Today we showed our final finished documentary to the rest of the group and Debbie for assessing and peer feedback.
Film Update
Since
our last tutorial we decided to change one or two things with the
narrative order but kept most things the same. Our main piece of advise
was to cut down bulky bits of interview and either be very selective
with what content we should keep in, or space it out more specifically.
We all decided to be more selective about what we though should go in so
we started trimming down the more wordy parts of the interview, to keep the information in a steady, but not overwhelming, pace. As cinematographer, I captured a large and good amount of exterior shots that could potentially be used as cut aways in the interview. However, later on in the project, on our 2nd shoot, I brought it to attention that we want the story to be personal to Hannah, so we should try and keep it as personal as possible. The rest of the group agreed and so we decided to re-shoot exterior interviews which we had filmed, and instead replace it all with a close-up, tightly framed shot of Hannah's face in her room. This meant scrapping almost all of our exterior shots due to them not being relevant to the film any more, and even though this was a shame, I believe it was a necessary and positive decision to enforce the themes in the film. Finally, due to cutting down and spacing out parts of the interview, we focused the narrative more on Hannah's brain tumour and the effect on her and her family, than we originally thought we would, as we wanted to have more focus on the charity work. However this played in our advantage somewhat, as we could make the film more intense and personal by not having Hannah talk about her achievements and instead use overlaying text to show the audience at the end of the film.
Feedback
The feedback we were given for the film was mostly positive. The main thing that people like was the use of just the talking heads for the majority of the interview sections. Thankfully, they agreed with our group that it made the film more personal and allowed the audience to connect with Hannah more by looking directly at her when she spoke. They also liked the use of archive pictures as transitions throughout the film due to the impact they had as being shown on their own with just the soundscape over them. Finally, the use of the poetic footage at the beginning of the film was praised highly, especially because everyone seemed to like it when we presented it in our poetic documentary screening, as it gives the audience a contrast of the innocence shown in the home video with the seriousness of the subject that is being talked about e.g. "We joked about what our funeral songs would be".
The main issue that Debbie found with the film was the soundtrack we used underneath the content that Hannah was saying. She said that it wasn't necessary to tell the audience how to feel (as we used a very harmonic, orchestral and emotional piece of music, and that it felt as thought it was just thrown on to make the audience feel upset or emotional for Hannah. However, although I agree partly with Debbie, the rest of the group thought it worked very effectively at adding to the themes and tone of the film and helping the audience sympathise with Hannah. Finally there were a few technical issues with the sound levels and a few of the cuts in the edit, but apart from that it was a solid film that all our group are extremely happy with.
