Throughout this project, I have been looking for tips and tricks for making a documentary, as this is the first film of this genre that I have made, so needed to know more about it in order to make it the best way that I could. But there is only so much that I could learn from searching in the internet, so I started to research the styles of some well-known documentary makers to see how they convey their preferred style, and the techniques that they use to do this.
One of the most famous documentary film makers is Ken Burns, who has won numerous awards for his films, including 4 Primetime Emmy awards. I felt that he was a good person to research, and found out that he is a frequent user of the 'Ken Burns technique', which is zooming onto a photo, and then panning over it. This technique wasn’t invented by Burns; he has most frequently said he learned of it from his mentor, documentarian Jerome Liebling. But it’s nonetheless become heavily associated with Burns’s efforts to exhume America’s musty past and imbue it with the drama and grandeur it held when it was still the present. Despite finding this technique, I was not able to use it, as my documentary flows better with moving images, instead of stills, so this technique was not used in my project. However, this does match up with some of the feedback that I got from my edit reviews, as my tutor had said that the edit at the time was to interview heavy, so I needed to have some clips over my interviews in order to break them up a bit and to keep the audience engaged with the story.
Ken Burns also said that it would be foolish to start any kind of massive creative project without a plan. It’s important to map out your strategy and to stay the course as much as possible. However, it’s also equally important to remain flexible when the situation calls for it. This also happened during some of my shoot days. When I was at the Lunch club, I did have a plan for shooting, but because I was working on my own, so only had the one camera, I had to rush around and try and get what I could before people started leaving, so had to end up not using the plan that I had in place.
Researching how a professional documentary maker goes about making a film was very helpful for me as it gave me a sense of what I was doing right, and I was able to change the way that I went about filming on future shoot days, even if the changes were only minor.
One of the most famous documentary film makers is Ken Burns, who has won numerous awards for his films, including 4 Primetime Emmy awards. I felt that he was a good person to research, and found out that he is a frequent user of the 'Ken Burns technique', which is zooming onto a photo, and then panning over it. This technique wasn’t invented by Burns; he has most frequently said he learned of it from his mentor, documentarian Jerome Liebling. But it’s nonetheless become heavily associated with Burns’s efforts to exhume America’s musty past and imbue it with the drama and grandeur it held when it was still the present. Despite finding this technique, I was not able to use it, as my documentary flows better with moving images, instead of stills, so this technique was not used in my project. However, this does match up with some of the feedback that I got from my edit reviews, as my tutor had said that the edit at the time was to interview heavy, so I needed to have some clips over my interviews in order to break them up a bit and to keep the audience engaged with the story.
Ken Burns also said that it would be foolish to start any kind of massive creative project without a plan. It’s important to map out your strategy and to stay the course as much as possible. However, it’s also equally important to remain flexible when the situation calls for it. This also happened during some of my shoot days. When I was at the Lunch club, I did have a plan for shooting, but because I was working on my own, so only had the one camera, I had to rush around and try and get what I could before people started leaving, so had to end up not using the plan that I had in place.
Researching how a professional documentary maker goes about making a film was very helpful for me as it gave me a sense of what I was doing right, and I was able to change the way that I went about filming on future shoot days, even if the changes were only minor.
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