Documentary Evaluation

For the Documentary strand on the Moving Image Project module this semester, the brief was left open for us to discover our own story and create a documentary film on a subject that we feel passionate about. This module has been very enjoyable, as well as beneficial and productive, in terms of the learning process as well as creatively.  Taking on the role of Producer on a film project left with a very open brief was an exciting concept and I have enjoyed the process, as well as learnt a great deal throughout it about works well in documentary storytelling and how to approach certain elements with a clearer vision in future film projects.

For the module, I worked in a group of four and believe our key strengths as a group throughout the entire process have been our teamwork, communication and complete commitment to the project from the start. We decided on roles together from an early on point in the module, based on our interests and where our individual strengths lie. I offered to take on the role of Producer, as I produced another documentary in the first year of the course and found this to be a job role that I really enjoyed and was keen to try out again. I also wish to carry on with documentary filmmaking in future as this is where my main interest lies. I enjoy the organisation and the planning process of filmmaking, whilst the other members of my group prefer to work on the practical and technical side to productions. The other members of my group were Sarah Cooper (Cinematographer), Emily Spokes (Sound Recordist/ Sound editor) and Heather Hall (film editor), who all chose their individual roles as well, based on their interests and what they were keen to experiment with in this Documentary project.

Coming up with a concept initially for the film was enjoyable, as we discovered a lot of potentially interesting stories that could make great documentary content through searching online news articles  as well as through making and comparing notes on topics which interested us all as individuals. Throughout a series of group production meetings, we found our story through a current local news article that was present on quite a few different websites, and one which was very current and relevant to Sheffield.

The story is that part of the Devonshire Quarter area of Sheffield, that has always been the city’s independent area, is under threat of demolition plans and that there is an ongoing struggle to save this unique part of the city. After researching this further, we found that the story and the reaction from people was actually on a much larger scale than we initially thought it would be. We sourced comments and interviews from famous Sheffield born musicians backing the petition to save the area as further research on our subject. We also researched and collated comments taken from local people who have grown up in Sheffield and have positive memories of the independent area which they have shared. An early and on going inspiration for our film has been Sound It Out (Dir. Jeanie Finlay, 2011.), a documentary about the last surviving record store in Teesside. Having this as an inspiration throughout the process has been helpful, as have been able to go and look at this as example when we were struggling with a few structural issues even up to early on in the edit stage.

From this point onwards, our focus was to gain contributors for our documentary film. Whilst at first we anticipated this to be a positive experience which would gain lots of interest as our chosen angle was to support the campaign to save the area, throughout the pre production process this was one of our first difficulties with the project. The owners of two out of the three stores under threat of demolition were not willing to be involved in the film or give away any extra information on the subject, which although we completely respected, was a bit of a shame to us as we were beginning to get excited about our idea. Luckily, the owners of Syd & Mallory expressed a keen interest in being involved so we worked with them onwards to at least be able to gain one interview and follow on focusing a story of one particular business who this will affect the most in our film.  However, only having one contributor who this story will directly affect was a bit of a disappointment overall in our group, and as Producer at first I did not feel too confident with where this one small store’s story alone would go in terms of the bigger story we wished to tell.  However, to get around this, as a group we had a rethink in terms of our story structure and how we could break the film up into smaller sections, and about who we could try to contact in terms of extra contributors to strengthen our film. The decision to meet up as a team to work around this was a positive and helpful learning process, as we all contributed our own ideas and it enabled us to ensure our vision for the film was still kept clear at a very early on stage in the filmmaking process. From this, I contacted some of the other main independent businesses within the Devonshire Quarter area to try and raise awareness of the fact we were making a documentary film and gain any further interest from potential contributors. Within a few days, I had heard back from The Forum, a small independent shopping space on Devonshire Street as well as The Green Room, an independently owned and run bar on the corner of the same street which the stores under threat stand.
After this initial contact through email, I also spoke on the phone to Kane Yeardley, the managing director of the Forum, to discuss the film in further detail and exchange schedules to arrange an available time for an interview. I also emailed a list of pre interview questions over after this, as requested. I decided it would also be a good idea to spend  some time visiting  the Green Room in person to get to know the interested member of staff and confirm availability so as to not disturb the needs of the business during the run up to the busy Christmas period.  

