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.

Our Documentary

We have got an idea to do a documentary about busking in Sheffield and challenge peoples perceptions of what a busker actually is and why they choose to busk. This idea came to us when we both walked past a busker in the city centre playing music quite badly but singing along happily and putting a smile on the face of every passer by. We both immediately wanted to make a documentary about this man so we began the planning. I went and found him and spoke to him about the possibility of being in a film and he was really positive about the idea, excited in fact and then I went again to find him with Hannah to finalise the discussion and find out when he would be able to make the film. After speaking with him we have noticed that he has a very friendly and likable personality so we want the interview him and then use his responses as voice over, with his music in the background as well and just film the reaction of people passing by him on the street, showing them smiling/reacting to his music. It will be fairly simple to film this documentary as we have two cameras and will be able to interview the busker using a marantz then cut the sound and footage together to make something that should come off as quite poetic. The aim for me is for this documentary to show that the busker is not just being annoying and loud but has a reason to be where he is and hopefully this will change the perceptions of the viewers and cheer them up a little.

2 Minute Poetic Documentary

There are many ways in which you can make a documentary from investigative documentaries such as Louis Theroux (in which he also takes a participatory role and does not just sit back like other investigative documentaries such as Africa where the film maker sits back and lets the events unfold) Within all these different types of documentaries are also different ways of approach meaning that you can actually be very creative with something that would normally be associated with being purely factual, a good example of this would be a documentary winning a BAFTA last year "Senna" which was sold as a film to the public as it was very entertaining. The approach we will be taking for this assignment is a poetic one which is not very common in mainstream documentaries but also not un-heard of. The British Documentary Movement had used poetic documentary but this was quite early last century meaning that Poetic documentary has seemingly phased out, saying that from the small clips we have seen it can still be a very effective way of communicating with the audience and perhaps engaging them on a higher level than just presenting them with facts as poems/lyrics can often evoke emotions in the audience.