Documentary Evaluation
Documentary Evaluation
It would be a lie to say I had felt minimal stress during the journey of this project In reality, there have been times when the weight of my responsibilities has felt too heavy to carry. This is the first instance in my life where I have had to generate this much perseverance every day to show up and support my team. Which is something that normally comes naturally to me. On many occasions, I have felt like I was showing up for the team, and not for myself. Despite this, I only let my physical, not mental, health prevent me from playing the active leadership role I took on. Looking beyond the challenges face by the whole team, I feel I have not only grown as a person but also as a filmmaker. This project helped me step into myself with pride and own the choices myself and Callum made in the production and post-production process when choosing the best way to tell the story at hand.
I took part in the Myers-Briggs personality type test, which helped me understand myself, how I chose to function in certain situations and how these attributes have played an active part in my role as a producer. The test concluded that I am a defender – ISFJ-T, it states that defenders can be relied on to meet deadlines and stay organised. This is an important attribute to have as a producer because the role involves working closely with all members of the team, keeping the team grounded and running to schedule as well as completing the pre-production paperwork on time. The results also stated that defenders are caring and supportive, in doing so I found myself picking up uncompleted work from others and adding more responsibilities to my pile. These helpful and hardworking attributes often leave defenders feeling burnt out and overworked as they are easily taken for granted. “While defenders tend to underplay their accomplishments, it does not mean they do not enjoy recognition or are fine with being taken for granted. Unless they learn to stick up for themselves, defenders may find themselves quietly losing enthusiasm and motivation, eventually becoming resentful towards the people who just don’t seem to appreciate them” (NERIS Analytics Limited). I feel this has played a large role in how I have operated as a producer. To help the team I took on others' work and pushed myself to my full potential which slowly caused me to burn out. In future projects, I will stick up for myself more to ensure I am not taken for granted and that delegated work is completed by the correct people.
The test also stated that defenders “don’t just get their work done – they take pride in it. People with this personality type often form an emotional attachment to the projects” (NERIS Analytics Limited). I strongly agree with this statement as I have felt deeply connected to the project after hearing the stories and many challenges faced by Tim, Susie and the girls. It is a vulnerable decision to allow filmmakers into your home and freely tell your story. I am sure it was not an easy decision for Tim and Susie to make. One of the many lessons I learnt was how to form a relationship with Tim and Susie which was strong enough to allow them to feel comfortable in our presence when opening up. The relationship formed lead the project away from just meeting the brief and deadlines but also became a passion project. I wanted to tell this story for them and not for myself. These strong feelings made me incredibly attached to the project and I wanted to go above and beyond to ensure the story told was reflective of their love and efforts.
During idea development, the teamwork well together to generate multiple different ideas which we could potentially move forward with. It took some time to find an idea every team member could confidently stand behind and have passion for. Eventually, we decided that there was no story more relevant at this time than the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russia – Ukraine war. We needed to find a story which was upcoming and relevant as we were frequently quizzed on ‘Why now?’, why was now the best time to be embarking upon this story, why would people be interested, and why should this story be heard. At a time when the Homes for Ukraine scheme was just being kickstarted and there was an immense amount of community support to help Ukraine, we knew that stories surrounding Ukraine were worth being told. We knew that the people we were looking to involve had been through trauma and that we would need to handle the situation with the utmost care and maturity as we were dealing with vulnerable people who have experienced terrible situations. These ideas were echoed to us in our pitch feedback to ensure we were aware of the responsibility we would play in telling these stories and the care of the refugees. I think the pitch went well, in the future I will guarantee everyone on the team has an opportunity to speak in the pitch which is something I missed out on being ill. I will also ensure the visuals echo the seriousness of the topic we are exploring so there is no misrepresentation, and the story is handled with utmost maturity and sincerity.
The pre-production process was challenging as it involved lots of networking between potential hosts, volunteers and even some Ukrainian refugees looking for homes in the UK. I used different Facebook groups from the local area and reached out to people who were involved with the hosting process. This was challenging as I faced many tough conversations as well as rejection as people were not comfortable sharing their stories on camera and being involved in the documentary. As mentioned previously, it is a big decision to allow filmmakers into your home and be vulnerable with them, so I understand why people chose to not progress. When people rejected the offer to be a part of the documentary it was vital I found someone new to reach out to, to give the team the best foot forward when it came to production. As our project was reliant on creating relationships with contributors, we had to build up these relationships before going to film, this meant it was difficult to have pre-production work ready weeks in advance to filming. To overcome this, I made template forms which meant they were easy for me to complete before filming.
During production, there were some vital mistakes made which caused issues within the edit and the process moving forward. However, we found suitable ways to overcome these issues and create a documentary we are proud of, which does Tim, Susie, and the girl’s story justice. Callum and I first went to shoot the interview with Tim and Susie on Tuesday 3rd of May. We decided to take the Sony XDCAM, Nikon D3400 and the Tascam recorder. Due to technical difficulties with the mentioned equipment, there were missing audio and videos from this shoot. We did not realise some of these issues until reviewing the footage the following day. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to pack the power banks to run the Tascam which meant we had limited battery to use. In future I will make sure I remember battery packs for the Tascam, so we are not limited in our use of it as this has affected the overall project. To overcome this, on the shoot we used the mic on the Sony XDCAM to record audio during parts of the shoot which were less important, however, the Sony XDCAM quickly ran out of storage and the cable to remove the footage from the camera was missing from our equipment bag. The remainder of our footage was then shot on the Nikon D3400, unfortunately, the settings of this camera were not set to record sound. Therefore, any footage shot on this camera when the Tascam was not running had no audio. To prevent issues like this in the future I will double-check all equipment bags to make sure all necessary equipment is available to us. I will also make sure all equipment is set to the correct settings, so we do not miss out on any vital information about the story or lose the use of great footage. However, this shoot became a very useful test shoot for us as we realised what coverage we needed, and it clarified the style we wanted to use for the whole documentary.
