The Beginning of Documentary
My experience and what makes a good documentary...
I am not used to write about my own experience, although my experience before helped me a lot to stay calm. Two years ago I made a short documentary about old man who is a guide all his life traveling around the world. At that time documentary was made because of youth associations where I took part as a volunteer. In my opinion it wasn't good portrait documentary. I was a little bit scared, I didn't do research and doing editing was bored because of the story he told. I guess I was too young.
Next attempt was much better. Early 2015 I made my second documentary for a headteacher in my hometown. Her life story is very diverse. I loved the process during filming for 4 weeks. It was much easier too. I knew her her for last 5 years and was clear what she wanted from me. It was not only easy to communicate but also easy to edit and choose the best shots that she would like...
Documentary is not just a thing to make in two days. It requires patience and long hours to explore the subject. It's about skills to show the viewer someones personality and story using sound and visual material.
In my opinion, a good documentary can only be possible if the film crew is really into the subject. Otherwise it is going to be the worst film ever.
My team
Working in a team with classmates is a lot different. I prepared an online documents to sum up all our information, technology, contacts and ideas. I guess I made decision to focus on my role at the same time tried to make sure about other things like meetings, ideas and music.
I would say that I was lucky to work with Colin and Mary. The reason why is because it was really easy to decide what roles each member takes. More or less I am good with editing and operating cameras. I am bad generating ideas, editing sound or making it. So there Colin became really handy. He is a composer and his work is astonishing. If you have Colin in your team - no worries about soundtrack. Mary is good with story telling, she has done that many times before and I let her do her parts of film.
Our Subject
To be honest it was the hardest part. Looking for perfect subject in short term is not an easy task. Our subject suggested Anne. I forgot that Sasha Crespi asked me few weeks ago taking photos of him. He is a magician and mentalist. He is really good at what he is doing and it is also challenging for our cameras. Card tricks and quick hand movements are difficult to catch with camera.
Throughout his performances, he combines magic, mind reading, pick pocketing and even some hypnosis to achieve all of this and more. His show is completely modular and can be adapted to any theme or any vision you may have. He performs amazing magic so close that, if you weren't watching live, you would think it was a camera trick.
We had few Ideas before about mirrors (fiction documentary) but we needed to focus on Portrait Documentary. We generated another idea, but it would be even more challenging because of permissions and travelling - Filming a homeless person in Aldershot.
We contacted Sasha Crespi and he agreed to be in our first documentary project...
0 comments: