dfsa documentry- screen shots from editing

dfsa documentry - self reflection

how i thought the project went 

i think the project went very well. alot of the things ended up being last minuit but we ended up getting a well put together documentry i was happy with and i believe fit the breif but also was something i was proud of.


things that could of been better 

i wish i had spent more time on colour grading. i am also worried that it wasnt encoded right so might cause problems a viewing. (fix later) i also feel it could of included more things attacking bigger issues. i still like its relatablity. I also wish i had been more careful with lighting with draw my life. i also wished i had moved away from the pervious idea quicker as it didnt work.

how i feel my performance was 

i feel i did very well in this project. i took control when we needed it but also knew where peoples skills lyed so alowed them to work on them. i feel i was fair and allowed people enough influence. i made sure the film actually was made and worked alot of the treatment and overall stucture of shots and the edit. i kept everything on the right direction and put in the extra man hours to acheice the result i wanted. i think one thing i could do better would be to have better comunicaiton with the extent of the stuff i was doing.

documentry - story board and shot list

this is the story board i did for the documentry

there is a few pages for this 

this is the shot list 

i took both of these onto the shoot. 

dfsa documentry - editing

editing 

we had all the shots done at this point and were ready to edit. 

on monday we looked at all the shots we had and it was up to umor, chloe and luke to organise the clips and give them names so we could do the editing easier later. 

whist they did this it was my job to do the transcript for the interview. 13 double pages. 

this took the whole day of monday. i also looked over the naming of the files to make sure the fitted together. 

on tuesday i started to work on the script for the draw my life part. we thought it was the best idea to start this so we could get the pacing of the film. whilst we did this chloe looked for a song whilst umor looked into editing the gopro fotage to my prefernces. 

i did a first edit of the go pro fotage to show umor the way it should look. 

the whist he did that i worked on the script for the draw my life. i looked through the transcript and changed into first person and added bit of personality to it. 

on wednesday i work on the shot list for the draw my life with luke 

I looked through script and wrote the type of shots i wanted and practiced with luke. 

these are the final ideas for shots we can do. i researched into the techniques of draw my life and was ready to do it the next day. 

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-%22Draw-My-Life%22-Video

also this day i did the paper edit. 

on thursday we did the draw my life part of the film. 

we set up the shot and set the lighting using my dslr and led light. 

we then went through each shot and did the draw my life for it. pictures of the set up was taken by chloe. the me luke went through each shot. it went pretty well. 

on friday i wrote the script for the voice over for the walk. i also found our voice actress. 

this was two 4 page documents. it took all day. as i did it i help umor with the prelimary edit of the draw my life and other parts. 

on saturday we did the voice over for the documentry. me and umor met up with lainey and set up my dslr with shotgun mic. this went well. we made sure she was comfrtable and had a good idea of the snynopsis. 

we the listened through the parts and started organising the edit. 

on sunday we edited the voice over and started cliping it to visuals for the draw my life. by the end we had all the draw my life clip to each voice. 

sunday night i went through the second part of voice over making each voice clip seperate and the best take. i then organised the visuals for the walk part of the doucmentry and running part. 

on monday. I put the sound togther with the visuals i did. this took a while but ended up going well. i then gave it to umor to do the sort out the draw my life. i then put the race scene togther i did and did a bit of tweecking and sorted out levels. then umor took over the racing bit under my direction to get it right. whilst he did that i found and downloaded the soundeffects and put them togehter to create the sound scape. 

then we put it all together a i smoothed it out and made sure it all fitted. this involved cutting bits i didnt like. 

then we made the music go over the top. 

and finally added the colour correction adjustment layer. 

finally we exported it. 

