Progress of our work

To start I took all the interview material and placed it into a new Pro Tools session. I then took each interview one by one and listened to them all individually to figure out what material was useful for our film and what material wasn't useful. I then began to cut the pieces to give Tom our editor a rough idea of how long each shot needed to be on screen.

In the screen grab above you can see where me and Richard worked together on the sound to change the levels in the main music piece. The music we found was over powering when played alongside our interview material. Therefore we changed the levels on the main music piece to try and make it fit alongside the interview, so that they interview material was the main piece being heard. 

In this screenshot above, the second audio piece levels didn't match the levels of the interview material in the green. This material was significantly quieter. So as can be seen in this screenshot I have heightened the levels in the second audio piece, and played with the original audio to try and get the audio to be on similar levels. 

In this screenshot, you can see I have played about with the levels in this particular audio piece. This is because the contributor spoke significantly louder in some parts of the interview compared to the rest of it. To correct this I have changed the volume on the piece in to make the whole piece match in terms of levels. This makes the piece smoother and easier for the audience to listen to.

Feedback

Sleeves Documentary Rough Cut from Tom Crump on Vimeo.

For our tutorial, we only had a rough cut both of the film and sound, with the video being without sound. When showing our tutor this, we quickly became aware this was a mistake, as we were unable to portray what we were hoping to eventually achieve in our film. This lead to our tutor questioning what we were wanting the audience to get from our film and what we were trying to achieve with this film. Following this tutorial we had to question whether we wanted our audience to emphasis, or if we wanted to educate them or if we wanted to do something totally unique.

Our original idea was to place different audio over the tattoos, making the audience think and guess which reason matched with which tattoo. However due to this tutorial, we quickly became aware that this would not lead to our film being successful as this would only confuse the audience.

As a group, following this tutorial we have decided we need some more interview material to add more depth to our film. We also agree that we need a score which will add pace to our film, as well as evoke emotion when it comes to our more personal interview material.

Our tutor did mention that our film was very aesthetically pleasing and were of a very high quality. She also mentioned our sound quality was very clean ect. This feedback encouraged us as a group as we felt like these are two areas we were very conscious of when filming and we aimed to create something of a very high quality.

Treatment

Treatment

Documentary Treatment

Working Title – Sleeves

Genre – Documentary 

Duration – 5 mins

Target audience – 18 – 50 years of age and those with any interest in tattoos.

Tagline 

A documentary illustrating the stories behind people’s tattoos.

Outline

In this documentary we hope to illustrate the thought and care that goes into the art people put permanently on their bodies in the hope it may subvert some pre-made assumptions. Also in contrast showing the lack of care and thought people can have for it when they put anything on their body.

This film will be made with a montage of tattoos in close up, it will be shot on the Canon 70 D DSLR camera with a ring light around the lens allowing for a brighter, sharper and clearer image. It will be shot with a 50 mm lens with a shallow depth of field so that the background is blurred and out of focus. This draws the audiences eye to the main focus of the frame which is the tattoo itself. 

The camera will be mounted on a tripod to allow for a still image, it will also means that the camera will be steadily lit using a LED ring light attached to the camera in order to allow complete control over the lighting pf the close up shots we intend to take. 

We intend to use a  majority of close up, shallow depth of field images using a 50 mm lens. This ensures no background distraction and a certain blur on the background of the shot, allowing the image in the foreground to be predominant.

Shots and still images both in close up and mid close up will also be used throughout. These will be shot on an 18mm - 55 mm lens and an 85mm lens in order to establish the best focus and zoom required for each to look as ascetically pleasing as possible. 

In terms of the recorded audio we will be record short interviews with a number of contributors to find out, why they get the tattoo? Why it’s important to them? What do they think about when they look at it? By keeping the questions personal so that the film is more about the people and their stories than about giving a general answer as to why people get tattoos. It will be recorded on a mono track hand mic and a shotgun mic 

Setting

The film will mainly be set in the high street in Sheffield as that is where we plan to find most of our contributors but it may also be filmed in other locations depending on contributor availability. However, due to the fact we plan on blurring the majority of the background out it won’t make much of a difference.  

Examples of characters:

Harriet – A 19 year old girl dating an art and design student, she allows him to practice stick and poke tattoos on her legs. She has a variety of different images from him and a few tradition and abstract pieces.

Holly – a 19 year old girl who has a lot of film and lyric based tattoos, she has a Donnie Darko Rabbit on her thigh.

Elliot - 19 yo boy with multiple tattoos but the one he would like to be filmed is a tribal message on the back of his arm

Final Film Pitch

Documentary Pitch

These are the presentations for our original pitches for a documentary based on sheffield stories.

The Apology Line

The Apology Line is a unique take on documentary film making, as it takes a sort of experimental approach. In this short film we hear several different people's personal stories which has been anonymously sent in by contributors over a phone line. This film uses non sync sound to portray the individuals stories, while the images on screen have links to what is being said by the contributors. Non sync sound has been used as a way of protecting the contributors identity. I also believe these confessions have been re-recorded by actors, a further precaution in protecting individuals identity. Non of the confessions have a link, therefore it could be argued this film has no narrative as each confession is unique and completely different to the last. I really enjoyed this documentary as I enjoyed the simplicity of the film. They stories range from being deep and rather uncomfortable to listen to, to being light hearted and laughable. For my own documentary I will take inspiration from this film, as we would like to focus more on peoples personal stories, rather than what is going on screen. Therefore I think we will use non-sync sound and images which relate to what each contributors saying but do not take away from what is being said.