response to Leacock Reading

Leacock makes a good point. Documentaries that only inform you rather than involve you are not worth watching at all, but how do you get an audience involved? When i think about it, trying to get all of the senses involved would be a good start. Obviously we are limited when it comes to actually appealing to certain senses such as smell and taste, but that doesn't mean we can't instill some sort of imagination about taste and smell.

Most importantly what can we do with sound and visual senses and what about emotions? what makes people interested in watching something regardless of the topic? when i think about what hooks me in are things that make me think or feel something. I like watching cooking shows because it makes me wonder what that would taste like or smell like. even things that are disgusting or don't sit well with me, i find myself still watching it because it gives me a feeling and i want to know more. things that connect to me with my senses and emotions are what i usually find myself watching.

documentaries today try and bring awe and investigate many different topics. even things that are soo small and insignificant, as long as they find an angle where people can relate and connect to it, then they will have success.

Creating sequences is what Leacock says leads him to a fantastic film yet in order to capture footage for these sequences spontaneity is important, but those who are being filmed always have a certain reservation about being filmed. They either over react, or tell a few fibs or try to give you want they think you want. this is not the only thing that could sabotage your film. you yourelf could destroy it! everything you do could destroy that.

i guess one of the ways to help avoid this is to try and stay out of the way and to always be prepared for something. the less they feel the camera is 'right there' the more they are willing to go on about their business. of course this depends on what type of documentary you are trying to film. maybe you want to cause drama and instigate something to happen, but merely having you there and the presence of the camera could change what you were expecting to get.

watching the observer

Observing the observer

In our latest exercise, we were suppose to go and capture people doing something whether it be eating or working at a store, reading etc. we thought it would be interesting to capture those who were observing something themselves and then reveal what it is they are looking at in the end.

In this case we went to Melbourne Central's pet store. they had puppies and rabbits and it was interesting to see how many people actually approach puppies and completely go gaga for the animals. They don't even care if anyone is watching them. Our camera was clearly in front of them and they most definitely noticed, but they didn't care at all. It was quite funny.

You can always edit something to make it look like there is something worth watching, even if its just a shot of someone else standing there and watching something else.

Breakdown of a cheerleading documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXqxzs-QHI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oobHyiJUPfk

I found a cheerleading documentary on youtube and thought i would analyze it and maybe get some ideas for our documentary. after watching it, i would say that i am going to criticize it as it was horrible.

Firstly, the documentary was of an expository mode, where there is a narrator that looks into the history of cheerleading. Straight away, I am BORED. I don't want to know about the history of cheerleading, i want to know what it is in the first place. Cheerleading has the potential to have great footage and there was none in this documentary. The narrator would talk over alot of still pictures and there were only a few clips of only one team doing very simple cheerleading.

There was only one interview in the whole documentary and we didn't even know who she was or saw how she cheered. she was a random interview that wasn't the central character. i reckon if you have a topic like cheerleading, you should at least have a few different interviews with different people. there wasn't any music except for the star wars exert in the end and it was just plain boring. in the end it seemed like a commercial giving some sort of information about cheer.

in saying this, i do not think this documentary was actually a produced one and probably was done as a subject in school (very much like what we are doing..HAHA!)

there are definitely a few things that i know to avoid from this documentary

Interview exercise

In class we did an exercise with Interviews

We interviewed one of our members in the group and it was quite interesting. When we first sat down to do it, i thought that this was probably going to become a really boring interview. I was in charge of sound and asking the questions.

our interview was based on asking questions about our subjects life, history etc. I asked pretty simple questions and found that the answers were very straight forward, but then we stumbled upon something interesting. we asked about one of her placements at a school when she was studying to be a teacher and she started to change her facial expression and get really into how she hated it and disliked everyone at the school.

From this i could see how having emotion is really good for filming documentaries. it almost doesn't matter what the topic is about, but if someone is passionate about something, they are able to connect with some sort of an audience.

this set the scene for our documentary. we knew we would have to do something that would present some sort of drama or emotion to our topic. if we just focused on cheerleading the sport, it could just end up being a promotional video rather than a documentary.

Documentary progress

Our Documentary has come along way. It is getting done slowly but surely.

We had numerous amounts of problems with the documentary, one being that a member of our group dropped out of the course and left us hanging. The worst part of this was that he was going to be our main character in the documentary. We were going to follow his progress and participation as an outsider trying to get involved with cheerleading.

To a certain extent i am glad this didn't work out. Having him getting involved with cheerleading would have almost made the documentary a comedy rather than something a little bit more serious.

Now we have taken a new angle. We have decided that maintaing a central character was a good idea, but rather we will look more into her life and examine cheerleading as a part of her life. Our subject, Emma Podbury is a full fledged cheerleader. Her circle of friends are in cheer, her career is it cheer and her hoby. Everything she does is CHEER. Even though this has become a massive part of her life and her identity, Emma still questions whether the physical pain and drama that cheer has put her through is worth it all. She continues to face many challenges even at home, where she lives with former team mates. From this we can examine the sub-culture that cheerleading has become. How far are people willing to go, to feel apart of a group and community?

We have already had one shoot with Emma and we were able to get the first interview down. We were able to draw out some of the dramas that Emma is facing and have categorized them into sections so that we can start to form a documentary. There are three conflicts that we can see would be interesting to our viewers. One being her conflict with her former team mate, employer and student Jess Nugent, another being her conflict with her house mates who were on her previous team and lastly her conflict with someone who is on her current team.

Our next shooting will happen next week as we go and watch Emma train with her current team. this will be a good opportunity to get some interesting and active footage of actual cheerleading.

Rough Start to TV2

My start to TV2 has been somewhat slow, but i have finally been able to get up to date.

My group has for the documentary has been assembled. Eric, Arissa and Ollie are in my group. We have decided to do a fun documentary that is in between the interactive and performative style of documentary. We have chosen to do a topic that most people know about but do not actually know the true nature of...CHEERLEADING.

when talking about cheerleading most people say "so do you have pom poms and which sports teams do you cheer for?" we are going to show how cheerleading is also a competitive activity and that they don't just cheer for sports team but rather practice stunts, tumbling, gymnastics and dance and perform them at competitions all around the country.

the reason we chose this topic is because I am actually a cheerleading coach and will have access to the different teams in melbourne, competitions and training sessions. we will have many opportunities to capture footage.

Our group has already met a few times and we have finally come up with an angle. We will be following around Ollie, one of the group members, in his quest to participate in and find out what cheerleading is all about.