Back to Blogging.

So I haven't posted for a while but I do have legitimate reasons such as not being in the country and, you know, casually making a documentary.

The documentary is actually a lot better than I thought it would be, it almost looks.... professional. We are so close to being able to export it's almost painful to work on because you know it's just so close!

When I was in France I couldn't help but wonder what was going on, on set, was the interview going well, is all the equipment working correctly, had everyone turned up on time, were the potters getting mad at our sheer presence in their workshop - all the rational questions really. So every time I got wifi I would check the WhatsApp group and ask how everything was going, and I got some great responses which put my mind at rest for a while. Then the real work started, editing.

There's something strangely liberating yet annoying about editing someone else's footage, one the hand it makes it easier because you don't have any real connection to the footage meaning you can be brutal about and not really feel bad, but it can be so annoying. Especially when you go through and see a really great shot but it doesn't hold long enough or it's took shaky to be saved, it just annoys you. No other way to put it I'm afraid.

Something that has been hard for me is 'dragging' it out to 5 minutes, as a editor and as a person I'm very straight to the point so when it was recommended that we leave room just for visuals I was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. I mean I know visuals are important but I'm a strong believer in 'if somethings not relevant don't show it', so putting a random outside establishing shot in the middle of interviews was difficult to rationalise in my head. But I went with it and now that I've watched the whole thing it works, I don't know why it works but it does.

Anyway I know how a powerpoint to write in time for our screening on Tuesday which also means the official end of Term 1, which is actually kind of terrifying. Where have these months gone??

So close!

My mental check list is nearly complete and it feels so good!

I've just finished the Call Sheets for our two days filming, I sat with Jorn in the library today whilst he was working on the Risk Assessment, our production handbook is nearly finished!

This morning I received an email from Fiona who is our contact at the Pottery giving us a full break down of who would like to be interviewed, what they do and what time they are available which was brilliant for us as it was just a case of putting the puzzle together. We visited the Potter on Wednesday for a meeting were we had run through of our 'wish list' and a tour of the building. The building was recently refurbished and has amazing natural lighting which I'm sure we will use to our advantage when filming. I got some amazing photos (some of which I can't show because they include work for an up coming exhibition), I'll post these photos as soon as they are uploaded.

Other than that everything is on track, just a matter of printing everything out and getting it all signed off!

No Beer for us!

So after finally speaking with the marketing team from Hogs Back Brewery I found out that they could't film when we needed to due to the high demand for products during the Christmas period, completely understandable. I also found out that another 'team' from UCA had contacted them for the same idea, great minds think alike I suppose.

However we have now gone into full production mode with plan B, after emailing back and forth with the marketing team at 318 Ceramics, Farnham Pottery, we are hoping to plan a meeting for next Wednesday (19th) to get some more information on the people who work there and have them meet the rest of the team.

Overall, no harm done and it seems like it's going to be a very interesting documentary to film.

8 Emails later

The limit does not exist.

To say I'm nervous bout this impending phone call is an understatement. I write this now sat at my desk with my phone next to me waiting, with multiple tabs open about the Hogs Back Brewery and a word document with ideas.

Now you see I can write to people, I can explain myself in writing, I can explain myself in video (with the help of editing) however talking on the phone just isn't fun. You can't see a persons expressions, you can't gauge their reaction or if they are noting things down. Over all it's just not a fun experience. But I'm doing it anyway because it's our best bet of getting the Brewery on board with our idea.

What is our idea?

An interactive documentary highlighting the Brewery's history, it's workers and the beer itself. Couldn't be more straight forward yet also couldn't be more complicated. Now saying you'll do an interview with someone is all well and good but if that person doesn't have a personality on camera than you're pretty screwed. There is no light way to word that I'm afraid. After doing some research I've found out the Brewery was founded by 2 friends Marting Zillwood-Hunt and Anthony Stanton-Precious, now to interview these two men would be interesting, interviewing them together even more so! If you set up a business together you must bounce well off each other and be comfortable around each other, either way I'll see what I can do.

