Documentary Production

On Monday 5th March we arrived in Liverpool and unfortunately it took a while to get settled in with rooms/keys etc. I called Dermagraffiti to let Lisa know we would be late, and she turned out to be off sick, so for that afternoon we went location scouting and shooting city cutaways.
On the Tuesday, we got up early and went to Dermagraffiti where we conducted a successful interview with artist in training Yasmeen. During these few hours my appointment with Jamie from Stigma Tattoo fell through so we strengthened our interview accordingly so that this could be the single interview running through the film.
After this we went out looking for voxpops. Initially, we attempted to pull in people from the high street, but this turned out to be problematic, because most people here were having a day out shopping with family and friends. We decided to head towards Bold Street, where there were a lot of tattoo shops and arty-type shops. We had much more success here, and pulled in plenty of subjects to film and record. We had a good range of people and tattoos, some old, some new, some bad, some good, and some with or without meaning. Here we also managed to get a group interview, which was visually interesting. Later on, we also went to Albert Dock, but we had our old problems here so we went to Lime Street to find more interview subjects. Here we gained two extra interviews, one of which was very bad covered-up tattoos, and our first subject who was older than 20 or so who had time to talk to us. By this time it was about time to go, so we headed back to the hostel, with plenty of voxpops under our belt.

Production Roles
On the day, we each had certain jobs to do to ensure successful production.

Me: I co-ordinated the shoot and movement from location to location. I ensured all collaborators had signed release forms. I set about pulling in members of the public.
Ben Brown: Ben directed the look of the shoot and conducted all of the interviews, attempting to get good dialogue recordings from the subjects.
Ben Wilson: As editor, on the shoot, Ben acted as a production assistant, filling out production logs, operating the clapper board for the interview at Dermagraffiti and assisting the camera and sound people with their set-ups and pack downs.
Connor Elliott: Connor used his own DSLR to direct the photography and shoot the subjects as well as cutaways.
Lucy Smith-Jones: Lucy spent a lot of time collecting good recordings both of dialogue and stereo atmosphere.

Evaluation
I think that the shoot went brilliantly, and we all had a successful and relaxed day. This reflected well on our work, the good atmosphere really helped the subjects to come out of their shell and contributed to the uplifting mood that we wanted to achieve.
I think that I fulfilled my role as producer well and this in turn helped the smooth running of the shoot.