Original Treatment

Overview
Our film is going to centre around Hannah Louise Jones, a brain tumour survivor, and her charity work and achievements post recovery.

Goal/Purpose of the film
I hope that the audience acquires further knowledge about the illness that Hannah suffered from, and to also experience a moving account of her story, whilst at the same time, learning more about the work that she now does. I think that before watching this film the audience may have a preconceived idea of what it’s like to go through something as traumatic as this, however, once they have watched it I would like to think that they will in awe of Hannah and how strong she was throughout. Following this, I would like the audience to feel a sense of positivity, as that is really the main theme of the film (even though the initial story is terrible). Finally, we would like to be able to raise awareness for the charity itself.

Film outline
 Beginning

• To begin the film, I think it would be nice to introduce Hannah, without first exposing the main story as a whole which focus’s around her illness. This way, it will build a relatable character for the audience to get to know.
• For example, ask friends and family to give interview about what she was like as a child (happy/full of energy etc) using stills from her childhood, talking perhaps about her grades at school and school life as a whole, perhaps even hobbies.
• We could do this by asking them to tell a funny story about her and perhaps a friend or relative. This will also give the audience something that will hopefully hook them into the story.

Middle

• Once we have established a persona for the audience to relate to, we can then start to talk about the real body subject of the film in detail.
• We plan to introduce Hannah’s illness by having her explain the time she was diagnosed (obviously ethics must be taken into consideration here).
• It would be nice to be able to get some more interviews from family and friends about their reaction to this as well.
• Then we would like to talk, in as much detail as time allows, about the specifics of her condition. Perhaps gather images of her in hospital or images of scans etc. Anything that will provide the audience with as much visual information as possible.
• This will then allow us to progress onto what she has done since the trauma. For example, Hannah is raising funds for The Brain Tumour Charity, which she started raising for when she was just 15. So far the Hannah Louise Jones Fund has raised
• We also plan to show, in detail, her achievements since. For example, the amazing charity work that she has done and carrying the Olympic torch etc.

End/resolution

• Finally, we would like to end the film on a happy note, i.e. show how far she has come.
• Perhaps show her in a happy environment in present day.
• We could also end with what she is planning to for her future.
• It might be nice to end it by listing what her charity has done to help.
• For example, £199,000 pounds it has raised. (We could do this by having scrolling text at the end of the film/placed text over stills of Hannah)

Pitching session and feedback

Today we pitched our idea to the rest of our group to get their opinions on it and reflect on feedback given to improve our planning process.

In this film we are aiming to highlight Hannah’s bravery throughout her life by capturing her story from what she was like growing up, to now, setting up events and a charity to help others in her position as well as winning awards for her achievements.

The film style we hope to achieve is to paint a portrait of Hannah’s life and experiences. We know that this style can be very dangerous as it relies on just one contributor to tell the narrative and this can become very boring in a number of ways if they are dry on camera or have a monotone voice etc. The way we intend to get around this factor is by having the first part of the film about Hannah told by friends and relatives with the use of archive footage and stills.

 

We have contacted Hannah a number of times and Luke has met her in person and she is more than happy to do the film and talk about her experiences. Her family are also very happy to be a part of the film and talk about her past and their involvement in her life. We have researched her achievements thoroughly as well as projects she’s been involved with e.g.: Speaking at the Houses of Parliament, carrying the Olympic Torch for the 2012 Olympics, Winning the BBC Switch Teen Hero award 2009 and meeting Dame Ellen McArthur. We have scouted out a few locations already for certain areas of the film (her current university and home), but this is very much the next step we will be taking when we finalise a date to begin shooting.

  

After the group tutorial with Debbie, we were warned to not involve any bias into the narrative by focusing the whole film on Hannah’s charity work and instead get an image of her as a person first. We decided we would start the film by showing the family going about their daily lives with a voice over of what they think about Hannah and what she’s done. Depending on what content we get, we were going to lead with a funny/quirky story about her childhood to start the film off with a light mood using archive footage and stills. The film will then progress to when she was first diagnosed with the brain tumour and we will focus on how this affected her learning and relationships with friends and family. We aim to include stills of the x-rays/archive footage of the process. In the middle of the film we want to focus on the charity work she has done and how she started up her own. Finally we want to highlight her achievements, what she’s doing now and how this whole process has changed affected her.

