REFLECTION - DOCUMENTARY

Initial ideas stemmed from a brain dump which was then discussed with Anne, we originally settled on the reading music scene and the importance of Purple Turtle to young creatives from the area. We researched this by going to the location, seeing the pros and cons, and informed by this we went to other venues that could be used. We also conducted risk assessments and conducted interviews with myself as someone who is part of this thriving community. We then started making lists of people to contact and enquired about permissions with a positive response. After all of this, it was decided that the idea would be changed because it wasn't cost effective for the whole group. Upon the decision to leave the idea behind we had to quickly assume a new plan. After many discussions between the group we decided on our final idea that incorporated an element of performance to convey the theory that we never have free will and we are always controlled by a higher power. Due to these discussions, we initially decided that Elena would research into Brecht, Vertov and Warhol, Grace would explore Marxism, John Berger and A Clockwork Orange and Harley would watch some documentaries.

Our final synopsis was discussed and created by the group:

" Our documentary looks at conformity on a smaller scale within the community of Farnham to represent the western world. There are many subliminal messages around us that we fail to notice. Furthermore, we blindly follow these instructions as part of our daily routine. We are also consumed within our technology. We are alienated from reality via the false conciseness that we enter due to the vast information that is present. Our documentary seeks to expose these flaws in our community"

On reflection of the synopsis I then went away and formed a more detailed and coherent plan:

"In our documentary the themes we are going to address include; capitalism and how it permeates everyday culture and has become our mundane and secondly, how there is always a text and we can never escape being the reader. As Farnham is very familiar to us, we have decided to use this location to stand in for the entirety of the Western world who are all consumed by the same rat race. The same ideologies are relayed to us constantly which is leaving us in false consciousness - a state that the majority find comfort in. We are at the peak of the information age, there are more possibilities than ever before and if the vast majority realised to the full extent what this means, there would be a mass onslaught of panic and chaos. The public are numb.

We are going to use our documentary to explore how those at the top of the superstructure are flooding our lives with signs through a heavily mediated reality. Via our use of split screen, we aim to point out how frivolous the concept is and how senseless the public are to give in. By initially implementing the idea that the masses are inept to our viewers, we hope that by the end of the screening, they will realise that they themselves are just readers too. All of those feelings about the people of the West, bar some preconceived notions from other similar sources, were constructed by us. We are the creators with the power to inform and influence.

The dreaded cis-het-middle-aged-white man often makes reference to ‘the good old days’ and how they grew up in simpler times. We’re going to play on this concept with our use of editing. The two sides of the split screen will show the same image in two very different contexts. These contexts will be provided by colour. One side will allude to colour schemes in the psychology of advertisements. The other will be a stark contrast in black, white and red with a lot of white noise and glitchy tendencies. This is in reference to the ‘snow’ on early televisions that people consumed most of their information from in the hypothetical ‘good old days’ as well as the movie They’ll Live where a pair of glasses shed light on the visual truth. This colour pallet is also the most efficient way to communicate when in the written word so we’re going to translate the idea into moving image. Having the footage shot handheld subtly conveys the imagery of home movies recorded on VHS. This is also complimented by the fact that the content of what we are going to shoot is not exactly ground breaking material, it is everyday life with no real meaning until we give it context."

Group meetings were frequent and ideas were constantly being discussed. Delegating research and tasks was successful in that when Elena and I returned we could put forward a large amount of research in a specified and coherent way so we could all aim to understand the concepts and how they could inform or how they related to our work.

Elena and I both made story boards to map out how the general order of sequences would go but specific shots of advertising would ultimately depend on what was there on the day of the shoot. We decided that just leaving it to the day was a bit irresponsible so we rectified this by scouting out the location the weekend before - although this was Black Friday weekend so many of these signs would be gone come shooting time.