When reviewing the footage, we did not like the framing of the two-shot as it was very flat and boring and the eye levels were slightly too high. We knew this was not how we wanted the documentary to look. We also decided we liked the beautiful image created by the Nikon DSLR over the image of the Sony XDCAM. These reflections alongside the missing footage and/or audio encouraged us to step out of our comfort zone and own up to the mistakes we had made, by asking Tim and Susie if we could return to re-shoot parts of the story we were missing and to get more coverage. This decision was not made lightly as we knew it would involve asking them to rehash some of the horrible things they have faced. We discussed this option thoroughly before suggesting it to Susie and Tim. As mentioned previously, this became a passion project for us and we knew we wanted to do this story justice which was not possible with the footage we had shot. We swallowed our pride and told Tim and Susie how passionate we were about their story, how we want to do it justice and how we had not met our own standards. We understood we were asking a lot of them but kindly they agreed to have us return. I think we built a strong relationship with the couple, and they were shocked by how passionate we felt about their story which played a huge part in their decision to allow us back.
As a producer, I evaluated the size of the story and the amount of footage we would have after re-shooting on May 9th and decided that this story had the potential to last or exceed the whole 10-minute brief. I discussed this with the director, and he also agreed. I suggested this idea to the whole group to hear others’ opinions before making any decisions. I approached the situation by stating how important it is to tell the story properly and do it justice as it means so much to the participants and I felt that trying to fit multiple stories into 10 minutes would take away from the individual stories. The team agreed with me, so we decided to base the whole documentary around Tim and Susie’s story.
Off the back of this conversation, the director and I made a shot list to follow which meant we did not miss any coverage on the second shoot and that we were efficient with the time we had as we knew it was an inconvenience to have to return to film a second time. Before the second trip, we made sure we had all the correct equipment and replacement batteries to prevent the same issues from arising again. We also swapped the Sony XDCAM for another DSLR, so the new clips matched the image of the previous shots as they fit the style we were aiming for. Before returning we also knew that we wanted to adopt a handheld style so the DSLRs would be easier to achieve this.
When going to re-shoot it was evident that both Callum and I felt more comfortable in our roles, asking Tim and Susie to repeat certain things, or asking them to do things to get the desired shots. It was also clear Tim and Susie felt more comfortable being Infront of the camera the second time around, they were more emotional, willing to open up and more connected with each other e.g., by putting arms around each other. This brought Susie and Tim’s perspective to my attention as I now understand how for Callum and I being around the camera has become normal whereas for people like Susie and Tim it can be nerve-racking and uncomfortable at times.
The post-production process was great to experience as before I was tasked with editing a documentary, I did not understand how hard the process was. The edit was done mostly without a transcript as there was a backlog of work which made the editing process difficult, but we still achieved our intention. As we had some problems with videos and audio it took some time to sync the clips and audio together but once this was done the process sped up. One of the most challenging things to overcome was the amount of footage we had and how big the story we wanted to tell was. We knew that this was a big story and we wanted to do it justice therefore we initially struggled to find the best way to structure the documentary and shorten clips to get a concise story.
Eventually, we decided to structure the project with a harsh, hard-hitting opener going into a contrast between the situation in Ukraine and the UK before moving into the ‘set-up’ of the story – how Susie and Tim know the girls. We decided to put the nice, loving stories in act 1 to bring the audience up and make them happy before bringing them down in later acts by showing how terrible the humanitarian crisis is and how the girls have been let down by the UK. At times we found it hard to find b-roll and coverage to cut away to during long interview questions, we now know that in the future we should allow time for the participants to pause and do their own thing for a bit longer before moving on to the next question as this would have given us more b-roll to work with. One of the biggest issues we faced in the edit was camera shake from the DSLRs, until reviewing the footage we did not realise how sensitive the DSLRs were to shake, this meant lots of our footage was extremely shaky and was something we had to try and fix. We tried to achieve this by using a warp stabiliser in premier pro, this negatively affected our footage by changing the scale and smoothness which meant this would not work. After trying alternative options, we found that slowing the duration of the video by 10% eliminated almost all camera shake and made the clips look great. In future, we will use a stabilizer when using DSLRs to eliminate camera shake and save time in the edit.
Overall, I really enjoyed the project and learnt a lot about the process of documentary making, such as how the order the story is told makes a huge difference to the feel and outcome of the documentary. I liked the final film and feel we told Tim and Susie’s story in a way they would be proud of which was a concern of mine throughout. One of the main things I learnt would be how to communicate with potential contributors and more importantly people who have been through trauma as we did not want to trigger them. I also learnt how to remain professional during emotionally tough conversations which could have easily triggered an emotional response. I like the structure we formed in the edit and how we have used phone footage unique to us to aid the overarching theme of the documentary. There are many things I would do differently throughout production and post-production, which are stated above, however, in the future as a producer I would try even harder to make sure everyone is on board and knows what work needs to be done to ensure the team runs smoothly and efficiently.
Final Cut
References
NERIS Analytics Limited. “Defender Personality: Introduction.” 16Personalities, NERIS Analytics Limited, Aug. 2013, www.16personalities.com/isfj-personality
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