I've been looking more into the modes and styles of documentaries to get some influence into how i want our documentary to look like, where at the moment, i'm still trying to decide as to how the story should be told, where i've not done something of this nature before, so every-time i research, i'm finding out something new, and changing my decision.

Here are some examples of stylised, observational, experimental documentaries that i've came across, which are character driven, using the expository mode, in a Cinéma vérité style, in that it's letting the narration tell you a different side to the visuals that your being shown, to give you a different look on the subject matter, possibly one that you would't of thought about, whilst using a poetic mode to help emphasise this notion.

City of Cranes

Made by Eva Weber

2007, 14 Mins.

http://www.4docs.org.uk/films/show/17/City+of+Cranes

Summary

A companion piece to our other film ‘The Solitary Life of Cranes’, ‘City of Cranes' is a poetic look at the life and work of crane drivers. Originally made for Channel 4, ‘City of Cranes’ is divided into four chapters: 'The City Above", "The Last Topman", "Ballet of Cranes" and "Solitary"; with each chapter accentuating a different aspect of the drivers’ world.







The full version of the documentary http://youtu.be/a8bZEFuszDM

Self-storage units are windows into human histories: their discarded objects and dust-covered furniture are inscribed with past dreams, secret hopes, and lives we cannot let go of.




What i particularly like with the way in which Eva Weber presents her documentaries is, she shows a lot of visuals, in an artistic/experimental way, and whilst showing them, lets her contributors narrate the visual by telling us their emotional feeling towards/concerning the scenario we're viewing, not by them telling us what they're doing, but rather telling us a story concerning the subject matter, and what it means to them.

The contributors she features as well, she shows them on screen, but not showing them in an rehearsed, or in your face interview type of reveal, but rather in an actuality style, where by you know that it's the contributor, because when the scene changes, the voice would change, but they would not introduce themselves to the camera, they would just commence with their "activity" of what they're doing, not paying attention to the camera viewing them, and in some cases this would be carried out in a first person view.


The way in which the story is directed is meaningful as well, where it emotionally draws us in to how the narrator feels, using a mixture of wild-track sounds plus music, and the way how the shots are composed, in regards to the lighting, colour palette and grading, the perspective of the shots, and also what the contributors are doing within the shots.
For example in the Steel homes, you feel a sense of emptiness because of the way how the shots are displayed, they're not up close and personal, but rather observational from a distance, showing the surroundings of where the contributor is. Supplemented with the audio it helps to further more give you this sense of loneliness and emptiness.



With the stonemason apprentice documentary, i want to try and incorporate some of the elements from this documentary to help show the apprentice's at work, within a natural and un-altered environment due to the presence of a camera being there.

For this workshop, we had to create a sequence, the member of my class whom i worked with Sam Babington

Here is the final results



The equipment we used for this was a Canon 60D, Canon 50mm f1.8, Rhode video shotgun mic, and a Tripod stand.

first i labelled all of the clips

then i edited the clips together

i then sent all of my clips to after effects

i then colour corrected the footage

i then removed the noise/grain from the footage

i then adjusted the level of each audio track

To help with the brief historic story of Canterbury Cathedral, I've been searching the web trying to find some archive footage of Canterbury during the 2nd world war, and also stonemasons at work during the 19 hundreds, plus any other archival footage of of what seems to be stone-masonry work.

Here's the footage that I've found:

CANTERBURY BOMBED

Description
VS of rescue workers and clean up teams in rubble left after extensive bombing of Canterbury, Kent.
VS of slightly damaged Canterbury Cathedral. Damage is mainly confined to the stained glass windows. Two good GV shots of the windows.

Useful?
The good thing with this footage is it shows the aftermath of Canterbury when it got bombed during the second world war.

EXT. CATHEDRAL AND COUNTRY SCENES

Description

Various exterior shots of large Cathedral, possibly Canterbury - showing statues and some more ancient ruins. Various country scenes including oast houses and riverside scenes - possibly in Kent.

Useful?
The good thing with this clip is it has a variety of shots from around the Cathedral, it also has people walking around on the Cathedral grounds as well.

CATHEDRAL WINDOWS

Description
Good L/Ss of Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. Various good shots of artists at work on repairing damaged stained glass windows (the commentator says that most of the glass was damaged during the Second World War) in the cathedral workshop.

Useful?
The good thing with this clip is it shows a few different wide shots of Canterbury Cathedral, but also within some of the wide shots also shows scaffolding at the top of the Cathedral Structure.