Grace:

• Idea development
• Research into R. Maclean
• Research into B. Kruger
• Research into J. Berger
• Research into general Marxist theory
• Story boarding with Elena
• On location planning shots for both ideas
• All days of filming
• Logged footage and audio with Elena
• Transcribed interviews with everyone
• Sorted interviews into an audio paper edit
• Answered our own questions to form a script for Act 3
• Recorded footage and audio
• Attempted to edit audio for Act 1
• Rough cuts for Act 1 & 2
• Edit Act 2 which was then enhanced by Elena
• Delegating tasks in the final week(s)
• Planning of final few days for everyone
• The reflection
• The presentation

Harley:

• Idea generation
• On location planning for first idea
• Location photos for final idea
• Production handbook
• Googled D. Vertov
• Transcribed interviews with everyone
• Visual editing for Act 1
• Cut the pre-edited audio for Act 1

Elena:

• Idea generation 
• Research into advertisement colour
• Research into Brecht
• Research into Koyaanisqatsi
• Research into Consumerism & Postmodernism
• Story boarding with Elena
• On location planning for both ideas
• All days of filming
• Logged footage and audio with Grace
• Transcribed interviews
• Risk Assessment 2
• Encoding rushes
• Sound edit for Acts 1, 2 & 3
• Edited Act 2
• Made a schedule
• Acquired permissions
• Production diary

When Harley researched D. Vertov she learnt what he thought about the truth and documentary filming.

I explored the thoughts of J. Berger and found that his views on Marxism became his life's truth which informed our decision to explore how the power's views become our reality. As he aims to make people 'unlearn' and see the truth in Marxist ideals we aimed to make people 'unlearn' to see the truth of signs and symbols.

Following on from that I then looked into R. Maclean and discovered that she uses highly stylised colouring to emphasise themes and narratives. Her work is also very post modern and uses this to make comments on the flaws of the west.

Finally I explored B. Kruger and how she used text and colour mimic advertising and make a mockery of it. She also made her viewers feel enveloped by her truth via scale but because this was not something we had the option to change, we flipped the idea and wanted to make the viewers feel removed from the work, this led us onto Brecht.

As we wanted to educate our viewers, rather than show them something that they’ll get too involved in, Elena looked into B. Brecht. The Verfremdungseffekt is a Brechtian technique that we wanted to adopt. We wanted to distance our audience from our piece so they had more time to think about the message and decide what they would do with the information that we gave them.

Elena also looked into G. Reggio and found In Koyaanisqatsi he used rushes of people waiting in queues and Time lapses of people rushing around in the stock markets, but reaching no resolution.

VHS home movie style, which we achieved through shaky handheld footage, came from the idea of 'the good old days’ keeping it simple and when people supposedly had more free will and were controlled less by the power. Having the aura of a home movie also reiterated that the footage we recorded was nothing special, just mundane everyday life - much like a lot of the films people made to capture their families. The use of split screen came from the idea of the movie They'll Live where a pair of glasses showed the truth. The truth is displayed on one side and the preferred reading is on the other. As we read and consume information left to right we subverted this and put the truth on the left-hand side in an attempt to make the viewer uncomfortable and even more self-aware, much informed by the theories of Brecht where the viewer becomes very self-aware. Use of colour was key and for the side where we exaggerated the preferred reading we used the colours we found most in the signs and messages. On the other side of the screen we simplified the colours down to three, black, white and red, this was loosely informed by the work of Barbara Kruger.

The shoot

• Day 1: We solidified our ideas and made a schedule. Called for permissions and realised we needed permission from Surrey film at least two days prior to shooting. Thankfully they were not busy and we got permission that night.
• Day 2: We went through our production handbook and filled out our risk assessment before giving it to Anne to sign off. Once we took out kit out we took it home to set it up for our interview filming the next day. 
• Day 3: The next day we went to Farnham park to ask people if we could ask them questions. However, as it was so cold, no one wanted to stop for us. We managed to ask one person who happened to be on the way to the UCA open day. As it was cold though my phone malfunctioned and we had to try and remember our questions. We headed nearer to the university to see if we could get the general public, except they would be more open to answering questions as they would be in an open day for an art uni.
• Day 4: We spent have the day getting shots of signs without the tripod so our footage was relatively shaky. This was to remind the viewer that they were watching something as to not suspend their disbelief and think about what they are watching. We then went back to uni and reviewed our footage and transcribed the interviews.
• Day 5: We used the tripod to get more still footage of the town for half the day. We got some establishing shots of the town. Then we went to a friends house to get shot of their doorway as we intended to have it in the documentary. We also interviewed them.
• Day 6: Using the Leggria and a monopod we shot traffic and crowds of people for Act 2.
• Day 7: Using the Leggria and a tripod we waited for a 20 minute slot in R19 and shot the revelation.