The pre - production and planning process took up a lot of our time as a group, however we worked well  and consistently at this as a team during this time and I think the amount of work we put in and our commitment from an early on stage was a strength of ours.  Whilst I was focused on sourcing and remaining in contact with contributors as well as filling in the project forms, Sarah (cinematographer) and Emily (sound recordist) went out onto Devonshire Street with my camera to collect a series of cutaways and establishing shots of the area which we knew that we would need to include at some point during our final film in order to manage and distribute our time well throughout the course of the production scheduled weeks.  We also went out to try and gather some voxpop style interviews around the Devonshire Quarter area to try and get a sense of what people liked about the area and capture some of the ‘community’ side to our film, which was a main theme we had in mind. However this was not as successful as we initially imagined it to be, so we decided to put this idea to one side from quite an early on stage. Instead, we chose to include news articles and spoken comments to show the story in a more literal visual way and add a bit more of a unique element to our film.

 

 

In terms of moving on to scheduled production filming days, one of the most successful of these was in Syd & Mallory, when Sarah and I went inside to take some close ups with the intention of capturing the finer details which make the store so individual. Whilst doing so, we had a chat with the owners about any updates on the proposed plans, signed an in store petition and were given permission to spend as much time as we needed around any area of the store to collect as much visual content as we could. I think this was another early strength of ours, as we managed to form an established working relationship with our main contributors from the very beginning of the project’s planning and kept this continuing throughout the process.

An area which began less positively but which we built upon throughout the filmmaking process was our interviewing. Each of our three contributors had very different reactions to being in front of camera and so our approach had to be adapted through learning what worked well and didn’t during our earlier interviews. This did however mean that some aspects to our interviews were weaknesses, such as remaining a steady line of eye contact and the consideration of background noise in interview set ups. In the Forum, the background sound in particular was a huge issue which we did find difficult to get around, as the location was chosen and set by the interviewee in terms of ease of convenience for the venue which we had an understanding for. After attempting several ways to work around this issue such as using an audio clean up editing software, we discovered that the quality was affected and collectively decided we would rather finely cut down the interview to the parts that the background sound was less noticeable in and have less content than affect the overall quality of the film’s content. Although our interview approach in terms of keeping a consistent eyeline and taking our time to set up to visually frame the interview as well as carry out tests positively developed throughout the production process, there were still areas of this which we were disappointed with and can identify as weaknesses to our final film. As Producer of this film, I do feel that this was on quite a large part my responsibility, as looking back on it after reviewing footage, I recognise that I could have focused more on certain finer elements whilst setting up, such as asking the contributors to turn down background venue music, as well as ensuring our interview questions were a bit more varied between contributors in advance. However, I see these as mistakes to learn from when creating future films, and do think that in part this comes down to the nature of documentary filmmaking in terms of the unpredictability of situations and adapting to change during the documentary filmmaking process.  

 

Whilst another group strength was organisation, during the last few remaining weeks of our production schedule we seemed to gain a larger amount of people interested in helping us out with the film and becoming involved as they heard about it from other contributors. This was challenging for us in terms of knowing the best way to approach this at such a late stage in the process. Although on one hand we could have just apologised and explained that it was too late to become involved to the interested contributors,  as a group we felt a stronger interest in trying to gain as many contributors and opinions on the story for our film as possible to strengthen it. We understood that this was going to make our schedule extremely tight, however thinking about how the value of the extra content would add to our documentary, we decided to go ahead and film further content which we left space for in the current edit, which we worked on simultaneously.  
For this particular film, it was a positive although brave decision to reach, as it had the potential to not add much to our story and instead purely be time consuming, however it did the opposite and added a new and interesting element into our film in the form of bringing in memories told as stories, which added a reflection theme into it, strengthening the overall film.

On the whole, the finished documentary is a film which we feel does tell our story well, but that has more of a campaign film style and approach than we initially imagined for it to.  Although our story does lend itself to a standard, short and almost promotional type of film, we do feel a little disappointed with the overall result, purely due it feeling quite standard and nothing out of the ordinary to us.  However,  we did challenge ourselves with form especially when producing content for our earlier poetic documentary, and we were extremely organised as a group and worked well together during the process of creating the film.

The learning process has been extremely valuable to me as I would still like to continue with documentary filmmaking in future and have tried to find outside of university opportunities relating to this since, such as applying for the Sheffield Doc/Fest Youth Jury and visiting video installations in my own time such White Hole (Dir. John Smith, 2014.) at the Tyneside Cinema.

