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It is seriously hard to believe that tomorrow our final documentary is due and this semester of Documentary as Action will come to an end. It has been such a whirlwind journey, and it is amazing to look back now and see how far I have come.

Coming into this semester, I chose this class for the main reason that I could work for a not for profit organisation. I did not know a lot about documentary making or the even the fundamental reasons behind documentary making, and really had no clear idea of what I was hoping to achieve. I spent many of the first weeks desperately trying to work out what it is that I hoped to make, and at some stages thought I would never find my footing. This is one of the many reasons I am so proud of the final product that I have been able to create with Matt for Good Shepherd, though there are many other reasons.

I am very proud to say that I have been able to help create something for an organisation that did not have the funding or resources to make it on their own. All documentary has a purpose, and I strongly believe ours was made to make sure many more women and children engage with Good Shepherd and get the support that they need.

In terms of my own personal development, I am so proud of the actual final product I have made, and all of the challenges I have been able to overcome. Before this class, I had never made documentary. Now I am able to say that I was able to create a piece with a real organisation. I learnt how to tell the delicate stories of these women ethically, which was one of the biggest things I hoped to achieve. I learnt how to communicate with these women, how to actually go into their space and shoot something with a schedule in mind. I even moved away from my beloved iMovie this semester and gave Premiere Pro a go, and was successfully able, despite many moments of anger, to create a four minute piece that I am proud of.

I believe, from my experience in this class, that documentary’s main purpose is to start some kind of action. It has the power to create change, and impact someone, even if it is just one person. I hope that in the long run my documentary is able to target women in need and help them to reach out to Good Shepherd for help, but even seeing the effect it has had on the women in the class in terms of their confidence is enough for me!

The time has come around once more for Matt and myself to show some of our work in progress in class. In our last viewing, we showed a short clip we had made of the Sew Much More sewing teacher Wendy and the interview we had completed with her. While we did get some good feedback from the class, one big question that came up was surrounding how we actually planned to start and finish the documentary. The introduction and conclusion of a documentary are very important to the piece, as it is what hooks the audience and what the audience is left to think about.

This is why, for our second work in progress, some of the main feedback we asked for surrounded the beginning and ending of the piece. This time we did not show the piece surrounding Wendy, instead deciding to show the piece we had started to construct about the actual women completing the class. We had put in the graduation scene at the beginning with some voice over of the women, and tied it up in a similar way. We were interested in hearing from the class how this worked in their opinion, as they had no idea who the women were or the story behind the documentary, so we felt they would have a pretty good idea about whether or not the beginning and ending actually made sense and whether they felt it worked. We understood that this feedback may be hard to give in some ways, as much of the middle of the piece was still missing, and it was hard to tell how the start and end sequence would fit without the rest, however we hoped the class would be able to see enough to give us some helpful feedback anyway.

We also wished for some further feedback on the content itself and how it was structured. Structure was something that Matt and myself had struggled with through the editing process, so once again hearing more about how the flow seemed and whether it made sense was also important for us. The editing was a little rough, which was something that we were already aware of, however, gaining some further feedback on how we could improve it was something that Matt in particular was hoping to hear as well.

The feedback we received once again from the class was quite good. A lot of people seemed to react well to the documentary that we had put forward and the actual content within it. Many people suggested that we move the graduation footage to the end of the piece, as that would be a nice way to conclude, however, also suggested that we leave some of the interview voice over that we had at the start as the emotion worked quite well.

We also gained some feedback on the b-roll footage currently in our documentary. As our cut was super rough, the b-roll we had was very limited, placed in mostly to give an idea of what it would look like when we finished. Watching it ourselves in class, it was easy to see that the talking heads were getting quite boring and that some b-roll was definitely needed to make it more intriguing. Something else that came up during the feedback was lack of music. As we showed the introduction and conclusion to the piece in class, we knew this would come up, as these are two areas of the piece where emotion is quite high, and music is necessary to match it, while also needed to drag the audience in.

Going forward, we hope to play around a little more with the structure and the beginning and ending of the piece to find something that works. As suggested in class, we may take some pieces out of our current beginning and move it to the end, and add some different footage at the beginning to fit with our voice over. Watching our documentary once more and pin pointing the moments where music and b-roll would be a good fit will also be one of the next steps, to ensure we don’t simply have a documentary full of boring talking heads. We will try to play a number of tracks over our documentary to see exactly what works before we place it into the documentary in the end.

I am very excited about where we are headed with this documentary. The fact that people seemed to take to it quite well in class makes me feel much more confident, and with the advice received from our peers, we should be able to create something emotional that has a well rounded structure and keeps the audience hooked from start to finish!

This week was Grand Final week, and while i’m not sure how I feel about the final result on the final Saturday in September, I was very glad for the break on Friday. This break on Friday did mean we did not have a class, so our only actual class time was on Monday.

