Editing the Poetic Documentary

When we had got the footage we wanted which comprised of about 5 different songs by Max and multiple angles to work with it was simply a case of picking out favorite songs and trying to mix them well with the close up angles we had. We wanted to get a few songs in so that the film did not just turn into an arty music video as well. We had plenty of footage collected even if the variety was not that much so we used the best of the close ups and our favorite songs from the filming. If I was to do it again I would have used more of the footage of people walking by, perhaps sped up as I tried to do this before but the film went all jagged and was not nice to look at, I could not work out what technical fault this was. I think more of this and less of seeing Max play music would have helped drive the point and make the film a bit more interesting to watch as there would be more to look at.

What we actually got and why

After we had spent a few weeks trying to find our busker and having no luck, either just missing him or he had not been turning up to play his music for a few weeks we finally found him outside Mothercare in Sheffield but when we went over, with all of our equipment ready to film he suddenly decided that he did not want to be filmed anymore. The busker had decided that he did not want any extra attention as people had made facebook and twitter groups about him and he did not like it so with less than a week left to film we went to find another busker and stumbled upon a singer/songwriter called Max. We decided to take the style that we had planned for our initial idea but instead use it on Max, with the slow black and white sections to focus the viewers attention and also eliminate sync sound issues. We did not interview him as in the poetic documentary we figured his songs would form the rhythm that would be required to make it poetic and the main focus of what we wanted to get across was peoples perceptions of the busker. We did this by showing wide shots of the city going by and ignoring him completely while he was busy playing his songs but at the end luckily a small child turned up and was fascinated by the busker and we managed to catch this on film. I think that scene in the film shows how not everybody just ignores buskers and the family were in fact cheered up by Max's music. The main point of interest with what we wanted to do with the buskers was document or perhaps change peoples perceptions of buskers and what they do and I believe that this film and specifically that scene did show that even if it was very rushed.