Documentary Grouping and Inspiration

Upon being given the documentary brief 'Liverpool Stories', I immediately set about trying to find a group whose mentality was similar to mine with the brief and creative inspiration. I ended up with a group that I had never worked with before, and the thing that we all had in common was that during the briefing session, we had all been massively inspired by one particular film. This film was called 'Pockets', by a filmmaker called James Lees.


Pockets from Pilgrim Films on Vimeo.



The thing that we all agreed on was that the poetic style of the documentary complimented the simple narrative and we felt that it worked better as a short film than a news-piece interview based documentary.
Pockets is a film that simply portraits miniature character studies based on the things that people in the street have in their pockets. We thought that this little slice of life was more poignant to us than most well-made documentary pieces and as a group we decided to follow this kind of a story with our own film. It was not only the narrative that had us gripped, the shallow focus and bright eye-catching soft cinematography as well as the slow editing pace made us look at common people in a whole different light - literally. For me, it had encouraged me to look upon all of these stories with a positive, calm and reflective state of mind, which made the film all the more charming.

As the next stage of my own personal inspiration research, I looked at other films by James Lees. One in particular jumped out at me from his collection on Vimeo. It was made as an introduction to a song for Shakira's live world tour, but again, the slice of life style and personality that shone through with the subjects in the video not only inspired me but changed my mood for several hours afterwards.


Shakira - Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) from James Lees on Vimeo.



In particular, I loved the use of paint powder and colour as well as the use of dialogue: to me it made for a visually dramatic piece despite the simple subject matter.

I set about trying to find other films with similar subject matter just to see the different ways that it could be done. This film was made by Rick Mereki as a tourist advertisement, but it demonstrated a different way of editing a documentary piece. The landscape cuts look beautiful, but if we were to use members of the public, this effect may be much more difficult to achieve; the reason that it works in this film is because it is one man featured.


MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.



Aside from short films, I recently watched a slightly darker character study on Channel 4. The Cutting Edge documentary was called 'Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder', about a Mr Walker in Surrey, who had hoarded about a million pounds worth of property that used to belong to his parents. I decided to include this in my research because of three key things: 1) It was a less positive story and there is still a possibility of finding a story that is sad or disturbing etc. 2) It is a single (rather than group) character study and 3) It was made in a more traditional documentary style. After watching this, I hope to find a more positive story that can encompass many members of the public, because I want to recreate the charm and beauty of 'Pockets' preferably.

Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder on 4OD

PRODUCTION IMAGES

Chris Slater - Cinematography

Chris Slater - Cinematography
Robbie Troth - Editing and Art Design

PRODUCTION - ARTIST CONSENT FORM

In order to cover myself in case of injury and possible release on the internet or in competitions, I had to ensure that my actor had signed a disclosure form. Images of the hard copy are shown below.

OCCULT PRODUCTION DOCUMENTATION

The plan for the sound in our film would be crucial to the effect that we wanted to create for our audience. We decided that we wanted the film to be 'affecting', though not necessarily scary. As one of the sound recordists, I decided to find some sounds around my home that could be warped and edited to create dramatic soundscapes. I also recorded some sound during the shoot in Sylvester Gardens so that we would have some authentic sound effects to use.
SEE THE SOUND LOG BELOW


We found that it was difficult to plan how the sound of the film would come together without knowing what felt right. So instead of planning thoroughly what we would do in Soundtrack in advance, we created a silent edit which we then exported into soundtrack pro, and used sounds that we had already processed and edited them together where they felt like they created an atmosphere. 
SEE SCREEN SHOTS OF ORIGINAL SOUND EDITS BELOW

Use of Channel EQ

Use of Channel EQ

‘Occult’ 05/02/12
Marantz 660 (44.1K), Rifle Mic, Hydrophone, Dynamic Omni Mic
No.	Title	Comments	MONO/STEREO	Mic
1	Phone Keys	Clicking	MONO	Dynamic
2	Keyboard	Clicking/tapping with space bar	MONO	Dynamic
3	Keyboard	Clicking/tapping without space bar Slight disruptive noise at the end.	MONO	Dynamic
4	Creak	Creaking sound made on a mobile phone. Slight noise distraction at the end.	MONO	Rifle
5	Swish	Sound made my rubbing hands together.	MONO	Rifle
6	Breathing	Better sounds towards the end	MONO	Rifle
7	Whistles	High and low pitched whistle sounds	MONO	Rifle
8	Squelch	Sounds made shaking a mousse bottle. Disruptions	MONO	Rifle
9	Squirt and bubbles	Squirting mousse.	MONO	Rifle
10	Soundscape 1	Location soundscape	STEREO	Rifle
11	Soundscape 2	Location Soundscape	STEREO	Rifle

OCCULT PLANNING DOCUMENTATION

In our production meeting we planned the shots that we wanted to include. In terms of the light shots, we would go out and improvise depending on what we could see. With the actor's scenes, we planned 18 specific shots that would be shot over one day (plus cutaways). These shots would be filmed during the late afternoon so that we could catch a dusky natural light. In our location scouting we found a great demolished warehouse in Sylvester Gardens, Sheffield, where these scenes would be shot.