During shoot week, we experienced very cold weather which we had to persevere through and made sure we took breaks. For the few minutes where it was snowing, we covered the camera and stood under shelter. Apart from technical issues the practicality of the situation meant that a lot of the Black Friday advertising was gone which meant we had to find more signs in other places within the location. Trying to film traffic lights, double yellow lines etc. meant that we did have to battle with the cars and pedestrians timing things as efficiently as we could - this did result in us pressing the traffic buttons several times rather than waiting for the public to do so.

When it came to post production, we chose to focus around yellow as it is a marketing colour to grab attention. It is often used to show optimism which is ironic and we are showing our society as dark. I also layered the original yellow footage over with the original but just picking out the hues. This created a glitchy effect which showed how the Farnham community is functioning corruptly. We also added the footage of the reflection of the camera as an homage to Vertov. We were using our camera to reveal the truth of society. We linked it to Brecht though as we wanted our viewers to be aware that they were watching a play. We wanted them to think about what they will do after watching our film instead of getting emotionally involved in it.

In the last act we revealed our truth of society, through our own knowledge and research that has confirmed our theories about signs and obeying. We used a male voice as we felt that men are typically in power and therefore people only listen to them. I also put in a long dark note to hold the audio together. I added in the beeping to reiterate societies conforming. It matched out up to the visual of the pedestrian crossing which should connect the audio and visuals for the audience if they hadn’t already linked it themselves. 

We talked about making our shots heavily saturated or having them black white and red to highlight the use of colour in advertisements. Colour in advertisements was something that I looked into to see how society can be unknowingly manipulated through colour. 

Some of the audio only came out of one side so this was something that Elena had to adjust in Audition. Furthermore, there was noise in the background of some shots so she edited it out slightly. Another thing Elena needed to do to the interviews was adjust the volume to they were all the same volume. Some of the interviews were conducted in the quieter areas so she added some background noise so the audio for the interviews flowed better.

In Act 2 she built a discordant soundscape to reveal the powers wrong doing and how society blindly followed. The soundscape was focused around the pedestrian crossing sound. The noise seemed familiar but jarring if you can realise how much you obey it.

In conclusion, Act 1's composition of frames is interesting and successfully highlights the importance of the commands by way of positive and negative space. Although, we only managed a few basic masks and it would have been preferable to have masked solely red for a stronger impact - this could have been easily resolved if we used the resources available to us, i.e. technicians and staff, who could have taught us the necessary skills.

Act 2 successfully makes the viewer uncomfortable by the use of garish colours and the intense, looming soundscape. However, there could have been more relevance to the research into colour in advertising - which could have been achieved if we all discussed this research together as we did for the rest of our findings. Also, the footage was not varied enough and had this Act had more planning and time dedicated to it, we could have easily found more locations to shoot in.

Act 3 is where we used a voice of God to clarify what was being watched, this also reigned us back to more standard documentary styles. The only slight qualm we have with the final act is that it is marginally overexposed, but this was the only way you could still see us - with more time and planning we could have had some dim lights on us to counteract this.

In summary, we wasted way too much time at the start on another idea and there was a big lack of communication between the group which only amplified this problem. Secondly, we found it difficult to put our idea across to Anne and struggled to make it clear what our new intentions were.

Our research definitely wasn't prominent enough in the final piece and with only 2 people actually doing research and filming it, made it drastically more stressful than was necessary. Also, having to relay our findings was difficult and time consuming in itself due to differing levels of previous knowledge and willingness to learn - and whilst as a whole group we were able to research more by having two people doing it, it would have been more beneficial for everyone to research the same things so everyone stood a chance of knowing exactly what was going on.

Being a group of two for 90 per cent of the time also obviously put a massive strain on us and general group dynamics made progress difficult and predominantly unfair. Whilst it was helpful to have people to discuss initial ideas with, the negatives certainly outweighed the positives. I'm very clear on where I want to go with a project from the get go and holding myself back and picking up the pieces for the benefit of other people was a hindrance more than anything else. But regardless of how we got there, I think the final film was successful enough considering the circumstances as well as being a first film.