During the first two weeks of this semester we all delved into local newspapers, national publications, the Internet and our imaginations to try and come up with an interesting and manageable idea for this module.

Here are some of the ideas and the pros/cons:

1) Bath Rugby


There are plans to demolish the current rugby ground and beloved space “The Rec” and in its place build a larger, more commercially viable stadium. There is out cry from several areas. The supporters and the locals who feel attached to the current building and don’t want to see the “end of an era”. Yet there are strong business reasons why the property developers want to push this venture forward. This is an interesting Money vs. Nostalgia topic.

This is an interesting topic and it is also local which would give us good contacts and easy filming. There are two definite sides and it would be interesting to explore the reasons behind each view point.

Although we liked this topic there was an undercurrent of feeling that this wasn’t very adventurous. It is an area of local interest but it has been covered, recovered and brought up in every part of this city. There was even an article that suggested that:



“With no actual rugby to focus on supporters of Bath Rugby can enjoy their other favourite past time, discussing whether Bath Rugby should continue with its plan to redevelop the Rec. This activity, along with checking the progress of Somerset CCC is a good indicator that the summer has arrived.”


That was posted on a website last summer as well so there was really nothing more that we could dredge out of this topic.



2) Bath Spa Students have novels published

There was obviously such dislike of this particular topic that it is simply the title in my notes and a big cross beside it!
It would be interesting as they are students from our University. It may be easy to contact them and they would probably be more than willing to contribute to a project that comes from the same University that nurtured their talents.
Yet, this idea clearly didn’t get past that first suggestion.




3) Festivals- organising or promoting


This was of interest to all of us. We had a keen idea of what direction we could take it in the preliminary stages of organising and preparing for a festival. We thought that this would be interesting but we were unsure that this would be an effective documentary without the final scenes showing the festival in action. As our deadline is in May it would narrow down our chances of being able to film both the planning and the execution. If I were watching a documentary on planning a festival and then it finished before the event took place I would automatically presume one of two things:
a) The festival was a flop
b) The filmmakers ran out of tape/coffee and just gave up



4) Laser Eye Treatment


This topic was met with the least resistance from all parties. It is an area of interest to so many people who wear glasses. Not only is it expensive but it is also risky. This can be filmed locally using local clinics. Rather than the science side there were suggestions to follow the human aspect of the procedure. Why people wanted to get it done.


5) “£27k for slipping on M&S grapes”

The headline shrieked over the front page of the Bath Chronicle and it was hard not to take notice. The M&S in Bath was the subject of a court case which saw them paying up in the thousands to a woman who complained that “had the grapes been sealed in a zipped bag and cleaning the wet area had been facilitated better then this accident may not have happened”.
This is an interesting topic and something that fascinates me. Injury Claim is becoming more and more a bizarre money hungry frenzy of blame and it is one of the things that is slowly eroding the amazing human trait of common sense. Setting aside my personal opinions it is still a huge topic. M&S were licking their wounds and would be unlikely to appreciate student filmmakers chasing them around. Also hopes of contacting the ironically named Mrs. Plumber were dashed by her reluctance to comment in any publication.

Roles for BC1006

We have drawn up the roles for our production and here they are. I have also explained a little bit about why these roles were chosen.

Researcher: Laura Carey
She is a wiz on google and can knock up lists of suitable people to contact, places to be and things to see. She has a lovely telephone manner and so will be great for contacting contributors and negotiating filming licenses.

Cameraman: Nathan Russ
Nathan has an active interest in photography. He is very good at it too and has an eye for placement and lighting. Although he has never really used a film camera before he is accomplished with a stills camera.

Editor: Chris Arrowsmith
Chris is really interested in editing. He has shown that he has a flare for it and is clearly dedicated to getting the right feel from the process. He is going to watch lots of documentaries before he starts the process so that he can gather as much background as possible.

Producer/Director: Jessie Barstow
Jessie really enjoys bossing people around!


Laura Carey is also going to be our roving reporter. Running up to the unsuspecting public in the streets of Bath to snatch interviews. I am in the process of trying to convince her to be like Anika Rice.

We are all keen to put as much as we can into this project and so the roles are going to be fairly loose. This gives us the chance to combine all the ideas that we have and produce the best documentary possible.

well!

The time has come to transfer my scribblings in the book of notes onto this blog. I find it so much easier to write things down the old fashioned way (quill and parchment) before I transfer onto this blog. Trouble is that there is now a backlog!

So here you go a myriad of postings for you to digest at your pleasure.

Whilst researching.....

... I came across this little video. great stuff!

more things that I have found....

This is lovely:


Le ballon from et su on Vimeo.

Documentaries

The documentary is one of the oldest and most visited styles of film making. It can depict anything from monumental earth shattering, eye opening, jaw dropping events right through to delicate personal moments. It can captivate you for months with a format like Planet Earth or for minutes like the format 3 minute wonders. For me it is one of the most important reasons we transfer life to film and there is seemingly no end to the age of the documentary.

You may have guessed that I am a fan. I love the fact that I can be drawn into a programme so much and emerge with a greater understanding of a topic.

Where did it all start?