On Monday we spent a lot of time focussing on music and how it can be used in documentary. We watched some examples and it was good to hear of some of the websites we can use to source some songs that are free to use. I have begun to look at some of the websites, however, I do really want to cut the documentary first to try and see exactly when the music is necessary. I find that watching something makes it much easier to work out when music needs to be used, whether it’s to heighten the emotion or highlight a certain thing happening in the documentary.

The rest of the week has been used to sort through the footage and work out exactly where we should start and how our documentaries should be sequenced. I have tried to focus my attention on working out exactly how to start the documentary. The feedback we received on our last feedback piece was that we needed to choose a piece of footage or a part of the interview with heightened emotions to start off with to immediately hook the audience. For our major piece, we are hoping to create something that surrounds the women and their experience. During our final filming session at Good Shepherd, we filmed the women receiving their certificates, signifying the final day of their class. While logically this may seem like something that could round out the documentary, I also like the thought of using it at the beginning due to the emotional element it would bring, as well as the way the sewing class and women are all introduced together.

My current idea is to use the footage of the women receiving their certificates as mostly b-roll, muting it and overlaying it with the responses each women gave to the question ‘how do you feel about the sewing class coming to an end’. This could also work well at the ending of the piece, however it is a nice emotional piece that could be used as an introduction. We will work on cutting this footage together and potentially gaining some feedback on how it fits with the structure of the piece.

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!

It’s hard to believe that this week marked the official half way point of the semester.

This week we spent some time looking at how to write basic documents surrounding our synopsis’, treatments and pitches. These documents have been quite hard for me to develop at the present moment, as I am still in talks with Good Shepherd about what I am making. However, while developments have been slow, they are starting to become steady and I am becoming much more confident in my direction and documentary.

During Fridays class, we heard from one of Kim’s past students about his documentary experience, and we had a chance to actually watch some of his documentaries. I was blown away by what he was able to create, and will take crucial parts of his advice into account when making my own documentary. I found it interesting that he didn’t use a tripod very often throughout his documentaries. I want to create something personal, up close and authentic, and I have definitely thought about limiting my use of a tripod, yet always worried that there is too much room for error. Seeing the end result of Kim’s past students work without a tripod however has made me want to explore this technique in my documentary more, and see whether I can do it well.

This week I have been in further talks with Good Shepherd, and have planned that myself and my documentary partner Matt will create a documentary surrounding some women who attend a sewing group at the St Albans Community House with Good Shepherd. While i’m not exactly sure what this will entail at this point, whether it will be a long documentary or part of a smaller series, this coming week I will be attending the site of the sewing group, taking a look around, and hopefully discussing exactly what Good Shepherd are hoping to get out of this section of the documentary. I am hoping to have a lot of my planning done in the next week, and am therefore really relying on Good Shepherd to plan exactly what they want so I can continue on with my planning, especially because we need to present a pitch in just over a week. I would be happy to create a long documentary about these ladies and the sewing group, and make something personal about them and their journey to where they are. In saying this, Good Shepherd was interested in us making a number of short videos to be used on their social media, so this may only be a small piece of something bigger, only time will tell!

 

This week I made a large amount of progress with the actual content of my documentary. It was our first week back with Monday classes, and we had two representatives from Good Shepherd come out and speak with us about potential projects.

From this discussion, it looks as though I will be making a number of short videos that Good Shepherd can use on their social media pages and website that highlight the volunteers and Good Shepherd members. I am very excited to complete this project, as making campaigns for organisations and their social media is something I am potentially looking into as a career, and seeing how documentary can be used in this is very exciting.

At this point, I’m not exactly sure who I will be interviewing or creating my documentaries about, so this will effect the style I use. Certain techniques such as using my digital camera and my idea to use informal interview techniques may not suit this type of documentary, depending on the people and nature of the videos. I am happy to finally have some of these things locked in, as I have been feeling uneasy about getting my idea together.

In Fridays class, we discussed each others ideas, which was great as we have all listened to each others ideas throughout the semester, and its great to hear how everyones ideas are shaping, while also giving me some ideas for my own documentary.

We then watched a short documentary made for the AFL Women’s league. I found this very beneficial to watch, as it was used for promotion on the website, which is very similar to what my Good Shepherd work will entail. The AFLW promotion had a very informal style to its interviews, and was very well done, so I will take this as inspiration for making my own documentary. Of course, I am completing something of a completely different subject matter, so while I can take some inspiration, I will make sure to alter the style if I use something similar to fit my subject matter.

Over the next week I hope to continue my talks with Good Shepherd and lock down exactly who I am going to be talking to so I can start planning out my videos and exactly how each one will be set up.