Post-Production: Nearly Finished...

The semester is drawing to a close now and Lauren and I are putting the finishing touches to our documentary. I'm so proud of what we have achieved together.

I sent an almost-complete version of our documentary to one of our interviewees over the weekend (Dr Johnny Ilan at the University of Kent) and we have his approval, so it was comforting to get a positive review from somebody outside of the course.

This afternoon we will be re-recording the commentary here at the studios. I recorded some at home on an SM58 microphone, and it sounded fine at first when I imported it into Audacity, but in Final Cut Pro it sounded distorted and kept 'popping'. So today we will be re-recording the commentary using a radio mic to get a clean, crisp sound that hopefully won't distort once it is imported.

We've also been meddling with music, adding an instrumental version of Ben Folds' 'You Don't Know Me' as a bed and mixing Lily Allen's 'The Fear' into the opening titles. Not only do these songs sound good, but the meanings behind them also fit in well with our documentary.

After we've recorded the commentary this afternoon, we'll be making sure our sound mix is of the highest quality possible. We'll do as much mixing as we can in Final Cut Pro itself, but as the programme is primarily designed for video editing rather than audio, I'll import the entire documentary's soundtrack into Garageband where I can compress it and make sure everything is at the right sound level (you can do this in Final Cut Pro but you can only compress individual clips rather than the entire soundtrack, thus making accurate compression impossible).

Once the soundtrack has been compressed, we can import it back into Final Cut Pro as one long sound file. Then - fingers crossed - we'll be finished and ready for deadline day on Thursday!

(x-posted to jo coulson's uca blog)

Finishing Touches

The edit is going great, and I think me and Jo are an amazing team!! We are working hard together to get the finishing touches right now. Our sync is all in order, and our structure is working nicely. So we are currently working on sound, colour correction, music, transitions and titles etc. I think we have created a good pace throughout our documentary, due to the change in subjects, archive footage and soundtrack.
We have chosen to use two female songs for our soundtrack, which we feel reflect the story and female charcters perfectly, they are:





I am happy with the sequences we have chosen, and have now made sure there is a sound bed for all of them. We have also rearranged the Bluewater section, so that the narrative flows more smoothly. We are going to have trouble mix the sound I think, so that Hattie's voice is more like the others, but we will start working on that now. I am pretty confident that we will meet the deadline, and feel that we have done the best we could possibly do! :)

The Edit Continues...

A week and a half to go and things are going well. We got our rough cut in place at the end of last week, and with the help of the post-it structure and re-writing our entire script by transcribing our interview answers, we managed to move everything into a suitable structure so we can now focus on things like GVs, sound and fine-tuning our actuality sequences.

We've built up a good collection of archive footage over the past couple of weeks as well, including music videos from Goldie Lookin' Chain and Lady Sovereign.



This afternoon I'm going to finish off writing the commentary and record it at home so we can upload it tomorrow morning. All in all, we're making excellent progress!

(x-posted to jo coulson's uca blog)

Starting to Edit

Lauren and I started putting together a rough cut last week. At first it seemed like a very daunting task, as we are going to have to arrange over an hour's worth of footage into a ten minute documentary. We started off by putting all the footage into separate bins for each interviewee and their various sequences/GVs.

We already had the archive footage in place at the start of our timeline, so that was a good starting point to work from. We cut each interview answer into separate clips to make them easier to arrange, and began to piece together sequences. After our lecture with Helen this afternoon, I am confident that we're on the right track.

This afternoon, I have been working on our script. I have transcribed the interview clips we shall be using to update our draft script, so now it represents exactly what is in our documentary so far. I have also created a post-it version which we can play with in order to get the right structure.

We have one more day of shooting until we've gathered all the footage we need. This will take place on Thursday. We're going to take a trip to Chatham and film the High Street, and maybe gather some vox pops. We were going to film a youth group in the evening, but we may have enough different characters. We'll make a final decision tomorrow.

(x-posted to jo coulson's uca blog)

The Shoot continues...........

