Provided below are the test shots of where we filmed at, at the Woodland Trust in Bearsted, along with an additional part of TWT that we could of used but we didn't as we were worried that it would have too many people around that area. Also below, I took a picture of the map and marked the locations we could of and did used with an X. Because of the COVID restrictions, we were not able to do a test shoot before recording, so we do not have any test footage of the documentary, if there wasn't any restrictions then we would have done the test shoots 2 to 3 days early before the main filming days.
According to her Maidstone Dance Studios profile it says:
Zoe trained at Dance College Whitstable formally known as The Deborah Capon College where she gained all 4 teaching qualifications in ISTD Ballet, Modern, National & Tap. Zoe then went on to further her teaching at many schools in the Kent area including Maidstone Dance Studios. In 2013 she joined Tap Attack and was successful in competing with Team GB at the IDO World Tap Championships for 2 years bringing back many Gold medals. She has most recently completed her Licenciate qualification and is now studying for her Fellowship. The natural progression of taking over the school from her mother happened in 2018. The school continues to grow and Zoe loves to see how her students continue to progress long after graduating from the school. Zoe is passionate about her students and strongly believes in upholding the ethos of the school with an emphasis on creating a safe, fun and nurturing environment.
She is definitely the right fit for the documentary as she has had very positive reviews from the people in my area as my sister used to do modern dancing at MDS and Zoe was her teacher.
Karl Fletcher:
I found Karl on our Rochester UCA Facebook group, and saw that he posted a lot of pictures that he had been working on. He is a first year at UCA and is studying Photography at Rochester part-time. In his own words he says:
"Had no idea I could even take photos until I used the medium for when I do drag. Until November 2019 I had never even used a proper camera before. Lockdown happened and I just had the urge to document it but everyone was doing it so I decided to keep myself sane I going to just do it my way and hope people will get it. And I learnt along the way and that’s what I did and it worked. I am dyslexic and have nerve damage to right leg and have a neurological stimulator implanted in my back to stop constant pain. I am a dad of 3 girls, one of the girls is transgender I am also divorced but the girls live with me mostly. Maddie is 18 years old, she is the reason I even did something, with the way I see things, she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome which means that her skin is more fragile and she bruises and cuts herself easily. Ellie is 15 years old, she is autistic and has a rare chromosome disorder, she is the muse for my anxiety photography pieces and characters. Lewie is 13 years old, he has ADHD and a chromosome disorder, he is the muse behind my mental health and gender bending photography pieces. Lewie is transgender, female to male."
This link provided shows all of the paperwork filled in the pre-production stage. All of the paperwork was completed fairly quickly with some changes made in the production stage. The ex-student that was planned to be at the shoot at the Dance Studios, called Milly O'Shea, was not able to take part because of family reasons. Luckily, Zoe provided us with another person to interview which is who we used in the final product, called Zara Gunner. We also had to interview Emily Gibson, the current student, over Zoom as her schedule was too busy to be filmed at, at the Dance Studios.
On the day of recording, Maddie Fletcher, Karl's daughter, was unable to be in the shoot as she started to feel unwell, so she wasn't filmed. Fortunately, we still had Lewie, Karl's transgender, female to male, son to film so I didn't include Maddie's consent form because of this reason.
In this workshop, Sam taught us about the importance of a transcript when in the post-production phase of our project and he also taught us how to read and follow the transcript when editing on Premiere Pro. The footage shown above was the edit that I managed to put together following the transcript that was given to us. I decided to add the audio effect known as 'Exponential Fade' to smooth the cuts of the audio I had to piece together. The company, Soundsnap, specifically a filmmaker/video editor called Jason Brandel, the author of this website article, agrees with me saying that it is: "great at smoothing out cut-up dialogue. Because of its curve, it allows for a smooth transition before, between, and after individual words and syllables." (Brandel, 2019)
A transcript is a script that can help when editing to piece the final product together, Louise Tapia, the CEO of Take 1, a transcription metadata company that provides transcripts, access services, translations, and post-production scripts to production companies, studios, localisation vendors and networks across the globe, describes a transcript as: "A 100% accurate word-for-word account of a movie, documentary or online video and is a crucial element to the smooth running of the post-production process." (Tapia, 2017).
