Screen shots

 

These are some screen shots of my editing so far. They are two of my favourite shots that I have done. The first is taken from the interview which I feel I have framed really well with the artist aggressively dominating the frame centrally. I had also chosen a good location for my mise-en-scene as the area is associated with the activity - an abandoned building site. Graffiti artists frequent these types of locations, constantly risking prosecution for trespassing. Psychologically they are are pursuing their desires at great personal risk - why? 

The second is taken from the shot which I filmed all hand-held as I wanted it to be shaky and not perfect, this adds a better sense of realism to the documentary and is typical conventional technique. I also wanted to capture us walking to these "gritty" and abandoned places that they will travel far and wide to get to with the purpose of just writing their names on a wall.

Pre-production

 Progress

So far my documentary on graffiti is going well. I have looked back at the footage I have filmed so far and it looks really good apart from a few where I didn't keep it in focus as much as I should have. My favorite pieces of footage so far are the interviews. I think I framed the artists really well and chose a good location for the mise-en-scene. I have currently edited three and a half minutes of footage and am hoping to get up to between four and five minutes.

Things to do

There are a few things that I still need to do for my film. One of which is to try and get an interview from one more graffiti artist. I have spoken to him about it before and he seemed up for it which is good as he is a big name in the local scene. Another person that I need to interview is the landlady of the Railway Tavern pub. I want to interview her as a lot of graffiti artists drink in the "Tav" and she supports what they do when its done in a legal space and not vandalism. She also has problems with people tagging the pub doors and toilets as every time it happens it costs the pub money to clean it. Because of this she has decided to create a legal graffiti area on a wall in the pub. For these reasons she would be a good person to interview.

I also need to find the music to use in my documentary. As graffiti originated from The Bronx in New York on the Hip Hop scene I thought it was only right to use some Hip Hop. Artists I have considered are, Souls of Mischief, Gangstarr and NWA. I am still yet to decide whether I am going to do a narration over the top of documentary or narrate through on screen graphics.

The final thing that I need to do is to get a lot more of quick shots of graffiti. The reason for this is because the intro to the documentary is a big montage of graffiti so I need as much as possible to make it a really quick cut montage. I am hoping that I can get all of these things done by the deadline for the project so that my documentary explores deeper into why they do what they do.

New Wave Shots

            

            

Here are examples of a close up shot and the cut away. The location for this footage was at Five Street Park in Nuneaton. The park has a reputation of being quite "rough" so we thought we could get some good footage there. Unfortunately The white balance was wrong so theres a blue tint to the shots but if it weren't for that these two would be really good. Both pieces of footage were filmed hand held with a Cannon 600.

Health & Safety

Having a reputation as a rough area we had be careful of where we were filming and where we were leaving the equipment. There were also precautions made for pieces of broken glass on the floor that people could fall on or tread on. We also made sure that no one went off filming on their own.

New Wave

The reason for these shots was because of the French new wave. I wanted to capture both smoking the cigarette and the finished burning on the floor so i could edit the footage and put jump cuts in to show the "life" of the cigarette.

Aperture

Aperture

       

In this shot we were doing some innovative filming techniques like the new wave directors would. you can see that the back ground in the shot is out of focus. This is because we were filming at around f/14 which creates a shallow depth of field.

       

This is the same shot but done again. This time we changed the aperture to f/22, which creates a bigger depth of field so the background is in focus swell as the fore ground. This made the shot look a lot better. I think it is a really nice new wave shot as well because of the innovative camera movement so its as if you are walking with me. I also break the fourth wall in this shot which has influence from the French New wave film 'Breathless' when it is highlighted at the end that the character is breaking the fourth wall.