Commission Documentary Unit 3: Transcribing audio interviews & update with Helen

After a short break for Easter, Vittorio, Andrei and I met up to look at the interviews that we agreed Andrei would film over Easter (as myself and Vic had stayed an extra week to film but went home the second week to see families). However, to our surprise what we received wasn’t the interviews we expected, a group member had only recorded interviews without filming them. I was quite confused and asked why, and I got told that the people at the Cathedral was ‘camera shy’ but we had stressed previously that we needed camera interviews to introduce the characters and then we could cut from them to the cut aways of people working. We decided we needed to re schedule another day to visit the Cathedral to get interviews on camera, but for now we would begin highlighting the transcribed interviews that Andrei had done. All three of us took an interview each and went over important sections that we thought would go well in our documentary – we then looked through it together and made any necessary minor changes.

Helen came over to myself and Vic and asked us how our project was going, as we wasn’t in the best of moods because of what we’d just found out, we became crucially honest and began telling Helen about how we’re not happy with how the whole documentary is going as we feel our opinions don’t get taken into consideration which is why VARIOUS things keep happening that we had stressed so much not to do, yet they happened because we didn’t get a say in anything and had been refused the idea to meet up in person and discuss work. Helen decided she wanted to sit down in a group with us all and discuss it, the meeting was a little awkward but I felt better that we had all spoken about it properly and naively thought that the communication barriers may improve…

Helen had also talked about commentary with us and Vic had agreed he would do it and create a script after we had all the footage together. In our group we agreed that Andrei and myself would go back to the cathedral to film shots on the scaffolding of the builders putting in the stone in the great south window and Vic would put our cutaway sequences together - then the following week Vic and Andrei would go back to the cathedral and I would carry on editing, add any new footage and trim and neaten up any work needed.

This was the plan – however afterwards the commentary idea got pushed out the window again.

Overall the day has been quite stressful yet relieving at the same time, although I wish things would change in our group.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Filming over Easter! Day 3,4,5.

As myself and Vic have gone home for the second week of Easter, Andrei agreed that he would go and film some interviews at the Cathedral.
During the week off we kept up to date with Andrei and he mentioned he had been three times to film interviews and get some extra footage!

Hopefully all is going well! :)

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Filming Day 2

Filming day 2:

Today Andrei, Vittorio and I set off at 7am again to get to the Cathedral at 8am! 

With lots of ideas for the day we was all excited to begin filming.

However, that all changed once we realised that the first few hours of the day was a complete waste of time as we had nothing to film due to contributors being busy and us already filming what they was doing the day before, however we need to learn that this can be a problem working on actuality driven pieces!

Luckily, at around lunch time we was able to film Darren McCulloch (who works in the drawing board office) drawing out some measurements from the Cathedral which he was taking measurements for for some minor mullions to be cut, carved and fitted back into the Cathedral!

Vic also went back down stairs to the workshop to film Steve cutting some wood. 

In conclusion the day has been a bit of a waste as we believed we would have got a lot more filmed today - however luckily we filmed a lot yesterday.

Today we all worked well together and discussed in the car home how we can plan what to do for the next shoot! 

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Filming day 1

Filming day 1! 

Today myself, Vittorio and Andrei set off at 7am and arrived at the Cathedral for 8am, we was all very excited to begin filming and had been told by our contributors before hand what they would be doing - therefor we was excited to get the filming started!

We began by discussing with Steve and apprentice Marella McGee what we would be doing and that we would make sure to work around them, we said we're going to be moving around taking different angles and hoped we wouldn't disturb them too much. Steve and Marella seemed happy with this and let us begin filming.

We first all began setting up and I set up the canon we book out, and Andrei set up his own camera which he helpfully brought along!

 Vic began double checking everything and setting up the tripods.

We decided as there was three of us and only two cameras, we would have to try collaborate with each other and let everyone have a chance at filming.

To begin, myself and Vic worked on one camera and focused on the wide shots - whilst Andrei focused on the close ups as he was using a lense which created beautiful shots for us.