NINE YEARS AFTER - ST. PAUL'S BUILDS ANEW

Description
This footage shows various scenes of the damage caused by the German blitz in and around St.Paul's Cathedral

Useful?
Even thou this is not Canterbury Cathedral, the main reason I've posted this clip is because their is a scene in this clip that shows stonemasons from the 40's working on stone, inside of ST.Paul's workshop

SANCTUARY SAVED

 

Description
Various shots show restoration work taking place on the exterior and interior of Chichester Cathedral; crumbling stonework being replaced. In a workshop several stonemasons are seen at work.


Useful?
The good thing with this footage is, it shows stonemasons at work during the 60's. Even tho it's not based at Canterbury Cathedral, the footage could still be used to help drive the story of the historic account of the continual work that has been done on the Cathedral, but also the workshop resembles Canterbury Cathedral's workshop as well.


Feedback
Out of all of these clips i've found, i'll probably only end up using maybe 2 or 3 of the clips as they cost £30 per footage, however, they do also sell 2 second snippets of some of the clips as well for £20

After having our lecture about documentary scripting, on monday 17th march, i done some extra research to see if there's further information i could get about documentary factual scriptwriting, in regards to work flow, organisation, and how other producers/directors would format their scripts.


Heres the research results that i came up with:









Taken from: http://wtbrandt.com/2011/10/03/reverse-engineered-scripts/

"This post is an exercise in writing shooting scripts. The objective is to look at two different 30-second commercials and reverse engineer them, resulting in shooting scripts that would be used by directors, actors, and production workers to deliver an end product representative of the story or vision."

The good thing with this website is, it's by a student whom was studying for his master's degree, and he had a conceptual unit that he done, which also involved creating a script for a factual documentary, on his course however, this was one of the workshops that he done in order to prepare for factual script writing.

I've been doing further researching into creating a story/ narrative arc for the documentary, and have came across a few more useful websites, that will help me to give this story a clear narrative structure for the audience to follow.

Even tho we have an overall idea of what our story is, we still need to make sure that we have a clear, concise, chronological narrative structure in order to help show our story to the audience, making sure that they have something logical to follow, such as a storyline; which would mainly consist of an introduction, problem, climax, resulting in a resolution to the problem.





Here are some of the website that i've used for this research:

Gives you the outline of a narrative structure
https://sites.google.com/site/videophotodesign/home/video/script-writing/seven-cs-elements/configuration-dramatic-arc

Two really good website on documentary structure giving film examples!

http://newdocediting.com/client-resources/resources/

http://newdocediting.com/2011/07/declaring-your-documentary%E2%80%99s-central-thesis/


http://newdocediting.com/2010/09/declaring-your-documentarys-central-thesis/

Another good website to add onto the information learned from the previous two websites
http://www.writersstore.com/documentary-storytelling-the-drama-of-real-life/


Further information about story writing, and developing central message/thesis of documentary
http://www.ncdcr.gov/Portals/32/PDF/NHD%20Documentary.pdf

Very basic but very good and refreshing for the basic principles of story telling

http://www.flocabulary.com/five-ws/

So that i could prepare my documentary treatment, i've been researching into various documentary treatment examples to find out how those productions companies went about researching, formatting, and creating their treatment, and the techniques that they used to help make their proposal more informative but also interesting, helping to sell their vision, but also give a brief story on the vision that they're looking to capture and tell.





 


Here is some of the resources that i researched from:

Location Scouting

Following up from the email correspondence with Heather Newton on the 6th of march, i went and visited the Cathedral on Friday the 7th of March 2014.
To prepare for the visit, i brought my canon 60d and kit lens with me, plus i used my phone as an audio recorder to record all of the conversation i had with Heather, plus the other stonemasons & builders at the Cathedral building site.

The main reason for my visit to the Cathedral was, so that i could scout the location, to get a clear understanding on what's happening their in regards to the conservation work, also, the process in which the stonemasons have to go through to carry out their work, as this is especially imperative in order for us to create a story for this documentary.
Other reasons for me scouting the location, was to find out where i'm able to access, whether i would need lighting, the type of shots i could get, how my camera works in the variable lighting situations, and other creative imaginations that i could think of such as coverage, lens, possible match on action shots ect.

Here's some of the videos taken from my visit:

In order to have a clear understanding on exactly what a stonemason is, the work they do, and the importance that they've played throughout their existence, i've done some more research, to establish defining factors about stonemasonry, in order to help with the overall story of the documentary, so that i can refer to this post for reminders.

Most of this research has been taken from wikipedia.


What is a stonemason?


Masonry is the craft of shaping rough pieces of rock into accurate geometrical shapes, at times simple, but some of considerable complexity, and then arranging the resulting stones, often together with mortar, to form structures.


Brief introduction on stonemasonry










Training