Filming style

We will be adoping the same style as we did for the poetic film with the black and white being used to focus the audiences attention on key details and to really allow the viewer to make a connection to what they are seeing. We will be filming in quite high exposure to relate to the bright and friendly atmosphere of the store as I believe that if we were to shoot the film and make it look too dark it would not accurately reflect the mood of the store and the people in the forum.

We want to interview the people in the forum but not just show them being interviewed, hopefully the footage we get will compliment the answers that the tattooist gives so that we can give the viewer more to look at as a lot of the tattoo designs are very interesting, especially Tacho the owner who often does full body colour tattoos that are incredibly intricate and vibrant, which should be very interesting for the audience to look at.

I watched a documentary last night (Dogging Tales) and the interviewing style in this was so tedious even though it was about a strangely engaging subject... often the interviewer would ask questions such as: "What have you got there?" about an inane object such as a deoderant spray and this has made me certain that I do not want to include the questions asked in the documentary but let the interviewer tell the audience what question they are answering by dropping it into their reply.

The sound may be an issue when filming as the needles do make a lot of noise so making sure that we use the microphones properly is very important otherwise we will not be able to hear what people are saying. We will also get a seperate recording of the atmosphere and add it to the interviews but a lot quieter that it actually is so that you can still get a feel for the store without the sound overwhelming the interviews.

10 minute documentary

After losing the person that was going to be our main focus of the ten minute film we have decided to come up with a whole new idea rather than a diluted version of the idea we already had. We had to think of something interesting or different for our documentary and decided to research the different stores in the forum underneath the common room on division street. I had visited this place before and knew that the tattoo shop had very friendly and interesting staff each with interesting stories and all very talented at what they do. We got the contact details of all of the shops in the forum and then went there to speak to the different owners to see who would be up for being filmed and the tattoo shop "Follow your dreams" said they would love to and to pop in after a few weeks when the redecorating was done. The owner of the shop is originally from South America and has travelled the world tattoo for a number of years so we thought that he would have a lot of interesting stuff to say about the subject as he would have learned about tattooing in many different cultures. We are aware that a lot of films cover this subject so we want to try to make this stand out by having these very out of the ordinary tattooists in an equally out of the ordinary location. (in a basement boutique under a pub)

All of the shops in the forum are small independant shops so the owners and staff all know each other and help each other out which makes for a friendly atmosphere and the kind of working environment that is becoming rare at present.

2 minute film: treatment

Working title: A Busks Life

Length: 5-10 Mins

Format: Documentary

Hook or tag line:

Short synopsis (25-50 words):

What is the film about?

This film is about the daily lives of Buskers in the city centre of Sheffield. We hope to find out what motivates these people to busk in Sheffield and also hopefully challenge peoples perception of what a busker does and why they do it.

Mid-Length synopsis/outline (250 words):

What is the core subject matter of your film? How will the story unfold? What are the themes/issues/arguments you are trying to uncover? Who are the key contributors? What makes them interesting? What will we learn about them? Use visual language the aim is to bring the story alive and the characters off the page.

The core subject matter of this film is finding out what it is like to be a Busker and we are also hoping to uncover ties between busking and being homeless as it seems to be a necessity to make money for some people. The main theme of the documentary will be showing the motivation for individual buskers and also challenge people’s perception of buskers as we feel they get a slightly bad press. Our Key contributor so far is one busker who we have spoken to a couple of times and are making the focus of our poetic documentary; he is very entertaining to speak to and clearly an interesting character so there is potential for him to be the focus of our ten minute documentary as well. I spoke to him on my own and asked him a few questions just to get an idea of what it would be like to interview him and his answer to “What makes you come out here and do this?” Was that he just wanted to make people happy and he that he was most confident in his ability with the tambourine. I thought this was a very heart-warming and funny response and hopefully his answers to all of my questions will be similar. Hopefully we will learn a lot about this person and how the general public perceives him as he is quite a quirky character.

Analysis of approach (500 words):

How will you make this film? What will it look and sound like? What is its style? What are the techniques used? What works were inspirational to the film? What works does it resemble? What is its mood? Its ambience?  Demonstrate enthusiasm and a distinctive visual/aural voice here. Include references to TWO films that you have watched as research.

We will be making this film in a quite close and intimate style where the buskers can be closely viewed by the audience and it will give the audience a better chance of connecting with them on an emotional level. The film will look quite bright and natural so that the audience will feel as if they are seeing it from their own point of view, in a similar style to Sign Language – Anthony Gurner (http://vimeo.com/9573920). I like the close style of this film and how fun and relatable the main focus of the film is, the style works really well to make the audience connect with the protagonist. The sound in the film will mostly be backed by the music of the Busker(s) that we are talking to and then their responses to our questions on top of that. I want to cut out the sound of us asking questions to it appears that the focus of the interviews are just talking about their lives and speaking directly to the audience, sort of breaking the fourth wall like Ferris Buellers Day Off but without it being scripted. Sort of in the style of “Fifty People One Question” – Galvea Kelly(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GnLiLZnnx3I#!) where the people being interviewed will repeat the question back to the camera so that the audience knows what the person is talking about and it also feels natural, flowing like a conversation. Technically this film will be quite simple, mostly handheld with lots of establishing shots and footage of the general public responding to the buskers. In the two minute film we will only be filming the pedestrians whenever the focus of the documentary is singing/playing his instruments and only cut to him when he is not speaking, perhaps just smiling in order to fit the brief and make it a bit more poetic. The inspiration for this film is just seeing one busker in the city centre and thinking that he was so entertaining that he deserved to have a film made about him. He sings happy (not very good but very joyful) songs and plays random instruments but clearly does not know how to play them but he laughs and smiles the whole time and it makes him really entertaining and fun. We have also thought that a lot of people busk for money so the documentary might uncover a more serious reason for these people to have to busk. The film should resemble the two short films that I have referenced earlier with a light hearted and cheerful mood but with the possibility of serious undertones depending on the motivation of the buskers.

Filmmaker biography (50-100 words) :

What kind of documentary maker or filmmaker are you? What are the themes in your work? How do you approach work? Do you have any awards?

As a film maker I want these documentaries to be quite light hearted and approachable for the audience but not pointless… they should have a serious undertone but approached in an easily digestible and un offensive manner. Themes in my work include a lot of handheld as I like the close personal feel of it as the audience can feel as if they are actually there and not just watching from a camera fixed to a tripod. Audience engagement is very important to me in every film I make, even documentaries. I approach work in quite a relaxed manner and try to make the entire cast/crew feel comfortable as being too serious can intimidate people and stifle them when we go to film.  

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.