Whilst there are areas we don’t feel come across as well as we initially intended to in our film, I think this is partly due to us having spent so much time on it ourselves without having a fresh pair of eyes viewing the content and having someone watch it who don’t necessarily know anything of the story. The positive feedback from contributors in the past few days to the film has made us feel more confident and positive about the film as they have expressed to us that the film has done a great job of showcasing their part of Sheffield, which was the heart of our story and the main thing we wanted to achieve from this film.

Made in Sheffield - Final Documentary

Made in Sheffield from Hannah Grencis on Vimeo.

Post - Production process

Due to other group member's unavailability during post production, we had to share job roles more than we usually would have, meaning Sarah and I took charge of the edit on a number of occasions. Although we initially had a draft structure by which to go by, several issues cropped up during the production process which meant that when reviewing footage back, the structure had to continuously be adapted which although was extremely time consuming was worth it in the end as we managed to better the film as we went along and it has been a valuable learning process.

Some of the main issues that we encountered whilst in the edit were finding enough variety in shots to make an interesting visual structure and sound interference issues. We decided the best way to approach this with there only being two of us was for one of us to work on the sound issues and research ways around this, whilst the other one work on visuals and searching through all of the footage, including any extra content that we originally gathered which we did not initially intend to use. This way of working was quite successful, however the editing process was still quite stressful as it was taking up a large amount of our own time when we had different job roles than the editor and other work to be getting on with. 

I also spent some time during the final post production week reading a few sections of an editing book that I have, The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory and Practice (by Ken Dancyger, 2010.) to gain a bit more knowledge on and familiarise myself with post production as this is an area that I am not too confident with.

Having sat down as a group and reviewed the footage a number of times again, we made some more notes and managed to restructure the timeline completely so as to try out new ways of structuring the content and telling our story in the way in which we intended.

I think we made some brave decisions which worked to our advantage, such as choosing to shoot a final last minute interview and leaving space to fit this in and work around it within the current edit. Considering the tight time schedule we had, I think we have done the best job we can with the edit and have worked extremely well as a team to ensure that our final film is what we initially intended for it to be, especially in terms of the story that is coming across.

Making further contacts

Whilst choosing to film an extra interview close to the deadline was risky, it also provided us with the opportunity to talk to new people about our idea and make further contacts. Although this was unanticipated, it was an exciting part of the documentary filmmaking process, as we just happened to be filming in the Green Room when the sound engineer from the SheffAid single was in the bar.

Before this interview, we had not heard of the SheffAid campaign, but after it being mentioned we were interested in finding out more and so used this as an opportunity to introduce ourselves and our project, whilst finding out more about the SheffAid single. We actually came away from this interview after exchanging details with a suggested offer for us to use the track on our film, and/or promote the campaign as the cause that they are trying to promote ties in well with the theme and general idea behind our film. In this case, it was a bit disappointing that we had come across this at such a late on stage in the process as we could potentially have gained a lot more contributors and made a stronger film if we had more time to work with this, however we understand at the same time that unpredictability is part of documentary filmmaking and we are still pleased that we have gained potential contacts to send the film to and perhaps work with in future.

The SheffAid campaign

(source: http://www.thestar.co.uk/what-s-on/gigs-music/slideshow-sheffield-musicians-roundabout-way-to-support-retailers-1-7002440)

The SheffAid single was released by local Sheffield bands and musicians to raise awareness of the demolition plans and to try and save the independent businesses, whilst also raising money for Roundabout charity.

Instead of putting this track underneath our film as it's main soundtrack, we used the local busker's instrumental track instead as we felt this fit alongside the visuals better and was not too distracting in terms of still hearing what the interviewee's were saying and giving the viewer time to take in the visual content. However, we still wanted to include the SheffAid campaign in some way in our film, so we did this by putting a link to their social media page on the end of the film.

Production File - Contributor Release Forms

Here are the signed and agreed contributor release forms for the remaining two of our interviewed contributors:

 

 

 

Transcribed interview with Bill (The Green Room) - Tuesday 16th December 2014

Interview with Bill - The Green Room - Monday 8th December 2014 - 2.30p.m
Can you please briefly just introduce yourself and your role at the Green Room for us please?

Oh god, I don't have a role here I volunteer!.. erm My name is Bill, I work at the Green Room.
What is the Green Room?
The Green Room is a bar which has been around since the early 2000's, it previously was various other establishments.

