Last Seminar Before Liverpool

Having Zap graffiti on board make us all feel a lot more confident about the documentary now we had two defiant interviews, kerion from Zap Graffiti and the people from Urban Canvas, a company who use chalk to create pavement art, we thought this would be a nice contrast as its a different kind of interviews. 

Our seminar was all about interviews looking at how to prepare for them, how to set up but more importantly what sort of questions to ask the interviewer. We decided to have to two groups, one group focusing on the main interview, the director, main camera man, sound recordist and the producer, they role was to get the the bulk of the interview and having the correct eye line. while the other group was to get off cuts of the interview but also them group setting up. another important role we had was to stop people coming into the studio where the interviews where taking place. 

The interview set up

We imagined the interview at Kerions work shop and drew a diagram to represent each role. As i had DSLR i would consecrate on getting cut aways but also a second able for the interview. 

job roles 

Pitches- Feedback

Today we had to pitch our two ideas to our seminar groups. Its quite interesting to see how other people interpreted the brief and the many directions the groups had taken. When it came to our turn to pitch, it was quite interesting as the group was very undecided on which idea they like best, the tutor’s seemed to be in favour of the record shop idea, while the group seemed to prefer the graffiti idea.

The tutors really seemed to like the first idea as they felt it was quite unique and spike seemed like an interesting character. However with us not been able to access the shop and now the record collection been sold it was quite hard to see what we would film and the lack of cut always could be a problem and make the film quite boring and static.

The main problem with the graffiti idea was that they had seen a lot of student videos about graffiti and said doing a documentary about peoples perceptions had been told many times. Another problem they had with the idea was how liable our contact was, which is understandable and the fact our other contacts haven’t got back in contact with us was a problem. Although they seemed to really like the visual side of the documentary and with we tweaked the potential was there.

After the pitch we all met up to decided on which idea we was going to chose, although they seemed to prefer the record shop idea, we decided to chose the graffiti as we saw a lot more potential. Instead it challenging peoples perception it was now going to be a celebration of street art and the future of the art form.

Contact with Zap Graffiti

After not having much look with emailing Kerion, and struggling to find an phone. We came across his Facebook page and contact him through there. He seems really interested but after phoning him he seems a little unreliable which is something we need to take into consideration.

 

Third Meeting- Contact/Treatments

In our meeting today we really started to finalise our two ideas, looking at what direction where going to take. As well as writing the two treatments our producer started to get in contact with the appropriate people.  

After emailing a couple of graffiti artist we didn’t seem to have much interest and Kerion at Zap graffiti still hadn’t replied to my email.  However our producer had managed to get in contacted with the owner of the record shop and he seems to be really interested

                                                     Treatment- Change The Record

Treatment- City Canvas 

As well as putting together our Treatments we started to put together our power point for the pitch.. the powerpoint covered both ideas and explaining what where trying to achieve with the documentary. 

Pitch Preparation 

Skateistan

Skateistan is a beautiful documentary about Afghanistan first skateboarding school. In a country where they problems are well documented it was nice to see how skating has bought a community together and help build relationship between, male and females but also to breake down the stigma in the Afghanistan army.

During the interview we see a young girl called Fazilla and skateboarding is her passion yet her father disagrees with her skateboarding, as she’s female. I thought this was quite a power scene in the documentary and really shows the dived between male and females.

As well as having a great narrative and subject matter, it also really well filmed and editor.  Some off the shots of the kids skating are amazing and isn’t filmed like your typically skating film. The contrast between the beautiful backdrops, derelict building, broken tanks and the kids skating create a really cinematic documentary. Another strength in this film is the cut aways, a number of times we see what seems to be random images of goats heads or shots of the markets, to me this the contrast between our lives and there. What we find quite disturbing a is quite normal to them, its like they have become desensitized, to valance and war.  

Overall i think it's an effective documentary as it raises many questions, such as how can we keep the peace and stop war in places such as Kabul.  I feel that the director dealt with an important issue in a very effective way by having it come from children.  It makes the information, that they want to grow up in a peaceful environment, even more hard-hitting.

Second Meeting- Developing/ Reaching Ideas

We had our second meeting earlier today and we really started to develop our two ideas. One about peoples perceptions on graffiti and the other to do with Liverpool music history.

Second Meeting

While looking through the Liverpool echo we came across an article about a local music store, which closed down due the lack of demand for vinyl’s. Not only did the shop close down the person who owned the shop has resorted to selling his collection on EBay. We thought this would be a great angle to really explore Liverpool’s music history by looking at who has come through the doors, in the article it mentions one of only a few famous people like Tarantino and the Gallagher brothers. We thought this would a fresh and quite unique way to explore Liverpool’s rich music history. 

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-record-shop-music-consortium-6647913 

While researching the graffiti idea I came across a Liverpool based company who have been trying to promote street art as a positive art from. This would be a great way of celebrating the art form and could potential lead us to more contacts in Liverpool. We emailed the company and are just waiting for a reply to see if they are interested

http://zapgraffiti.co.uk