Individual Analysis
In this essay I aim to critically analyse my work throughout the documentary process. I will include my research, the planning and managing of the project, the role I had within my production team Red Cherry Productions, the way in which the group and I made decisions throughout the documentary making process, the way in which I improved the designs of the major product and the technical elements and skills in which I improved upon throughout the process. I will also discuss how my group resolved the small issues we faced.
The first few weeks of our project consisted mainly of research into different possible documentary ideas as a group we came up with several good ideas and several as individuals. Having many ideas was very important because not all ideas were going to work due to, the availability of the topics main subjects, whether it was physically possible (i.e. the location may be in an other country) Lastly whether the topic was relevant and interesting. One of main back up ideas came from a conversation between myself and Harry Webb (Producer) this was about the American TV show Man Vs. Food, from which the idea of competitive food eating was thought up. We expanded upon this finding out that the UK food competitions scene had not really been looked into leaving this Documentary idea open for us to create if we had wanted to.
Another idea I had was to something different from the norm and make an experimental Documentary using a similar style to Andy Warhol’s experimental Docs. This would use an observational mode to explore different topics. One topic I came up with would have been to look at the life of commuters. This would have included a section of the doc revolving around A single shot video of the Motorway. This is similar to Warhol’s work on Empire.
In the end we came to the decision that our best idea was that about the Brony community. So this led to harry and Michaela the producer and director to contact several online forums about arranging some discussions and meetings. This led to us finding out about the season four premiere, in which Harry secured us permission to go and film. This took place in London at the horse and stables pub. This became the location for the documentary. All the while we continued working on our website, communicating with primary sources and working on other pieces of media work.
As a group we travelled up to London for the day of filming. On arrival we filled in a few forms and quickly set about thinking about shot and filming ideas. As the pub began to fill up I set about collecting several ambience recordings. I wanted to collect several ambiences at different volumes and some with singing, music and other general noise to have a range to choose from when editing. On the day I worked closely with Johnny who was camera operating at the time. This was very important so that all the video had good quality audio to accompany his visual recordings. I also made sure we took a rode mic to leave on the camera at all times. I set the level of the rode generally low to avoid any peaking in changing circumstances.
I used the Marantz and gun mic to collect all of my sound. These are good choices as they allow me to be portable and separate from the camera when needed. So I could get places that the camera could not necessarily go to record sound. This worked well and an example of this would be during one of their showings the camera was placed up high looking down on the crowd of bronies, where as, I placed myself in and amongst them to record my sound. This was great because the camera was recording the entire situation, where as I could begin to collect select bits of audio from separate people at the same time.
As the sound engineer I had a huge boom pole and microphone to carry around which can be somewhat intimidating to some people, so I had to be cautious not to scare off any timid subjects. We where also invited to this day that the community had set up and we had to make sure we were subtle as to not upset the running’s of their occasion. Generally we where just another part of their day by being there. This shows how we were participating in the documentary, we interacted with them, asked questions, ate and drank with them and watched what they watched.
We then went about interviewing the Bronies, trying to find out more about their community. At first we attempted to do the interviews inside the pub but after the first interview I said we needed to change location. Within the pub there was very loud background noise that prevented me from recording audio at a good enough level. To fix this I suggested we move to outside the front of the pub. After a short group discussion we realized this would be best. It was good to work with a group that took my opinions into account. At the end of the night we managed to secure an audio interview from a very knowledgeable subject who didn’t wish to be on film. Harry and I worked well with this subject bouncing off each other, both asking questions and interviewing the subject. I recorded the entire 20-25 minute conversation that we hope include in the larger documentary we make next semester.
After the day had finished Johnny set about beginning to edit all the content and Harry wrote up the script for the kick-starter presentation. We then filmed the entire presentation in one day. We all shared rolls for this shoot. I did some camera, a lot of the sound and a lot of assistant directing to move the shoot along. I also feel I contributed by encouraging people with their lines for the kick-starter.
Johnny came up with a great idea of having an echo after the first line of the documentary. So as sound editor I knew exactly how to achieve this. I took the piece of audio away from premiere pro and put it into audition where I knew I would have better control over the audio. I added an echo and fine-tuned the amounts of echo, against the time of repeats, against its overall echo volume. Then I placed the echo back into premiere pro where I fine-tuned again to fit it well with the video and already existing pieces of audio.
I went through the entire Documentary several times to mix the piece to the same volume throughout, but allowing for dynamics in several things. I.E bringing up music when there is no other sound. Smoothly dropping music volume where there is sound, adding EQ’s to clean up people voices. An example of this would be the group interview at the end. The girl’s voices were very trebly and sharp to listen to. So I backed the treble off to the point that it wasn’t so piecing, but still allows the viewer to gain an idea of how these girls actually sounded.
I also mixed the entire sound of the Kick-starter video. I went through it adding EQ’s to most vocal tracks as we were in a large room and had a lot of natural reverb and to dampen this slightly I dropped some of the bass frequencies down. This cleaned up the audio to a good level. As we have six different people speaking throughout the video it was also difficult to match the levels correctly for everyone. This meant I had to sit and methodically go through the entire video getting everyone to a consistent volume level.
We worked well as a group using each other and helping each other. I learnt a lot from the other members of my group, epically Johnny who showed me some great editing techniques. I feel our director and producer did well as they worked together. Harry always had final decision on clashes of opinion, which was good as it meant things were settled quickly. Everyone in the group has decent specific skills and I feel we fully utilised this, however this did not leave us much space to grow in areas we were not so great in. Thinking back on this project I wouldn’t have minded changing roles, which would have hopefully improved my skills in other ways. Overall I’m am very pleased with the two products we made as a group and would be happy to work with this group of people again in the future.
Jordan Shepherd