Seminar 3 - Planning a Documentary

Documentary Planning

We went through possible ways to plan a documentary and various conventions commonly used in them, to give us an idea as where to start for the planning of our own.

How to find contributors:

• Social Media - Facebook, Twitter, Forums etc.
• Organisations - Companies, businesses etc.
• Scout areas ('s) - Go to the location you want and find them yourself.
• Advertise - Put up advertisements around specific locations asking for contributors.
• Connections related to subject matter - for example the head of a charity or a consumer of a product.

We then discussed potential issues that could arise when filming and planning the documentary:

• Ethical issues - Age of contributors, their mental health, misrepresentation etc.
• Timing - Sticking to time schedule and getting everything done with time to edit.
• Reliability - Can you rely on the contributors you've chosen and what happens if they don't show.
• Professionalism - Plan effectively to be professional, ask well thought out questions, don't be late etc.

Next we discussed how and why we need to research around the area we are looking at and what ways we can become experts in that area:

• Internet
• Archives - Newspapers/Museums
• Offices
• Library/University
• Council

With all the technical and practical advice discussed, we moved on to the narrative of the film and the different styles we could adapt when creating our own:

• Observational - Just follows subject around, no real interaction or set up scenes.
• Investigative - Exposes something to public view.
• Asking a question - Similar to investigative
• Painting a portrait - Focused on one subject and gives overall view of that person/place.
• Informative - Like a Public Service Announcement, normally a voice over piece that just tells the audience information.

After reflecting on these styles of documentary, we looked at how to decide the number of contributors we would want for our film to make it still easy to follow, but not too boring and monotone with just the one voice throughout.

• Think about the main narrative and who will tell it in a way that is interesting and doesn't misrepresent anything.
• If there are any sub stories, think how you would tell them and by who.
• If this is the case, what is the weighting of each story in terms of narrative, themes and time?
• Do any of the stories interweave and how will you get them to do this smoothly.

Finally we looked at the kind of questions we will want to ask our contributors and what the best way of getting really good answers from them is.

• Ask open questions and not closed ones to allow them to elaborate on anything possible that's interesting.
• Ask empathetic questions.
• Try and link questions on from one another so the interview flows smoothly and make them comfortable.
• Build up a relationship with the contributor(s) to once again make them comfortable which will encourage them to give more thorough answers.
• When you make the questions, think of what underlying themes you are attempting to connote in the film, and link the questions to that as much as possible.
• Surprise them with a question they won't be expecting so they really think about their answer and hopefully subsequent answers.

After we discussed all these topics we had a screening session of 4 short documentary films: The Solitary Life of Cranes (2008) by Eva Weber, End of the World (2010) by ?, Everyday Something (2002) by Carol Morley and Plank (2009) by Billy Pols. They were a mixture of investigative, observational, dramatic reconstruction and painting a portrait documentaries and the one I enjoyed the most was Plank by Billy Pols.

Link to the video here.

The reason I enjoyed this one the most was because I can adapt some of the conventions and techniques used in it for my groups documentary as we are also doing a ‘painting a portrait’ style documentary focused around 1 contributor. The techniques used in this documentary are very effective in portraying the underlying theme of sport and activity in the film and the way this is done is through the predominant use of tracking shots, hand held and motion within scenes. Although our documentary doesn’t have this theme, we want to adapt some of the techniques used such as tracking shots and over the shoulder shots just so we can make the documentary more personal and make it feel as though we are in the subjects’ position. We also don’t want the audience to get bored by loads of static shots and talking heads so we will use a lot of cut –aways when the subject is talking.

Also, although it is not my area in this project, the sound design and use of music in Plank is very effective at backing up the underlying themes of youth and skateboarding culture throughout. It also evokes an emotional response in the audience on more serious parts of the film which is very powerful at making the audience empathise with the contributor which is what we are going to be attempting in our film.

