Documentary film project- Hook

Graffiti art is often frowned on by the press and public but for the artists themselves it is much more than just vandalism. Speaking in detail about their art and what's available for the artists to escape the criticism they faec. Taking their art to a new level, have we accepted this art form is now around to help?

Possible questions for public:

• What are your views on graffiti? Is it an art form or a nuisance?
• Do you agree with Government funding? Does this help or hinder?
• What do you think of the problems facing youths today and could graffiti help put a stop to this?

Possible questions for artists/ zap guy:

• How are you trying to promote graffiti as an art form?
• Have you noticed a change in perception/ acceptance?
• Is there a divide between graffiti and 'street art'?

Possible question for the council:

• Do you think funding street art is an effective way to reach youths?

Locations: 

• Zapgraffiti studio
• Areas that are graffitied around Liverpool
• Liverpool city centre

Our film will consist of interview footage mixed with b-roll of numerous graffiti pieces plus some vox pops over the top of the b-roll footage.

Documentary film project- Pockets

by James Lees

• close-up of characters talking followed by what they have in their pockets and why
• street interviews
• not typically framed shots of faces- importance on what they have in their pockets 
• extreme close ups

Documentary film project- King of laughter

The King Of Laughter documentary by Nick Hillel was a really feel good documentary to watch as the comedy element of having a man laugh throughout most of the film with his infectious laugh, made me smile inside and laugh along. The good use in subject matter keeps the viewer entertained with a mix of interviews, even though the gentleman is in the centre of most shots laughing away, the miz up makes the piece easier to watch and not get on the viewers nerves. The use of the speed up clips of the man laughing in different locations works well within the piece as it shows the popularity and social-ness of the base of the documentary.

documentary film project- In Liverpool- Day 2

On the second day of filming we had planned to interview my contact from 10am when he was free. This day turned out a lot better than we had originally thought as Kieran was fantastic! We had a basic structure of the questions we wanted to ask (see ideas page) but Kieran was so much better than we had every expected. For every question we asked, he gave a long and full answer, leaving us with about 15 minutes worth of interview time to look through a choose for our final edit. On the day Kieran, being an artist himself, offered to paint us a piece of work which was so much more than we'd ever expected from him and i think that this added another depth to our final edit. In total i think we were with Kieran for the best part of 3/4 hours that day and leaving with a lot of really strong footage and a shift in idea.

Because Kieran was so excellent we changed the idea slightly to base it around Zapgraffiti and what they try to do there for all kinds of street artists, as well as link it to our newspaper article by structuring some of our questions around it. I think because of this we have a stronger narrative and structure to our project which makes it more interesting to watch.

Documentary film project- Struggles

I think one of the only problems we had as a group on this project was to get one of our group member involved in the work. Having been added to our group at the last minute, rolls had already been chosen and he was left with the one that no-one else wanted to do, and barely gave it a try throughout the whole process. Whilst in Liverpool he took over someone else's job as he brought his own camera and wouldn't let the assigned camera person near his camera and even then he was sluggish when choosing shots and didn't take any unless told to do so.

Throughout the editing process and when we left Liverpool, he has rarely been into see the group and has had little input into any part of the process. If it wasn't for Paul Manning and myself i doubt very much that this film would have made it to edit as we've put all of our time and effort into getting a strong film finished to the highest standard possible.

Documentary film project- Final idea

For the final idea we chose to use Kieran from zapgraffiti as the basis for our documentary, mixing with other people'e views (for example the council and people on the street) in their personal opinions of graffiti 'art' as a whole.


Questions to ask:

• What does the community think?
• What opportunities are available?
• Making streets better or worse?
• What do they try to achieve?
• Genuine art form?

Documentary film project- Editing

At first the editing side was a little slow to start, meaning that we didn't have a lot of time to get it perfect. Before the tutorials we hadn't got much done in terms of edit as the transference of the DSLR footage took a lot longer than we had originally thought it would do, meaning myself and Paul were the ones to stay there until it had competed. As for the rough cut that we had to show to Dom, myself and Paul sat and did that before our tutorial, even though this was the editor's job.

Thankfully Stephen pulled it out of the bag the last 3 days before the presentation and we gained a really strong opening. However the day before it was due in there was still a lot more work to be done on it and i'm hoping it is done to a high enough standard to do justice to the great footage we took.

Documentary film project- Production side

   

Documentary film project- In Liverpool- Day 1

As always no everything goes completely to plan but thankfully our few days went so much better than we thought. We obviously had a rough idea of what is was that we all wanted to achieve, yet none of us knew Liverpool, so we decided it would be best for our first day to explore Liverpool and stick to the arranged meeting with our contact on the Tuesday. We also used this day to get some planning down about what rough ideas we would have in terms of the questions we wanted to ask.