(i'm not able to open the file on my laptop so I can't show the edit right now. but it should be able to be seen on umor blog for now i hope) 

dfsa documentry - draw my life

for my documentary i want to use draw my life to illustrate the parts of the dogs history we can see. this is something many youtubers use to show their life before youtube. 

from this video i can see go ligthing is very important and strong colored pens
also using movement of the camera to illustrate more of the picture.

from looking at these videos ive seen that simple drawings are best. also strong colours add alot of emotion to the pictures. also keeping the hand clear as it moves is important so it doesnt blur. this means i will have to practice with both stop motion and sped up shots.
i will try with my dslr.

dfsa documentry- treatment

Documentary treatment & script  

Scene 1

Option1

Draw focus .Open up to close up shot of dog in bed (camera still)

Voice over “that’s me”  (recorded in post)

Voice over starts talking and the shots cross fades into a draw my life version of the dog.

option 2

double exposure behind dog sleeping which transitions into draw my life (dream effect) heart beat sound.

 

The drawings of dog from puppy to training to racing to rehoming to home in draw my life version. (Discuss visuals in post)

Last shot super close up of dogs face. Cross fad to live action dog.

Lady’s voice “walk”

 

Scene 2

Switches to go pro shots.

Go pro shot walking through the park. Films all the interactions between the dog and it environment. Edited to look smooth and keep pace.

Voice over created from interview, first person inner monologue about the dog’s life over the shots.

Inter cut with establishing shots of the park. (decide to use in editing)

 

Scene 3

Race scene. With sound over of race track sound effects.

Dog running go pro intercut with other shots from other camera. Use slow mo

 

 

dfsa documentry - people to contact (notes)

people to contact

 

 

 

park people

 

 

Nigel   (fluggy dogs)

01252 850 400

need for interview


Jill (retired greyhound)
01252 712 014

need for filming and interview





other dog owners


penny bonner (mum)

*yes

harry hutchins (staffie owner)

*message sent


dave and gail (nabours)

*visit

leseley   (aunt)

*message sent

yes call her. let her know before

molly (friend)

*message sent

Wednesday evening


 

dfsa documentry - filming dates

Monday :

finish post production forms



Tuesday:

 gopro practice with my dogs




Wednesday :

filming with jill  2:30 - onwards



Thursday :

filming of backup idea




Friday:

filming with jill (if needed)

dfsa documentry - jill (greyhound owner)

I called Jill today to get times and more information for the documentary

she was still interested
I found out her second name for the production forms
found out her address so we can meet and do the interview
I found out if we could film a walk which she said was good.
then found out dates and times. we are doing Wednesday at 2:30 but if we don't get everything she said Friday would be good to.

I then talked about the gopro which she said should be fine and we can try out.

dfsa documentry synopsis

Synopsis

 

 

A documentary about the connection between a dog owner and their dog. The film also explores the effect of rehoming and the adopting of racing dogs after their career. This will be shown through a firstly a “draw my life” animation exploring the past of the dog and an exploration of the life of the dog via a point of view camera showing his walk around the park. The documentary is enhanced by the first person voice over coming from the dog’s point of view.

dfsa documentry- cinemotography and story inspiration

inspiration for using a gopro on the dog to get a closer to the subject

inner monologue inspiration 

dfsa documentry - production and contacts

production 

chloe is our producer so alot of the production stuff was handled by her whilst i was directer and cinemotograher so alot of the idea creation and treatment of the documentry was done by me. obvously in a small documentry like this the roles are shared slightly so this is the production stuff I did. 

for my first idea we were going to go with homeless army veterans. at the time i got talking to a random lady at the west end centre and told her i was a art student wanting to make a documentry. she said she was a leader of the homeless shelter in aldershot and said i should contact her and maybe make a documentry on them if it painted them in a good light. we discussed past projects and ideas she had and the lack of awarness for retired homeless vererans. i was very intrested in the idea and got her details. 

we ended up not following this lead due to idea devolplment but i will keep this information for a future project. 

we the focused on the retied greyhound idea. we let chloe contact some places then me and umah contacted the others (luke wasn't around and needed to be swift) 

i firstly contacted celia cross in guildford 

the seemed fairly positive and said i should send them a email so they can show their manager. i sent one and got no response for days so called back and got the same treatment. this felt disapointing but a little like a dead end. i then decided to team up with umah to contact some not greyhound focused places as maybe the issue was the controvesy behind the issue. 

