Critical Analysis
My role with our production company for Silver Line Production is sound design. It’s something I have always taken an interest in, since creating films since before secondary school. I had a Steven Spielberg book from my Lego Studios set explaining different aspects and shot types within film, as well as ways to create your own foley sounds. My interest in sound production grew when I started to play the piano, where I would record and edit different pieces and synths from my keyboard and piano and edit it within Magix Music Maker, creating scores and atmosphere background pieces for my own productions.
Being the sound designer for our documentary was a role I opted for within the group, as I’ve had a lot of experience within this aspect of film before and I would be working in one of my passions. I seemed to be the only one with knowledge and practice into sound editing software with a keen interest, so I believe that I am right for this role.
Our task was to create a documentary regarding a contemporary issue that we could represent justly, being a minimum of approximately twenty minutes long which would be shown at the annual U-Doc festival at Winchester. Our main aim before filming the documentary was to create a website, which would include all research for our project as well as our own photo journalism essays and critical theories and readings. Our first meeting as a group was to research possible ideas and contemporary issues that we could successfully document as a group, with something we all had knowledge or interest in. My first idea was titled Lost in Paradise, where the idea was to seek out a psychic or medium that would inform the audience of spirituality and afterlife, and get footage of an actual séance and document whether the dead could really be contacted, or if the paranormal industry was just a money-making scheme. However, my idea was rejected by the group, deemed not interesting enough and that it had been done before.
Although this idea was rejected, there was controversial topic that everyone seemed interested in, so we began researching heavily into this and making our primary contacts in order to get the go ahead. This idea was the controversial cancer jab, and whether terminally ill patients should be allowed this treatment, if only it meant they could live for a few months longer.
I had a close friend back at home who was currently suffering from a rare form on non-Hodgkin’s disease- cancer, and with her consent, I would interview her and get her opinion on whether she believes its right that the NHS deny their terminally ill cancer patients this treatment. However, during our research period, she unfortunately fell very ill with her cancer treatment and could not be contacted as she spent most of her weeks fighting her battle in hospital. After eventually being dropped by hospitals in London and Liverpool and being denied filming permission, they idea was discarded and we began working on our back up; the treatment of racing dogs at a greyhound stadium, and what happens to them after they are too unfit or old to carry on training. The themes raised in our meetings regarding this documentary were abandonment, despair and hope. We aimed to uncover the negative representations of greyhound stadiums and see if they were plausible arguments against the cruelty of animals.
We assigned each other different roles during the research stage; one would contact our primaries and make connections that were vital in order to gain filming permission at the greyhound stadium, one would make the Wix website and other social media interactions sites such as our Facebook and Twitter account and we worked collaboratively to create our Yola website which is what most of our time was taken up on. I shot some of the pictures for our website and edited them within Adobe’s Photoshop to use as our headshots for our individual profile sections.
Throughout this semester I’ve also had camera training on how to operate and effectively shoot on a Canon 450d and Canon 550d, as well as using the Canon RAW editing software to professionally edit our photographs to produce high quality and stunning images. I learnt a lot in those four sessions, especially how to produce images suitable for web as well as the image quality setting needed to project for a mass audience without my images pixelating and becoming overly noisy and grainy. After the training and editing sessions I booked our the Canon 550d a couple of times to carry on practicing my camera skills and improving them, and also producing a black and white photo essay which will be released soon for another project. I’d like to think my skills have improved since my first stint in photography and that they carry on doing so as photography is something I extremely enjoy at the moment, and I especially want to try out fashion photography which is the most appealing to me of all.
Once all individual pages on our Yola production site was complete, I worked on the group workbook tab, analysing images and the theories behind them and why they were shot in a particular way, and the interpretations of the photographs and the way in which they are represented to an audience. The sections were divided fairly and we got to work with one another on different aspects on the website, which I believe has made our team stronger as we are comfortable working together as well as individually.
Regarding our final presentation for our greyhound racing documentary, we worked on the slides collaboratively and then individually wrote and researched our assigned slides. My assigned slide was research for the documentary itself, in which we found numerous videos and images regarding greyhound racing and the negativity behind it. It was an interesting way to start our project, as we wanted to show the truth in these negative representations of racing stadiums and see how widespread this was in the UK, and if there were any companies or organisations that aimed to shelter abandoned racing dogs when they get too old or injured to run anymore.
With our initial cancer treatment idea, we did receive a number of complications, mainly due to not being able to film within a hospital and finding someone suitable who was fighting cancer that would happily let us interview them and document their cancer battle. When we were ultimately dropped by all the hospitals that we aimed to film and investigate, we had to use our back up idea, yet this didn’t run as smoothly either. We made contact with several other stadium, especially with Oxford, and we sent all the insurance documents and our idea to them, which they seemed keen to let us film yet a couple of days before we were going to meet them in person they phoned us back telling us that they would no longer be working with us, and that we’d have to find another stadium to film at, which was devastating for all of us. But Hove, the greyhound stadium thankfully gave us the green light and production will start on our documentary early next year after the Christmas holidays, which we are all extremely excited about. We have a list of questions and the answers that we aim to get, but we just need to practice and find the most suitable member of our group who’s charismatic enough to allow us to get our vital answers.
I believe I have learnt some great skills this semester so far, especially on how to shoot professionally and also edit pictures to their highest quality. The photo essay has been my favourite part so far, and I’m excited to finally start filming our documentary and to produce a hard hitting film that showcases the different aspects, positive and negative, of greyhound racing stadiums.
