Reflection 4 (Final Reflection)

Now that our documentary is finished, it is time for me to do my final reflection. At the start of the project the group had good energy that i think reflected in our early research. The group would go out to meet possible subjects for our documentary and learn their characters to find which would suit best. When we decided on making a documentary on John Oliver and Covstock and conducting our research, we found there was little evidence online or with local newspapers  such as the Coventry Evening Telegraph of the past events, which could have been a problem as we might have liked to include some history in our final documentary. So to learn the history of John and Covstock the group took a trip to John’s place of business to speak to him first hand. Because i was the only person in the group to know John personally, i thought i would introduce the rest of the group to John to break the ice and relax John when it came to filming. During the research process i felt i as at a personal advantage as i was at Covstock and knew John. It was myself who organized the meetings with John and also knew where to gather most of the online research. The rest of the group did contribute, however it made more sense if it was myself who took lead during research.

When it came to filming the documentary the group was on a high, working well together and was glad to be doing some production. During the shoot i set up lights and camera, also made sure we captured good audio. Because i knew John personally i thought we would get a better interview from him someone else in the group asked the questions. A problem we encounter during filming was that John had limited time to spend with us, so how we over came this was to use someone in the group to stand in for John as we set up lighting, sound and camera angles. Then when John was ready we were prepared and used him for as little time as possible. The shoot went well and was enjoyable because we were well prepared and knew what we wanted from John.

Editing was the hardest part of the project. The main problem was gaining access to the editing rooms as our work was saved onto a certain MAC and other students had lessons in there. When we were editing though, i took a back seat to the job. I was present at the editing sessions to put my imput into the film however i wasn’t the one clicking the buttons. When the documentary was coming together we started to add our cut-aways, but found that we didn’t shoot enough of them so to compensate, we used still images of Covstock downloaded off the internet. Towards the end of editing, i luckily found video footage of Bethany Keenan, the little girl with cancer who the Covstocks were raising money to cure. It was difficult as we found the footage on youtube and had to rip it into our documentary. We did this by finding an online converter to convert the FLV file from youtube to a MOV film for editing in final cut.

From starting this project i feel that ive learnt just how important research is to a production. Without it we would have found it very difficult to complete our documentary. Although i feel, if i was to do it again, i would focus more on the heart attack, as i feel it’s the heart of the story (no pun intended).

John Oliver

Shooting

Short Review

Titled “The gig that nearly killed me” John Oliver explains briefly about Covstock and how it led him to have a heart attack, then how his passion to work in the merchandise business led him to start-up his own business the sound foundry. The documentary starts off fast paced with good use of pictures as cut aways to show what Covstock was as John explains. The documentary then slows down as John explains his heart attack. There are little cut aways here so it could have been easy to lose interest but John keeps it entertaining by speaking so openly and passionately about how it affected his life. Overall the documentary gets its story across but i feel more depth was needed, but it is impossible to fit in the John Oliver Covstock story fully into 3 minutes.

Audience

I’ve been researching into who is the target audience for our documentary and there it quite a range of people who id feel would watch it.  As it is music based and shot MTV style i feel it would relate to a younger audience, but also to the older generation as the subject is a middle-aged man talking about dealing with health as he gets older but still keeping his passion.

As for broadcasting the documentary, i think it would suit Channel 4 on a program such as “3 Minute Wonder” or on VH1 as that channel has shows such as “Behind the music” which is in a similar vein as our documentary.

The main place i think our documentary would suit on the internet is on YOUTUBE, but i wouldn’t like to see it on there professionally as it’s a non-profit website. Id rather it was brought by a TV channel to air. Though it could also be shown on music forums around the world or promotional websites.

I think the documentary is perfect for a film festival, either local or national. I have been to a film festival called “The Heart Of England Film Festival” and i can really see it fitting in well there.

Private screenings around the sound foundry would also suit the documantry. John has a big screen and projector where he could screen the documentary to his customers.

Reflection 2- Research Progress

Looking over my research progress and i feel so far it is going quite well. At the start of the project i didn’t know much about the chef world but after learning from Nick first hand (the groups first character) I’ve learnt just how much passion and work goes into cooking. It was good to go and get some primary research from Nick and actually go to his kitchen and speak with him before starting production. This was an important move as from doing this primary research, we made the critical decision that Nick wasn’t the best person to base our documentary on. Instead we chose a man called John Oliver because he was local, there was more information online about him, he was willing to be filmed, we had more access to him, he is man with passion with his business and he had a more depth to his story.

Finding John Oliver wasn’t difficult because i knew him personally, but i still had to research into John’s character and also the events that he has been involved in. Because these events were covered by the press it was easy to find information and images online. The group still took a pre-production trip to John’s place of business (the sound foundry) so i could introduce the rest of the group to John and let him tell the story’s that we would later cover. Also John had more information and images that which aren’t online and he has granted us permission to use.

At the start of the project, the group and I were mainly using secondary research with things like the internet to find the majority of our research. We never felt like we could dig up enough personal information so going out and meeting our characters gave us a good advantage when it came to shooting. I’m pleased we did this as i feel it is a better type of research. I feel the project has progressed well and I’m looking forward to continuing with it.

Sound Foundry Research

For this project to be a success myself and the group have had to carry out primary and secondary research.

For the primary research we went out straight to John himself to speak to him and gain his story first hand. Also John has kept pictures and videos that are not available to the general public, though he will allow us access too.