Stephen had a lot of different friends within the different groups so asked a few people if they'd be able to tell us if they saw any graffiti on their travels as we took to the streets of Liverpool in search of any work. A lot of the different group members pulled through for us and saved us a lot of time in searching for graffiti as a lot of people found them.

These are some of the photo's that i took of the graffiti in Liverpool:

                  

Documentary film project- Eric's secrets

We then watched Eric's Secrets by Lucia Ashmore. This is an adorable personal story of an old man as he tells the viewer about his life and his wife. The good use of old photographs with Eric talking over the top, gives the viewer a real insight into what this man's life has been like and effectively sets each string of the story. The choice to film Eric in his home also gives you the sense that this gentleman is a genuine guy and also links in with a lot of the general points made by Eric, and to give B-roll to the film. Although cheery music runs throughout to show how happy this old man has been about his life, the emotional end about his wife having died, ties the whole piece together and brings out the emotion in the viewer.

I do quite like this piece as i think it's constructed really nicely to show all of Eric's story with it being nice and easy for the viewer to watch. The subject matter is also very genuine, giving the sense of the maker to just want to show this man's story and not to sensationalise it in any way, which a lot of things do now-a-days.

Documentary film project- Skateistan

The second film that we watched was Skateistan by Orlando von Einsiedel which was about the lives of children that chose to skate in Kabul to get away from the struggles of their everyday lives in the warzone where they live. The use of the voice over the action really showed the audience what it meant to each child and what they do as an organisation to help the children build their lives around something positive. 


One of my favourite things about this film was the mix between the children doing this new activity and staying in a safe environment, combined with their home surroundings and the shot down buildings that the kids call their home. I think this accomplishes its aim to tug at the viewers heart strings, which probably links in well to the idea shown at the end for the viewer to donate to this good cause. I think that choice to use children's personal struggles is also a good method of making the piece more emotional and inspirational. However, a lot of the shots are very good technically and gave me inspiration for my film, with the beautiful long shots of the run down buildings as well as using an interview style which is something i was thinking about doing in my groups documentary. 

Documentary film project- Dark Days

The first film that we watched was the making of Dark Days by Marc Singer. This film (although only the making of) showed a truly remarkable and inspiring story of one mans struggle to make a true and personal film into the lives of the forgotten people. The pure spirit to finish the film and help others through the constant knock downs is very inspiring. Getting the chance to listen to everything that they had to go through added a whole new level to film making for me.

I really found this interesting because the filmmaker never tried to hide the struggles that he occurred and spoke openly about the project and what he wanted to achieve. I think that the mix between actual footage and the interviews gave an in depth insight into each stage of the filming process.

documentary film project- Contacts

After the first session and our idea was decided i went home in the hopes to find someone to help us and give us an interview for the day. I started by typing 'graffiti artists in Liverpool' into Google, and one of the first websites i found was a website called zapgraffiti. I started by sending an email through their official site asking if they would have anyone available to speak to us on the days we were set to shoot in Liverpool. I was thankful to receive this reply :

Hi and thanks for getting in touch.
Please give me a ring and we can see what we can sort out for you!

All the best!

Kieran Gorman

ZAP GRAFFITI ARTS (Studio & Shop.)
Promoting graffiti as a positive artform across the UK & beyond since
1995
Challenging stereotypes - Developing skills - Regenerating!

2ND FLOOR
GRAND CENTRAL
35 RENSHAW STREET
LIVERPOOL
L1 2SF

0151 708 7073
KIERAN GORMAN : 0757 2370 0300 NB NOTE NEW NUMBER!!!

On receiving the email i contacted Kieran directly and got a friendly reasonable fellow, more than willing to help us with our documentary. Plans were initially set for the Monday, thinking we would be abe to get the bulk done on the first day but nearer to the time this wasn't possible due to not knowing exactly what we wanted to ask him and the little time he had available on the monday. Plans were made for the Tuesday morning, giving us plenty of planning time.

On the day we got Kieran to sign a release form before we started the interviews.

Documentary film project- Research and newspaper articles

In the first session we decided that Paul was going to look for a good newspaper article for the base of our documentary, although i personally looked and had no luck in finding any good articles, and these were the one's that he found. Realistically the first article would be very difficult to achieve in the short space that we had in terms of planning time and in shoot time as to make the story link to our piece, it would preferably have to entail visiting schools and places where 'Jordan' had had an impact with his teaching, if not talk to 'Jordan' himself which could be difficult as the boy isn't given a surname, plus the fact it is based in schools would mean gaining a lot of permission which may not have been granted by the time we had to shoot. This could probably be similar to the 2nd story about a street artists tragic death as i'm sure it would have been hard to find people specifically related to this story as well as it being a raw subject for such people. I don't think much depth would have come from it either if we chose to interview several artists about the dangers involved, this could once again be time consuming. The story that we decided to go with was the story about the knife crime in Liverpool being linked with graffiti artists to get the word out about the dangers of knife crime as well as the interesting point about a Government grant being awarded as it is believed that a lot of the council money now-a-days goes on trying to remove such work.

