The US Office

When I think Documentary, the thought of the US comedy show The Office comes into my head. All though not typically classed as a documentary, the shows use of interview techniques and handheld camera work screams documentary.

The show focuses on a paper sales company in Philadelphia called Dunder Mifflin. The fictional comedy show was inspired by the UK version. One reason I do in fact class the show as a documentary is the style it is filmed. The filming of The Office is set up to the audience with there being someone filming and documenting the day to day workings of a conventional Philadelphia office. The boss, Michael Scott is the main protagonist in the show, along with other key characters, Dwight, Jim and Pam.

One key feature in the show are the interviews with the employees, the framing is very stereotypical of a documentary , with the character just left of the centre, with the background of the working offices, reminding the audience that it is in fact about the working company. The camera work is mainly handheld when not in interviews, this re-enforcers the idea that it is a documentary. The camera work at times is quick, moving from one character to another in conversations. In addition in scenes were walking/running is a focus, the cinematographer makes no effort to steady the camera, this gives the audience a sense of space or reality. Almost thrusting them in there world, creating a sense of 'real life', which is interesting in the sense that this television programme is fiction, posing as an office that genuinely exist.

The Office does make me think about documentaries as a whole, along with academic writing that i've already read. I always thought that documentaries portray real life’s, commenting on realist events or situations, this opinion has now changed, the view that the director takes on a situation isn’t always the one of truth. I've come to realise that Documentary film could be as fiction as Sci-Fi film, this genre works on opinion, including facts isn’t always mandatory.

'Up There' by Malcolm Murray

Up There is a documentry about the art around New York City, particually advertisement that are still painted onto building instead of stuck on with paper, they discribe how dangerous it is. I chose this film mainly because of its cinematography. Opening with a panning shot of the city, the film clearly has a scene, the film constantly cuts from shots of painting, the city and interviews. I love the depth of field used. For example on the interview shown in the top picture, you see every single detail in his face, with the background barely visible. The main focus is him, the director has made a clear decision for the depth of field to be so shallow, also to have the man framed quite tight in the shot, you can see all the expression and emotion in the mans face, really feeling connected to what he does/did and how he felt about it.

One particular angle I like is the one to the left. The camera is positioned above the subjects with the focus being on the paintbrush. This clearly gives the viewer an idea of the concentration and reinforces the idea that it is in fact a type of art. One other thing is that it gives a sense of depth, hence the 'depth of field'. So it is clear that the workers work at a height, the use of depth of field also reinforces this. 

The style of this short documentary is very stylistic, with the use of interesting and dramatic camera angles and shallow depth of field. The great panning shots of the city really do give the depth of life there and especially in the third shot, it gives you a sense of space. The interviews in this short are in my opinion great, they give a sense of realism, with the 'nitty gritty' detail. This film has really inspired me in terms of artistic direction. 

'Wait For Me' by Ross Kauffman

I decided to search through Vimeo, to find other film makers documentaries, maybe shorts or students. I came across a film called 'Wait For Me'. Its a simple film, narrated by a mother. It follows the story of the mothers emotional search for her son who traveled across Europe in the hope to find a 'spiritual connection' to help him carry on living, the son is said to have travelled through India, then disappeared in the Himalayas.

I found this film particularly emotional and almost difficult to watch, not because of its visuals, but mostly because of the sound, and how genuine this woman sounded when describing her son, so I thought it was important to write about. The film uses some 'talking head' but it is mostly voice over, while visually they showed closeups of a letter the son wrote, and footage of the male when he was younger.

This shot is particularly intimate, you feel physically closer to the person, due to how close the camera is. I don't think this is a conventional interview. The camera is zoomed in much closer to the subject, making it more personal, conveying the emotional much more. Almost making you feel or attempting to get the audience to connect with her feelings a lot more than framing an conventional interview would do.

This is a shot I took of when she was reading, I feel it signifies something much more than just reading. Particularly the material that has been chosen for this shot. The hand writing makes it a lot more personal also. Generally the director is really making an effort to get the audience to understand this woman's pain and unconditional love for her missing son.

With all these other shots of the males mother, half the film is made up of footage of the male when he was little and some when he was older. Again this creates a connection, making the video more personal. The audience are able to understand what this woman has lost.  But at the same time you can understand their love, and almost telling you that this make was a nice man.

This is the ending shot, I've noticed it is very conventional for there to be a almost 'summary' at the end of the film, reminding the audience or in some cases keeping them up to date with what has happened since filming has taken place. Along with all these shots and the voice over of the woman, there is music in the background, mainly piano, which is quite sad, this is important to set the tone of the film.

