Project evaluation
Making this documentary was completely different to how I ever imagined it would be. I never thought I would be able to say that I made a film during a pandemic and I'm proud to say that my group and I managed it. The process did not go how I first expected it to but thanks to the internet and online resources we were able to make it happen.
Coming up with Ideas:
When starting the project the first task we had was to come up with the idea. I have normally never found it too challenging to come up with an idea before but in this case I did find it quite tricky as it had to be something that we all as a group were passionate about. It also had to be something that fit with the brief "2020 Vision" (UCA, 2020:9) and as well as this something that personally related to us. We began to brainstorm different ideas and hall list what we personally thought affected us and our generation. The ideas that stood out the most to me and my group were all mental health based; so we knew this was our starting ground and we could begin to find ideas surrounding this. We researched online and find out that "The rate of suicides among under 25s increased by 23.7%, reaching 730 deaths in 2018"(Samaritans, 2018). This figure was shocking to us and we began to to consider what topics we could cover to do with mental health in younger people. None of us in my group had ever made a documentary before therefore we were already feeling quite apprehensive about making sure we had come up with the right idea. We began to do our own research and started to branch off into the idea of focussing it all around young people the main factors of mental health issues in young people. I felt really positive and passionate about this idea, however I also felt nervous as it is a very sensitive subject and I knew that it needed to be handled with a huge amount of consideration and care for the contributors. Furthermore I did feel excited about our idea and wanted to get straight into research and deciding on how we want to structure it as a whole. Below is a document that we created when deciding on how we potentially could lay it out and I felt very optimistic about these ideas.
Screenshot of our ideas for 'Falling Through the Cracks' documentary
We began to think of some contributors and reach out to them through sending emails out; for example I emailed a Doctor from my local Doctors surgery as well as a teacher asking if they would be available for an interview to ask what they believe to be the main negative factors on a young persons mental health. Unfortunately due to the Coronavirus situation starting to worsen a lot of people were unable to confirm if they would be able to help. This started to worry me and was a problem that I had never faced before in making films as there was a chance that no one would be available to contribute therefore we started to think about re shaping our idea.
As time went on the situation with coronavirus got worse to the stage where we were unable to go into university anymore and work with our group in person. This started to change things for us and we made the hard decision to find a new idea. This was a tough decision to make as we had all put a lot of research into the film, and to stop working on it was a shame but we knew that we would not be able to make the film that we first envisioned whilst having to stay inside. Looking back at this situation now it disheartens me that we could not follow with our initial idea however it turned out to be a great learning curve and I now feel that at some point on future we could go back to this initial idea and try to carry on with our research and create it.
We then had the task of deciding on a new idea, this had to be something that we could film and create in the current circumstances that the world was in. We listed the possible documentaries that we could make in the circumstances that we are in; most of them did surround the coronavirus topic due to that being the main reason that we had to change our idea and the reason that we could not go outside. I also informed my group of how I was planning on making a coronavirus video after the pandemic so I had already briefly interviewed my grandparents from a doorway as they had been told that they have to stay inside. I also had some B-roll of empty shelves in shops, empty streets in a town centre, and lots of shops starting to close. We talked about how we could try to create a documentary on coronavirus that would be different and that would stand out, our main worry was that the media was so saturated and full of videos we had to make sure that our one stands out compared the the others. We created a document like we had before where we listed different ideas and plans of how we could structure it, this was very helpful as we could draft down and share all of our thoughts.
Screenshot of 'When the World Locked Down' Ideas
Pre Production:
I would say the pre production phase of the unit was probably the most busy for me. This was because I was the Producer for the documentary therefore it was my responsibility to complete all of the paperwork, as well as finding our contributors. For the poem segment I had to find 28 contributors, I looked at the idea list and first of all started to message and ask people I know if they would be willing to take part in the poem section. I then started to reach out to people that I do not know; I began to send out some emails to local business owners, teachers, nurses and community members that run community projects. I sent out emails describing our plan for the video and asking if they would be interested in contributing in it, I was worried that I would not get many responses but I was actually impressed with the amount of responses that I ended up receiving. Below is an example of the email that I sent to a head teacher regarding the poem.
