Supersede feedback review and Documentary Reading

So my contributor is late today. As in still not here at 4pm. So I went to the library and did some reading.

Will and I have have had some constructively negative feedback on Supersede which does not surprise me. I knew the sound was awful despite our best efforts and I was waiting to find out if we had gotten enough coverage. So Will and I are now planning a re-shoot which we hope will be on the week of the 19th (as that's the earliest we can film) which isn't ideal as it's the 3rd from last week but hopefully it will be ok. I picked up a book in the library called Documentary Production- A Guide for Media Students by Eearle Kochberg and flipped to the chapter on Documentary Cinematography and read this:


"Students of documentary production often approach their subjects with the opposite view of production [referring to the planning and pre-production that goes into fiction films]. They assume that the documentary director has little control and simply responds to the scene that unfolds before the camera. This attitude invariably results in mediocrity for many reasons. Shots are ill-conceived, scenes do not edit well, lighting is poor, sound is poor, and the audiences perceive the work as mediocre. Mediocrity becomes a barrier between the audience and the content, and the director's vision, intent, and window on a truth become obscured. Planning is essential in order to avoid mediocrity. Planing can occur on many levels and to many degrees. Not all situations can be anticipated and planned; however, the more forethought and planning one puts into a project, the more likely the outcome will be engaging and compelling. Even naturalistic, observational documentaries benefit from planning."


While I don't think Will and I slipped up in such extreme measures, alot of our mistakes are brought up in this and I am ashamed that as third year students we allowed this to happen. However, Will and I have never encountered such problems with sound and have always managed to produce decent sound so we of course thought we could manage it, especially as only one of us was operating a camera and the other was free to operate sound. I don't know how much planning we could have done to record better sound apart from to have assigned a sound recordist to give us more breathing room. We had already thought about it and had made the decision prior to filming to use the radio mic on the Canon so it's in sync with the footage and the direction on the sony as extra back up sound which would need to be synced. I'm not sure how much more we could have done but we will definitely rope in a sound recordist for our re-shoot.


I think our greatest slip up was we didn't know the contributors prior to shooting. We had met them once. And viewed the area once. This meant while we did have a vague shot list, we were kind of responding to the scene that unfolded. Though we did set up the interviews we weren't sure what they were going to say so we shot the interview and then got shots of things they mentioned to cut to. We didn't get much actuality and what I hadn't even considered was more wides!


Anyway, we are in the process of re-shoot planning and while lack of time is a disadvantage I think we are at a couple of advantages also.
We know the location.
We know our contributors and what they will say (unless Will is planning new questions)
Dylan has seen what is needed to make it cut better.
And we have a week and a bit to get our contributors in line.


I know Will is planning to shoot some wides on tuesday without me (as I am on Casey's shoot) so I have been thinking about shots and will storyboard and shot list them for him.