HERE IS THE SLIDES & BRIEF SCRIPT ON THE PRESENTATION FOR OUR DOCUMENTARY PLAN ON THE MOUTH
Idea Development - Slide 2 - George
The idea of making a documentary on ‘the mouth’ wasn’t put forward
by anyone in our group. But we’re all intrigued upon the idea of the subject
because of its great potential and numerous approaches to it. Since the mouth
is part of a person, or a place on a person, the idea meets the criteria of the
project brief. Now that we had our initial idea, we then had to logistically
plan our creative documentary project and develop upon our ideas in terms of
how to structure our documentaries from its narrative structure to its and
visual aesthetic.
Logistical
Planning/Creative Development - Slide 3 - Ben
The
first thing we did as a group to develop our ideas was to creating a mind map
about the mouth. That way, everyone’s ideas could taken on board and associations
could be made between peoples suggestions, sparking further ideas. Practicality
of finding participants
Audience
and Style - Slide 4 - Mariah
Hiring
Crew & Equipment - Slide 5 - Roshana
Hiring
crew and equipment is vital in the productions stages, so organization is key.
Since our crew would consist of just our group, we have to share the roles
between us and exchange them during the production process so everyone would
get a chance to play a different role. Equipment we will be using shall be the
Sony Z1 to film, shotgun mic with boompole attachment, if needed, for sound.
One of the tripods in the Sony Z1 kit and Adobe software on the macs.
-
Difficulty
in booking equipment SISO
-
Edit
Location/Freedom
Schedule the Shoot - Slide 6 - George
Scheduling the shoot is another important area in the production
stage that requires a lot of organization. Sometimes your crew, equipment and
cast may not all be available at the same time, so finding a date, time and
location that’s suitable for everyone is vital.
We worked out what days of the week each of us were free to work on
to film and edit our documentary. We concluded that on Tuesdays and Thursday
afternoons would be days we could commit to filming and also having the
weekends to work with on things too. We aim to shoot all our footage we need in
3 weeks, but to start on our post-production edit as soon as we get recordings
as different interviewees will have different availability. Once we gain
consent from our interviewees that we can film them. Being organised with time
keeping makes the filming a more efficient process. We must ensure once we’ve
secured a date and time to record an interview is to book the equipment via
SISO as soon as possible.
Budget/Finance
- Slide 7 - Ben
Being
students, none of us have much petty cash spare to fund a major production so
we had to be realistic in terms of what impacts this could have upon our
production. For instance, when choosing our interviewees or locations, they had
to be people and places we could have access to at as little expense as
possible. Therefore, we knew our locations and interviewees had to be people
based on Campus, in Brighton or anywhere, which our group could sensibly reach.
-
Werner
stealing equipment
Researching/Sourcing
- Slide 8 - Mariah
From
our mind map and creative planning, we knew that we would want to interview
people who had a profession that involved the mouth in some form. By doing
research on the mouth this would gives us a better knowledge on who we could
contact for an interview and what sort of questions we could ask them.
-
Definitions
of the mouth/dictionary
-
Relate it to
Werner
-
Research on
interviewees field of work
Scripting/Storyboards/ShotLists
- Slide 9 - Roshana
When
it comes to scripting and storyboarding, this stage of the production allows
you to share your potential vision with others, saves you times and makes the
product run more smoothly.
Because
of the uncertainty of the interviewees responses, we don’t know what cutaways
we’d need beforehand, however with our interviewees, we’d always frame them
appropriately with a mid shot to the side of the frame.
Werner
didn’t do storyboard...FIND QUOTE
We
knew this would need some area of thought but not too much as we didn’t want to
come up with our cutaway shot lists before we attained our interview footage.
That way we could acquire more cutaways that reflect on the interview dialogue
rather than constructing our dialogue around our cutaways.
We
have come up with a script for our questions, keeping them open ended so our
interviewees could have a more detailed and less limited response to them. The
storyboarding of our documentary is important as when it comes to filming our
interviewees and cutaways, we will instantly know what shots we need and how to
frame them, making the filming more time efficient
Casting
- Slide 10 - Ben
As
a group, once we came up with our narrative, we looked towards industries and
professions that involve the mouth and could provide a good insight and
knowledge on the subect.. I contacted many different people from our list,
asking if they’d be willing to be involved by being interviewed for our
documentary project. We contacted local dentists, make up artists, biologists,
tattooists, sommeliers, musicians, bi-linguists and so on. [change to next
slide] We wanted as many options as possible so that we could choose who to
interview rather than having limitations for our documentary, such as not
having enough people to interview. This is because not all who have been
contacted will respond, want to be part of the documentary or their
availability to meet our deadline.
We
have received one response already, confirming their willing participantcy
Recce - Slide 14 - George
Deciding on locations to shoot in for our documentary is crucial
for the mise-en-scene as it signifies aspects of our interviewees. Herzog is
known to use the mise-en-scene to reinforce meaning behind what the audience is
being told. For example, in Grizzly Man, we would hear Herzog’s narration about
the loneliness of living amongst the bears in the wild, it would then cut to a
long shot of the Timothy, alone in a vast landscape. Therefore we wanted to
base our locations around the places of work of our interviewees. For example
we’d have the dentist in a dental practice clinic rather than sitting in park
as it would harder for our audience to accept its authenticity of our
interviewees. For our cutaways, we knew
they had to be relevant to the piece. Therefore, we decided that we wanted to get as many cutaways of our interviewees
place of work as well as basing it them around the answers they give to our
questions. If the interviews cannot take place in the interviewees place of
work if then we would have to book out the studio on campus to interview them
there instead.
Narrative
- Ben + George
Werner
Herzog, now 72, is a German filmmaker. He is seen as great figure in the New
German Cinema movement, which originated in the 1960s-80s. He has made both documentary
and fiction films, with his documentaries focusing on Bells From The Deep and
Grizzly Man are prime examples.
His style of documentary filmmaking consists of expository and
participatory mode techniques. Infact, he actually parodies the expository mode
by his voice of god narration with his authoritive German accent.
From
Herzog’s style to ours, we aim to convey the message that the mouth is a
significant part of the body by raising awareness of the functions it has in
our life. Therefore our choice of interviewees construct the evidence for our
argument, whether this may be a good or bad thing as we no control over what
they may say. If we do choose to convey a specific message, we shall use
Herzog’s technique of voice of God to persuade our audience towards a certain
argument.
From
a narrative perspective, we aim to make a short length documentary feature the
mouth and the implications it has by being part of our body. We want to engage
our audience by making them critically think and be aware of the potential a
part of their body has, for good or for bad by selection of whom we interview.
Our interviews will consist of asking our interviewees open ended questions to
our subject such as how their profession involves the mouth and hopefully then
making a personal connection between our subject and interviewee, making our
audience reflect upon the information given..
Visually
- Mariah + Roshana