For secondary research we searched the internet for pictures and news articles of Covstock and anything we could find on John Oliver. We came across Covstock and Sound Foundry websites, but we dug deeper and found Covstock stories on the BBC website and pictures from local photographers.

http://thesoundfoundry.forumotion.net/portal.forum?pid=2 - The Sound Foundry website.

 a few Covstock pictures.

When we saw the rehearsal rooms, we thought it would be good to shoot an interview with John in the style as MTV shoot their interviews. By this i mean not only would the audience see the formal interview, it would also cut to a free hand shot showing the interview taking place from a 3rd person angle. I decided to search for similar interviews to look for techniques. I found this video interview with Eminem, and though it doesn’t show the interview from 3rd person, it does cut to a black and white angle and has cut aways. Similar to what we have in mind for John’s interview.

 

The Sound Foundry Recce

The group recently took a trip to The Sound Foundry for a recce and to meet with John Oliver and learn more about his story. Firstly we meet with John and he talked to us in good depth about his heart attack and the cause of it, and also what he has achieved afterwards. Instantly we knew that John would have no problem doing the interview and would be much more natural on camera than Nick the chef would have been.

We then had a tour of The Sound Foundry rehearsal rooms and decided that we could shoot the interview in one of them as it suits the music business feel. We looked a lighting and these rooms are well-lit, but even so we will take Deado lights to have more control over the lighting. These rooms are also perfect for sound recording as they are fully sound proof, so we shouldn’t have too much trouble from excess sounds.

The other half of The Sound Foundry is where John does a lot of his printing of merchandise and running of his business. This is a good location to film some fly on the wall type footage of John at work.

New Idea

At first the idea for the documentary for to concentrate on the story of Covstock and the backstage story of the making of that event. But when researching deeper into the story of main promoter of the event, John Oliver, we found there was a better and more personal story we could concentrate on that had more soul.

With the pressure and stress of Covstock, John suffered a heart attack days after the event. Luckly he made a full recovery, however he gave up promoting gigs (something he had a real passion for and had being doing for years) Instead he set up his dream business which was providing merchandise and rehearsal rooms for bands. A nice touch of the story is that after the heart attack John struggled to open his business The Sound Foundry on time, so most of the Covstock musicians came down one day and surprised him by finishing off the painting of the building.

These day’s The Sound Foundry is doing well and John is even starting to help promote big gigs like he used to. The best part of the story is that recently John was asked to design the Michael Jackson award by the Jackson family (to which they were very pleased with the result) and has even meet one of the Jackson brothers to do a deal where John will provide the merchandise for the Jacksons up coming tour.

So the heart of this story and the focus point of our documantary is from “the gig that nearly killed him” John has recovered and doing even better because of his work at Covstock.

We pitched this new idea to the Green group and it was well recieved. The next stage is production.

Back To The Drawing Board

It has been a while since i have posted a blog about the 111MC documentary but i have been busy with a few problems to do with it which i will make clear in the next few blogs.

With the chef idea in place the group decided to carry our some primary research. So we got together, took out a D90 and video camera and took a trip to where Nick the chef was currently working to meet him and get a feel for his character and passion for cooking and opening a restaurant in Coventry. This would allow the group to plan the “feel” of the documentary and find the heart of the story which would lead to work on production.

When we arrived at the kitchen we were hit with our first hurdle. Health and Safety at the kitchen would only allow two members of the group into the kitchen at the time, creating a problem when filming as we’d need people to operate lights, camera’s and sound. We managed to do a recce of the kitchen (see pics below) and then we met Nick.

After speaking with Nick, the group got the feeling that it would be difficult to get the passion out of him on camera. He seemed camera shy in didn’t come off well enough in the mock interview we did with him. So we left Nick and the kitchen with doubts that this would be the better idea for the documentary.

Soon after the recce the group decided that due to the lack of research we could get out of Nick, and the barriers we’d have with filming, we would re work the Covstock idea and go from there.

                                                                                                

Research Week Plan

This week I shall be watching chef show’s such as “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Gordan Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares” in preparation to filming the documentary. I want to look at the style and camera techniques used in these types of programs. I will also be researching the history of our chef which will include training, background employment, awards our Chef has won and when he won them.

Aside from this, the group plans to work out a shooting schedule with our chef so we can begin filming.

Proposal

 Our 3 minute documentary will  present  Mr Nicholas’s great passion – cooking. To be more precisely, we will start with a brief recapitulation on Nicholas, including his history as a chef which includes his awards, achievements and passion for the job. Our character will speak about  the reason he has chosen the career of being a chef and why has he chosen to open a restaurant in Coventry. To gather this information from him, one of us will ask him a few questions like :  Is it all  about passion and talent, or you have also worked hard to achieve your reputation? What is your dream (wish) ?   Why Coventry?   Will you cook in your own restaurant anymore? How did he become interested in cooking?

Visual style

The documentary will be a mix of film and photos.  The filming will be done within a kitchen, interviewing Nicholas, whilst other chefs work behind him. The footage will consist of photos of other places where he had worked before and also photos of him cooking and some with his awards. We shall use talking heads and cut aways, so the documentary isn’t just a 3 minute interview. For the interview we wont see the interviewer or hear the questions, we’ll just be using his answers as a narration. We have looked at other chef show’s  such as “HELLS KITCHEN” and ”GORDAN RAMSEY’S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES” for inspiration and style ideas

Mr Nicholas