Documenting The Doing #17: 2 Minute Documentary

I'd never really studied or looked in to any sort of documentary before, so I was really looking forward to this week. It was a Monday morning and we were hit with the bombshell of having to create a 'Documentary in a Day'. Those words sent all of us loopy as we had to plan, film, edit, export and upload between the hours of 9.30am-4.30pm. We knew it would be a challenge, but we were determined to pull it off.

Myself and my colleague Naomi came up with an idea pretty quickly, and we thought it would be quite simple to film and put together. We settled on "The Morning of a College Student", which would consist of 10 shots of Naomi walking from her bus stop, through college and into our studio/classroom. We would then record a separate voice-over using a zoom mic to have a higher quality to our production, and giving it the final footage that extra edge.

Our shot list

It didn't take us too long to plan, as both of us are quite in sync with each-other and we could both visualise what we both meant; whether it would look as good as we hoped was completely out of our hands! Myself and Naomi were both panicking slightly, as we're both perfectionists, and we wanted it to be super good - even though it was our first ever documentary and it had to be done in 6 hours!

We began by walking up to the bus stop in where are first shot would be taken, and began filming. The weather wasn't on our side unfortunately, so we were limited on time as it was practically raining when we were out there. Naomi and I also decided against using a tripod, as it would be pretty complicated to try and work with it with just two of us, especially as I was the only one behind the camera. All of our footage was hand-held, which was kind of good and bad. The good side was that it was quite natural, and almost at the point-of-view of another student or passer by, however the bad side was that it was quite shaky. We managed to keep the camera in focus though! 

FINAL PRODUCTION: Documentary in a Day

When it came to editing, we were on a strict time slot. The final production had to be exactly 2 minutes long. Not 1.59 or 2.01, exactly 2.00. This proved to be quite a challenge for both of us, as our edit was absolutely brilliant, however the timing kept on going either a few seconds over, or a few seconds under. Whilst we were editing, we obviously had to put our voice-overs onto the production. It was almost like a narration, as Naomi would tell the audience a step-by-step itinerary of her normal college morning. Her voice was clear and very sophisticated, and it sounded really sharp and clean on the recording, which was a bonus. However, with the clips and voice-over being different timings, there were a few moments within the footage that were silent as the voice-over didn't quite stretch to the length of the clips. To resolve this, in my personal edit, I decided to put a quick and up-beat tempo song on to it. I chose "Sweet Sweet Melody" by Katie Sky, which is quite a happy song and I think it worked. 

Considering the time frame we had to complete this task in, I thought we did quite well. The production as a whole would've been a lot neater and more sophisticated if we had a week or so to plan it all, and complete a risk assessment and things like that. That would be the only thing I would change. I thought the idea was there, and we portrayed our outlook really well, it's just the quality and sharpness of the whole production could've been better. If we ever do something like this again, I will take these points into consideration!

Cheerio. :o)

- Olivia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY4ycS6_YF4 - accessed on 3rd-Feb-2014