Poetic Documentary - Draft tutorial

After completing a rough draft of the treatment and a first assembly of the poetic documentary, we shared our work with Debbie to receive feedback before presenting the final version next week. As Elliot was having some issues editing together a draft of the film, we showed the rough edit I had made earlier in the week. At this stage we are still experimenting with which sound-bytes to include from the interview, so much of the sound is still rough and unedited, with opportunity to cut it down further. I made notes of areas for improvement that were identified:

• Improve pacing in the first half of the film - cut the fat from the voice-over and use only the best bits to convey the story in the shortest time possible.
• Confused about who the speaker is in the photograph - include voice-over describing that he's in front. Will consider this for the longer film so that we know who we're looking at.
• Remove piano from the music track - overly sentimental and sombre, don't need to direct the audience. Keep the underlying tone.
• Create a sound-scape of related sounds - bike sounds, wind, trees, possibly a crowd. Will likely use this for any other photos to add another element - helps to bring the memory to life.
• Keep the nuance but remove sound which is difficult to hear - laughs and pauses for thinking keep personality but some parts are hard to understand.

The group worked together to create a first draft of the treatment too, which we initially found difficult due to not having contributors set in place to include. However, we received advice from Debbie to talk about the poetic film, our approach for the longer film and the people we had met at the friendship group on Tuesday. To help the group write it I produced a few pages of notes talking about the interviews with my grandparents, what we are likely to see/hear in the film and how to summarize our idea.

Notes for treatment content

We were given advice to improve this too:

• Include people - most important factor. Talk about the people we met, what they showed us and the stories they talked about even if they might not appear in the final film. For example, 'George, 76, shows us a black and white photo of a cycling race in the 1950s...'
• Include visuals and sound - what will we see and hear, make the reader able to visualise the film. Use poetic film to start that off.
• Give an idea of how many people we'll be interviewing or showing in the film.
• Add some of the photos mentioned as supporting material.
• Avoid repetition to allow for more information elsewhere.

Over the next week we'll continue to experiment with structure for the poetic piece and implement the changes that were outlined. This weekend Jamie is recording bike and other atmos sounds to begin creating a sound-scape next week, and I will speak to some of the contacts we made last Tuesday about bringing in a photograph for Tuesday's session. We will also amend the treatment at some point in response to the feedback we received, and the week after we hope to have enough contacts to begin filming.