Progress Update:

- Well this wednesday and the last have been a mess! I was supposed to finish my survey last wednesday, but I had to do my LNAT exam so I pushed the time for filming a bit later - my camerawoman got confused and was unable to make it. So I rescheduled it for this wednesday - both camerawomen were unavailable. I know my production schedule allows for flexibility, but I hate when things dont go to plan!
- Thursday 24th = an interview with a friend
- Friday 25th = interview with plastic surgeon. I am uber excited. I hope it will all go to plan!


Will update again by the end of the week...

The Human Face, BBC Mini-series, John Cleese

What I picked up on from the first part of the series:
- Cleese is a comedian and he began the documentary with a bit of humor e.g he was standing on a face, some of the background music was comical.
- All the interviews were medium shots, which I found a bit unusual as usually documentaries of this kind often have close-ups of body language etc.
- Most of the music was instrumentals.
- In most of the interviews, the interviewee was seated in a dark place with lighting. This made reinforced that I definitely need to check the lighting in the plastic surgeon's office and any other locations as I don't want to have to carry unnecessary equipment.
- There was use of both colour and black/white.

- The only things that were zoomed in on were the magazines and photos.

Survey

So I began my survey of 100 people today...

Some of the problems I encountered today:
- Location: the initial location (Islington high street) was problematic as there were (eight) charity workers working in the same location. We decided to move and ended on property we didn't know was private property (middle of N1 centre). The most successful location was near Chapel market.
- Amount of people: many people were reluctant to become a part of the documentary, in the time available, we managed to survey 40 people. 22 were willing to be filmed, 18 only wanted their voice recorded. The amount of males and females were equal also.
- Equipment: one of the crew members was a media student (a friend as suggested by Rebecca to help out), she was late and although this didn't affect the actual taking of the survey, we actually completely forgot the mic! It was only until we brought the equipment back that Rebecca brought it up and the crew member mentioned that we needed it.

I guess I can call this is a learning curve (or whatever they call it) seeing as I have 60 more people to do.
Improvements for next time:
- Remember the mic!
- Begin the filming later (as I started at 10:30) around lunchtime
- Change of location possibly?

Progress and Feedback

The EPQ session on wednesday really motivated me! Rebecca went over Primary and Secondary sources and I'm definitely guilty for believing that my GCSE knowledge of it would help the project, the brainstorm added some new types of sources that I will use for my project e.g. Focus groups.
The sheet on "Prioritising your workload" has also enabled me to actually sort out what I need to plan for the following week.

The feedback on my project proposal has really helped also, what I've taken from it:
- Do a Management Matrix
- Add more books! (My research so far only includes a few books for my project and so this is crucial)
- Develop production schedule

Reading up on Documentary making

I decided to read up on documentary making before I actually start filming:

Book: The complete guide to Digital Video, Ed Gaskall

‬What I have taken on from this book:
- Always have a filming schedule!
- Always think of these questions beforehand: What is going to be shot? When is it going to be shot?
Are there any interviews? Will there be dialogue?

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http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_13/section_5/artc1A.html
"Guidelines for producing a short documentary by Kirsten Sørensen, Mette Bahnsen, Henrik Holch, Gitte Hvid and Lise Otte (makers of Jutta Ravn, 2000):"

What I learnt from this article:
- Use tv and/or film documentaries as primary inspiration > "discuss the qualities of each film and note the good elements. This will probably give you an idea of how you want to structure your own film."
- Ethics: From the beginning you must consider whether you are portraying people appropriately. Are you twisting in any way the image(s) of your subject(s)? Respect your subjects (which includes an honest representation of them) must come before making a great film.
- Interviewing: "If your film contains an interview session it is important that you experiment with different interview techniques before you start shooting."

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In the next few days, I will:
- watch a selection of documentaries (from sites such as
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/category/documentary/)akes or breaks a documentary film in order to learn about which kind of genres and filmaking styles I like.
- Create an outline of documentary
- Organise interviews!