Pre Production: What I've Contributed
Before we begin shooting there are a number of things aside from casting that we had to prepare. Including locations, interveiwees, scheduling, B-Roll requirements and various other services. I had a big role to play in regards to the filming preperations.
Locations: For our documentary we broke down each section in to different days and times, then listed the exact locations we needed to be in for each one. The document bellow shows the details of this, but for the purposes of this blog I will break it down further to show which locations I was in charge of organising.
Day 1- (Pole Fitness)
For the first day of filming (upon our lecturer's recomendation) we decided we needed a humourus and outstanding segmant to help make a bold documentary that would appeal to a BBC3 audience. Our lecturer suggested we look in to pole fitness and recomended a place in Strood.
It was my job to go on to their website to find out their contact information. We initially began contact via email, but quicly aranged a phone conversation. This was where I explained that we were making a documentary and gave them a full breifing on its content and purpose. Then after some negotiation we were able to organise a session and the owner agreed to be in the documentary and get one of his students to help out and be interveiwed. I agreed to provide a personal cut for the owner to use on the studio's website in exchange for the session and interveiw.
Day 1 (exersise montage part 1)
For the
second part of the first day we thought it best to use the time to film an
exersise montage. For this we wanted to use somewhere close to the studios
(since that was our main base of opperation) and although I wasn't in charge of
this section I did help to scout out the location with Alex to make sure it
suited our needs and plan where we could film. We looked around on google maps
for a suitible park like area and came accross a dog walking area close to the
studios that we decided to use.
Day 2 (Personal Shopper)
For our second day of filming we needed to look at "style hacks" so that we can confront the idea of slimming hacks when it comes to clothing. I decided we should try and find somewhere that offers a personal tayloured personal shopper service. After a small amount of research and some phone calls I found out that both house of Fraser and John Lewis offer such a service. I looked around for the closest branch of both shops and as I suspected it was at "Bluewater" shopping centre. After a phone call to the manager of the personal shopper department of House of Fraser I found out they had a young employee that wouldn't mind being interveiwed for our documentary, and sicne she matched with our intended audience age group I decided to book an apointment with her via the website, and thus the second day was planned, and we also had John Lewis on standby.
----Note we ensured we had permission to film, although you need a special permit to film in trhe mall area, shops are seperate and you are allowed to film provided you have their concent, which we have.
Day 3 (Photoshoot)
For the third day we planned to speak to a photography student to get their advice/opinion on weather or not their are any tricks when it comes to posing in photos or lighting, angle, colours, background etc. that can make you look slimmer. We also wanted to get an interveiw witht hem in regards to their thoughts on body image in photos which could be a useful message for our young audience.
This was another section that I was in charge of aranging. My initial idea was to utalise the resources close to hand, so i emailed the corse leader of teh photography department that we have at the main UCA rochester campus. I asked for a student to help with our documentary on body image and requested their skilled help. The lecturer passed my request on to the students but unfortunatly no one got back to me. However I wasn't going to give up that easilly. So i looked around for the next best thing and remembered that there was a collage (Mid-Kent Collage) close to me that offered a photogrphy course. This was particulalrly useful since I had a few connections at the collage and spoke to someone I knew on the photography course who gladly agreed to be a part of our documentary.
Since i originally planned to have someone from the photography course at UCA I had set our location on the green by the campus, since it had great lighting and background options. Our group decided it would be much simpler to keep this location since we had already scouted it.
Day 4 (B-Roll)
This day was dedicated to obtaining B-Roll footage and demopnstrating how newspapers presnent a flase ideoligy when it comes to body image. Although I was not in charge of organising this, I did slelct and provide all the newspapers that i thought would be best.
Day 5 (Commentary Recording)
This day was dedicated to tying up loose ends and recording all the commentary that we would need to sync up for the final cut. Although I was not in charge of this section I did write 1/3 of the script we used which I'll insert a link to bellow.
Day 5 (Exersise Montage Part 2)
The second part of day 5 was set aside for obtaining more footage for our exersise montage. Although I was not in charge of this section I helped to scout out the location and I obtained the facts we based this section on.
("Media sources say that a 10 minuet high intensity work out, can burn more calouries than a full gym session").
Day 6 (Nutritionist Interview)
For our final day of filming we set aside the entire period for interveiwing a reputable nutritionist, who could help contrast the humour of our documentary and provide some hard hitting facts and advice that would benefit our audience.
I was joint in charge of organising this section. I used the following website to track down qualified and trustworthy nutritionists that coukld help with our documentray.
Myself and Alex emailed dozens of nutritionists accross the south of england to find one that was available, accessable and willing to take part in our documentary. I emailed almsot everyone i found on the website, and after several wild goose chases, re - schedualing and phone calls; we eventually found one in saltdean who was willing to help. I helped write a series of questions to ask her which ALex then edited and sent over.
I also helped scout out potential B-Roll locations around the area.
That just about sums up most of the pre-production work I did before filming. It is worth noting that I helped put together both the script and the schedual which are linked above and plan to help create an edit schedual transcript etc.
