Final Production & Evaluation

I chose to base my documentary subject on preserving music and different musicians because when I looked at the ephemeral brief I saw the word ‘preserve’. This then gave me the idea to try and spread the message about why we should ‘preserve’ musical skills that have been learnt and passed down for years. I wanted to spread this message because music is such a big part of my life and since I began learning my instrument it has helped me so much with confidence and making friends. In my documentary I wanted to spread this message by interviewing other musicians and finding out whether the same things have happened to these people as well. This would then help me to spread the message and give other people reasoning to why we should ‘preserve’ musical skills. Over this project I looked at many specialist materials to help me achieve my goal of creating a good quality documentary with a clear message. For example, I first looked at other music documentaries to use as inspiration. I used these other short documentaries to analyse different aspects of music documentaries and the methods that they used to spread a clear message. I also completed lots of pre-production which I used to give me my first ideas of how I wanted my documentary to be structured and how I wanted to film it. An example of something I completed in my pre-production to prepare for this was my proposal/ treatment which included a narrative, a structure, my target audience and even a key scene which I later on helped me to film my first interview. I was able to develop a good idea of my concept and ideas by researching my chosen topic and specialist context to find out how I can link my subject to the brief I chose at the beginning. I was able to meet my aims and the requirements of my brief by basing my documentary over the word in the brief I decided to use which is ‘preserve’. In my final documentary the message that I spread is all about ‘preserving’ music and the documentary suits the ephemeral brief because music is something that is ‘temporary and short-lived’ and it ‘only exists for a moment’. I think that this is the idea I give about music in my documentary because in all of the interviews, the interviewees talk about how they feel when they are playing music and how we need to ‘preserve’ these skills to keep this short feeling that musicians get passed down.

Over the period of this project, I have used many different specialist techniques and processes to present ideas and outcomes that meet the brief requirements. One of the specialist techniques that I found very helpful was looking at different interview techniques and camera angles. This is because from this research I learnt which shots are best for spreading different messages and I also learnt which styles of interviews can be used to give different types of information. For example, in this research I learnt that an interview with an ‘interrotron’ camera angle helps to give the best connection between the viewer and the interviewee. This is why I used this camera angle for the final question about preserving musical skills in one of my interviews because I wanted the viewer to have the best connection with the interviewee for the most important question. Another technique that helped me a lot to support my exploration of ideas was creating a storyboard and a set design in my pre-production. This is because I was able to use the shots, I designed in my storyboard to then think about how I want my set to be designed and laid out so I can achieve these shots I planned. Finally, I think that the best and most effective technique that I used to support my exploration of ideas was creating a test scene. This allowed me to bring together everything that I had researched in my initial research, my pre-production and my action research. I was able to include different interview angles, my storyboard, set design, and even the microphone I chose to use. I found creating a test scene incredibly useful because it gave me my first good idea of how I wanted to edit my interviews and what type of footage I needed to capture to fit my brief. The test scene helped me to experiment with different editing techniques to find out how I wanted to edit my B-roll. The test scene gave be the ability to go through a process of experimentation to find out how I wanted my interviews to look to develop and refine a professional looking documentary. Finally, creating this test scene was the most effective technique for exploring ideas and meeting my brief requirements because I was then able to both test out colour correction techniques and also think about methods and techniques, I could use to further implement my brief requirements into my documentary. Throughout this project I think that I have also adapted well to unforeseen practical and technical problems. For example, I began filming as soon as a could so I would have time to re-shoot in case there was any filming issues. In my first interview when I looked over the footage, I realised that even though the room was well-lit the camera did not pick up any light meaning that the shots were darker than I wanted them to look. Therefore, I adapted to this by reshooting the interview footage and then taking some of the B-roll footage from the first interview attempt and colour correcting it. By colour correcting the B-roll footage I was able to remove a lot of the shadows and increase the highlights which made the shots brighter allowing me to include some of them into my final edit.