Factual Documentary Portfolio
Being a producer through factual programming making a 3-minute documentary video was fascinating working with different people with different ideas. It has made me learn a lot through the process of teamwork, limiting your time and accessibility. In this blog, I want to express how this factual documentary project has affected my career path.
Our video’s plot line was about haunting's in Greenwich. The idea came from our editor/scriptwriter who left half way and our aim was to make it interesting and not too factual that it comes across as boring. We found an interesting story, ‘The Linear House’. Through our research, we found an article on ‘www.thegreenwichphantom.co.uk’ named ‘The Old Henry’s Game’. There had been rumours of a haunting in the building going back to the early 50s when the current photo studio gallery was a cafeteria for the school up the road ‘Greenwich Secondary School for Girls’. We wanted to visit Tony Othen who is a photographer in the building finding out more about the history of the story and even going back further to the second world war where it was a receiving station and more.
Research and Influences into my role:
Through previous experiences of being a producer in all my projects, I have grown quite fond of the role. I have always enjoyed a management role. After completing this documentary, I had to work in a team and normally work individually and I can do it all on my own so it was hard sharing paperwork with others because it isn’t a difficult thing for me. But group work in the industry is crucial so, it was important for me to learn from it, and see what I need improving on to be a better producer.
Towards my team’s research, it was my responsibility to organise the meetings to clarify our ideas, title, tagline etc. I also gave everyone the research jobs to search for haunted places in Greenwich with the stories alongside research from similarly haunted documentaries to get some inspiration on how they make it appeal to their audience.
With regards to our research, I feel it was very organised and gave everyone a good sense of what standards we are trying to reach and what our aim is. I was happy with how I organised our research by making everyone conduct the same research so our story had everyone involved and having a debate of which one works best. I asked Edna (our sound operator) to be our main researcher which involved making online surveys and reaching out to the public with results.
The documentary I looked at was ‘The Nightmare’ (2015) which caught my eye with how it was visually effective and how it consisted of re-enactments telling their story. This inspired me to create re-enactments to tell the story of the girl in the article we found. And to make it clearly separate from our scenes with Tony and interviews we decided to make the video black and white so having footage in colour to black and white doesn’t confuse the audience. It was effective watching the existing products itself as a producer because I had an intake of the other roles within my team and it gave me a clear understanding of what they would want to aim towards and so it made my instructive organisation
easier and helpful towards them.
Technical development process/planning and production management:
In pre-production, my role was very important for the team to keep everything organised and plan how we are going to make our documentary. I set a schedule for specific pre-production job roles as well as our given production roles. I set deadlines so that everything was handed in on time ready to film.
Pre-Production paperwork related to planning and organisation:
Attendance Sheets
Unit list
Production milestones
Checklist
Proposal
Call sheet’s
Consent Forms
Risk Assessments
Location Recce Forms
Run order
Minutes from Meetings
Schedule
Creative Pre-Production:
Lighting Diagram
Booking Equipment
Storyboard
Shot list
Script
Costume/Makeup
Audio Plan
Production Diary
Editor Proposal
Continuity sheet
I feel our pre-production was very successful and everyone felt comfortable with what they were doing. I always checked on them privately of how they are doing and giving them guidelines for their assigned paperwork to help them. They all appreciated this and felt I was doing a good job. I helped every team member and was keeping everything positive. This all reflected well on my communication skills and organisation.
Legal and Ethical requirements:
When it came to planning the production in more detail regarding legal and ethical requirements, we were given a few restraints to solve. It was my responsibility to get filming permission from every location and every cast member.
We chose 3 final location ideas and I planned a location scout to go see them visually and look at which one would have more facts, potential graphics, and least hazard risks. We went to see ‘The Linear House’, ‘The Maritime Museum’ with the ‘Good Old Bess’ and we tried finding ‘The Blackwall Tunnel’ with the ‘Blackwall Hitcher’ story which had confusing directions. After looking at the variety of locations to choose from, the group agreed on the ‘tulip stairs’ looking visually better but was already being done. We wanted to be original. Whereas we had a lot of potential graphics including floor plans in The Linear House. We visited the building where I met Tony Othen. He is currently a photographer in the building who has a huge part in buying the building. He was very welcoming and was willing for us to film there and was happy to be a part of our project. He gave us a lot of useful information that we didn’t even know ourselves about the second world war.