One of the other points that we were trying to show is other people's opinions about graffiti as a whole, is it art or vandalism? When looking through numerous newspaper articles on line, i found a few (not specific to Liverpool but interesting none-the-less).

I found this article interesting because although Jeremy Hunt is the Shadow culture secretary, he still expressed a positive meaning for some graffiti. In the article he states: "Sometimes graffiti — however objectionable and anti-social it is in principle — can be very thought-provoking". To the disarray and later disapproval from Home Office Minister Tony McNulty, goes on to call a specific piece from a fence alongside the M40 into London as being 'Wonderful'. 

Documentary film project- Initial ideas

During the first session and following watching (insert doc name), I became inspired by some of the shots that I saw which gave me several good ideas for a project.

Documentary:

• Specific to location
• within the space
• natural environment or staged?
• contemporary music
• loction
• unique
• early morning
• contained
• 'if' questions
• character
• comfortable environment
• co-operation
• specific artist
• opinions of subject matter 

Shoot ideas:

• Maybe link to deprived areas of Liverpool
• Interview with zapgraffiti man on ideas of studio
• interviewed artists if any can be found
• interview general public
• long shots of wall art/ gallery space

Graffiti art is something i have had an interest in for some time and it is something that we see and hear about a lot, so I thought that this would be a great thing to shed more light on to as it is a subject that is often criticised. For this I wanted to try and find an artist who would be able to go into detail about what it means to be a graffiti artist and what their views were on it being classed as art. i wasn't entirely sure about how this would be achieved as i personally don't know anyone from Liverpool. After discussing the idea with the two members who were present at the first session, we all agreed upon the idea and quickly came to discuss the possibility of how this would happen.

On the facebook website i suggested the chosen idea to the other members and all agreed that this would be an exciting project to work on and were all keen on sharing ways it could be made better.

Documentary film project- First session

In the first session we watched several different kinds of documentaries (see other posts) to give us inspirations and ideas for our own personal projects. We were then asked to get into groups of 5, which for me was easier said than done as many people in the class already had groups. I knew from the offset who 2 other members of my group I would like to work with, Paul and Ruby, but the other two members were a little more difficult to find. With help from Dom we found the other two members of our group, Stephen and Jake, but ideas were already starting to form in my mind and group provisions were already having to be put into place.

I decided to take on the role of the director as I have never filled this role before and wanting to take hold of the project as i believed that there was a lot of potential to make a really good film. As Paul is one of the most organised and liked the role, he chose to be the producer. Ruby had never done camera work before and we thought it would be a good opportunity for her to gain skills in this area so she chose to be the camera person. After discussing first with Stephen, as he was the next member to be part of our group, he wanted to fill the role of the editor. Which left Jake in charge of sound.

After this session a facebook group was set up to discuss ideas and make plans for meeting about discussing these.

Documentary film project

FIELDTRIP TO LIVERPOOL ON THE 5^TH & 6^TH MARCH 2012

For this project you will be working in groups of x 5

You will each have a specific role in the making and completion of the work and will need to undertake a different role to the role you had on the experimental project.

Think carefully about the role you will undertake – as a group try and play on your individual strengths and also take the opportunity to learn from each other.

It is important that all group members contribute equally to this project and this should be reflected in your self-evaluations.

The brief for this project is to create a 5 MINUTE DOCUMENTARY FILM ON THE THEME OF LIVERPOOL STORIES

For this project you will create a work inspired by research into documentary ideas based in Liverpool.

Your starting place for this will be articles or news items on Liverpool found within the national and local newspapers and by researching on the web.

The newspaper item can be closely adhered to, or may for a loose basis for your project.

Things to think about could include:

–       What is the key point about the news item?

–       What attracted you as a group to the item?

–       What slant/angle are you interested in pursuing from the news item?

–       What form of documentary would be most interesting and original for the chosen news item?

Think about the possible documentary approach you could take, such as:

Observational;  - the filmmaker does not intervene but uses the camera to observe the day to day life of the documentary subject – usually requires a contributor highly involved in an interesting task that has a finite time span.

Direct Cinema;  - the filmmaker is very much an active participant in the film, interrogating the subject of the film to reveal information

Educational/informative – the film usually revolves around exploring a subject in detail and presenting factual or expert information, often with multiple contributions from different contributors.

Poetic  - uses metaphor, visual lyricism and soundscape or music to portray an aspect of life – often with a universal human theme.

Investigative – usually a journalistic approach exposing information not commonly known understood

Collage;  - often combines stills, archive, found footage and moving image and juxtaposes them to shed new light on a subject area.

 Some seminal documentary filmmakers to look at include:

Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Humphrey Jennings, Basil Wright, , Chris Marker, Alan Resnais, Jean Rouch, The Maysles