Throughout the process of making this documentary, I have been faced with issues which have tested my skills, however I feel I have successfully overcome these issues and in turn produced a good short documentary.
The whole process from planning to completion, I was faced with challenges which have tested my patience, after struggling to find an initial idea I searched the internet to find a good story to document until I found Jack, the 106 year old record breaker from Chesterfield. In the planning process I was put under pressure by the deadline to produce content within a 2 week period, so I had to use my personal management skills to ensure I had all the plans in place to meet Jack and have an idea to film. The film I made was strongly based on a documentary I found called ‘A brief history of John Baldasari’ which was fast paced and screamed everything I wanted my documentary to be. So, when planning my questions I planned them in the style in which Jack would answer them like in documentary I watched. However, after filming the interview and coming to edit the footage together, I decided that the style of the video would make it too long to fit the brief of a 3 minute documentary. So I tried to change the footage to fit a similar but different style. This in itself was a problem as I filmed the footage to go in a specific order, but in the end I managed to successfully create a new story which made sense and was much more interesting than my previous idea.
When researching into Jack, I discovered that he was a guy who was very funny and had a very cheeky attitude about him, when watching videos of him on Good Morning Britain he would say quick, sharp funny things to make the interviewer laugh. This made me think about the mood of documentary and what I wanted it to be. With the fact that Jack was comical, I wanted to reflect that in my work, this was shown through the overall pacing, being very quick, not only this but the music was essential. I decided to use uplifting ukulele music as the main score as it seemed relevant to keep it light hearted. In addition, I added comical sound effects at funny moments in my edit where Jack had said something funny, so a record scratch would pause the music. I thought this was effective as it wasn’t too over the top, but still kept the tone.
Although my work is intended to be comical, it still follows the conventions of a documentary, things such as ‘real’ footage of events are incorporated within the video, everything is natural and not staged which gives it the realism. Even including the imperfections of the audio, with Jack’s hearing aid whistling overall gives the film character. My initial intentions where to show the audience the type of person Jack is, and to create an uplifting memoir to him. Personally I feel as though I have achieved this.
In terms of improving the documentary, I feel as though I could have built upon filming more angles of Jack when interviewing him as I feel that I could have had at least one more shot to cut to, just to make it more interesting. Although by leaving it a single shot and cutting to B Roll did the job, I feel it would have improved the whole look of the documentary, allowing the audience to see Jack from more than one angle would have engaged the audience and allowed them to feel more connected to him as you would have also seen more of his home.
Incorporated within the documentary, are clips which I didn’t have permission to use, nor did I film them. In a professional situation I would have needed to get permission from whoever held the copyrights, however for the sake of my documentary the pieces of footage where essential in maintaining the pace of the story. In an ideal world I should have either took the footage myself by arranging to be there, or asked for permission to use it. I understand that this would be a real issue when working in the industry.
One final thing I would improve on, would be the sound quality of the interview. Although it does add character to the documentary, it does sound like a mistake. When editing the footage and audio together, I did try to fix the audio, however it wasn’t entirely fixable. If I was able to film this again I would have done one of two things. I would have used a lapel microphone to reduce the risk of hearing the hearing aid, or had Jack’s primary contact, his daughter, to be on hand to sort out any issues I may have had on the day of filming.
Overall, I feel I have produced a short documentary which fulfils the brief. I have succeeded in telling a story of Jack Reynolds in an interesting way. I have also fulfilled my own intentions to create an uplifting memoir to Jack and expressed the purpose of the documentary throughout.
-Joshua Poole- 