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Train of Thought
"Don't chaise people. be yourself, do you own thing and work hard. The right people - the ones who really belong in your life - will come to you. And stay." - Will smith
Unit 12: Documentary
Proposal
Ideas for Documentary
Grandad
Eliot
Louis
These are written in the order in which I would like to do these documentary if I cant do one.
Research
Research report
Deconstructions
Performative Documentary
Expository Documentary
Literature revue
Pre Production
Recce's
Belson
Gdad's house
Treatment
Production schedule
Story bored
I did this during the summer holidays in 2022, just before we drove to Germany, so I knew what I needed to film on the day of shooting.
Costumes
For the costumes, I went to Grandad's and tried on his uniform. I was going to wear what he did when he was in Germany in 2005, but after tying on the uniform am wearing in the picture, I couldn't be asked to put another one one because the first one took ages to put on and Grandad said that one was easy. I can't imagen how long the other would have taken to put on. Also, it was quite a hot day he said the other one had more layers.
BTS
For this shoot, I prepped Grandad to help him to understand what I was using. Like the mic that I attached to him and plugged into my phone. I then said; "You told me once about when you went to see your dad's grave, do you think you can tell me it again, but this time on camera?" then he started to talk and it wasn't the same story as last time, because he went right to the beginning when he was born. I think the camera stopped recording about 5 times, but my phone was fully charged, so I was able to get all of the interview. Whenever the camera stopped, I would tell him, and he would go back to the last sentence and carry on with his story. When he finally got to the part that he told me before, the SD card ran out of storage, and we couldn't carry on the interview. I could have if I had another SD card, but I didn't know he was going to go on for that long. after the interview, I had to film his uniform, army truck, meddles, etc. on my phone, which didn't look as good. I did this shoot round about the same time that we were filming our FMP project in 2022, we had a day off and I saw the opportunity to film it.
BTS
For this shoot, I barrowed the uniform from Grandad, I tried on the uniform he said was the easiest to put on, even though I wanted to wear the uniform he wore when he went to see his dads grave, but if the one I put on was the easiest, I would have hated to see how difficult it was to put on the on the uniform. A few days later, we then drove from Bodmin, to London, stayed a night there, then drove from there to the ferry which took us from dover to France, and from France we drove through Belgum and stayed a night in the Netherlands. Then from there we drove to the place where my grandad went to see his dad's grave in Germany and we scouted out where we had to dive the following day, did a little recce of the grave site, then went to our hotel. The next day, early in the morning I put on the uniform, which didn't take as long as when I had previously tried putting it on at Grandad's. Then we set off to the grave site, with all the uniform on, I then filmed a little bit, with lots of different angles around the grave of my grate grandad, with me laying flowers at his grave and pretending to play the bugle about 10 times, something I forgot to ask him for. I then did another shot of when my grandad was looking at all the graves from the other side of the grave site, just like the pictures that he showed me does. We then drove to Belgum and stayed 2 nights there, then we slowly made our way back to Bodmin staying in different countries. I did this shoot in the summer holidays, during the really hot 2 weeks of the summer in 2022, it wasn't as hot in Germany, which was good for filming in the really hot uniform, we managed to come back on the last 2 days of the really hot days.
BTS - Videos
BTS
For this shoot I did it in England, it was supposed to show 2 people clapping at my grandad playing the bugle when he went to see his dad's grave, because I only had me and dad when we went to see my grate grandad's grave, I couldn't film the 2 people clapping part, which meant I had to try and recrate it in England. So, I found a tree and faced the camera in a way that wouldn't revile that there weren't any graves around. I got my friend and my dad to clap at a tree which when edited would look like they are clapping at me pretending to be my grandad playing the bugle. It went alright, nothing went wrong in the few shots I did. I filmed this around about the last few days of the summer holidays.
BTS - Video
BTS
On the 7th of January 2023, I went to Grandads house to do the interview again. This time I went with 2 cameras and 2 tripods, one of them was the one I got for Christmas and the other was from College. Dad drove me up to Grandads and I set up for the interview inside because it was quite cold outside. As I was setting up, I talked to Grandad and told him to talk about a specific part of when he went to Germany, which he sort of rolled his eyes and said ok. But he said it all in the first 30 minuets of the interview, he did go on a few tangents, but what he said was very good and he always went back to the story. The rest of it was a few interesting things from his life, like when he lived in Horror Bridge and had about 4 different jobs at the same time. One of the SD cards did run out of storage at one point, but it was ok, because I brought my laptop and a memory stick with lots of storage on it, so I could put the footage on there which took about 30 minuets, then carried on with the interview. At the same time as downloading footage onto my memory stick, I showed Grandad some footage I did in Germany. When I finished the interview, I needed some footage of the bugle, so I went up to Heather, who lived upstairs and she took me to the shed up the top and I filmed Heather attempting to play it, Heather filmed me attempting to play it and then we brought it down to Grandad and he was clearly the best at playing the bugle. He played about 3 different tunes on it. Anyway, after that he gave me a bunch of things that I didn't really need/ want, but accepted to be nice, I went up to Heathers and waited for dad up there as Grandad went to sleep. After a long talk with Heather dad took me back home. When I got home, I opened up my computer and there was an envelope from Grandad which said, "This is for your books." inside was £100 which was really sweet of him. Backstory to what he wrote - I told him that I don't get any money for writing my books, (Mostly because I'm not a very well know/ good writer.) so he must have felt obligated to give me some money, but it was still very sweet.
BTS
20th January, today on our 2 hour brake on Friday, me and Emily got a lift down to my dads house to film a small recreation scene. this was two mall recreation scenes, the first one being when my grandads secuatery found and gave my grandad a slip of paper with the location of where my great grandads grave is. In this Emily played my secuatery and I played my grandad, I was in uniform to show that I was grandad as if I was in different cloths the audience wouldn't know who I was. My dad set designed the office we used, he basically took the pictures of me and Tommy as babies away, because the rest of the office looked like they where 20 years old. Then we filmed a bit by the door where my dad handed me a picture that was raped in brown paper which my dad bought and wrapped before we came down to film. We used walkie talkies to communicate with my dad to tell him to knock at the door, which worked quite well. Both of the re-creations took a few takes to get right. When we finished, me and Emily had lunch at my house, then dad took us back to college in time for the next lesson.
To carry on with Documentary, follow the link.
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