Screenshot of an email that I sent to a headteacher
My main priority for the poem and finding contributors was trying to find a vast representation of people, this includes ages, ethnicities and genders. I feel that I successfully achieved this as when reaching out to people I tried to cover a large variety as I really wanted to represent the whole community to show that everyone has been affected by COVID-19. I did some online reading and found out that "try not to rely 100% on the internet for casting because it can be limiting. Diversity is important in Tv documentaries." (Jolliffe, 2012:178) After reading this firstly I was slightly worried that I would not be able to find the contributors online and secondly that I would not be able to find a large variety of people to show. Despite reading this information I felt quite happy and proud that I had actually managed to find a large amount of contributors that are all of different ages, different ethnicities and different social backgrounds. I would say this is definitely one of my biggest achievements for the whole unit as it was one of the things that I was most worried about and did not want to underrepresent anyone in society as it is affecting everybody in different ways. Below is a screenshot of all of the contributor which shows just by image how different they are all.
Screenshot image of our contributors
I think something that I was also worried about was not being able to build up a good representation with our contributors. As the producer I feel that it is one of my responsibilities to have a strong relationship the the respondents involved in the documentary, but due to not being able to ever meet with them in person I feared I would not build this relationship. Despite this I ended up surprising myself as due to the large volume of emails that I ended up sending to all of our contributors due to the amount of information that I had to learn from them and also that I had to let them know what to do in regards to filming themselves so again I was happy with how this turned out.
A huge part of the preproduction for me was the level of paper work to complete. On my preproduction blog it highlights the amount of tables and forms that I completed in order to keep organised. Before this project the largest amount of contributors I have ever worked with for a film is four, so this was a huge step up for me as we had twenty eight. As I explained in my preproduction blog that meant that there were 28 consent forms for me to get signed by each contributor, and 28 risk assessments to complete. When I first found out that I needed to do this many assessments and forms I got worried as it was a very big task in front of me. Normally when creating a video I find it challenging to complete three or four risk assessments let alone twenty eight of them. I was scared to start them but thought it was best to get on with them as soon as I could. When I actually started them I got quicker and quicker at filling each one out and the more I was doing the more I was realising how it was actually benefiting me to fill that many out as now I will never feel intimidated about doing risk assessments again in the future. In terms of the consent forms I tried to make it as easy as I possibly could for contributors to complete by highlighting all the areas that they needed to complete; I believe this was effective as I received all of them back rather quickly and did not have to chase any up with was actually quite surprising as I expected to.
Because our preproduction involved so much paperwork, as producer I decided to make an online folder so that it could all be kept together and was easily accessible. This included shot lists and storyboards that I had worked on as well as all of the consent forms and this fixed the issue of being able to send paperwork online to my fellow group members. I feel that I helped to keep our group efficient and organised during the project due to these folders.
The next task that I completed and learned from was trying to reach out into the community. Our researcher Evie had mentioned how times are constantly changing and many people are starting to draw rainbows for our carers and put them up in their windows. This inspired me to try to find some rainbows and include them in our film, however I knew that I needed permission for this. Therefore I wanted to contact my community and thought the best way to do this would to be to post on an online facebook group. I'm glad that I did this as thankfully I received over thirty five responses. I contacted everyone that we thought had appropriate rainbows and asked them to send me a picture of their rainbow clearly displayed in their front window, I also got them to sign a consent form for the front of their property to be in our film. I'm so glad that we decided to include the rainbows and that I reached out to the community as they definitely stand out and help to enforce that hopeful and positive feel that our Director Matt wanted to create; and as his producer I wanted to make his visions happen.
