Make up your mind!

Up until recently, it has been easy enough to delay certain questions which we were just not quite ready to answer, but we realised the other day during a group meeting that those decision really can’t sit out in the cold any longer.

The main issues have really come down to pinning down the theme and style of the documentary. Within the group we already have some video experience, and are looking to pursue a simple, clean approach, keeping the audience interested, but not bored. Deciding the various locations for our initial interview, and out follow up observation period, was very difficult. We were looking for somewhere that I had a degree of life to it, but would not over complicate the frame, and distract the audience away from what we were really trying to focus on.

As we focusing the documentary on the day to day life of an IMD student at their practise, we decided the studio in which he spends most of his time would be the most suitable place. Filming the initial interview in the IMD Studios has a number of benefits. First of all, we think it has become somewhat of a comfort zone for Mike. He knows the place well, and is used to spending many long days there. Secondly, being a live University studio, the area has a essence of life to it that you may struggle to find of replicate outside of an intense learning environment. We did contemplate filming the interview out and about Dundee, but from a technical point of few, this may have been quite difficult in this season. Our days are certainly becoming shorter, and the general light isn’t a crisp and colourful as it may be in the likes of summer. I think it is fair to say, that if we had a wider time frame, we may well have liked to have taken the opportunity to use the summer weather and buzz of Dundee to add a refreshing twist to the documentary. Never the less, this is when we have been given the task at hand, and we must rise to the occasion come rain of shine!

For the observation period we looked for somewhere really clinical. We found that that white wall, a desk, and a chair, would be the most effective way of focusing the attention of the audience onto what Mike was doing, and how he was completing our tasks.

For the second interview we decided to try and key in theme of the studio from before, but with some clear evolution. By this point in the documentary we are looking to have really achieved something with the story telling people. We would like people to see that there is a lot to a IMD Student, and that their thought process is really quite mature. Through the use of music, and camera angles we hope to achieve this look of maturity and growth over the initial interview.

We also talked at length about the best way to capture these moments that we are looking for. The interactions we are looking to capture could be over in mere seconds, and insuring we take the most from these is paramount in importance. Hopefully with multiple cameras, and very focused sound recording, we should be able to acutely pick up on what is going on, and effectively express that the audience.

All of this falls under the momentous grasp of the AV Script. Having spoken to people who have worked with AV Scripts before, they sound very simple - however we did not find this to be the case at all. We are most definitely film makers from the pick-up-and-go generation. We found it really difficult to precisely pin down what it was we were after, something which the AV Script demands. Never the less, we gave it our best shot, and hope we have come up with something that is coherent to those on the outside.

So now we are essentially in production mode! We know where we are heading, and know what we’ve got to get done. I’m fairly confident that we will be able to achieve what we are after, and maintain a fairly hight standard throughout. Something which I definitely believe we should do, which I haven’t before, is keep accurate notes of the actual process as we go along. I think there could be a lot of value in knowing how we did certain things at a later date, and especially in the post production.

That is all for now. Exciting week ahead as we really get dug in.

Finlay