With the amount of time we have to complete this unit, unfortunately, we wouldn't have enough time to write a transcript for our documentary, so we will be following our script in the post-production phase.
In this workshop, we played around with the lighting and structured it how we would structure it when we are filming our interview scenes for our production stage of our documentaries. We decided to structure the lighting like it is shown in the pictures below.
Because our locations are really well lit, we did not see a purpose to have another light for this reason stated. So, we wanted to use, what it is called in the media industry as a key light, to highlight the part of the contributors face that was not being hit by the natural light already provided at the location. According to SC Lannom, who is a screenwriter and director living in Los Angeles, states:
"Positioning your key light in this way is by no means required, but it will allow your less intense fill light to favour the camera which, in turn, will give your image a smoother look that is still well lit." (Lannom, 2020)
This is what we wanted to achieve and will be used throughout the production of our documentary to make the final product more continuous as we are using continuity with the lights so the lights do not change and affect the shoot. SC Lannom says:
"If you take one light source out of your 3-point lighting setup, you won’t receive the full benefits. Think of it like your favourite recipe for cookies; if you leave out one ingredient, the cookies won't be perfect." (Lannom, 2020)
This is an excellent analogy and is another reason why we want continuity in our lighting, because if we don't use the same lighting the shot will not look the same and lack smoothness and will disturb the general flow of the shots.
Today was our first day back at the Maidstone TV Studios, and we learned about actuality and how to structure questions for our interviews for our documentary and the best techniques to use when doing interviews. We were taught that there are three different types of interview, these are:
Hard Exposure - This type tends to be quite investigative and pushes the interviewee out of their comfort zone and forces them to come up with the answer that the interviewer wants or the company wants to hear to capture the audience's attention about what the interviewee is saying about a particular subject.
Informational - This type involves putting the audience in the picture of the interview. This includes making the audience feel like they can relate to the interview or feel like they are in the room when the interview is taking place.
Emotional - This type requires engaging with and revealing the subject's emotions about a particular topic. This is great to make the audience feel a certain emotion towards the interviewee, for example if the interviewee is having a rough time and is emotional in the interview, it would make the audience feel sorrow or empathy for the interviewee.
We decided that when we interview Zoe and Karl we are going to use a mixture of both Informational and Emotional. We decided this because we want the audience to relate to Karl and Zoe's stories in a way and we want them to feel inspired by them and their actions that they've gone through throughout this pandemic. We then practiced our questions on each other, with me pretending to be Zoe, filming the interview if we were to be filming the actual interviews, which you can see in the video above. However, it was our first time using the clip microphones and we didn't know what frequency to put the microphone on and when editing the footage and looking back at it, the audio was very pitchy and loud. So, when we film the actual interviews, we will put the microphones on a lower frequency and try angling the clip microphone to be less direct to the interviewee's mouth to make the audio less pitchy.
According to Marie Gardiner, a writer and photographer from North-East England says:
"Turning an omnidirectional lapel mic upside down is a useful trick in a studio environment or ‘dead’ space for reducing popping and sibilance. If you’re ‘in the field’ or somewhere where you’ve got an echo or lots of external noise then you’re better off using a cardioid and having it the right way up, taking into consideration mic placement and proximity to the speaker’s mouth." (Gardiner, 2015)
This technique was also suggested by my cousin who works in the Media industry and he has his experiences with microphones as he was on this course before I was. Since we are filming in a dance studio we will make sure that Zoe's and Zara's, the ex students, clip microphones will be facing downwards. However, we will have to have Karl's microphone facing upwards and we will consider the distance between the microphone and Karl's, Maddie's and Lewie's mouth.