A screenshot of the Facebook post asking for rainbows
An image of a rainbow in a window that we received
Overall I feel that the preproduction stage was extremely successful and I managed to achieve a lot more than I thought I would. I also feel that if I had not of been organised with the amount of paperwork then some would have gone missing or would not have been completed. In future though I would adopt these methods again and also use this organisation from the start rather than after already completing some forms.
Pitching:
I felt very nervous for the pitch, this is because I had never done a pitch over a video call before and also we had changed our idea a week before the pitch so we had to make some decisions such as contributors very quickly so that we were ready for it. In future I hope that there would not be a pandemic whilst making a film however there could be similar setbacks therefore in future I would always like to be prepared, whether that means having back up ideas and plans or just being certain on decisions that are made and quick with them; of course with still putting thought into them.
I created the below document with the information for the pitch:
This is the information that I recited during the face to face pitch. Our feedback from the pitch was:
- It is a great opportunity for why now.
- It needs to stand out compared to other coronavirus documentaries.
- We need to be careful with copyright and stay away from including any news clips due to them being big broadcasters.
- It is good that we are focussing on the positive side of COVID-19.
- State the negative facts as well as the positive aspects; how the world is improving yet people are dying.
- keep up with the research as lots is changing.
- Empower the audience with music and emotional connections.
- my section of pitch felt strong, a little more visuals would have helped though, what lifts it off the page?
- Focus on a BBC3 audience.
- Find a way to link the case studies.
Overall I felt rather positive about the feedback that we received and we tried to work on it straight away. We reviewed our footage and started to think of how we can link it, we talked about how we could show cutaways that we have during interviews. I also suggested how we could use uplifting and positive music as I saw in the 'Imagineering' documentary.
BBC:
In the brief it states how our documentary must be suitable for a BBC3 production and documentary. This lead me to research into BBC3 and what makes something suitable for BBC3 rather than any other channel. BBC as a whole has a remit to reflect and represent the whole of the UK. it also has a remit to inform, educate and entertain.
I began to link these to our film and feel that we succeeded in making it suitable for a BBC3 documentary, this is because:
- The fist section contains statistics and interviews, this section informs the audience of information and will teach them about the situation as a whole.
- In terms of educating we teach our audience about different peoples lives through the three interviews that are featured in our documentary and how they reveal information on coronavirus and how it affects their lives.
- Finally in terms of the entertain remit we have the poem section that works perfectly for this as it is uplifting and positive.
Therefore I do feel that our documentary does successfully fit all of the BBC remits as a whole. BBC3 is particularly famous for being different and standing out compared to other BBC channels. It focusses on other topics such as "Sex, Drugs, Crime, and LGBTQ+." These are all normally categorised as being different and being more risky topics compared to their other BBC channels. Even though our documentary is focussed on a topic that is very popular in the media at the moment and is very saturated however we wanted to make ours different and a little risky.
I had a look on BBC3 website and discovered "a commissioner wants to know why the programme is good for BBC3 not just the BBC" (BBC3 Commissioning) therefore I started to reason why it is good for BBC3 and it does have that risk that other BBC3 programmes also have. The main risk I believe it holds is that it is positive, this may sound strange but when researching many coronavirus documentaries at the moment are all very negative and ours is different because it focusses on some positive aspects and how we should have hope for the future. It also has such a wide variety of contributors that it clearly represents the whole of the UK with who features in it. Therefore I do believe that we did quite a good job of making a documentary suitable for BBC3.
Production:
The production stage did not go at all as I thought it would. By the time the production stage had started the situation with COVID-19 in the UK had worsened; unfortunately a member of my family contracted the virus and passed away just as the production phase had begun. This took away all of my motivation for the subject for a few days, as this was the first time that the pandemic had hit really close to home. However this was also in the time period when I started to receive some poem videos through. Although I felt sad and did not want to think about it too much the videos began to uplift me and after a few more days I grew a passion that I did not have before for the subject. Even though I had been a first hand witness to how tragic the virus can be, it gave me a motivation to prove that there is hope that that it has bought us close together. Working on the documentary also gave me a distraction from lockdown and made me focus on my passion of filmmaking.
