PLANNING OF THE QUESTIONS AND DID IT GO TO PLAN?

 

I knew what I wanted to get out of the subject, being dyslexic myself, so I started with thinking up how the flow of the documentary would work with the questions, so initially I covered his early years, followed by experiences later on in life and finishing with how he is feeling about it now.     I really wanted to include how it affects his mental health and how he copes with day to day pressures, eg., spelling and writing, and his love of outdoor cold water swimming and ice baths.    This meant I could use b-roll to highlight how he uses these activities to calm down the limitations of dyslexia.  I produced a list of about 7 questions and used all of them and covered all the topics I wanted to.

 

I felt it went very well to plan, the subject was easy to get to talk and he answered all my questions clearly, although some of the questions were quite long, which meant I had to spend a lot of time editing them down and removing all the ‘ums’.  

 

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PROCESS OF FILMING, COLLECTING ARCHIVE FOOTAGE & B ROLL

 

I sourced a lot of the photos from the subject’s own Facebook page, which had old archived shots of him at various events and shows around the world.   The much older photographs were physical photos we had in storage from when he was at school.   The pictures of his book publications I found by searching on the internet.    The sea photographs were taken over the Christmas break in Cornwall and were filmed on location by the sea.   Some of the still ice bath shots and at the lake were sourced from camera roll on various phones.  I also took some general shots of large cities from the internet.

 

I chose the B-Roll footage as I really wanted to show him in the water and to also show how much exercise is to his life.    If I was going to do anything differently I would include more B-Roll footage to detract from just the face on interview style of shooting.

 

 

ANY CHANGES?

 

My first idea of location was in an outdoor garden room we have.  Because dad works for an American company, we had to work around his hours as they all ‘come on line’ about 1.30pm UK time, so I went ahead and spent a long time setting up in the garden room, but what soon became relevant was how cold it was out there and the biggest factor I had to change was the sound was too windy and had a lot of distracting noise, and as it had no carpet on the floor to dampen the sound it had a lot of echo.   So I had to pack everything up and find a different location.   I eventually came to the conclusion to change to our front room, which was a great idea as there was lots of more natural light and the sound quality was good with no distracting noises.   Another thing that took a bit of tweaking was the lighting, as I could not borrow a light stand and the lights I did use created quite a large shadow behind the subject.  

 

As you can see from the behind the scenes photos I had to put the light on a table and a stand up desk to get the right height, which in the end worked out to be very perfect.

 

WORKFLOW

 

I did two full interviews using the same questions and I labelled each question on Premier Pro for both interviews using the same colours ie., Question 1 was pink for both interviews. I could then review both questions and could cut out my voice from both editions, and then cut it so each question was its own block, which then allowed me to see the length of each question, which one was answered better and keep the flow going.   This also allowed me to see which bits would need B-Roll so I could fill in any gaps.   

 

My full interviews were 10 and 15 minutes long, but I had a lot of shots with me asking the questions, which I could remove fully and also any places the interviewee said ‘um’ or hesitated in replying.   

 

HOW COULD I MAKE THE STORY BETTER?

 

 When the B-Roll for the ocean came up I had it as waves crashing, as the original audio was very noisy with too much wind.  I found the ocean sounds on Youtube Studio as it was clear and crisp.

 

 I also put the title Ocean of Words to track where the camera was pointing, so it stayed on the horizon of the shot.   I did put in children playing in a classroom when I referred back to him being at school, but took it out at the end because it became apparent that it was too distracting and not adding anything to the final shots.

 

When he was talking about his books, I had them pop up on the screen in chronological order and when he stopped talking about them, they fell away off the bottom of the screen. 

MUSIC LAYER

 

I found the music on Youtube Studio and was called ‘whale sounds’ and was un-copyrighted music.  I chose this music to play in the background to match the sea vibe and had generic ocean sounds.  I made the music come in and out at various points, as some parts didn’t need music, but some did.  In the beginning and end it comes in and slowly fades out as the interviewee was talking.   I felt it enhanced the film well as it carried through the ocean feel throughout.

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

 

I would play around more with different camera angles throughout the interview and also find new ways to get more B-roll, so that the subject could be doing different activities that compliment what he does for a job ie., typing on a computer.   I might have got him to have used the question more in the answer to highlight it and make it easier for me to edit.  I did wonder whether because I knew what the questions were and he did too that this came across to the viewer in the interview so may have done this slightly differently. To get around this I had to put the answers up to make this clear to the audience.

 

 I was very happy with the final outcome and felt it showed his life coping with dyslexia well.