Throughout the day we switched around and took a lot of shots of Marella carving into a relief print of a lion sculpture and creating a cast for it.

So far we was happy with the shots we'd got as we got a variety of close ups, wide shots and close ups of our contributors. I loved the close up shots we got as the detail was amazing in the lion and looked really lovely on the cameras.

After a long day of filming Marella and Steve, we decided to break for lunch and then carry on upstairs.

After lunch we went up to the drawing board and discussed with Darren if we was able to film him drawing.

Darren agreed and we began setting up around him - trying not to be too loud as it was a quiet room and the measurements he was taking was very precise as he is measuring out for the minor mullions to be fit back into the Cathedral once they have been worked!

We also decided to use the tracks with us to create beautifully smooth panned shots of Darren. Whilst myself and Andrei set out the tracks and began filming, Vic decided to go back downstairs to get some more shots of Steve working by himself as we had been told he was working into a sample piece for an American investor whom had come to discuss sample pieces with Heather and Steve.

After shooting some tracking shots of Darren, we noticed some really nice scenery around the drawing office of some sample stones, we decided to create another tracking shot of the stones and scenery which worked really well!

The filming day was a huge success as everyone was extremely helpful with us and we all got a lot of shots.

Here are some photos from filming today!

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Skype Meeting

Today Vittorio, Andrei and I had a Skype meeting the day before filming on day 1, this was so that we’d all make sure we knew what was happening during the day so we wasn’t standing around waiting for things to happen and had a clear schedule on the day. Originally we was meant to meet up at the library at 2pm to have this meeting, however Andrei couldn’t make it in person as he was at the Studios still… so we chose the next best thing to have an online video call.

Throughout the video call we each spoke about the overview of the story we want to create and how we want to film tomorrow. The meeting online was quite stressful as it was hard discussing things and sending links and documents to each other due to bad connection and the general idea of talking to someone through a computer screen when we’d much rather see them in person with the documents in front of us. However, we tried to do the best we could with the situation and got our preparation ready for tomorrow.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Music Ideas.

Music Ideas.

For our documentary we don't want stereotypical cathedral music in our video as it's meant to be an upbeat, new, fresh promotional piece about the apprentices.

I decided to do some research into a variety of different genres of music that I thought could fit into our video, another option we have is to take all our ideas together and create a new piece of music.

1. The first music idea I had was the song Take Five by Dave Brubeck, which is an old Jazz song, I know this exact song won't fit but I thought it built up a lot of tension and enigma in our film, however i'm not sure how we will suddenly cut this peaceful piece of music to the loud abrupt sawing and banging in the cathedral however I think this style of song could fit when seeing shots of the Cathedral and the apprentices at work.

2. Another idea I had was to go down the reggae/ hip hop style of music and found a reggae beat on Youtube that was quite slow but built up tension in the cathedral workshop, however it does get a bit repetitive and could bore viewers.

3. Another idea I had was to choose an uplifting cheesy pop song as the video is promotional and is meant to be showing where investors money is going and how it's helping the young apprentices build there careers. I really like how this song could fit and introduce the apprentices (could fit better with emotional backgrounds but we don't have those!)

Or this song below could simply be for at the end of our video when all the apprentices and workers are talking about how they love there job at the cathedral and how they are excited for the future as I think this uplifting song would fit, or even for the credits.

4. I wanted to also look at a Rock n Roll style song which was really upbeat and the beginning of the song is especially good for introducing the cathedral with exterior shots and shots of the apprentices introducing themselves so the audience immediately know this documentary is young, fresh and not a typical slow paced cathedral video.

5. The song below was an idea I had for a really cheesy beginning to our documentary which like the above song could introduce the cathedral and the apprentices, or it could fit with the end of the documentary where the apprentices are talking about why the cathedral is great to work at and why they love the apprenticeship and people they work with.

6.  The final idea I had was a more developed Rock and Roll song beat which could be totally off the radar, however could be seen as an unconventional and totally unique way of selling the documentary with this upbeat song.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Shooting schedule.

