Research, Influences & Planning

Our task was to create a 3-minute documentary related to Greenwich. After we were put into groups we had to select our roles; I was editor, Dominic was producer, Yashna was director, Conor was director of photography and Beth was on sound. We then discussed researching ideas, so we each prepared for our first production meeting by researching current documentaries and coming in with a concept for our production. A documentary I had found that I liked was about the secrets of body language [1]. I found the idea of showing how body language is used to be very interesting, so I thought it would be a good idea to apply theories from the documentary to the people of Greenwich.

The documentary idea that Dominic had brought was about gymnastics. Dominic had found a documentary telling the story of a gymnastics coach and his background, why he runs the group, and about his students [2]. The whole documentary had been filmed on GoPro’s which we all really liked the idea of. Out of all the ideas brought to the first meeting we decided that the gymnastics documentary idea was the best one, so we began making our pitch for the next seminar session. For our pitch we each created one slide of a power point and spoke about how we would use our role to produce our best documentary. As an editor I spoke about using a bright colour scale to create an upbeat atmosphere, using a mixture of slow and normal speed shots, alike what was used in the gymnastics documentary. I said I would work with the director of photography to get the perfect types of shots so that they can be edited nicely together for smooth transitions. Conor as director of photography said he would be using a GoPro for some shots, because we had liked the idea of filming on GoPro’s from our research.

Before the pitch, Dominic had already got into contact with multiple, local gymnastic groups, asking for permission to create a documentary about them, however the first group to reply said that they would be unable to facilitate us and recommended we ask other groups. About a week after our pitch, all of the organisations had either denied our request or had not replied, so we sought help from our lecturers as our plan for the gymnastics documentary had failed. One of the lecturers recommended us a gymnastics group outside of Greenwich who are often looking for advertisement, which we could give them with this documentary. So we then had permission to film outside of Greenwich and Dominic got into contact with the new group. We had to send them a couple of emails because they were not replying and we were getting tight on time, so after a week of them not replying we had to have another meeting to discuss our new plan.

In this meeting we discussed ideas that could replace the failed gymnastics one. Firstly, we went back to our original ideas from our research and one option was my idea for the documentary on body language. Another one that Conor had come up with was on the Maritime Museum. He thought we could look into how the museum is run, and, for example, look into their takings over a day, month or year. Another idea related to the museum was about Dominic’s Grandfather, and his links to the history. So we emailed the Maritime Museum asking if we were able to film anything like what we wanted there, Dominic also spoke to his Grandfather about the topic, however both tasks were unsuccessful and we were back to the drawing board with our idea again.

Our final idea was to make a documentary about buskers. This idea came about when Dominic found a busker in Greenwich and asked him if he would be interested in making a documentary, and got his contact details. We spoke to the man on several occasions, trying to sort out when he was playing so we could go and film, but we were struggling to arrange something as he was very vague with the dates and times he plays. After a week we decided we were unable to complete the documentary within Greenwich or with this busker, so we researched about busking in central London and where we were most likely to find someone playing, we had quickly found a website called Busk In London [3], which told us about the 'Busker's code', which is basically the laws that buskers must follow. It showed us a very large number of places that buskers could play around London. We used this to search for the best place for us to travel to to film. We found that Camden is a popular place for busking, so we decided that it would be a good place to go to create our documentary. After this we researched documentaries on busking and we found one that we liked, and used it as inspiration for our new idea [4]. On Friday the 2nd of December our group travelled to Camden to film, with the intent of filming multiple different buskers.

1. Psychology Tomorrow (2015) The body language documentary. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RmSQm9_o-c (Accessed: 8 December 2016).
2. GoPro (2016) GoPro: ‘Two roads’ - gymnastics with coach Liang chow (Ep. 7). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy9NeUTUuXE (Accessed: 8 December 2016).
3. London Busking map (no date) Available at: http://buskinlondon.com/map (Accessed: 10 December 2016).
4. Busker Stories (2016) Tash Sultana - Busker stories episode 1 (street music) documentary webseries. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2BSetAUL20 (Accessed: 8 December 2016). 

Original Pitch (Different From Final Idea)

Production and Ethical Requirements

In order to get our production completed on time, we had to miss a lecture one Friday. This is because we had to change our idea multiple times leaving us with very little time to complete it. During production, we first stopped at Canary Warf to film a busker we found in the station, however we were unable to film him for very long because of how busy the station was. We then moved onto Camden to start our search for buskers. As soon as we got out of the underground station we found a man called Terrence busking by the entrance. We quickly discussed as a group if we should ask to film him, and then Dominic went over to speak to him about our documentary. We found that he was happy to talk to us and tell us about himself and his music, so Conor went to film as Terrence spoke to us. My only regret is that we didn’t start filming him earlier as he was telling us about how he has had problems with drugs and alcohol in the past, because this would have deepened the story of our documentary. We managed to film him playing two different songs, which he then told us a bit about afterwards, like why he wrote them and what they mean to him, and then we asked him about his life and he told us about his family, and how he is having problems there. 