Liverpool Documentary

After looking at the brief, I am very excited to start this project. I have started to research types/techniques of documentary films. When I think 'Documentary', my initial thoughts are of Louis Therioux's series of documentaries surrounding interesting groups and individuals of the world, also the US hit comedy The Office. Thinking and researching into this, documentaries take many different forms  . Is a documentary truly a true depiction of reality? I think, after research that with the act of editing in place, documentaries can never be true or factual, the editor or director picks and choices what an audience is shows, portraying a point of view of opinion. This type of film are not that different to fiction films, that simply comment on the real world, or take ideas and expand on aspects of life. Documentaries are very dependant of the audience believing or gaining the audience's trust, this is key to creating a good documentary, involving the audience to gain their trust.
There are different types of Documentary -

• Compilation - Pioneered in 1927, this type of documentary are comprised of entirely authentic archival footage.
• Direct Cinema - This type of cinema is were the director or any of the crew do not interfere with any of the footage or stage. Nothing is staged, it's as it worded, a direct way to film. 
• Nature - Concentrating on the natural world, this type of documentry focuses on the nature of the world, very informative.
• Portait 

http://news.doddleme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/documentary.jpg

Evaluation

The concept for our work was developed through mind maps and discussion, with some ideas failing, we started to think about places we visit everyday, so simply my kitchen automatically came to mind. With this, Chris and I went in and looked around, obviously the usual utensils and appliances were there, but we saw the fish bowl that my flat mate was bought for his birthday. From this we kept developing the idea, thinking about what does a fish see throughout the day, Does it care?

Is it actually aware of anything?
How does it see things?

What does it hear?

How does it hear?

From these simple questions we formed an idea, attending Debbie’s tutorial did help with the idea processes, Debbie suggested the film Rumble Fish. We had a look at it, In one scene everything is black and white apart from the fish. This sparked ideas about editing a film.

The project has small hints of humour, all though not intended, this isn’t necessary a bad thing, some would say it comes with the territory of fish. With the editing it is clear that it is a experimental film/sound piece, I feel an audience of 18 – 30 would enjoy it the most, due to the technical sounding nature of the piece, plus the use of students in the film and sound piece does narrow the audience range. When researching fish, and how they have been filmed in the past, I found that the animated Pixar film, Finding Nemo was useful. In this film one scene that I blogged about previously was useful (the dentist scene), to my surprise, this film inspired me a lot, in some ways it motivated me.

In terms of my sound work, I feel Chris and I should of planned it more in advance, instead of turning up and 'winging' it. This would of made for more time on our film piece although I am happy with the film. I feel one thing that worked especially well in terms of the sound piece and the sound in the film was the effect that was applied to the sound in Sound Track Pro, it really does give that atmospheric effect we wanted, I feel it amplifies the sense of space you get, making the audience more aware of the initial aim of the piece. A thing that if I/we could do the project again would to do with the colour correction. When editing the film we wanted everything to be monochrome apart from the fish, this would be fairly easy to do if there weren’t objects of the same colour as the fish around it. As you edit the colour for this you have to select a colour to 'highlight' for it to become visible through the monochrome background, but during filming, there were bright orange Sainsburg's bags in the background, as well as red chairs. This made it very hard for us to get the perfect colour effect we wanted. One thing that when especially well on our shoots are the shots that we didn't expect to get, at times we would let the camera roll, even by accident sometimes, from this we found that we would get the most out of the fish. Stereotypically, fish are quite boring, but with the zoom lens we hired from stores, we could really capture the details of the fish, it's gills, mouth and tail were main focus's for us. These aspects of the fish were something we never considered in the pre production stages of the project.

On our first sound recording session, we started to experiment in terms of how to create the distinct underwater sounds we were looking for, firstly talking to the editor, Chris, he thought he could create effect in after effects. After recording some sound, Chris tried manipulating the sounds but they turned out every echoey, and wasn’t the sound we wanted, it had a very extraterrestrial sound. We met and discussed whether we could make these sounds in the actually practical process of recording. Researching sound in films such as,Finding Nemo, The Abyss and Jaws we found that we could use a hydrophone, after experimenting with this, we came to the conclusion that that wasn’t the way forward, it just sounded very 'deep water' sounding, with the sounds that we were trying to produces not being picked up.

After more research, we found an article discussing how other sound technicians have created sounds similar to the ones we were looking for, so we tried this. There ideas were based around using a condom over a general use microphone, and putting this in the fish bowl and interacting with it. To our surprise this worked, we experimented with fish food, splashes and conversations underwater.

In terms of the film, this was a little harder to produce, obviously with us already having the sound track, it was a little pressure off us, but the aim was the realistically portraying a room through the fish. The problem was establishing the fish as a character that the audience could somehow connect to. We decided on using some Point Of View shots with some close ups of the fish. The issue with Point Of View shots was that when we put the camera in the fish bowl, you couldn’t actually see the glass so it was pointless, so we decided just to film hand held then apply an after effect to create the effect of the action being viewed from the point of the fish. I was officially the camera operator, but as a team Chris and I both contributed to the practical filming of the piece, two of us were needed on the shoot to assemble the jigs to allow us to shoot extreme angles, for example a particular angle were you see the water pouring in the bowl. This was shot from below, so we balanced the bowl on two chairs, although this was a risk, it worked and created a great shot.