Ideas for The Documentary + Group roles

Documentary Idea
Our main idea for the documentary is to base it on a girl called Hannah Louise Jones who had a brain tumour at 15 and after numerous surgeries and treatments, she finally beat cancer. Even in these unthinkable circumstances, Hannah kept up hope and was brave enough to afterwards speak about her experiences and how it had effected her, her family and friends throughout the years. She spoke in the Houses of Parliament on behalf of the Brain Tumour Charity and after getting awards for bravery from the BBC and carrying the Olympic Torch, eventually set up her own fund called The Hannah Louise Jones Fund for the Brain Tumour Charity and has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to date. We want to create a documentary that reflects on her past, present and future in regards to her involvement with charities, fund-raising events etc. as well as looking at how this whole experience has effected her life and her families.

Secondary Ideas
Although the whole group is very excited and happy to do both tasks on the first idea, we also discussed potential other areas we could look into. One was on a local Sheffield band called The Sherlocks, another was on the building complex in Sheffield that is being renovated called Park Hill and the final idea was on the Sheffield local Ice Hockey team called the Sheffield Steelers. We have a rough idea of what we would like to do for these ideas, however we have already got conformation that the contributors for our main idea will be available, so we are focusing more on that.

My Role
These are the roles in our group:

• Luke Finch - Director/Sound
• Ellen Bounds - Producer
• Nathan Harkin - Cinematographer
• Matt Brunton - Post Production

As cinematographer on this project, I want to be focusing on interesting compositions, well exposed shots and the overall quality of footage we obtain. As I am doing the cinematography production skills strand this semester, I will be using what I learn in it to apply into this documentary. For now, my main focus is on planning our shoot and what I will have to do on it, composing a rough shot list and location list (along with the director and producer) to make sure we have a variety of different shots to use to cut away from in interviews. As the poetic piece is in before the whole length doc, I am exploring ways in which to use the poetic mode when shooting and I think I will be using a variety of tracking shots, extreme close-ups, focus pulls and hopefully some contra-zooms to expose this theme more. We have also been discussing the use of stills and connotations of imagery to use in our poetic piece which has lead me to taking a number of photographs with my own camera to explore this further.

However, it is early days at the moment and our group as a whole is just planning the trip and scouting out locations for now as well as reflecting on our own roles and what jobs we will potentially have to carry out leading up to and during the shoot.

Poetic Documentary

This seminar focused on the form of Poetic Documentary; what its conventions are, where it came from and a brief history of it.

Regen Analysis

We started off by watching a film called Regen (1929) by Joris Ivens which is one of the early documentaries that uses poetic form within the film. It is simply about a Dutch city that is being filmed while it rains and this is shown through a constant montage of different shots. It is defined as a poetic documentary because it doesn't dwell on traditional narrative content like other documentaries do such as individual contributors or events, and instead attempts to set a mood or tone as its theme, much like that of a written poem. Regen does this by having a narrative ark from the town in the morning when it is sunny and bright, to then transitioning into it beginning to rain, then to a downpour and then back to it being sunny again and this evokes emotions subjective to the individual audience member watching it, which is why the film is so simplicity powerful because of the range of emotions it portrays. We also read an essay from Joris Ivens where he describes his process of making Regen which was very interesting as he explains his thoughts and opinions of his own work "I failed to emphasize sufficiently human beings' reactions to rain in a big city. Everything was subordinated to the aesthetic approach." (Joris Ivens, The Camera and I, Seven Seas Books, 1969). This showed that he had focused on one main factor for his whole film and using that factor alone, he had created these themes and emotions in a very powerful way, through the image itself and with no help from dialogue.

