week our class time was very focussed on our pitches, with Monday being time to plan them out and get into our feedback groups, and Friday being the day to deliver them.

Before I delivered my pitch, on Thursday Matt and I headed down to the Good Shepherd Community House in St Albans to start some initial filming for our documentary. We went in and spent some time setting up and planning our shots, then started to film some b-roll footage of the women sewing. We tried to capture a large number of different shots across two cameras, some of the women’s hands while sewing and over the shoulder shots, and other shots wider showing the sewing tutor Wendy teaching the students and the students engaging with different machines.

After we took these shots, the students joined us outside under a shelter where each member and the sewing tutor sat and enjoyed their afternoon tea. I particularly liked the shots we took here, as the women got very comfortable and talked about really normal things, such as the floods in America and the sewing excursion that had run in the morning. I tried to capture some shots of the women and their hands to tie in with the other pieces we filmed. While we would of loved to of taken our interview outside, the wind was creating a lot of negative feedback on the microphone, so we decided to head inside instead.

The first interview we completed was with the sewing tutor Wendy, who we were not initially expecting to interview. Many of our questions were made up on the spot, and Ruby Richardson who works for Good Shepherd saved us

profusely by asking Wendy if there was anything she wished to add. From this, Wendy spoke for many minutes, even getting teary eyed just talking about what the class did for her personally, which is a great moment we hope to pull away for a 30 second video on Facebook.

 

After this, we began our interview with the women who attend the sewing class. This interview was a little slower, with the women not elaborating quite as much, however some of the women did have some really nice things to say that we will also look at taking away for social media, as well as the bigger documentary. We finished off filming the women talking a little bit about the pieces they had made. We ran out of time to speak to some of the volunteers, but we did get a lot of footage we hope to be able to use.

Actually completing the filming has helped to see exactly what we will be creating for Good Shepherd. We will pull some of the strong quotes from the interviews, as well as the videos we took of the women showing off their clothes, and make 30 second videos for the Facebook page. We were also planning on making just one five minute video of the women and everything else we shot. However, after capturing the fantastic interview with the sewing teacher Wendy, I would like to also pose the idea of making a video of 2-4 minutes specifically about her and her experience from a different angle.

I was not feeling very confident about my pitch on Friday as I was not sure I was covering enough information, however it went quite well, and I found that the feedback Matt and I received was very helpful. I would definitely like to head back to Good Shepherd in the next couple of weeks after we review all of our footage and see exactly what we are missing. We would like to film the ladies again, and also gain the perspective of some of the volunteers and runners of the community house and program for something different.

The suggestion came up that we should try to head into the homes of the women and gain a deeper perspective of the women in their own environments. While I would love to do this, the women did seem to be a little too reserved to do this. While this may have just been because we were strangers, I feel as though the women were more interested in completing something just surrounding the sewing class. However, I will not rule it out, and see if they do get more comfortable in the next couple of weeks to do something more personal.

Over the next week, Matt and myself will review all of the footage we took on Thursday, and see how much of it was usable. Interview wise, I really enjoyed what we captured with Wendy the sewing teacher, and would be interested to see if we could make a short documentary simply surrounding her, however some of her footage may be necessary to boost the documentary about the women themselves.

During the past week we stepped away from the classroom and went on our mid-semester break. While I feel I probably could have been much more productive than I have been, we made a big break-through with our So Much More documentary with Good Shepherd.

On the Wednesday of our break, we headed down to the St. Albans Community House that Good Shepherd runs to check out the space we will be filming in, and talk to a couple of the leaders about their expectations, and what we should expect on the day we film. We talked through some questions we could potentially ask the women on the day, as well as where we may be able to shoot. Both Hilary and Ruby at Good Shepherd told us more about the ladies we will be interviewing and what we can expect, and its exciting to hear how excited the women are to be involved.

We spent some time walking around the premises and planning what and where we will film. We are hoping to tape our interviews outside in a nice seating area while the ladies eat their afternoon tea. We hope to do this to ensure the women are completely comfortable and feel free to simply speak. We hope that our documentary about the women and their experience with the sewing class can be so much more than that. We hope the women can become confident enough to talk more personally about themselves and how the class has helped at a personal level.

This coming Thursday, we will be arriving at the Good Shepherd Community House at around 1 to set up and film the women with some b-roll moments of them sewing and using their hands. When they break for afternoon tea, we hope to engage in an interview with the women in their comfortable environment. Depending on how we are going for time, we would also like to record 30 second videos with the women about the clothes they have made for Good Shepherd to potentially use on their Facebook page.

Over the next few days we will work to finish planning out our documentary to ensure we make the most of our time on Thursday. We may need to go back again, but it feels good knowing we are beginning to get somewhere!