British filmakers were some of the pioneers of the documentary. Grierson was commissioned in the early part of the twentieth century to make various documentaries. Famously he produced works such as "The Night Train" and "Drifters" in 1928. Drifters is a particularly striking example of early documentary filmaking as it was commissioned to promote British commerce. Grierson did not want to make a plain fact-tracing film but was instead inspired by the idea of storytelling. It was one of the first steps towards the documenary style we are so acustomed to today.

Another important factor that Grierson wove into his documentaries was the idea of the "heroic beauty of ordinary labour" which is again something that has very much been championed by many documentary filmakers to this day.

Throughout the twentieth century filmakers captured the zietgiest by transfering the world around them onto film. Now days we can select from a vast amount of topics with everything from consipary theories to drama documentaries, history lessons to natural wonders, election hysteria to the best way to poach an egg. The list is fantastically endless and as we step into the twenty first century the variety is only growing.

Here are some documentaries I like:

• Observational documentaries
  

"an attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum intervention"

Observational documentries tend to focus around local issues and as the term suggests they are based on observation rather than a planned narrative. They are time consuming to film and often leave editors whith hours and hours of footage to sift through. They can be unpredictable but this is one of their charms. Observational documentaries mainly concentrate on human issues and rely heavily on emotion. A well filmed and edited observational documentry can be increadibly captivating.

A great example that you should watch if possible is "Sisters in Law" (Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi) which tracks a first female judge and prosecutor in the male dominated country of Cameroon.

• Nature documentaries
  

I find it hard to dislike any nature documentry. I think that, like most people in this country, I have watched more documentries on nature than any other genre and yet I still feel compelled to watch. Especially now that nature is being capured with a more cinematic feel.

A great examlple is Planet Earth (BBC). It is beautifully filmed, cleverly planned and the behind the scenes mini documentaries add more to the magic rather than taking anything away by revealing technique.

• "Things you never realised you'd be interested in" documentaries

I could not think of another way to phrase this genre of documentary. I am including in this programmes that explore the brain, murders, nineteenth centrury highway robbers, egyptian myths and how stuff is made. These documentaries are brilliant and for thirty minutes I become totally engrossed in what they have to say, the story and the focus.

Good examples are "My Brilliant Brain" which was run on channel 5 a few years back and focused on various individuals whose brains just worked differently. An amazing mathemitician, a talented young virtuoso and a gifted artist. Yet the programme revolved around the fact that they had discovered these talents after various degrees of brain damage.

The documentary is certainly cemented into the world of television. I think that it is brilliant and interesting that that we still follow many of the same prinicples as when the concept of documentry first came about in the early 1900s.

preparing for Thursday (aka "getting my head round Final Cut"!)

Here is a short edit I have just done in Final Cut. This is just in preparation for Thursdays lecture and because it is just fun!



music- Limp Twins - Tales From Beyond The Groove (from the album Tales From Beyond The Groove, released by Tru Thoughts 2003)

clips- various artists music videos comment for details

Expo

How Mike managed to persuade the University that taking 11 of its most chaotic students on a luxury bus all the way to London town was sensible I shall never know. What I do know is that there is a whole world to broadcasting that I have only just scratched the surface of!

The Broadcast Video Expo in Earls Court is the largest technology fest of its kind in the UK. It is designed to help broadcast professionals peruse the new advancements in technology, check up on their rivals and hear about progress from the respected members of the broadcast community. In truth a lot of the exhibition was focused at selling and buying, things that my student account couldn't possibly handle! This meant that I took on a kind of role at the exhibition. In this role I was a very interested customer with a cheque book lurking in my handbag! Yes I did make sure my name tag which screamed the words "BATH SPA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE" was hidden!

I have a thing about consoles. Maybe because I spent two years of my life trying to understand them, but hopefully just because I have a genuine interest in how the signals of the sound is maneuvered through them. This interest meant that I found myself heading straight for the Roland stand. They had their incredible live sound console (M-400) on display and I was impressed at how compact it was. Working in layers like the Mackie D8B that i had used before meant that it had 48 channels and a further 16 auxileries! It had a digital display that allowed the user to have almost complete control over the sound, to a degree I had never seen before from a digital console. The Roland technician said that it was by far the most portable and reliable console he had been on tour with. He would say that though, he was the Roland technician! It also had somewhere you could plug in your usb and save your settings so when on the road you didn't have to spend hours fixing the sound at the next destination.

After that I meandered round the rest of the exhibition. There were touchscreen consoles, 3D televisions, expensive cameras, subscriptions to Broadcasting magazines, colour correction software and a couple of fast cars, of course!

The technology on display was mind blowing. The Tricaster was very popular! I'm not sure wether this was because of the actual product or how the salesman/smoothtalker made it feel that all our lives was missing was a Tricaster!

It is actually a fascinating bit of kit which can put you in a virtual studio where ever you are. It is also fairly sophisticated and I was most impressed with the virtual reflections it was able to produce in the virtual polished surface of the virtual desk he was virtually sitting behind. Here is the website.

All in all it was very interesting and although much of the technology and equipment was beyond our current know-how it was great to be completely surrounded by my future career for a day!