In High Violet Productions my primary role was sound and advertising, which is a really important aspect in our documentary; however this part of documentary had not been something which has needed to be executed yet and will not be until later on in production when we come to film our documentary. It will be important that I prepare myself for the big challenge which sound brings. For this semester I have helped where it was needed from researching and coming up with solutions to the many problems which we were faced with and working and supporting the producer as much as possible.
Our first action as a group was to discuss the roles we would all fulfil and then onto to discuss all the weird and wacky ideas we had which could be potential documentaries. We individually on our own researched further into many different ideas we felt it was key a group to have an idea which would take us all out of comfort zones. I found it most difficult to find an idea which had not already been done before and would wow and audience.
My idea for a documentary was the subject of Naturism although it had been done before I wanted to see if there was a link between naturism and a person being mentally unstable. When I thought about this idea I knew from the start that if this was made into a documentary, the best mode to use would be observational so that we could capture as much real life action. My idea proved difficult when it came to further researching it as people who take part in naturism are very strong minded about what they do and our confident that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing, whereas people who do not take part in naturism can be very standoffish with the issue and boldly opinionated about people who take part accusing them of being unstable although this would have been what I was looking for it was difficult trying to get a professional opinion on the matter. As a group when discussing through ideas we knew from an early point that we probably would not be doing this documentary as for us to really push the boundaries with it would mean taking part, which had already been done.
As a group we had lots of difficulties throughout this semester, although we connected as a group when it came to picking what we would like to do for a documentary, nothing seemed to click which then made it difficult for us when further researching. Although we had lots of different idea when it came to contacting primaries each idea fell through.
This semester has been a big learning curve for High Violet Productions and I feel that in semester 2 there will be a big improvement with following ideas through and maintaining a relationship with our primaries and acting as professionals so they know we are taking the documentary seriously. It is also important to stay prepared, I hope by semester 2 week 3 that we will have a shooting schedule and be planning to film by week 4.
We would have regular group meetings each week where we would add pieces of work to our yola site, as a group it took a while for us to get our heads around what was needed on the website and where each section should be placed as some tabs seemed to want the same content on them. This was definitely a down fall for the group as it was not until around week 5 when we was sent an email which explained the difference between each tab clearly that we really started to apply the right content to our website. Our yola site dramatically improved after we were sent feedback on it in week 8, I felt this email would have been more beneficial to the group if it had been sent earlier as we then spent a lot of time trying to improve the website which would have been the reason to why as a group we failed to find a significant amount of primaries.
As part of the advertising team for this documentary, this semester I created our mobile website and QR code, I found this fun and interesting to do. By creating a mobile website it allows people to experience a website which is different to what they would be viewing online, this is ideal for us as some people are accessing websites through mobile phones more than actual computers. We have also been discussing many ways in which we can promote our documentary on speed dating. I feel it is essential that all promotions we plan to do will be different, fun and gain the attention of outsiders, we have already decided that we will make lots of short promotions ads which will allow the public to interact, each short episode will end on a cliff hanger making the person watching want to keep returning each week to watch and eventually will lead them into watching our documentary at Udoc festival.
On Wednesday 13th December we had our group presentation, we had spent hours preparing and rehearsing for it. It was my job to discuss the research we had done into speed dating because we had lots of research I had to pick the most important points to include in presentation and really break it down into only a few sentences as we felt we should only spend a short amount of time on some aspects of the presentation for example promotions would need a long amount of time to explain all the idea we had come up with to promote our documentary. As the presentation was only 10 minutes we were unable to expand on possible ways of filming our documentary and who we would ideally like to go on the journey with. In hindsight there were parts of the presentation which could have been shorter allowing time for more important things to be said.
This semester has proved to me how difficult it can be to work in a group and that there will be times where there will be some confrontation but as long as you respect each other and are willing to all work equally as hard as each other then you will be able to achieve deadlines. Although I have found this module hard I feel it had been beneficial to building my confidence and gaining valuable knowledge which I will continue to use in other modules.
In conclusion I feel I was successful at working hard and adding all the information that was needed onto our yola as soon as I had a finished a piece I was working on. Next semester I feel we will be much better with our time management and now we have a set idea which we are passionate about we will want to build on it and create a documentary which will win Udoc. Finally although there were admittedly times where we may have concentrated on other modules and could have been better as a group and got work done quicker, I was proud of what we achieved in the end.
JESSICA MASSEY
