Major Project: Research-Joe Weller "Walk The Walk"

Major Project: Research-Joe Weller "Fighter"

In order to prepare myself for this documentary, I knew it was important to do plenty of research, to help educate, inform and inspire the decisions I  made in this project. So as part of that I sat down with Alex and went through a large number of pre-exisitng documentaries, and I made notes on both the positive and negative aspects of them (focussing on what I could take/learn from them), to better shape our documentary.

Below are my notes on the Joe Weller Documentary "Fighter".

Black = general points

Blue = points relevant to presenting and emotional content

Red = negative points

Mrs Brown = Normal people with limited subject knowledge

  

• The film starts with clips from the middle of the documentary, which is a good way to introduce the story.
• The “diary room” or master interview that is seen throughout is a great way to ground the story. It also has effective lighting that sets the mood.
• Drone shots are used to establish some of the new locations that are mentioned/visited.
• There are cutaways for a lot of the narration, helping to keep the audience engaged.
• PTC’s are often filmed on location, creating a strong metaphor and keeping the pacing of the film effective and angaging.
• There are frequent changes in the pace of the narrative, I'd hope to avoid this as it messes with audience engagement.
• At one point all audio is cut apart from the presenters heavy breathing (highlighting their exhaustion).
• Pictures and  old clips/stock footage are used to connect us with the presenters past.
• The presenter introduces us to each contributor and gives us some context about them. This is key in any documentary.
• There’s a great little montage after the presenter says “I need to get FOCUSSED”. It's really inspiring for me as an editor, and is something that I'd like to work into our film to wow audiences.
• This documentary adopts a sort of “video diary” style which is a good way for as to see the presenters development.
• Some PTC’s drag on longer than they need to and could have been replaced with narration without losing any of the effect.
• Montages are used to show the passing of time (however they aren’t very well edited).
• The range of close-up’s used (especially during training sequences) help us connect with the presenter and understand the strain they are under. (However they could have been used more frequently).
• Often the presenter mentions something that could have been represented by a cut-away but wasn’t (and it was clear that they had the footage available).

• When we’re introduced to some of the contributors it would have been nice to have some B-Roll of them.

• We have great use of close up’s when the presenter is at a low point.

• Use of slow motion and dipped audio effectively emphasise the struggle the presenter is facing. (29:00)

• Some great montages around 35 minutes into the video. 

• Some of the PTC’s felt very flat, the presenter needed to be more enthusiastic and emmotive in order for us to care about them.

• It would have been better if they walked around the locations in some of the PTC’s rather than just sit in one spot (especially when they are reflecting on somewhere that has a lot of meaning to them).

Closing Thoughts

• Similar style to what we want in our documentary.
• There were a few good examples of montages, storytelling, and re-living moments.
• The narrative was all over the place, in terms of content and pacing.
• The use of narration was ineffective (didn’t make us care enough).
• The overall story arc was weak.

Overall Relevance Score 6/10