Our production meets legal and ethical requirements. While it does contain multiple uses of swearing, we discussed it and decided as a group that the documentary would be shown after the watershed. At one point during filming a police car with sirens on came past in the traffic, and because Terrence was talking to us about his family, he stopped and began swearing at the police, telling to “shut up” and so on. We became very wary from this point and on because we didn’t want to be involved with any trouble, but thankfully the police ignored him and moved on. As we managed to record this happening, we talked about including it in our documentary, however after some discussion we decided that it would be unethical to include this as it presented him in a certain way that would be unfair on him to do. At another point Terrence was talking about the government and the people that were against him and what he does, when he then said that he would “smash their faces”, and again we thought it would be unethical to use this footage.

During our conversation with Terrence we had attempted to leave several times as we had enough footage and we also felt quite uneasy talking to him due to him speaking quite violently at times. However, we found it difficult to leave as we couldn’t get him to stop talking, for example, when we said we had to leave to get back to class, he began asking questions about us to get us to stay. After we spoke to him for over an hour, we decided that we had enough footage of just Terrence to create our whole documentary, so we wouldn’t have to continue around Camden to find more buskers to film.

Link to raw footage, including mentioned unethical extracts 

Analysis and Evaluation of Documentary

Before we began filming we were having some trouble booking our equipment because our first booking attempt was rejected because of a problem with our risk assessment, so Dominic had to go and talk to the people in charge of equipment booking to sort out what was wrong. We made sure to take into account the effect the public would have on our filming, for example if it is very busy while we are filming (which it was), then we may not have room for the equipment, or we may get knocked and it messes up our filming or if we drop the equipment and cause damage. So we made sure to minimise risk by taking out smaller equipment, more suitable for the place we were filming.

During post-production, I was the editor so (along with help from the whole group) I selected the shots that I thought would fit in certain places, and I helped come up with the text input, also the speed of the transitions and cuts. I think that the transitions worked well, however one shot I am slightly happy with is when Terrence is singing and it cuts away to a beer can. I liked the shot, but I found it difficult to find a place in the song he was singing where it would match nicely. 

We had filmed two different buskers, and they were quite different in their style; the first guy we visited seemed more professional compared to Terrence, who appeared to be homeless. So from this I decided to make the beginning of the documentary look professional with steady shots and good sound, and then as we move on to Terrence the footage looks clearly handheld as it’s a bit shaky; we were aiming for a guerrilla filming technique. I am unhappy with the sound quality here as it slightly hinders our production and lowers its quality, however we added subtitles to the documentary so the audience would be able to understand what was being said. The problem with the sound quality was not the fault of Beth, who was in charge of sound, because we found Terrence, and speaking to him was a ‘spur of the moment’ kind of thing, and we didn’t have time to set up the microphone, also the street was very busy and if we brought out a boom pole and microphone we would have been inconveniencing the public. 

During a screening of our documentary to the rest of our year, I found that a couple of people laughed when Terrence was playing his guitar. I asked one of them afterwards and they said that they thought he wasn’t very good and they had found it funny. I was unhappy with this because we had tried hard during post-production to make sure the documentary was not funny as we didn’t want it to have this effect on the audience, we more wanted to show Terrence’s story of how he is struggling with life. They had also said that they had nervous laughter at one point because they found him to be violent and scary, but again we had tried to omit footage that presented him in this way.

Link to Documentary on Vimeo

Analysis and Evaluation of Group Work

I believe that everyone in our group worked well together; we got on well and didn’t have any personality clashes which can sometimes happen with group work. Within the group I feel that we all contributed well with our role in the production. However, we did have some problems with one member at the beginning of production because they weren’t attending our first few crucial meetings, so we spoke to them and made sure that they participated and contributed to the group. During filming, I wish that I could have helped more, but there was not much for me to do as we already had two people filming, and we did not need any more angles of the same action. We had a group chat which we used as our main contact with each other; we used it to arrange meetings and filming dates, and to discuss the work. My communication with the group was very good; I made sure to attend all production meetings, and I was active in discussions on our group chat, giving my opinion and feedback when it was appropriate.

In post-production I think that I contributed well to the editing of the documentary. I made sure that any unethical footage was removed, that the arrangement of shots worked well, that the transitions were smooth, and that the sound was good. However, there was not much that could be done for the sound as we were not skilled enough to remove the background noise as we needed more practice doing so.