Comparing Original Idea with Final Artifact

29Apr10

For my final project I intend to extend my previous photography project (210mc) and go on to produce a documentary, which explores of the lives of a group of young people who all live in a particularly bad area of Hackney, nicknamed Murder Mile, and follow their story as they tell us about their lives, what its like living there, and why it makes a difference that they all attend the same church every week. I also intend to create a photography project to run along side the documentary project, which will be using the young people themselves being the photographers.

Looking back on my original proposal, a lot has changed since my initial idea’s. I unfortunately had to abandon the photography project, this is still a regret of mine, I wish I had been able to find a way of making it work in the time frame and resources which I had. Sadly, you really have to go with the flow when working the the young people I was working with, I am not their teacher, or anything so I can’t force them to do something that they just weren’t engaging with. I did come up with a back up plan, but just didn’t have the time to use it as the filming was going so well on the day that I had access to them, and I had to make the decision that I would rather get a longer, better interview, than stop and set up the photography project, as I knew I would loose their interest and concentration. I felt I made the right decision in abandoning the photo project, as it then allowed me to focus all my attentions on the documentary. I feel my documentary has come out almost exactly as I had envisioned, and has really gone to plan, which has been great. I obviously have had hiccups, but I feel nothing major has really occurred to suffer my film.
I knew the hardest part would always be getting the young people to talk to me in the first place, they would talk totally freely to me while off camera, but they change when its turned on. The young people were always very aware of what they were saying, and that it was on camera, it was very hard to get them loosened up and to just carry on talking like they were off camera, because that’s what I wanted to capture for my documentary. After a couple of sessions with the camera the young people got more used to the idea and loosened up, and that sessions is the majority of the footage I used in my documentary, because they were just themselves and nothing else, which was just what I needed to make my film seem real. I always had the vision of the initial driving scene, where it enters Hackney from the motorway, and you can see the Olympic site being constructed, and then go into this alien world which is Hackney. I am really pleased I managed to pull it off, and it developed to be the driving force of the whole film, the feeling that your driving through Hackney, starting from outside hackney, hearing these real life stories, and then you eventually end up at the epicentre of these young peoples worlds, the church. I think this is what carries the film, gives it fluidity, and form. It took me a while to come up with this concept, which is disappointing, and meant I was still searching for a clear theme throughout my research and still during my production, as it wasn’t till post-production the theme was clear to me. I think if I had had this concept at the beginning of production, then I would of been able to plan much better, organise, and research more than I have. I think that it would of perhaps made a better film at the end of it, but I am still pleased and proud of my final film as it is now. I feel I have achieved the outcomes that I wanted to express through my film. I think that the messages and the themes came out through the interviews and stories being told in the film, and more than I expected! I wanted the voice of the film to be only the young peoples, I was always very against using any external voice or voice over, I felt this would give it too much of a “channel 4 – true life stores” feel about it, and I am so pleased I have managed to avoid having to use this. I did use on-screen script, but I don’t think this takes away from the one voice of the young people, as it could be the young people writing the initial on-screen text. I like how the text in the intro sets up the mood for the rest of the film, and truly sets the scene
for the rest of the film. Over all I feel I have stayed true to what I set out to accomplish. The reason I set out to re-cover this topic through a university project is because I felt the photographic project didn’t do the subject justice, and looking back on my film, I think I am one step closer to feeling like I have truly told their story, and have advanced the story from the photographs I took in year two, and adapted it for film, and allowed the young people to tell their story.

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