I had already filmed some elements of the video prior to the production week. This was because I had interviewed my grandparents a few weeks before for personal use but we decided to use this video in the film. I had also recorded myself getting upset after visiting my grandparents and was unsure of whether or not to add it to the documentary, but after discussing it with my fellow group members we decided it would be good to include it and a good bridge for connections between interviews and to also portray how coronavirus can make people really feel.
When it came to interviews, we obviously could not set them up in the way that we had initially wanted to which was frustrating, however we all agreed to try our best with any footage. not being able to take out kit was definitely a big setback however I did not want this to stop us from achieving the best shots that we could get in the circumstances. I had a look at different theories surrounding documentary production and filming and this was useful to us, especially the book 'Directing the Documentary' and the five golden rules that it states. One of them in particularly stood out to me which states "you cannot prepare for the worst." ( Rabiger, 2009:178 ) This statement and point really made me motivated during production. Although it was just a phrase I felt that it perfectly represented out production with being in lockdown and then unfortunately myself with loosing a family member, and that you can never ever prepare for what might happen. This is a lesson I will take with me on all of my future projects and that even if everything feels it is going wrong we still mange to create a film we are proud of. We just carried on filming as good as we could and stayed motivated in order to showcase our skills.
Post Production:
Post production was one of the most stressful parts of the project, however we still worked as hard as we could. First of all many of the poem videos took longer than myself and then contributors anticipated to complete. This meant that I did have to chase up a few contributors as it got closer to the hand in date. I was respectful of people being busy and that their poem videos will not be their priorities therefore I gave contributors two weeks to send them back but some did take a little more than this. It did cause a bit of a panic towards the end of the unit as I was scared that we would have to find new contributors at the last minute. Unfortunately a few days before the fine cut one of our contributors did drop out but luckily I had already got a back up who had signed a consent form and I had already completed a risk assessment for. However once I had used the back up I was nervous that another would drop out and I did not have anymore back ups but luckily this did not happen. However it did teach me to be very prepared for situations like this and if I am using a large amount of contributors to make sure that I have a few back ups to cover every base.
Also during the edit out editor Matt's laptop unfortunately broke which meant that Luke had to take over as he was the only other person with the appropriate editing equipment. A struggle that we did have was being able to send over the footage to Luke as we had all filmed separate parts for the documentary and I had put it into Matt's hard drive, however for sending it to Luke it had to be done over the internet which took much longer than anticipated and this meant that we were behind for our first cut. Myself and Matt did create a rough editing script for Luke to help him with editing efficiently in the short time frame and he told us that this did help him so I am glad that we did it.
Due to the circumstances I could not contribute much to the actual edit process other than the script due to not being able to see Luke however I did try to help by noting down Beth's feedback during each of the cuts that we had and also adding some of my own opinions to them. Here are the notes that I made for each cut:
Screenshots of the feedback
It was beneficial having the feedback though as we did discuss as a group the changes that we could make. For example a point that Beth raised was that the transitions were very jarring, so as a group we worked on the solution of having music to help them flow along with adding some text between the shots to explain briefly the circumstances but this helped to add a sense of unity to the film.
Being a Producer:
A producer is a role that I have always been interested in trying but never actually tried out. Even though this documentary was create during the coronavirus pandemic, I thoroughly enjoyed the role and creating the film. I started by researching some qualities of producers and this is what I found:
- You need good communication skills.
- You need patience.
- You need availability.
- You need management skills.
- You need to be be positive.