..and what do you like most about it being in the Devonshire Quarter area of Sheffield?
I haven't been working in the Devonshire Quarter until around three years ago, er - it's great, it's a really close knit community around here, all independent shops, mostly independent bars -  really nice place to be.

Do you have a favourite memory of working here?
I've got lots of memories, but none of them involve working here, erm, but I did used to drink in this place when it was Mr Kites, and Casablanca's after that, erm and then I've obviously been around for a while here before I started working here.
..Favourite memories...that's a good question!

In the time that you have been working in the Devonshire Quarter area, have you noticed it change at all?
It's changed with the whole street drinking and homelessness side, but that's a different story and side to it. Erm, I think (on the demolition plans). As far as I'm concerned, it's not so much the shops that would be going, it's the fact that there would not be independent shops replaced there. If the building needs to be knocked down for fairly structural reasons then fair enough, but if it's just replaced with another...bar, another chain shop, another restaurant, it would just take away the fact that all around here is mostly independents and it's got a reputation for that.

So, is it the independence of the Devonshire Quarter area that you think attracts people?

Yeah, I think it's a great area, I remember when it was first redeveloped, about ten years ago...more than that about fourteen years ago. Before then, again, it was still little shops and bars, but they knocked down a lot of those to build the flats opposite - that was great because it brought all the students and the first big sort of city centre living into Sheffield. Erm, but I think there's enough. We don't need anymore around here, there's about four halls of residence that you can see out the windows here and even behind us they've got a new student flats area, so I don't really see the point in knocking down three old shops to build, I think it's twelve more flats.

Do you think it would affect you, or the customers of the Green Room if the plans for demolition were to go ahead?
I don't think it would affect us directly, I think it would affect the streets. It would particularly affect some of our neighbours where, for example Filibuster and Booth - an antiques store - a lot of people who shop there would also shop in Rare and Racy. We've already lost Sue Callaghan who was the book binding specialist, but erm, the company that is in it's place, Syd & Mallory - is another great little store for boutique clothing and everything. It wouldn't affect us directly, but it would affect them more.

Can you tell us about a bit about the customers that you get in the Green Room?
Very collected (?) customers in the Green Room - we have anyone from magazine editors to...anyone really. From pop stars, all sorts of musicians, very artisty sort of crowd, few professionals come in after work. In the mornings when we're doing the food we get builders in, everyone comes in, and of course, quite a lot of students!

Yeah..so do you think if the Devonshire Quarter area became sort of more commercialised, then it would change that?

Yeah, I think it would. Yeah, I think it's the beginning, it's the thin end of the wedge, and you know..if a lot of other cities were to save areas like this, er to make sure there is still areas of culture, I mean - its called the Devonshire Quarter area for a reason, its like you know they're trying to make it sound arty. It is the thin end of the wedge because if we start getting rid of everything, all the independent places and just having chains, then it may as well be Fargate, which as we know is struggling.

What kind of musicians have you had in?Over the years? Yeah over the years there's been..er quite rich, one of the bars has got quite a history of music. Er, when it was Mr Kite's and Casablanca there was a lot of jazz here, we still have obviously all the live bands, but recently various bands have done live showcases here. The people are sort of well known Sheffield people from Jarvis Cocker to Richard Hawley, people like that, they've all come here - used to remember when I drank in here years ago The Human League used to drink in here, it's always been that kind of bar.

...any funny stories of working here?Haha, no! ..because they all involve things you can't say..I do like that question though!

Thank you very much!

Production File - Contributor Release Forms

Here are the release forms for the interviewee contributors in our final Documentary (Bill & Kane)

Inspiration for Opening sequence - Life Itself (Dir. Steve James, 2014.) and Living Like Kings (Dir.Zoe McIntosh, 2014.)

Whilst at this years Sheffield Doc/Fest, I watched Life Itself (Dir. Steve James, 2014.), a documentary on the life of Roger Ebert, and found the beginning of it to be a really interesting way of opening the story. From just showing the city scenes of a key location, the story is established by the location rather than the subject at first. I also really liked this film for the style of it's content as well as it's approach - turning a sad story into a more positive memoir and celebrating a life rather than purely focusing on the negative side to grief.
Although our film is incredibly different to this in terms of it's approach as well as type of film, I like the idea that although the story we are focusing on has the potential to be quite negative, we could experiment with instead celebrating the positive sides to the area as it stands today.

