Evaluation

Our initial idea for this project was to create three different documentaries, all one in a different style, which would be segments of a bigger documentary, looking at the people of Plymouth.

We’d wanted to make one of these documentaries about a residential home in Plymouth which would look at people’s past stories of Plymouth, from a personal point of view. We also thought it’d be interesting to look at how Plymouth has changed as a city through their eyes. The second was going to be following the story of a rock band that my friend was part of, which was based in Plymouth, getting a view of Plymouth through its youth’s eyes, from those who are going to be part of Plymouth’s future. The third was going to be about the Navy, as it’s a big part of the city, its past and its future.

We decided the Navy one was too ambitious and would be too hard to achieve. We still liked the idea of the other two, but the residential homes we had contacted hadn’t replied and the band we were supposed to be documenting were going through a dry spell.

Our project seemed to be falling apart, so we decided to focus our documentaries on some of the historical places and buildings around Plymouth. We decided on St. Andrew’s church and Royal William Yard. We had thought about doing the other about Smeaton’s tower, though we decided against it.

We knew that pre-production was going to have to be the part of production we needed to dedicate most of our time to. We used email as the main method of communication, mostly based on the fact that we’d all have access to the same email address, so we’d all be able to view them and stay in the loop with that was going on. Gathering emails for the people at Royal William Yard was a lot easier than collecting them for those at the church. As the people we were speaking with from church were of an older generation, many of them didn’t have emails or mobile numbers which meant that we had to contact them via their home phone, or going to the church and speaking to them in person. We decided to speak to them in person for the most part, as we thought that it would be better that they met us first, before we started requesting interviews, and that by doing so they’d be more willing to participate

The pre-production stages were proving slow for the church, as we were talking to different people, but they didn’t seem to be communicating with each other. We spoke to the office and got given the go ahead to film, but when it came to interviewees it was hard to finalise any subjects for sure, let alone dates for the interviews.

However, Royal William Yard started off much more successfully. On our first visit there, we came back with four contact emails, one confirmed interviewee and 3 other potentials. We’d also spoken to a man who agreed to send us some past photos of the yard, which we thought would be very useful.

The church film continued to progress slowly. We spoke to a steward named John Stevenson who agreed to give us an interview on camera. We arrange a day to shoot it, and showed up with two 7Ds and tripods. Whilst preparing for John’s interview, he suggested that we ask a man named David who used to be a caretaker at the church. He’d taken an interest in what we were doing and came over to ask us about the technology we were using. We used this as an opening to ask if he’d like to be interviewed, also. It took some persuading, but he finally agreed. We proceeded to shoot John’s interview and then set up, ready to shoot David’s interview straight after. John also suggested we pop along to the choir practice that happens on Friday evenings, as we had mentioned we’d wanted to get some shots and audio of the choir singing.

When speaking to the office staff, they suggested we speak to a man named John Dobell. We arranged and shot an interview with him, though, unfortunately, the audio from the shoot was so bad we decided not to include it in the film.

We continued to go back, arranging an interview with Jack Spence - the historian of the church.

We were really pleased that Jack had agreed to go on camera for us, as we knew it would be what he had to say that would be the spine of the film, knowing as much as he did. We went along to one of Jack’s weekly history talks about the church, prior to his interview. This helped give us more of an understanding of what happened and allowed us to add any more questions to our list for him.  After his interview, he suggested we get an interview with Ann, a long term member of the congregation and a past volunteer at the church. She agreed, so we shot her interview there and then.
Whilst the St. Andrew’s film was coming along quite nicely, the progress of the film on Royal William Yard had started to slow down. We’d successfully planned and filmed an interview with James, the security guard and Martin, the artist that owned the gallery space there.  We’d had confirmation that Uncle Bill was willing to be interviewed, but beyond that we didn’t have any other potential interview subjects. People seemed to be avoiding our attempts at contacting and visiting them. We went on to film Uncle Bill’s interview, which was very interesting. But looking over the footage we had, we didn’t feel that we had enough to create a structure for the film.

We continued with the St. Andrew’s shoots, attending the Lord Mayor’s service to collect some audio and shots of the choir and congregation singing.

Although it was a slow start, the shooting for the documentary had really picked up in pace and they seemed to be more comfortable with our being there. So much so, they allowed us to set up the dolly and track, right in the middle of the church.  We got several more cutaways over the rest of the week until we felt we had enough to work with.

The Royal William Yard, by this point, had come to a standstill. We hadn’t been able to arrange any more interviews, which is what we’d needed to continue with the film.

We decided to focus on the St. Andrew’s film, making sure it was done to a good degree of quality, ready for the deadline. The edit was fairly straight forward. We had enough cutaways, and once it was suggested we include archive footage, it was just a case of fitting to all together. The only really issue we had with the post production stages was with the audio from the radio mics. The sound levels were really low and extremely noisy and we didn’t have much time to play around with them. We adjusted them in Adobe Audition and got them to a reasonable quality, ready to be part of the edit.

Overall, I am very proud of the piece we have produced. Not only is it a film I’d be happy to put on my showreel, but I feel I have learned a great deal from it. I’ve definitely become more confident, both as a film maker and as a person, as a result of this project. When we first started, we were all very anxious when it came to speaking to people we didn’t know, let alone asking something of them. By the end we were asking people and even pushing and negotiating with them to be interviewed. It is a shame we didn’t get the Royal William Yard film finished in time for the deadline, but it definitely has been a useful experience in terms of learning how to go about interviewing subjects and arranging shots. Although our initial objective was to explore different styles in which we could produce a documentary, we have learnt the necessary fundamental skills needed to put a documentary together and even developed a style of documentary making we’re comfortable and happy with making which we can apply to any future projects. This module has helped us develop and explore elements that have actually helped us in other projects we’ve been involved with, such as the ‘Free School’ project we have been involved with. We used the skills we learned from arranging interviews for the church and the yard to help arrange and execute when filming the interviews for ‘Free School’, so this project has already started to benefit us in other projects as film makers.

We plan to continue making the Royal William Yard film to expand our skills further. We also would like to add to the ‘Resurgam’ film, as there were more interview we wanted to get, but couldn’t include them due to time issues. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction and has been a valuable learning curve for me.  

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