For now we are just explaining ourselves, who we are and what our intentions are. Our original intention was to have a running question yet due to our current lack of knowledge on the subject on whole we don't really have one question. Perhaps Jill can help us out with that.

We've also been in contact with Farnham Pottery and will continue to be in contact with them to see how the ideas will differ if we go ahead with them.

Either way it's 4:43pm, the phone still has not rang and my statement from before still stands, it's impossible to gauge how nervous I am because the limit does not exist.

Guilty Pleasure

Watching documentaries has always been fun for me, How It’s Made marathons were a guilty pleasure of mine for a long time. It was engineering documentaries such as Extreme Engineering, How Do They Do that? and a variety of ‘one offs’ such as 'How was the Eurostar made?' inspired me to take Engineering as my first career path. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that it was learning about new things that enticed me rather than actually building things. It took me a car, a radio, many iron casts, a few desk lamps, a couple of welding jobs and a theatre lighting rig actually.

Recently Performing Arts documentaries have been my go to, reality shows such as Dance Moms

whilst prompted it does take me back to the days where I was the little dancer getting shouted at for my pointe not being on point. An interesting film I saw today was called ‘Ballet, Sweat and Tears’ an interactive style documentary focusing on the young girls a the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, the ballet school of the Mariinsky Theatre. It had a great interview technique (although overdubbed in English) where they would sit down with the artists either backstage or in their ‘comfortable’ place. It would then have a B-Roll switching between rehearsals, down-time and their main performance.

Whilst writing this I’m watching another documentary similar in style called ‘Getting into Cirque Du Soleil’ in which you see the audition process behind the world’s most strenuous circus. Which seems to be the worlds longest and most gruelling audition and workshop process (Which in the end only means they will put into a database of talent, not actually get a job!). I love the circus and have been involved in the circus community for a long time so this is But again I like the style, like the other it’s interactive with a mixture of interviews, interesting b-roll footage and a standard voice over giving extra facts and giving context where needed.

I personally believe that this is one of the most effective ways of documenting a business or work endeavour as you get the visuals backing up the context and opinions given by the people involved.

When given the idea of the Brewery I was reminded of one of my favourite Youtubers SortedFood, who did a tour of a Brewery in Ireland on their ‘Let’s Talk Chocolate’ tour.


I think the interactive style works really well here, you have a clear outline of who know what they are talking about and who are there to entertain the audience, whether you have watched the channel before or not. You get a clear inside to how the Stout is made but not really the history of the business which is something I would love to get involved with if we are to produce our documentary at the Hogs Back Brewery.

Time To Document!

1. Brewery  2. Theatre  3. Pottery  4. Gorge

This list will make no sense to anyone other than Megan, Jorn and Klara (Possibly Jess) at the moment which is probably a good thing. When given a brief of making a Portrait Documentary I was rather lost, until I realised that all documentaries are just moving portraits - I really wasn't awake that day. Now I'm not going to lie, staying local was a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around I think because I've spent so much time in Farnham recently I'm starting to overlook the interesting things about it.

Anyway we had a team meeting today in Subway (because food helps us creatively, that's completely the reason), we sat down and came up with some ideas of what we could possibly base our project on, hence the list.

Now my idea was number 4, The Gorge, I was just having a mini-brainstorm about who works there, how it became, how it expanded to Guildford and if they have any regular customers. But on reflection that is rather generic. I think it seemed more interesting to me because I go there often and is a running theme between me and my friends.

When Jorn mentioned seeing a sign for the Redgrave Theatre and how they were planning on demolishing it, it caught my attention. I am a huge lover of Theatre and was actually rather shocked at the lack of Theatre when I moved here. So I'm going to research the Theatre on behalf of my group because it's something that I'm really interested in anyway.

My research will be found here once complete.