These were all attributes that I felt I have, but I wanted to prove that I could do be a good producer. I started by creating the online drive folder for my group, as this allowed us to share any useful information digitally, as well as be organised with storing work. I tried to help my group as much as possible for completing tasks, for example with the treatment that we created I outlined an idea on each slide and then grouped them, the slides consisted of: Style, Facts, Storytelling and Contributors. Then asked my group what they wanted to cover and distrusted the slides this way so that everyone was researching and writing what they felt comfortable with. I also tried to help with creating a template for transcripts and writing documents for Evie and Luke on what needed to be written in the script and the poem. For communication I created a group Facebook chat so that we could discuss ideas on there and it was another way to contact each other. I suggested to the group it may be a good idea for us to call regularly on video call to discuss any developments and these became regular and were a great chance to help each other with challenges we were facing in the project and overcoming them. The attribute that I struggled with the most was having patience, mainly with the poem clips and waiting for them to come back as there were so many I wanted to make sure they were all back in time for the fine cut; which they were, but it definitely stressed me out. Therefore in future I would like to produce again but try to have a little more patience to avoid stress in the edit week.
I also had a look at some Producers and became really interested in Sam Bailey. He is a directer and a producer for the BBC and specialises in documentary making. I read his article and felt particularly interested in his words "be in control, don't be afraid to ask your contributor to do something." (Bailey, 2016) The reason that this impacted me was because I did feel a little wary in asking contributors to do certain things, for example I felt slightly worried to ask them to film themselves and to actually reach out and get in contact with people that I had never met before and ask them to be involved. I did not want to feel as if I was annoying people by asking them or inconveniencing them however when watching Baileys short film and reading his advice it did impact me and I looked up to him as he is a producer that has also had to do some filming to create his films and I feel that is myself with this project. Therefore when he said it is okay to be in control and to ask for things to help the film I felt more confident about reaching out to people.
In conclusion I have really enjoyed this unit. It did not go at all how I imagined it to although it has been the biggest learning experience for filmmaking that I have ever had. I am incredibly proud for our groups efforts and feel that together we have worked extremely hard to try and create the best documentary that we can. I feel that it has helped me grow so much confidence in making films as we managed to pull it off during a pandemic, I am extremely happy with how the video has turned out and feel that it captures what we wanted to achieve; creating a hopeful and positive documentary that will give the community hope for the future and that stands out compared to other coronavirus films.
Here is the list of contributions for the project, everyone had an equal part to play and it would not have been possible without having such a great group:
Bibliography:
UCA (2020) Documentary Unit Handbook. At: https://learn-eu-central-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/5d11c85256e5e/514500?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27HANDBOOK%2520doc%2520comm%25202020.pdf&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200514T155028Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21599&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAZH6WM4PLYI3L4QWN%2F20200514%2Feu-central-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=d0121163bc919e088277d0cda18a20bfefcc89573762758c99a5fb9377eae504 (Accessed on 12.05.2020)
Samaritans (2018) Suicide Facts and Figures. At: https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/research-policy/suicide-facts-and-figures/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmdzzBRC7ARIsANdqRRlJAwK6amtDSy-mjcSlpg40xbKkkUghmIRbyaMeMZqLZvTutzZqTHsaAuRLEALw_wcB (Accessed on 13/03/2020)
Jollifee, G. (2012) The Ultimate Guide to Documentary Filmmaking [online] At: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FckxVmkNuxAC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=documentaries+having+large+variety+of+people&source=bl&ots=DJQN3Swje6&sig=ACfU3U0WvuHmhBGptujubOaIPoRUI5N1Zw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiL18r7ibTpAhW5ShUIHXDnAwUQ6AEwDXoECBEQAQ#v=onepage&q=documentaries%20having%20large%20variety%20of%20people&f=false (Accessed on 12.05.2020)
Longform Commissioning on Three [online video clip] Sillery. BBC Documentaries (4 mins) At:https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/articles/documentaries-bbc-three
Rabiger, M. (2009) Directing the Documentary [online] At: https://ucca.ent.sirsidynix.net.uk/client/en_GB/default/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:476751/ada?qu=directing+documentary&lm=EBOOK (Accessed on 13.05.2020)
Bailey, S.(2016) Self Shooting actuality At: https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112136087 (Accessed on 14.05.2020)
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