From this project, I have learnt many things, with it being our first real project with ideas created and developed our selfs there was many things that went wrong, from this I have learnt more things than if it went perfectly. Firstly I have learnt that planning is key, one thing I regret from this project is jumping straight into it without a thought of 'How are we actually going to film (or record) this?'. After experimentation I feel we could of planned the sounds clearly, this would of saved us a lot more time in the long run. The same applies to the film, even more so, if a detailed storyboard was produced, and stuck to, outlining every shot, it would of saved so much time on the day of the shoot, leaving is more time for editing or experimenting. So one major thing I shall apply to later projects is the importance of planning.

Secondly, although I was not the editor, I feel I have learnt skills to do with post production. With the nature of our vision and the practicality of it, it was important as a team that we understood were we both stood, as Chris was the editor, he had his ideas and methods of doing things, I on occasions I watched his work and contributed with ideas, I technically learnt out to apply colour correction and now have a rough idea of how to highlight a colour, it is definitely something to consider looking into and experimenting on my own with. Throughout the stages of experimenting, one thing I have learnt is to never dismiss an idea without trying it, this may not be a skill, but in terms of the sound piece, we got the best results by putting a condom over a microphone, and the results were great in my opinion. In this project, we really have gained the best results through trying out ideas, no matter how tedious or stupid they may seem at first glance. As I mentioned before sometimes by accident we would capture shots that we didn't think would normally work, but these led us to greater shots, I have learnt that accident can lead to great things, so I shouldn't dismiss them without a thought.

As a team, overall I feel Chris and I worked well as a team, in the early stages of production I feel we could of planned more, but that isn’t really a criticism of our teamwork. Generally we both contributed equally, at times Chris did some camera work, but this was key to project our ideas and vision into the camera. Our weaknesses when it comes to team work are that when we stuck with an idea, we would not take verging or altering from it lightly, this made for a strong team in some aspects, but whether that trait is a good one for a team, I do not know. I feel I, as an individual could improve my teamwork skills by considering others ideas more, before dismissing them for my own. I do feel as if I listen, I just think maybe its the thinking about an others idea and developing that before putting my own onto the table and forcing that into play maybe more than I should.

Overall I feel the project was successful, with no major problems in terms of team work. We created in my opinion, some great work, experimenting with methods I wouldn't normally approach. This project has definitely taught me things to apply to later projects, and reflect onto my peers when creating other films or pieces. With the planning being partly rushed but the experimenting being quite thorough, there are parts of the project I would of changed but saying this, the outcome has successful portrayed our vision.

Hollis Frampton's, Nostalgia (1971)

This experimental film particularly stood out to me, one reason for this is its simplicity. Nostalgia, created in 1971 by a avant-garde film maker, photographer and writer called Hollis Frampton. This is one of my favourite films, at first when I received the brief that we have to produce an experimental film, I was unsure about the subject as I have never really focused on experimental, but after viewing this film, I was focused that I could create a good piece. The film shows different image every 30/40 seconds on an old stove (because it was made in 1971), these images gradually burn and turn to ash, accompanying this is a voice over, talking about an image, but the voice over is talking about the image that is coming next, after the one you are viewing. I like the idea of this, it creates confusion in the audience and requires them to pay close attention both the voice over and the image. The piece is very structural, it plays with the ideas of how fragmented memory actually is, creating an almost realistic representation of the mind. This piece is obviously personal to Frampton, experimenting with themes such as personal identity. The piece has inspired me throughout this project, even though it doesnt directly relate to my ideas.

Shooting and Editing

We decided to change our idea so the film actually has a narrative, a simple story being that there is a fish in the kitchen, a new fish is introduced, there is a party, someone pours alcohol in the bowl, one fish dies and the other is left alone. The experimental element of the film is the way it will be shot, for example composition and colour. In after-effects we have applied a filter, so the background will be black and white and the fish will have a extreme orange/yellow glow, emphasising its importance to the narrative.

In total we had around 3 shoots, not worrying about sound as we have our sound piece finished we could easily experiment with angles. On the first shoot we shot a lot of close-ups, concentrating on the particles in the water and using depth of field to give the film a clean, focused visual. We had trouble shooting the party scene due to the lack of space we had, and with my housemates being actors we got a realistic performance, even with some shots being bad in terms of performance and composition, in editing we could really fix these issues with cropping and actually editing the shots together.

One problem in editing was to apply the colour correction and effects is that to create the fish glow we have to 'grab' a colour, the problem being there is too much orange in some shots, as we are half way through the edit, we will try overcome this issue.