Night Mail Analysis

The second film we watched was called Night Mail (1936) by Harry Watt and Basil Wright and this is one of the most famous early examples of expository style documentaries but with a small amount of poetic form contained within it. It is about the mail service and how it gets letters across the country by train. This film is one of the first to contain a voice over as one of the main narrative points and as it is a film produced by GPO, it uses this to serve as information to the audience. The film also contains dubbed voice which is synced with the contributors on screen in the edit which was also relatively unheard of at the time and got criticism because it went against the normal conventions of documentary film and people believe that it was scripted slightly and the contributors had to 'put on a performance' for the cameras. This brought up the ethics behind documentary film making and made people question how much influence the camera itself could have on the representation of the subject matter, as well as how much influence the director(s) would also have on the outcome of the film. This is somewhat supported by the ending of the film which takes a much more poetic form stance as it is a poem read over a montage of footage with an orchestral soundtrack. It follows the poetic form as it evokes emotions from the audience through pace and tone of the sound which causes reflection on the subject matter they have just seen and allows them to draw their own thoughts and opinions about it.

Night and Fog Analysis

The third film we watched was Night and Fog (1956) by Alan Resnais and contained a mixture of expository and poetic modes as it contains a variety of different conventions from each. The film starts out in colour footage, shot after the subject matter had occurred, which then transitions into archive footage shortly after which follows the poetic form of an abstract contrast between the two parts of footage in terms of composition, colour and quality. This is used to give the audience some perspective to the subject and how it is used as a metaphor that time cannot change the events that have happened in the location. It also uses a voice over frequently to give a direct address to the audience of the situation and is used to inform and educate them about the subject. Finally it uses stills to slow the pace of the film to allow time for reflection by the audience, and because these stills are normally not accompanied by dialogue, it allows the audience to make up their own subjective opinion on what they are presented with.

Winsconsin Death Trip Analysis
Finally we watched a film called Winsconsin Death Trip (1999) by James Marsh which, much like Man on Wire (2008), contains a vast amount of reconstruction footage and fits into the Performative Mode of documentary films. This is because the director has decided how each scene of reconstructed footage will be shot with considered camera angles, compositions and sound design which will ultimately reflect his own interpretation of the subject matter. This means the audience cannot effectively come up with their own understanding because they are being manipulated by how the director has decided to represent 'the truth'.

Introduction to Documentary by Bill Nichols

The Introduction to Documentary hand out really made me think about documentary in a different light. It opens by saying "Every film is a documentary" which is a very profound statement, however it then explains by saying "... that there are two kinds of film: (1) documentaries of wish-fulfillment and (2) documentaries of social representation." This is highlighting the difference between fiction and non-fiction in films, and suggesting that even fictional films are documentaries as they still represent certain things, people or groups within them, which the audience can either accept or reject. "Fiction may be content to suspend disbelief (to accept its world as plausible), but non-fiction often wants to instill belief (to accept its world as actual)." This highlights the intentions behind each style of film and shows what the directors and film makers want to achieve. Bill later goes on to define what a non-fictional documentary is in a different way "Documentaries lend us the ability to see timely issues in need of attention, literally." This is a very interesting way of explaining the purpose of documentaries that I will keep in mind when creating my own as it tells us what the audience wants, and how to achieve it.
Further on in the extract we get into details about the ethics of documentary and how to represent contributors accurately with no bias so you are not in danger of misrepresentation. There is an interesting example used to show this which is Land Without Bread (1932) by Luis Bunuel. This film is a documentary that uses standard conventions ironically to make the audience question the realness of representation as well as the ethics behind documentary film making in a 'mockumentary' genre film. "... an outrageously judgmental, if not ethnocentric, voice-over commentary. "Here is another type of idiot," the narrator tells us at one moment as a Hurdanos man raises his head into the frame." Here, it is being brought to our attention that when we watch a film that is labelled a documentary, we can be easily manipulated by misrepresentation and instantly believe what we are being told without any regard to the context or evidence. "Luis Bunuel's film gradually suggests a level of self-awareness and calculated effect that might prompt us to wonder if Bunuel is not quite the insensitive cad we initially thought." "Bunuel may be among the first filmmakers to explicitly raise the issue of the ethics of documentary filmmaking,"

The whole article is very interesting and informative and has already altered my outlook on documentaries which I will bare in mind when creating our own.