I found Physically meeting the people you want to contact is more useful than emailing. It’s easy to contact the wrong people. He gave me his card with his contact details for me to keep in touch and keep him up to date. I would send call sheets alongside Julian and the other cast as well as the script and informative paperwork to keep them notified.
My responsibility within health and safety risk assessments were to brief the printed paperwork to all the cast/crew before filming where then the director would step in. So, my job was thinking about the rules and regulations of the project to follow.
I had to use these risk assessments when booking equipment. Booking equipment is also important towards my role because after scheduling our filming, I need to be prepared with what equipment we will need and to reassure the group of the details. I always notified them when I booked equipment/rooms and reminded them on the regular basis of upcoming film dates in case they don’t check the schedule regularly but I highly suggested it to them in the meetings. The technical team needs to be reassured that you aren’t filming anything dangerous and has any high-level chances of risk. So, it was important on my part to make sure they knew every detail of what was being filmed and where the equipment will be held after in a secure location. So, I feel my risk assessments were up to date and didn’t worry anyone of anything risky.
Despite making my call sheets and checking on them consistently prior to filming, it didn’t come up with any updated weather statements that would affect our schedule. However, on our very first film date outdoors, we had an unexpected problem with rain. It was slow but it put the equipment at risk. Our director had an umbrella so we solved this by covering the equipment whilst finishing off our takes. This taught me that weather is unpredictable and you need to be prepared for anything. I didn’t encounter for an umbrella it was luck that we had one. So, I learned something very useful and having these small details encountered for will make a production team more prepared.
Another major part of my job as a producer is making sure we have consent for all actors/locations. This affects whether we can publish it on YouTube/Vimeo. Without consent in a professional production, it would end up in serious matters. Your production company could get sued so it was important for me to remember to have everything finalised. At the start of arrival to The Linear House on our last filming day, I went into the building shaking Tony Othen’s hand and asked to sit with him going through the important documents whilst our group set up outside. During this, I felt very professional sitting with him on a glass table with all our documents printed out. I handed him consent forms to be shown in the video speaking, consent forms to use the location. I also went through the risk assessments describing the possible hazards that could occur and I found out where their first aid box and accident book is located with his signature so if it came to that situation we were prepared. This briefing also contained going through the storyboard, run order and script with him so he was aware of the plans of the session with when and what will be happening.
Within consent forms for the other locations we used such as ‘Starbucks’ in the Stockwell building, we had some issues. I had emailed multiple people with an attached ‘cpda’ risk assessment who didn’t get back to me so I had to cancel our film date to extend my time on getting the consent to film in the corridor of the Stockwell Building and Starbucks. I had already got the consent from the Starbucks manager but it was also important to have the cpda to agree on that permission which I was responsible for. So, as I continued trying to contact these people but I still didn’t hear back from them. However, because I had permission from the manager, a lecturer on my course and the night’s security staff due to filming at 8-10pm. This, therefore, gave me the access to use this location with no leg issues.
Group working practices:
From this experience, it has taught me that group work can be difficult and have various opinions come together can be complicated and hard to work around. But it is also very uplifting and awarding when things work out the way we want to.
I was pleased with the amount of effort everyone put in. However, it was confusing at times with the script we had which was written by our editor who then left the course. The grammar wasn’t accurate and the content was confusing because it went off balance and fell from being factual to fiction. Re-enactments weren’t documented in real life to have apparently occurred so it was perceived as false information. This was told to be changed by Lindsey in a meeting to remain factual but after I went through the script with our editor personally, I wrote what needed to be where and what we needed to add or cut out. However, this wasn’t done. So, after his departure, our group collided together re-writing the script. It resulted in a better documentary. There were confusions with our other teammates, we wanted to make sure Tony and Julian was perceived as our main character telling the story of what he read and his insight on it. And not the school girl telling the story because she’s an actor and we didn’t get any contact with the real people or their relatives that could help the situation.
Based on our filming, everyone split into their roles doing their jobs. But I saw many errors and room for improvement. Our sound engineer felt uncomfortable holding the boom mic based on length and holding it up for a long period. She was unsure of where to have it because she wasn’t instructed by the director. The director slacked attendance of meetings and filming sessions, therefore, she didn’t direct the cast or crew in a professional manner where it came to the situation where I had to keep asking her to cue them in and to tell them what they are doing. There was a lot of confusion and miss-communication from her and the cast especially. I feel this was very unprofessional and I was unhappy with the way our team was working together despite working well together considering our perfect pre-production. It could have been due to lack of experience but I tried helping them with what their job roles entail. I got to the point where I had to direct the cast and felt like I was doing her role and that shouldn’t ever happen on set. It started to make me feel unprofessional. The way I decided to try and solve this was through production diaries after each film date asking what everyone thought they did good/bad about themselves and then hearing our team members point of view.
