Throughout the pre-production and production for my documentary, there are many things that I could have done better, but there are things that went really well. I feel like I managed to overcome the challenges that arose in a good manner, and also made some decisions that led to some very good results.
The first thing that I could have done better is doing more thorough research, and trying harder to contact people from the club outside of club hours. If I had done this sooner, then I would have a better portfolio of more people who attend the club. I did manage to interview quite a few people at the club, both volunteer and customer, so I feel like I still had quite a good range of opinions, however it would have been good to broaden the types of questions that I asked them, such as what they did before coming to the club, or how they heard about the club. I feel like this would have been better to do as then the audience could build up more of a relationship to the characters, and would add more to the story.
There was one woman who I had arranged to go to her house and film her cooking something for the club while she talked about her experience there. Unfortunately she had to cancel as her husband was not comfortable having a stranger in the house filming, which I have to respect. This was definitely a set-back for my project, as I feel like this would have added an extra dimension to the film, as we would be able to see more of the work that goes into preparing for the Lunch Club.
Another thing that I could have done better is trying to contact people I hadn't spoken to when visiting the club, but who had attended in previous years. I did put a post about my film in the Facebook group The Gossip Board of Sittingbourne, but I only got a few responses. If I had done this sooner, I may have gotten more people to reply, and so I could have possibly had a bigger group of people to contact. I feel like it could have added useful information, such as if they missed the feeling of being at the club now that they had left.
Several things during the pre-production did go well, but the best for me was how well the test shoot went. I managed to get a good amount of footage, and was able to try different angles in order to see what worked best. Also, by doing the test shoot, I now know that I will most likely need to use the clip mics during some of the interviews, as the inside of the Church was creating quite an echo, so the sound could have been better. However, it turned out that I was not going to be able to shoot in the Church when I came to film this for real. This was due to renovation happening in the Church, as they were taking the pews out. Due to this, the Lunch Club was not taking place in a hall just down the road from the Church, so I did a reccy of the new location and got a new idea of how I was going to film.
Some of the research went good, as well as bad. I went around Sittingbourne to six retirement homes, as I thought that some of the residents in them would have been either previous or current customers at the club. I thought that this would be a good idea as if there were people in the homes that went to the club, I could possibly interview them in their homes. However, when talking to the staff and asking if they knew of any residents who went to the club, they checked and all said that none of their residents do. This was unfortunate, as it meant that the amount of people who I could interview was smaller than I was hoping for. On the other hand, this could be seen as a good thing, due to the fact that I could now go a bit more in depth with the people that I was able to interview, which would make for a better story to tell.
During the editing stage, there were some problems, but also some things that went really well. One of the problems that I encountered was the fact that I was not being harsh enough when putting clips together. In quite a few clips, there was space that could be cut from it, such as pauses between sentences or a few seconds at the end of a clip that included someone doing something which I thought would need to be in the documentary. As I filmed the Lunch Club over two days, I edited each day separately so that I would not be confused with the clips. I had also filmed some interviews before the first Lunch Club film day, so I had edited them in different files as well. When I brought all of these edits together, however, the total runtime was almost 20 minutes. This was still in the runtime that we were allowed, but after some feedback from my tutor and fellow students, I could see that there was quite a bit that I could cut out. This leads on to something that went well during the edit, which was the fact that after several rounds of cutting and tidying up the clips on the timeline, I had managed to take almost 6 minutes off, which I did not think I was going to be able to do.
Overall, I feel like there were decisions made throughout the various stages of this project that were made correctly, or at least to the best of my ability. If I were to do this project again, however, there are a few things that I would do differently. The first thing I'd do differently is take more contact details from the people at the club so that I have the opportunity to film them outside of the club, or even so I can just check if they are coming to the next club day if I need to reshoot an interview with them. Doing this would have made scheduling some shoots a lot easier. I would also make sure that I manage my time better, as there were some times during this project that I was not effective in using what time I had. One instance of this was in the edit, where I had put together two of the interviews that were at people's homes, but I had not started editing the Lunch club footage from the first shoot there, as I was going to wait until I had the footage from the next club day to start editing the footage together all at once. By doing this, I wasted several days that I could have been using more effectively, as I could have been testing out different orders for the clips that I already had, which could have changed the tone of my documentary.
The first thing that I could have done better is doing more thorough research, and trying harder to contact people from the club outside of club hours. If I had done this sooner, then I would have a better portfolio of more people who attend the club. I did manage to interview quite a few people at the club, both volunteer and customer, so I feel like I still had quite a good range of opinions, however it would have been good to broaden the types of questions that I asked them, such as what they did before coming to the club, or how they heard about the club. I feel like this would have been better to do as then the audience could build up more of a relationship to the characters, and would add more to the story.
There was one woman who I had arranged to go to her house and film her cooking something for the club while she talked about her experience there. Unfortunately she had to cancel as her husband was not comfortable having a stranger in the house filming, which I have to respect. This was definitely a set-back for my project, as I feel like this would have added an extra dimension to the film, as we would be able to see more of the work that goes into preparing for the Lunch Club.
Another thing that I could have done better is trying to contact people I hadn't spoken to when visiting the club, but who had attended in previous years. I did put a post about my film in the Facebook group The Gossip Board of Sittingbourne, but I only got a few responses. If I had done this sooner, I may have gotten more people to reply, and so I could have possibly had a bigger group of people to contact. I feel like it could have added useful information, such as if they missed the feeling of being at the club now that they had left.
Several things during the pre-production did go well, but the best for me was how well the test shoot went. I managed to get a good amount of footage, and was able to try different angles in order to see what worked best. Also, by doing the test shoot, I now know that I will most likely need to use the clip mics during some of the interviews, as the inside of the Church was creating quite an echo, so the sound could have been better. However, it turned out that I was not going to be able to shoot in the Church when I came to film this for real. This was due to renovation happening in the Church, as they were taking the pews out. Due to this, the Lunch Club was not taking place in a hall just down the road from the Church, so I did a reccy of the new location and got a new idea of how I was going to film.
Some of the research went good, as well as bad. I went around Sittingbourne to six retirement homes, as I thought that some of the residents in them would have been either previous or current customers at the club. I thought that this would be a good idea as if there were people in the homes that went to the club, I could possibly interview them in their homes. However, when talking to the staff and asking if they knew of any residents who went to the club, they checked and all said that none of their residents do. This was unfortunate, as it meant that the amount of people who I could interview was smaller than I was hoping for. On the other hand, this could be seen as a good thing, due to the fact that I could now go a bit more in depth with the people that I was able to interview, which would make for a better story to tell.
During the editing stage, there were some problems, but also some things that went really well. One of the problems that I encountered was the fact that I was not being harsh enough when putting clips together. In quite a few clips, there was space that could be cut from it, such as pauses between sentences or a few seconds at the end of a clip that included someone doing something which I thought would need to be in the documentary. As I filmed the Lunch Club over two days, I edited each day separately so that I would not be confused with the clips. I had also filmed some interviews before the first Lunch Club film day, so I had edited them in different files as well. When I brought all of these edits together, however, the total runtime was almost 20 minutes. This was still in the runtime that we were allowed, but after some feedback from my tutor and fellow students, I could see that there was quite a bit that I could cut out. This leads on to something that went well during the edit, which was the fact that after several rounds of cutting and tidying up the clips on the timeline, I had managed to take almost 6 minutes off, which I did not think I was going to be able to do.
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| First edit with all edit files together |
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| Final edit with colour grading and sound fixed |
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