 I decide to go for the big guns and contact the only possible race track we could go for. swindon racetrack. despite my best effects at friendliness and honesty with the fact of being completly no biased their imediate and none refuting reply was "we don't allow filming here". i knew from the phone opporators bluntness and rudness with no compramise that they really didn't want any light be shone on the evil parts of this sport. so we decided we needed to 100% focus on the retired aspect. 

i then contacted some other places. 

we looked at what animal centres we around us and looked on the websites to get contact details. we had decided at this point that emails were fairly useless and to only focus on calling,

we liked the idea of doing dogs trust but it was too far away and our group wasn't willing to go that far so i dropped that contact. 

we got in contact with the retired greyhound trust but they said they wern't able to allow filming. therefore we move on. 

I had a brief think back to the retired racehorse idea. but again with this place the needed email which i didn't get a reply to. 

starescue looked like it could be interesting but from there website they had no dogs for adopting which is worrying. also every time i called i was sent to voice mail. i decided this was probebly not a full on regitistered charity and more someone working out of their own home so moved on. 

we then got in contact with the rspca. most of the time we were send to voicemail but one time we got through but again we had the same problem that the wouldn't let us talk to whoever was in charge only send a email as much as i tried to convince them otherwise. 

we finally contacted battersea which again we had to use email. surprising they got back to us. sadly it was a no due to the large amount of numbers of people trying to do the same thing. 

this was the moment I decided we had to look at this from a different way dog charities seemed very unwilling to allow us to do our project involving them. both my contacts and chloes had heded no positive results. I figured that dog charities were weary of people given them a bad light or putting a bad spin on practices so wouldn't allow filming. also the fact that we arn't a professional film crew alot of places found it easy not to take our course easly. maybe it was a mastake trying to takel a big issue topic at this level. i decided however you could do hot pocket issue but just not through convential methods. and through talking to anne we decided to go at getting a contact a diffrent way. 

It was starting to become very last minite. and due to my group not being avilible on the weekend it was up to me to find our contact. 

I know one person who owns a staffie so that could be a contact so i will be contacting him today. 

secondly i will be going around farnham park. talking to strangers and trying to see if anyone would be interested there. (braving the cold) 

finaily i had another idea. it is a revamp of the documentry idea and isn't so mainstream documentry but i like the idea. this idea won't involve anyone elses dog. i can just use mine. 

i will explain the ideas more in "idea devolopment" but put simply. dog point of view documentry and my other idea. the white dove of farnham. 

i will post my progress on here once the day is done. 

i'm back here are my notes from the trip. 

first people i talked to didn't seem to interested but i will maybe contact them if we need them. 

the next 3 i had brief chats with but the wern't interested i got practice at talking to strangers though and learnt about their dogs. 

the last two are the best ones. the first "nigel" has 4 fluffy dogs. he was interested and said i should call him and leave my details which i will. he will be good for one of the ideas. 

the second one was really good. she had a retired greyhound and was very intrested and we talked about her dog for a while. she will be perfect for the first one of our ideas. 

for the second idea i will have to contact people i know who have dogs 

my family 

my aunt 

my friend harry 

my nabour dave and gail 

my nabours 

people i met in park today 

random people in park. 

dfsa documentry - contacts

shooting brief explanation

for the shooting we decided there where a few shots we needed.
we split cameras into one for long shots and one for close ups.

firstly we started with two wide angle shots of the whole dance for safety shots.


then we did a similar thing but one camera high angle on a step ladder and the other low near the floor.

finally we decided to do following shots one of us focusing on one dancer the other on the other dancer

then we choose shots we would want one dancer close one in the background and shot those.

