Contents Page
Art Direction – New Storyboards (Stokes Café footage, GoPro footage) – Location Reece (Stokes Café)
Artist Research – Filming with a GoPro – A film about Coffee – Phillip Clemo – Michael Moore – Breaking Bad – Coffee 101: Behind the Buzz – Modern Family – Memento – The Lumiere Brothers
Background research about subject – Selection of drinks available at Starbucks (Images 1-4) – The Stokes Coffee Journey (Image 5) – Coffee Passion (Images 6,7,8,9) – Research into the topic – Coffee Production and Labour (Images 10,11) – Coffee and the Environment (Image 12) – Different types of Coffee (Image 13) – Image 14, Arabica Coffee – Images 15,16, Coffee History – Major Coffee Producers (Image 17, Map) – Images 18,19, National Geographic Research
Behind the Scenes – Test Shooting on Location (Stokes Café) – Original Storyboards
Bibliography – Sources used for planning and research
Deleted Scenes – Practicing filming with a GoPro (3x videos of rooftop tour at Lincoln Cathedral)
Diary of Production – Production schedules of whole production (From pre to post)
Evaluation
Final Production
Professional Liaison – Risk Assessment (For filming at Stokes Café) – Emails (3x permission to film at Stokes Café, 1x confirmation of booking of equipment)
Project Outline – Initial thoughts and ideas, Rough Sketches, Ideas for lighting, Different camera angles/shots, Rough Sketches, Recording additional sounds
Trailer
What is Documentary?
”Documentary Films strictly speaking, are non-fictional, “slice of life” factual works of art – and sometimes known as cinema verite. For many years, as films became more narrative-based, documentaries branched out and took many forms since their early beginnings – some of which have been termed propagandistic or non-objective.”
-http://www.filmsite.org/docfilms.html
Codes and conventions of documentary
Researching the different codes and conventions used in documentary filmmaking
The 5 different modes of documentary;
1. Expository – Expository documentaries speak directly to their audience, this is normally shown by having commentary, voiceovers or titles, to help show the strong argument and/or point of view. They are rhetorical films that want to try to persuade the viewer. The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds ‘objective’.
Example of Expository Documentary
2. Observational – Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.
-http://productiontechniques12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/codes-conventions-of-documentary.html3
Example of Observational Documentary
3. Interactive – draw the filmed people and events into direct contact with the film maker. The content of the interactive documentary is based primarily on interviews, which draw out specific comments and responses from those who are filmed. An interactive documentary that is made well will allow the filmed people to express their opinions and views, and the film maker may juxtapose one opinion with a contrary opinion, therefore offering the spectator a balanced view. Sometimes the film maker is the main person on screen, which may serve to hold the documentary together. There are a number of ways in which the film maker may interact with the people he or she is filming. The film maker may appear on screen and will, formally or informally, ask the interviewee questions. Here, both film maker and interviewee share the same space and the spectator can see them interacting with one another. The film maker therefore clearly acts as a mediator between the interviewee and the spectator. Or the film maker may remain off screen, in which case we may or may not hear the questions. All we see is the interviewee addressing answers to someone just beyond the frame.
– http://productiontechniques12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/codes-conventions-of-documentary.html
Example of Interactive Documentary
4. Reflexive – Reflexive documentaries don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this sub-genre of films. They prompt us to “question the authenticity of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’ It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to ‘defamiliarize’ what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.
– http://productiontechniques12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/codes-conventions-of-documentary.html
Example of Reflexive Documentary
5. Performative – Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1991). This sub-genre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc) to ‘speak about themselves.’ Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.
– http://productiontechniques12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/codes-conventions-of-documentary.html
Example of Performative Documentary
3 different conventions used in documentaries;
1. Realism – handheld camera, real people involved, real actions/events, filmed in real locations, voiceovers/talking head, one sided.
2. Dramatization – Dramatizing scenes allows the filmmaker to create an aesthetic for appreciation by the audience and a visual cue for potentially uncaptured reported events. When the audience is allowed a visual memory of something, even if the footage is false, then the idea put across is taken as being more real, or factual. Film goers are also used to seeing cinema that is, well, cinematic. The stylistic elements of a film, i.e. choreographed shots, well placed edits, etc. are what draw the viewer into a fiction film and allow the movie to be viewed as it’s own world, it’s own reality, for the period of time during which the viewer is engaged. Using the same tricks in a documentary can capture an audience members attention and allow them to fall into that riveted and accepting state of being.
– http://docfictions.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/dramatization-in-documentary.html
3. Narrativisation – Narrativisation is normally always seen or heard in a documentary. Narrative is an effective way of addressing to the audience and telling the story or in this case the documentary. Narrativisation can also drag on a bit so you have to be careful on how much you are using depending on what type of documentary it is.
– slideshare.net/JakeKemp/documentary-conventions