Poetic Documentary Final

Yesterday we showed our final finished film for the poetic documentary. We have changed a lot since the tutorial last week in most areas of our film. The advice we were given was to not make it too much like a short, conventional documentary by using more conventions of a poetic piece, to focus less on making a narrative and more on developing a theme using these poetic conventions and finally to consider the soundscape more and what to include in it to help portray these themes. As I've said previously, the group decided to focus on the theme of Hannah's personality in the final film.

The first thing we did to change and improve the film, was to think of the ways we could show Hannah's personality in an unconventional way. We decided after a long discussion, that we would use her fathers voice as a voice-over, taking individual words and phrases from an interview we recorded on the Saturday shoot, that described Hannah. We decided that we wouldn't have the fathers face or any talking heads in this film, to draw away from the conventional documentary style that this suggests. We believed the use of voice-over in small snippets and spaced out, gives the audience a chance to reflect on each word and really pay attention to what they are being told instead of just spoon feeding them the information about Hannah. We also wanted the theme to not be instantly obvious to the audience and make them decide for themselves who is being described to them and ultimately getting to know the person quite well, without seeing them speak on screen.
After finalising the idea of the voice over, we discussed what visuals we would have over the top of it. We all agreed we liked the idea of using old home video footage to show Hannah growing up so we decided to use that and select what part to use. Eventually we decided to use a section of home video of Hannah on a roller-coaster. We chose this because it was the most interesting visually of all the home video, as well as the fact it served as a visual metaphor for the journey Hannah has gone through in her life, contrasting the innocence of her youth with the seriousness of her condition later in her life.

We also agreed to make the film more visually interesting, we would cut away to archive pictures of Hannah when she was growing up in sync with when the voice over came in. This was to allow the audience to see Hannah more clearly and to start piecing together who the voice over was relating to, whilst still giving of an enigma as to why we are being told about this.

Although it isn't directly mentioned till the very end of the film, we wanted to slightly introduce the theme of the brain tumour in this piece, so it actually directly links to our main film and the way we did this was to create a small imitation brain scan through animation in AVID which we would use at the very start of the film, and overlay it throughout with reference to the voice over.

The sound-scape highlights when the brain scan effect comes in by fading out the roller-coaster sounds and screaming, with just a increasingly loud rumbling sound that is slightly distorted to give the impression of building pressure/tension in the film.

Final Feedback + Reflections
After presenting, we were given feedback from the group and Debbie on the poetic documentary. Everyone praised the use of the brain scan animation we included, specifically when it overlay on Hannah, as it made them question what it was and what its relevance was in the film and to Hannah, which was eventually explained by the voice over at the end. They also liked the sound scape used throughout as it added tension where necessary whilst also capturing the signs of the brain tumour and contrasting it with the innocence of youth. The roller-coaster was also praised as everyone also saw it as a metaphor of a journey through Hannah's life and the different stages she's gone through (dark tunnels and bright lights). A few criticisms were that the use of the reverb effect on the voice over seemed unnecessary and just thrown on, as well as the final montage of images of Hannah, which also seemed a bit out of place and out of sync with the sound.
If we were to improve the film I would taken out the reverb on most of the voice over to make the sound more clear to make it impact harder. I would also change the final montage to have the brain scan animation overlaying it and also sync it with the sound.