References: Nichols, B, 2001, Introduction to Documentary – Indiana University Press

First seminar session

 Summary
This seminar consisted of a brief introduction to the module, the module brief and aims, a screening section of a different range of documentaries (including last years work), and finally an introduction to documentary as a concept including brief descriptions of its major advances in history.

Reaction to the brief
The brief is split into an initial exercise, to produce a 2 minute "Poetic Sequence", which will assist us in our main documentary group project which is to create a 5-10 minute documentary on a serious subject you feel passionately about within a group of 3-4.
My initial reaction to the brief was one of panic, because of how broad and unstructured it was I was unsure as to whether or not I could even come up with a creative idea or take on it. However upon talking to members of my group and seeing the time scale we had towards the deadline for the brief, I am confident we can come up with a really interesting piece of film. I was also somewhat confused when faced with the first exercise of the poetic sequence as I had no clue what it was about or what conventions would apply to it. After watching one piece last years students did however, I have a much better understanding of it and my take on it is that it's almost a trailer to our final film, which gives off an enigma code and mysteriousness to it, whilst applying various conventions of an experimental style film to it.
Although we haven't decided on specific roles within our group, I would very much like the role of cinematographer, especially considering the first exercise because I believe it would allow me to practice with a large variety of compositions and shot techniques of which I am very comfortable with and others that I am very eager to try out (use of track and use of a macro lens). However I am confident in the post-production side of things as well,  due to my experience last year being the main editor and sound designer for almost all projects I was in.
I am very excited to get started on this project as soon as possible as it seems to be incorporating my favourite genre of film, documentary, with a genre that interests me, experimental, and will allow a very open minded and creative approach that I hope I can execute professionally.

Seminar Content
After the briefing, the seminar touched on defining what a documentary is, their codes and conventions and the ethics behind them. My opinion on what a documentary is and does was originally a film that educates people and entertains them on various issues that may or may not concern them. However after the seminar I believe that as well as that, it also attempts to represent the truth in a factual way in its purist most unbiased form, but I believe more modern documentaries attempt to entertain more and to do this they sometimes represent the truth in a bias or altered way. An example of how they do this is with the use of reconstruction footage within a documentary which breaks some of the rules and ethics behind 'pure' documentaries by adding fiction and actors into the edit like they did in the British Movement 1930's and this was called 'The creative interpretation of actuality' John Grierson. Examples of this style of documentary are Listen To Britain (1942) and Man On Wire (2008).
We were also given a brief history of  documentary films which arguably began in the 1920's and a notable example is Man With A Movie Camera (1929) by Roger Ebert. During this time and earlier on, documentary was a grey area as most propaganda films used claimed to be representing the truth such as the Soviet Cinema, which supported the non-fiction genre massively.
Documentary then expanded from this expository form in the 1930's with, as I mentioned above,
The British Movement where more scripts and actors were but on documentaries to enhance its entertainment levels and so the film could represent the directors opinions or views which was seen as a poetic form.
Then in the 1960's and with the advances in technology with cameras, the Free Cinema wave was created which valued intimacy over all of the professional codes and conventions that traditional documentaries were using, to give a more accurate representation of truth. This caused a number of disputes between film makers and lead to rules being made up for different styles of documentary including Direct Cinema which was the most radical and least tampered with. Some of the rules for this style where that there was no scripting,  no actors, no additional  lighting and above all to record reality without influencing it as the film maker. The French however continued to argue that the film maker will always create a bias film because they chose what to film and what not to film, what to cut in the edit and what not to cut e.t.c. which is true and still holds relevance to documentary films today.

My Final Thoughts
My opinion on documentaries after this seminar have changed, as I will now always question the films representation of truth and 'the real' and how much they themselves have influenced this representation. However, as a film maker, I can also appreciate how difficult it is to have no influence at all on this, whilst still making the documentary entertaining for the audience. I have also learnt various techniques that separate one form of documentary from another, as well as understanding the forms themselves and I will take all of this into consideration when I make my own film.