finally we did close ups as we knew they would be important.

dance video - editing

i started as a novice at premier pro. i hadn't had much experience and needed to improve to get the overall outcomes i wanted from this project. i talked and worked with phil and decided to do a simple continuity video first to get used to premier pro and improve my skills for the final video. i only used my footage as i was used to it and believed i could create the best continuity video from this.

as you can see this is just a simple continuity video. i used a mixture of wide shots to show connection and closes ups for intimacy. i then wanted to show the deterioration of relationships through this video so i added an adjustment layer which desaturated. 

from this idea i came up with the idea of abbusivie relationships and decided to create a drama in my dance video.   

i then worked on this little sequence to practice with dramatic use of the footage. 

i used the contrast between black and white and colour to show the difference between the characters and the abusive causing her to lose her individuality. i really liked this sequence so decided to continue with it for my final video. 

i then expanded the sequences and created more story. 

i then finished the story. i was happy with it's layout and worked hard to make it still make continuity sense and added transitions to create fluid motion.  but i knew it needed effects to really hit home the ideas of the piece.

from my research i found i really liked the idea of double exposure so decided this would be a good place start. i worked with phill to see how best to do this. first we worked with overlaying which i did like for a certain part of the plot to show the repeating of abuses in these kind of relationships. 

i firstly created the repeated sequence. 

i then overlaid them over the part of the story i thought most fitted the meaning and used colour punch techniques to get the most satisfy visual asethic to match the meaning. i worked a lot with colour balance and the type of overlay to use till i was happy. 

i really liked this technique and wanted to push it further for another part of my video. i wanted the dance to take part on the face of the dancers to show their own inner thoughts about the piece. 

i had to ask how to do it. i show phill the true dectetive opening (which he had seen already) and asked if i could create this. he said it would be difficult to create the exact thing as it would of been shot with that in mind and use after effects but said i can simulate and similar effect with equal power. he taught me how to extract certain colours from the piece and overlay video on it. this created this firstly. 

these are the effects i used. i really like the image. i worked a lot with colour tolerance and finess to make sure not to much of the detail was lost in the face. i loved the black and white nature of it. made it very pure and deep. 

i then added it over the piece. 

i really liked the effect of this and it really captured what i wanted. 

i had to work with the position of the front and back image to make sure the overlaid properly and i also work with colour balance to make the back image work. 

  i then thought about subtitles. my film had no music at this point so was silent so i really liked the idea of subtitles to help the viewer see the inner thoughts of the actors at points. i didn't want to over do it so only did small phrases and not important moments to push the feeling of the piece. 

i think it works. many might not agree but it think it adds a subtle power to the piece. 

i then added pictures. this was a call back to my tree of life inspiration. i made sure it wasn't in the piece even though i practiced with that but it took away from the feeling. i like it at the front and end as it created a emotional conceptual feel. 

i then used colour correction on the shots which were out.

my final thing was the music and i decided  to write my own music with my bass guitar and audio recorder. i had some inspiration 

i liked this song as the bass line was the main element of the song and had strong effects and reverb. i like how different effects where put on the similar bass line to create more power and change the feeling of the song

my other inspiration was radiohead. which i had similar effects to the other song. but this song added long high notes to feed over the bass line. i wanted to do a similar thing with a violin. 

i then had inspiration from jazz and bass players like jaco pastitorous. all these fed into my final song. 

i used my fender squire fretless bass as it had the most jazzy smooth feel i wanted. i spend a lot of an evening sat in my room writing different grooves till i found the one i wanted. 

i then used my boss audio recorder to record the song. i used a couple of preset effects to create the sounds i wanted for the different parts of the song. 

i then had to transcode the files to make them wav files to put in my video. 

i then put the parts of the song together and faded them in and out to create fluidedy between them. i then adjusted the levels accordingly. 

i then had my final video. i then exported it.