Uca Shooting Schedule

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Call Sheet

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Script

After various meetings talking about the script we want, we have created a script below, however this may change and adapt as our process goes along further.

After writing notes and discussing the script Andrei placed it all together below.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: New Interview Questions

As we needed new questions that are specified more to the apprentices (and also encouraged the interviewee to include the question in their answer), I decided to create some new questions.

Below I asked some questions about what the apprentice's and workers job entails, and also questions specifically for Steve Manuel - the apprentice master in which we can ask them about how he feels training the apprentice masters.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: The Treatment

After our group meeting at the library watching videos on how to create a treatment and discussing with each other what our Unique Selling Point was, the main idea for our story, and who are main characters are - we have created a treatment.

However, due to the fact the final treatment was written without a group discussion due to communication issues again I didn't have a final say in the treatment... so although we all talked about the treatment and what we wanted to write about, this is the final treatment written by Andrei.

The Cathedral Apprenitce Documentary Treatment

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment.

To make sure we was well prepared for our filming trips we created a risk assessment that helped us identify risks and hazards that way may face. As we're in a building zone and a stone workshop with a lot of heavy equipment and scaffolding we needed to make sure we knew the correct clothes to wear including safety hats that are given to us when we enter the scaffolding area. We looked at how we could prevent the hazards in a sensible way to make sure ourselves and contributors are safe throughout the shoots!

Here is the risk assessment below.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Locations

After visiting the stone masonry workshop and drawing room at Canterbury Cathedral various times, and also taking a trip to the Stone Yard in Canterbury – we decided that our main locations would be the workshop room and the drawing board room. We decided we would film some footage on the scaffolding as well when the stone is being put in to show how the Great South Window project was slowly but surely being developed. 

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Contributors

After considering all possibilities for our contributors - including whether or not to have more than one, or have a mixture – we decided on choosing;

Steve Manuel – the apprentice master

Marella McGee – apprentice

Darren McCulloch Smith - senior setter out

Jake Wood – apprentice

Scott Wiseman– apprentice

Although we've definitely picked these as our main contributors, in the edit we may still cut one out as we don’t want our documentary to have too many people that aren't as important in it. 

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Stoneyard visit

Today Vic, Andrei and I all went to Canterbury to visit the stone yard. We went there on location scout and to also see what the people working there were like to get a sense of if they would be a good character and talker for our documentary. We looked around, taking various photos and short videos of the workers to use as research, reference material and test shots. We spoke to Emlyn who was in charge of the stone yard, and also spoke to some workers there whom we briefly spoke to to try get a sense of who they were, their background, and if we could use them in our documentary. We also met an apprentice named Jake Wood – Jake is currently an apprentice at Canterbury Cathedral studying on the CWF programme, which is the Cathedral Workshop Foundation. After speaking to Jake for a while and getting a sense of the character he is we decided he would fit well in our documentary as he was currently experiencing the apprenticeship and doing written work and also practical work. As we want our documentary to be interesting and show that not everyone who works at a cathedral is boring – we want to show the lives of the apprentices in their free time. To do this we had the idea of asking Jake what him and his fellow apprentices get up to at lunch time, expecting the answer to be something like they go to a café for lunch, however Jake told us that they play card games in the workshop. This could be an interesting part of our documentary to see the apprentices’ and teachers playing games with each other to see their personalities outside the work area. With the apprentices and craftsmen’s busy workload we decided to leave them to it as they were on a tight deadline. We told Emlyn that if he was happy to be in our documentary, prior to the filming and interviews we would send him over a schedule and interview questions to prepare him so that we didn’t have to keep stopping or he didn’t have to think too much on the spot.

The day was quite productive as we all felt that Jake was a great person to have in our documentary and we’d further developed our knowledge on the work that was going on at the stone yard and at the cathedral. So far we are all happy with the process!

