Individual Assessment
My role within Red Bus Productions is director of photography, the task set was to create a documentary which would be feature length and shown at the U-DOC festival. Creating an online workbook of research for each person and department was vital in ensuring everyone could create and contribute ideas so that as a group we could start to create a vision for the documentary.As director of photography I knew that I needed to research theorists, photojournalists and documentary makers in order to apply my own research to the project. The initial ideas were brainstormed within the group so that we all compiled research on some similar topics while hand picking our personal favourites for the documentary. Immediately I knew that whatever was picked had to be visually interesting from my departments point of view.
Crossdressing had the imagery of picking out someone within a crowd with the camera who stands out as different and the added bonus of having a male or female in the opposite gender’s clothes is visually confusing for a viewer until the context is clear, I liked the idea of a confusion for the viewer. Unfortunately crossdressing is a topic which has already been covered on many programs and isn’t a edgy, new or raw story.
2012 was an idea that everybody liked within the group as it had so much speculation and hype surrounding it, and it would be perfect timing for the documentary to be shot as it would have a early 2011 release, early enough to build hype in post production and circulate. Also I thought it would be a visually stunning piece to shoot as it would have to cover a apocalyptic theory, a challenge but nonetheless an interesting one. A distinct idea which was varied enough to go in many different directions educationally and theoretically. It was decided that the documentary would appeal to an audience over 18 years and would be shot in the expository mode with an author using the voice of god technique.
I started researching photojournalists that I thought would compliment a varied style, Henri Cartier-Bresson was the first person I thought would be best to research in order to gain the theory of The Decisive Moment and history of Magnum Photo’s. Cartier-Bresson introduced me to the idea that a decisive moment in time and reality can be captured, but the process is delicate, a second before or after and the moment is gone making the art of timing an essential one to gain for the project.
I developed a love for Martin Parr’s use of irony/juxtaposition through colour and context, I believe it is a very clever technique that shows photojournalism in a different context. It is a style that is brave for Magnum Photo’s to have in their company as it doesn’t in include war or even hostility in my opinion, yet it has a juxtaposed message delivered via colour and bleak contrasting subjects. The use of colour in a 2012 documentary would be important, whether it be colour or black and white, colour could use Parr’s bright and ironic technique to teach the audience of a issue to do with 2012 in flyers, posters, documentary etc. Whereas if in black and white it would clearly demonstrate the yin and yang theory which Cartier-Bresson used.
Jeff Wall was the final photojournalist I researched for the workbook as the imagery within his stills are eye catching and eerily beautiful to look at in some cases. ‘The Invisible Man’ taught me that a set up still which uses fake scenery and actors can provide the exact imagery and messages, which for the documentary would make it more efficient to capture, instead of waiting for the decisive moment it could arguably be created instead with more ease. This idea seemed to be appealing to me due to the time it would save and the imagery and messages conveyed would be entirely of the groups creation to help with any 2012 theories and messages to put across.
Each member attended training session for the Sony HD camera, Final Cut Pro editing, Cannon 550d and a recap on the Sony PD-170 use. This was essential for me as director of photography because it’d be a shameless if I couldn’t apply all the theory I’d learnt to modern technology and software and not benefit from it’s advantages.
Each group member was assigned a second role to help with the promotional side of the documentary. To gain more hype for Red Bus Productions and 2012 documentary I started a Twitter and Youtube account to run alongside the Facebook page, the Twitter and Youtube page stuck to the same structure as the website, red, white and black colour range in order to familiarise the audience with our colour themes. The web 2.0 element of the project was a big opportunity to promote ourselves for free and hoping start a viral campaign online, the convergence of synchronising the Facebook, Youtube and Twitter accounts meant that we could afford to update a live feed of status‘, pictures and video updates throughout all three social media without having to be in a certain place to do it or to re-create a post.
The groups decision making was always a shared responsibility with ideas and opinions being put forward from everyone, a good example of this is the promotional aspect of the documentary, with all group members saying what needs to be added as promotional material and then being assigned to the task. Within each department all members contribution ideas, suggestions and make sure that the overall vision of each department is as we all are happy for it to be. The only continual problem was trying to get a group member who was behind on work to catch up and turn up to group meetings, this issue went through all procedures deemed necessary by the group with the producer Juliet ensuring that everything was logged accordingly with full group backing in doing so. Another compromise which was made voluntarily was swapping Jennie’s poster with Juliet’s as the main poster to use on the overall and as the main image on the website as they both amicably agreed Juliet‘s poster better suited the projects needs.
Before the pitch I was assigned to create a promotional trailer as a viral campaign. I struggled at first to do this without any footage, so I had to find royalty free stock images and video online which proved to be a challenge. I did create the messages that the group wanted to convey in a viral campaign but in my own opinion it visually wasn’t of a worthy quality, given the time span and resources it was good enough but will be scrapped as a first draft in order to make way for a more professional and comprehensive online viral promo campaign. If I were to do the promo again I would not have focused so hard on trying to find stock video that could relate to 2012 and instead built up the sound as the main component, for instance a simple telephone call in 2012 cutting off after something happens which the audience cannot decipher if it is the end of the world or a new beginning. I should have brainstormed more ideas and storyboarded to see which idea would be the most effective for the task.
I was also given the role of budgeting, funding and opening for the pitch for the pitch so I had to prepare a speech and slide for our pitch, so I began to look for possible grants and funding applications. I managed to find Kickstarter.com which allows independent production companies to pitch their idea online via uploading a press pack and written pitch, they then set a target for the money need and a end date for when donations stop, this seemed perfect until after looking through the terms and conditions a few days later I found that it only applied to residents in the US, I definitely should have checked this beforehand as we cannot afford to have someone working the budget/funding that doesn’t check the terms and conditions properly. I then looked more and fortunately found another website with the same business model applicable to UK production companies, I signed Red Bus Productions up, the press pack and written pitch would only be submitted when we had final definitive drafts and treatment for the 2012 documentary. I also found to the International Documentary Association which is a directory for all documentary funding and quickly signed the group up and to it’s newsletter so that we had the latest information about grants/funding. It was agreed upon suggestion and stated in the pitch that every other week a budget summary would be sent to each member via hotmail and it’s table-creating facility as this meant everyone had a copy and it was definitely private. I also emphasised the important of viral marketing as it was free and therefore cost effective. The funding and budgeting seems to be well received during the pitch and I feel was a innovative and distinctive strategy compared to other groups. I helped prepared the piñata for the pitch by making it look like a globe and filled it with flying saucers to symbolised aliens coming in 2012, the piñata idea fail when I tried to grab the class’ attention to focus on a competition involving a winning fortune cookie but the items proved to be too much of a distraction and hindered the beginning of the pitch, but did provide as a nicely featured symbol in the centre of the group whilst presenting.
Word Count - 1607