This helped on areas to improve and being appreciated for what they did well so it would build up their confidence. I think this worked well for most people in our group and I saw a lot of improvements. However, the director didn’t seem to improve and ignored the feedback through this solution. So, I have realised from this experience that it is hard working with director’s who aren’t very confident and instructive. This has benefited me through wanting to gain the experience of being a director. I have learned that I enjoyed directing and felt I was controlling the cast/crew well. So, in the future, I want to gain experience in every job role so I understand more how they are feeling and it will make me a better producer.
Due to losing our editor, I split the editing sessions already placed on the schedule with the group working together with split schedules working in groups of 2 with specific guides written on the schedule of what we need to do each day to have enough time to edit based on the deadline. I feel one person stood out the most in the group who worked the hardest and has been credited as our main editor, our sound engineer Edna Olet. As my job, within this post production stage, I had to narrow down the run order/schedule to fit the right time length which was cut from 5 minutes to 3. I also noticed continuity errors which I made a note of when getting Andreanna’s visual approval.
I worked on the graphics which was instructed to everyone to find 1 thing each where I gave them a task to look for something. I asked Andreanna to find statistics, Josh to find quotes, Edna to find Images and myself to find old footage and blueprint photos. I worked together with Josh to agree on a graphic background that worked well with our video’s theme. Edna couldn’t find any photos of the building while it was a cafeteria for schools. So, I used images within my world war 2 footage to build up enough interesting facts.
I worked on the graphics which was instructed to everyone to find 1 thing each where I gave them a task to look for something. I asked Andreanna to find statistics, Josh to find quotes, Edna to find Images and myself to find old footage and blueprint photos. I worked together with Josh to agree on a graphic background that worked well with our video’s theme. Edna couldn’t find any photos of the building while it was a cafeteria for schools. So, I used images within my world war 2 footage to build up enough interesting facts.
I also worked on the text’s animation which was decided spontaneously. It was originally 3 edited photographs of the building with text. But then I didn’t like it so, I thought about a typewriter. This technique reflects on Julian being like a journalist where he is interested in something and is going to get the inside scoop.
Through our editing, we realise how bad our lighting was on one occasion for Julian’s intro and outro. To prevent this from becoming noticeable I decided to look like we have purposely edited the lighting to have a coloured filter. I adjusted the levels and added a hint of blue with a soft, dark outline boarder of the frame to appear ghostly. I feel this worked well with the story and was an easy solution.
How it influenced me?
From my group, I have gained the influence of learning to not step out of any boundaries. I learned through the process that helping people has different methods for different people. I learned you will always get put in difficult positions in big groups and small groups. People have different work ethics and I need to try learning how to work around that soon. I can be quite head strong and organised with possibly a big work load so it may be hard to work with sometimes. But I think I did a good job with this project and succeeded within our limitations of Greenwich, finding a good story.
Overall, I was really impressed with my group’s contribution. I feel production still needs a little work as a team in general but I felt I did my part professionally, but shouldn’t have been in the situation to direct when it’s not my responsibility. I was disappointed by the lack of access we had due to lighting. Which makes it not as scary as I had hoped for orginally in our aim of the documentary.
Bibliography
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IMDb. 2016. The Nightmare (2015) - IMDb. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3317522/. [Accessed 03 November 2016].
Meet Google Drive – One place for all your files. 2016. Meet Google Drive – One place for all your files. [ONLINE] Available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B7D8Ztx5ohBPZUNtMWdibzNwcFU. [Accessed 09 December 2016].
YouTube. 2016. They Walk with You Documentary - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN_-hPL7Iow. [Accessed 09 December 2016].
Putlocker9. 2016. Watch the Nightmare Full Movie Online Putlocker. [ONLINE] Available at: http://putlocker9.is/movie/the-nightmare?thirdparty=vidbull.com&videoid=kuc6o5vjpka3. [Accessed 09 December 2016].
SMUC - Só mais uma coisa. 2016. The Nightmare e o Fenômeno da Paralisia do Sono - SMUC - Só mais uma coisa . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.somaisumacoisa.com/2016/09/the-nightmare-e-o-fenomeno-da-paralisia.html. [Accessed 09 December 2016].