During the car ride home we began talking about who are contributors could be, we made an abrupt decision to cancel Emelyn out of the documentary as he wasn’t a major part and we already had Marella, Steve, Darren, maybe Scott and our new contributor Jake which was already enough people.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Library Meeting

Today we met up at Rochester Library to go over ideas for writing our treatment. We watched a video off YouTube which explained what we can put in our treatment and how we can write one. It was quite helpful to watch and gave us a few ideas. We also discussed how Vittorio and I had met one of our contributors Steve Manuel (the apprentice master) the previous day when we went on a field trip to Canterbury Cathedral to create a short documentary on the stained glass and stonemasonry conservations. We talked about what he was like and how he was informative with anything we wanted to know. Steve was also very helpful when we began filming at the stonemason workshop room as he said if there are any shots you need just let me know. Throughout the meeting we talked about who we wanted our main contributors to be and decided we would have Steve introducing himself first, and then follow on to the apprentice Marella. We then decided we wanted to have some interesting shots of what they get up to at lunch or after work so we could cut to that during the middle of our documentary to show that people at the Cathedral aren’t stereotypically ‘boring’ people that don’t have fun too. We also want to feature another apprentice Jake in our documentary as he is currently also following the CWF (Cathedral Workshop Fellowship), and is one of the youngest apprentices. The CWF this is a course which the apprentice take over a few years and develop into a degree course, they learn about skills needed to be an apprentice and also have to study the theory behind stone masonry - they get hands on experience and are privileged to work with professionals whom have been in the busy for years - 30 years to be exact!  Another main contributor we want to include is Darren whom works in the drawing board room and on the scaffolding taking measurements and he also works closely with Jake which we thought would be interesting. In conclusion the meeting today was very successful and we all agreed on what we wanted to do.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Flat Meeting

Today Vic, Andrei and I had a meeting at the flat to discuss research we had found and talk about what we wanted to film in preparation to create the script. We caught up on anything each of us was unsure or worried about and made sure we all knew what was going on. The meeting today was successful and helped us become more confident in what we was going to film.

Commission Documentary Unit 3: Peter Lloyd-Williams

Today we had a workshop with Peter Lloyd-Williams whom is a director of photography. Peter is from the BBC and has a high knowledge of experience of the TV industry and was extremely helpful throughout the day.

Peter taught us tips on how to film an interview which included making sure we had three main shots. The first shot is a shot of a close up of the interviewee talking by themselves, the second shot is of the interviewer talking, and the third shot is a shot of the interviewee in shot with the interviewer in the corner of the screen with their shoulder in shot (basically an over the shoulder shot). Peter also taught us about tips on what to do when we need to either trim footage and it not be choppy or have audio added in that wasn’t in the original clip. To do this you would film the interviewee, and then film a wide shot of them with something in the corner of the screen and them blurred out so that the audience can’t see that the interviewee’s out of sync or not talking at all.

Another tip we was given was how to get a good panning shot so that you could get three shots from it. The idea was that you record for 5-10 seconds, do your pan and then record for another 5-10 seconds so that you could take three separate shots from a simple pan.

Throughout the day we filmed some short interviews and followed some other tips that Peter had given us including how to make an interview less boring – especially if the person doesn’t want to be identified. What we each did in our group was shoot an interview and then film close ups of their hands playing with an object and also film them from far away with an object in focus and them blurred out in the background. Another tip Peter gave us was to record nodding shots of the interviewer so their reactions look better – all these tips and shots made the interview much more interesting to watch instead of seeing someone just sat there for 5 minutes.

We also had to create a short interview outside which used a variety of shots including wide shots, medium shots and close up shots. I worked with Vittorio Falcucci and Sam Babington, Vic was cameraman, Sam was interviewer and I was interviewee. We had half an hour to film the interview and pick a subject to talk about, throughout the task we tried to find an interesting background for the interview and then tried to pick some interesting shots of us walking towards the spot we was going to stop to talk. We then had 5 minutes to sit in our group in front of Peter, Fergus and the class and edit our short interview together. As there was one computer and three of us it was stressful to each have a turn to edit, so only one of us edited and we tried to give opinions and eventually we produced our short interview.

Here is our finished video.