Documentary Final Idea

As a group, we began to search for news stories in the Liverpool area that would reflect all of the research that we had done into portrait video and personal stories.
Many ideas came across, but the one that really caught our eye was to do with the upcoming Liverpool Tattoo Convention in May. We thought that we could explore personality and personal experience through body art, much like the style of James Lees' 'Pockets', but with tattoos.
Liverpool Tattoo Convention Website
On the 29th February, as Producer of the film, I travelled to Liverpool to try and talk to some tattoo artists, in particular those from Design 4 Life studio, who were organising the convention. However, Design 4 Life had too many commitments to do with the convention and decided to decline participation in our film with respect and well-wishes.

In preparation for the recce trip, I had compiled a list of tattoo studios in Liverpool and so I carried on talking to artists and shop managers, and most studios were wary of taking part in our film because the equipment and interviewing would distract from the work that the artists are trying to do. However, I met a lovely lady named Lisa who ran a studio called Dermagraffiti, and was planning to set up a Liverpool Tattoo museum with her husband. She agreed to allow us to interview her and one of her artists, Yasmeen, and both would be visually dramatic to look at in the film.

Dermagraffiti Website
Returning to the team with just one studio confirmed, we decided to use the ladies at Dermagraffiti as a thread throughout the film, and would use voxpops for the main bulk.
Artistically we decided to only include visuals of the subject speaking from the tattoo artists, coming from a metaphorical point that the artists are the ones with the power to make or break a tattoo and are the ones with the voice. For the voxpops we would film visuals and record interviews separately and layer the voice over naturalistic behaviour of the subject.
I arranged to meet Lisa on the afternoon of our arrival in Liverpool and meet Yasmeen the next morning, and for the rest of the day we would go out looking for normal people to film and talk about their tattoos.
Stylistically, we decided to take severe inspiration from 'Pockets', and in fact produce a homage to it. We would use soft lenses to focus on the subjects and blur the backgrounds, and felt that this would bring out colour in the tattoos and the people. The fact that the piece would be optimistic was important to us because we want the viewer to feel lifted from the start of the film, and listen to the stories behind the art that contributes to who the people are today.