Evaluation

I am overall happy with my documentary as I felt that I did the best with the footage that I had. I also feel that I have stuck to my aims as much as possible and created an interesting presentation of Disability in the workplace through style and construction. However if I was to do the project again or another documentary I would be more prepared for the set backs and interaction with people. I have found it hard and mainly a set back having to rely on others.

Editing

Once the sound was fixed all I had left to do was decide if I should have sound in the opening shots or silence until the dialogue began.

SOUND!!!!

During this process it became apparent that my sound levels throughout were not level. The camera was picking up lots of the background sound even though I had filmed outside opening hours to avoid this. However what I had failed to do was take a wild track, this is when you film the surroundings for a minute so that you can then use this to settle sound levels. Mr Gibbs told me that there is a programme that can be used to level out all the sound. What I had to do was extract all of the sound from both interview and real time images into one soundtrack then export into this programme and level out the sound. This was such a relief as otherwise I would have had to either re-film or leave the sound the way it was.

Editing

Now that I have the two interviews I began to construct a firm narrative. As I mentioned earlier the fact that I had already written a script sped this process up as I knew the direction I wanted my narrative to follow.
When constructing John’s sections of the narrative I found that I was having to combine answers from each of the interviews in order to create a whole coherent answer. The problem with this was that visually it was jumping between his movements and was not only unrealistic but disorientating. I began to try find ways to cover up these sections. I put visual images in-between the jumps or over. This was a matter of trail and error that I would only fully see if successful once I extracted all audio from interviews where images where going over.
Before distracting the sound I ensured that the interview had a form narrative. The extracting of sound was along process as they had to be done individually as broken in sections. However once this was done I then had to move on to ensuring that the images and sound were in sequence. I had to tweak sound levels at end and beginning of clips so that sound was level.

Pro?

I have begun contemplating the option of transferring my footage and rough timeline into pro as this would allow me to have two video timelines. I feel that this will save me a lot of time as I would be able to simply place the video images over the interview narrative instead of having to extract the audio from the interview then placing it over the real time images. This would be a lengthily process.

However all the computers that have pro on them are occupied by other students. Although the simply solution would be to install the programme on my computer it isn’t compatible as we had the old programme that doesn’t work on MAC OSX system. Therefore this was no longer an option for me!

shot problems!

Editing

I went through the same process with john’s interview as I had done with Mikes. Titling the clips ect. However what I found with John’s interview is that the answers were not self- contained which meant I had to include my voice asking the questions or interpreting. This was extremely frustrating as goes against the style of doc that I had set out to make!

filming- John's interview

When filming john’s interview I asked Mr Gibbs to come along to help me, this was the only time I was accompanied when filming. I found it very helpful as it meant I didn’t have to do everything, such as film and interviewing. This meant that Mr Gibbs was able to zoom in on certain responses from john which was effective in conveying emotions.

Again like with Mike’s interview I had to think about the composition of the shot. This time I choose to have to place the interview in the conservatory as meant that there would be no problem with light. I had john and his interpreter Louise sit behind on bench like seat behind a table, it felt casual however gave enough space for the two of them to be in shot.

Before we began filming I asked Louise to read through the questions and tell me if any of them were two complex for john to understand. We simplified some of my phrasing however didn’t have to cut any questions. Again as I had done with mike I asked John and Louise to reiterate the questions. However this time it wasn’t as successful, john found it hard to remember to state the questions while Louise wasn’t doing this either. I also found that john wasn’t able to fully articulate himself and Louise- who I had waited for a month to become available- wasn’t actually very good at communicating with john. Her use of sign language was limited which meant that john’s responses were restricted. I knew this would make it hard for me in the edit as my own voice was very important to the responses as I had to interpret his answers. I had to film the interview twice in order to maximise the footage that could use and in the hope that John and Louise would become more relaxed and interactive.

Editing

Now that I had Mikes interview it meant that I could begin to construct a narrative. Firstly, I went through the interview cutting all the individual questions and responses then titling them so that they would be easy to locate. At this point I kept in my own voice so immediately apparent what section was also I might want to use some of the interviewee’s reactions somewhere in the narrative. As I had already comprised a script I had an idea of the narrative structure so I began to place Mike’s responses in this order on the timeline. However this was very rough as I still didn’t have John’s interview and I didn’t want to cut up the footage too much. This rough sequence of interview was placed behind the real time images sequence that I had created.


I have now started to cut my questions from all the clips as aren’t needed and it gives me a greater understanding of dialogue that I have to work with. From here I split up the clips even more identifying words and phrases that I wanted in my opening sounds cape.

filming- mikes interview

I filmed Mike’s interview over a morning. When I arrived the first thing I did was to set up the shot. I decided that I wanted the interview to be casual within the setting of the pub therefore choose to situate it on arm chair where the background was large section of the pub and bar. I felt this was important to the mood and atmosphere I wanted to convey and the casualness of interview means Mike is able to express his view rather than being viewed as spokesman for the company. Another important aspect that I had to keep in mind when filming was lighting. It was essential that my shot was well lit yet parts of the pub are quite dark due to the dark interior so I picked a arm chair that was near the front of the pub next to the windows.
Before we began filming I told Mike to look at me –who was sitting to the right of the camera- and not the camera. This is an important technique to the documentary genre and also important to ensure that interview is relaxed. By telling Mike to ignore the camera it diverts his attention from it being there thus meaning he is more relaxed and gives honest responses rather than playing up to camera. I also asked Mike to reiterate all the questions in his answers; this was so that in the edit his answers are self contained so that I don’t have to include my voice as would go against my documentary style.
There was very little that I had to re-film as I had made it clear how the questions should be answered. However I found that Mike was so relaxed during the interview that he was talking really fast in sections. The only part I felt need to be re-filmed was when he lists johns responsibilities as I knew that I wanted real time images of john doing this tasks over the descriptions.

The script

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