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

Research- The Archive

The Archive is a short documentary by Sean Dunne, about the worlds largest record collection and the strange but entertaining man who owns them, Paul.  The documentary delves into the world of collecting, obsession but also all the memories that come with each vinyl.

Lighting plays a key role in this short documentary and evokes a lot of emotion in my eyes.  The low key lighting symbolizes the sorrow the man is feeling as he slowly letting go of his collection but also the memories.

Paul him self really brings the story alive as he is quite a character and interesting to watch. As he talks about he’s memories he’s not static but also uses a lot of gestures as he speaks. This really engages the audience and keeps you interested. I also like the fact the director chose to keep the fact that he is blind a secret to the end, sometimes directors play on disabilities as a way to evoke emotion but Sean doesn’t, the fact that his blind doesn’t add or take away anything from the film.

Overall I think is is a really good short documentary, it evokes emotion, passion but also obsession. The use of a verity of tracking and static shots help to create a sense of atmosphere which is sometimes lost in documentary’s.

First Meetings- Job Roles and First Ideas

Once we had been given the brief we had short amount of time to get into groups of six. After the seminar we met up to discuss our first ideas but also get our job roles sorted out. For this semester I will be the sound editor, I really like the idea of composing my own sound track to complement the video but also create a sense of atmosphere.

Producer: Hannah

Director: Noah

Cameraman: Alex Kentfield

Editor: Saul

Sound Recordist: Alex Potter

Sound Editor: Oliver

We all had job roles in mind before having the discussion, however they was a little debate as no one really wanted the role of the sound recordist. However we came up with the idea of having supporting roles.

As well as sort out job roles we came up with a number of different ideas which we would like to explore.  We design a quick mind map with everyone’s ideas. Even from the start we all had our favourites and ideas that we wasn’t too keen on.  

Our two favourite ideas where, looking at peoples perception of street art is it art or is it graffiti? And also to Liverpool music history however at stage we don’t have much direction as we don’t want to documentary Liverpool’s music history as it all ready been done.

Brief- Documentary

The brief for this semester is to create a 5-minute documentary based around the concept of Liverpool Stories. For this project will be working in groups of 6 and be assigned specific roles: director, producer, camera operator, sound recordist, sound editor and editor.

Over the holidays I came up with two ideas. The first idea is all about people perception on street art, is art or is it vandalism. Liverpool is one of the most decorated city’s and many famous artist have used Liverpool as they canvas.

Another idea which I cam up was all to do with peoples misconception of pigeons. We see them pretty much everyday of our lives but how much do people actually know about them.