SHOT LIST FOR SYLVESTER GARDENS LOCATION

Shot No.	Description	Location
1	CU actor’s bare face , then putting make-up on	Warehouse Sylvester Street
2	MS actor putting make-up on	Warehouse Sylvester Street
3	ECU actor’s hand	Warehouse Sylvester Street
4	LA MS actor crouching behind fire	Warehouse Sylvester Street
5	HA LS actor crouching behind fire	Warehouse Sylvester Street
6	LS actor moving around room in warehouse (static for quick cutting)	Warehouse Sylvester Street
7	ELS actor moving around outside warehouse (static for quick cutting)	Warehouse Sylvester Street
8	CU actor leaning against a wall	Warehouse Sylvester Street
9	MS actor in frame of broken window	Warehouse Sylvester Street
10	LA CU actor’s face as he draws symbols on the floor	Warehouse Sylvester Street
11	HA CU OTS as actor draws symbols on the floor	Warehouse Sylvester Street
12	ECU of actor’s feet standing on the symbol	Warehouse Sylvester Street
13	ECU of actor as he draws symbols on wall	Street with brick wall
14	MS of actor as he draws symbols on wall	Street with brick wall
15	ECU fire	Warehouse Sylvester Street
16	POV PAN around warehouse	Warehouse Sylvester Street
17	LOCATION CUTAWAYS	Warehouse Sylvester Street
18	LOCATION CUTAWAYS	Street with brick wall

Before beginning to shoot our piece, we had to collaborate our own personal schedules and find time to shoot, record and edit our piece. In light of this particular discussion, and as producer of the film, I decided to draw up a schedule to stick to in order to complete the work on time. 


(Apologies for the difficult screen-shot. I had trouble getting the spreadsheet onto the blog)


I also drew up an equipment list so that we had everything we needed to start shooting.

EQUIPMENT LIST FOR 'OCCULT' DATES PICK UP  30/01/12       3/2/12 DATES RETURN 02/01/12       9/2/12 QTY DESCRIPTION NOTES 1 Sony PD170 Camera 1 x Tripod 1 Marantz 660 Audio Recorder 1 x Cable 1 x Dynamic Mic 1 x Headphones 4 x Batteries (spare) 1 Rifle Microphone 1 Hydrophone 1 x Rubber contact

OCCULT STYLISTIC INSPIRATION

In researching styles and techniques to use in our experimental film, Chris and Robbie both started by looking at dubstep, techno and drum and bass music videos. Classed as experimental in themselves, our theme of ritualistic practices is popular within this genre of music. You can view some of their finds on their blogs:
Robbie Troth and the Temple of Film

My Very First Blog (Chris Slater)

Being not very familiar with music myself, I was unable to take the same starting point as Chris and Robbie. I therefore researched some short films and animations with the techniques that we had talked about. These included:

• Use of lights - city lights close up and out of focus to create dreamlike glittery visuals
• Stop motion - using photography or still video frames to make certain objects within the frame jump around and/or move. 
• Urban locations - having an urban take on a very suburban subject matter

The first film that I came across was this animation on Vimeo by 'Pahnl'. Aside from its wonderful technical achievements in stop motion, the camera shots and locations serve as perfect examples of what we are looking for. An adorable little story is backlit by a gorgeous cityscape in which the cinematography and use of focus are second to none. In particular we  were inspired by the out of focus lights in the background. We also liked how the 'grimey' city was made beautiful by the events going on within the frame. 

Nowhere Near Here from Pahnl on Vimeo.

This music video is a very similar example of lights, animation and urban environment

Rippled from Oh Yeah Wow on Vimeo.


These abstract visual pieces gave us inspiration to create a piece that was more about a state of mind than a narrative story. 
Like Cocteau's 'The Blood of a Poet', the film will represent a dreamlike state of mind, a world of imagination that is sought (by the character) through ritualistic practices. And much like Buñuel's 'Un Chien Andalou', the film will be difficult to interpret. In fact, we have been inspired by Buñuel's attitude to art film in which he refuses to create a single reading, and our piece will instead be guided by the contrasts of light and dark, beauty and disarray, reality and the distant mind.


I was also inspired by a metalwork piece that I came across in Sheffield's Millenium Gallery. This is a chalice called 'Lest We Forget' by artist Chris Knight. I thought that the style of the piece was perfectly representative of what we were trying to do. The soft curvaceous lines of the chalice were heavily contrasted with the sharp gritty shapes and colours of the crucifixes. It represents a spiritual belief that appears harsher than it actually is. This is the message that we are trying to get across in 'Occult'.