 Friday 11/11/11
Our second day of shooting, went well without any hitches.
Jo acted as our "Chav" in our Public information broadcast, and I must say, seeing the transformation was very impressive. I'm not going to show too much, as I think you should all wait to see the completed film! We shot this part of our doc in a children's play ground in Tovil, a notorious council estate in Maidstone. We did inform the council, but heard nothing back, so we took a chance and it paid off!

In the afternoon, I went to film a young mum I had known from my secondary school. Her name is Hattie Mullville, she also lives on the Tovil estate, and has a one year old son called Bronson. There has been problems in the past with the child's father, who was serving a term in prison whilst Hattie was pregnant, and hasn't had contact since. As he does not know where Bronson is, I thought it might be difficult to get permission to film him, but Hattie agreed as long as her address was not given away.

Hattie is a "college drop out" and spent most of the noughties drinking cider and hanging around on street corners and parks. Although many people have labelled her a Chav, especially since falling pregnant with Bronson, she does not want to be called one. She is now a full time mum, and is a very loving mother to her son Bronson. She was able to talk about Chav culture, how people judge her, living on a council estate and how the media represent youths today.

Whilst filming a sequence from her balcony, I also managed to get footage of a local traveller girl, riding a horse, with no saddle, down the centre of the road. I thought this would be great to use in our documentary.

Monday 14/1//2011
Today we filmed a lovely Dr of criminology and the University of Kent, but I'll let Jo fill you in on the details of that one!!

Getting Ready For Day Two of Filming

Yesterday's filming went really well. I was really pleased with the interview and the coverage we managed to get. We have over an hour's worth of great footage from Lauren, so it's a shame our documentary is only going to be 10 minutes, but that's how this all works in the land of docs! For a full account of yesterday, please read Jo's post below :)


Tomorrow is our second day of filming. We have outlined our idea for the "Public information broadcast: Chavs". This will be a small segment in the film, a parody of Harry Enfield, describing "The Chav".  Jo will be staring in this small sequence, as we jump cut, and add items of clothing typical to a Chav. I am quite looking forward to making this and then editing it, as it will give us the chance to use an original piece of story telling in our film.




I also made a last minute contact with a girl called Hattie Mulville, who lives on the roughest estate in Maidstone. Hattie is twenty years old, and is raising her little one year old Bronson, by herself. She is a self confessed "tear away youth", who before giving birth to her son, fell in with the wrong crowd. Today she is still called a "Chav", and finds it hard living on the estate, where a recently notorious family was slain by shotguns.


I will be interviewing her tomorrow, to find out about her life during the noughties, how it has changed, and the surroundings she finds herself in today. 


What is life like on the estate? How are you judged? Do you feel you are stereotyped? What were you like during the noughties? How old were you when you had Bronson? What were the circumstances? How has he changed your life? What would you say to someone that called you a Chav?

Interview: Lauren Sharp

Yesterday we interviewed a friend of Lauren's, who is also called Lauren just to confuse matters. Although she is not a 'chav' anymore, she was throughout the noughties and is still a part of 'chav' culture. 

We interviewed her at her house. The interview lasted about an hour or so. There was a nice relaxed atmosphere and even though there was a set structure and scripted questions, Lauren's answers were really natural. We hooked her up with a radio mic and also used the directional mic, just to cover all our bases when it came to sound.

After the interview, we filmed some sequences in and around Lauren's house. The first one we filmed was of her smoking in the back garden. The sky was starting to turn a rather unpleasant shade of grey and we were worried that it might start raining, but there was still enough light to get some decent shots. We then visited her bedroom where we filmed some GVs of her boyband posters and personal photos.

We then filmed a sequence in Lauren's car. We conducted an actuality interview whilst she drove. Obviously this had to be shot handheld rather than using a tripod! 

She drove us to Vinters Park where we interviewed her in front of the shops where she and her friends used to hang out. It was definitely starting to rain by this point, but luckily our shoot was coming to an end anyway. Shortly after this, we drove to her boyfriend's house to get some shots of his car. Then it was a wrap!

Overall, it was a really good day. We're both feeling confident now about conducting interviews and filming actuality sequences. It turns out we got so much footage, we could probably make a documentary just about Lauren herself, but we're looking forward to the shoots to come over the next week.

(x-posted to jo coulson's uca blog)