Another short documentary film I have watched recently which also follows a similar opening sequence structure is Living Like Kings (Dir. Zoe McIntosh, 2014.) which I discovered when looking through the Short of the Week website.

 

I showed this to the rest of the production group, as I thought it would make an interesting and bit of a different opening to our own film, if we included a still or long take of the Devonshire Quarter area in a similar style to the ones shown above, and would be an interesting way to establish the location of our film's story without delving straight into interviews. I also feel like this would be fitting with theme of 'community' of our film - right from opening shot.

Transcribed Interview - Kane (The Forum) - Monday 8th December 2014

Interview with Kane - The Forum - 8th December 2014 - 12 midday
Can you briefly describe your role here at the Forum and a bit about the Forum area itself please?

Ok...so erm my name's Kane Yeardley and I'm like the owner and the manager of the Forum and we've got two bars here and about twelve shops. Erm, my role is to oversee the bars, make sure they're run well and the design and the offer, and then with the shops to try to get an interesting mix of tenants to make the place a destination.

Can you tell us a bit about your opinion on the Devonshire Quarter area?

I really like the Devonshire Quarter, 'cause it's where a lot of interesting small businesses start and er, it's just got a feel to itself . It's not like the high street ...people are more friendly here than the high street. Yeah, that's why I like it!

How's it different to the city centre?

Well like all city centres, because of the high rents, they tend to have the same chains and the same brands, so all city centres look very similar, whereas what you get here is you get different people doing different sorts of things and services. You know, you've got from small tailors that will repair things, you've got cobblers, you've got people that make one off pieces of clothing for you to specialist skateboard shops to great coffee shops which you don't get on the high street.

Whydo you think Sheffield benefits from an area like this?

Erm well, it benefits because...well I read an article this morning that says 60p the pound that is generated by independent stores goes back into the same city. It helps little businesses to start because the rents are not as expensive, and it's attractive to other people to come and live here, -  if there's a good independent area then people will choose it because it's kinda more interesting.

and can you give us your opinion on the demolition plans being proposed?

Erm it's a bit sad really, it's a lovely building. It's got three great , quite different, unique traders in - Rare 'n' Racy has been here a long time, the book and record store. The Royal (Natural) Bed company, which has grown from being a little store to like exporting all around the world, and Syd and Mallory, which again - small, two girls that set up and now export quite a few bits and pieces around the world.  I think the development and the proposing - knocking it down and making two large units, would be solely for the purpose to rent them out as bars or restaurants  - to chains - and to get more flats above. So...I can't see there's any benefit of that really to the area.

What do you think the effects would be if it did happen?

Er..(pauses) well as I say those three are great little retails, and they help with the character of the area, which if they go..it kills of a bit of the character in the area, erm...I can't see any benefit really.

And if you could give a message to the people behind the plans, would you have anything to say to them?

I think if they decided to say the building couldn't be demolished, it would then leave itself for smaller businesses to ...oh and it wouldn't mean that higher rents could be charged from new buildings so it would help other small businesses come into the area.

..and is there anything else you would like to say on the subject?

Erm, no (laughs) I think that's it. Is that alright?

Yeah, thank you very much!

Small Business Saturday - filming on Devonshire Street - 06/12/14

After some further research, we found out that today is Small Business Saturday, which is a campaign highlighting the importance of small, independent businesses, encouraging shoppers to support these local businesses in their area. Because this fits so well with the theme and overall story of our film -encouraging people to shop locally and save independent businesses - we  decided to use today as a full filming day around Devonshire Street, as we expected the environment to be lively due to this promoted campaign.

(Source - The Star Sheffield : http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/business/business-news/call-to-celebrate-sheffield-s-vibrant-independent-traders-1-6989289)


We gathered a variety of close ups of the individualities that make Devonshire Street unique, to show how considered this area is by the people who work in it and how small details have been thought about and are different to city centre, which has much more of a generic style.  We discovered when looking around the area for these small details, that we had not even noticed some of these ourselves previously. Signs such as 'support Sheffield independent businesses', friendly messages on chalk boards outside of independent cafes , signs thanking customers etc.. are a few examples of these.

Although today was productive in that we managed to capture further close up details of the businesses and general area, we were slightly surprised by how little difference small Business Saturday seemed to have made to the amount of people around the area. We still set up the camera and filmed two ten minute full long takes of the street, to capture as many people as possible walking around the area and are pleased we had chance to go out on a Saturday as it was busier than it had been when we had previously been around the area during the week.