Documentary - Evaluation "Are we Numb"

Roles in the production

Under the development and work for this unit I've been in a group consisting of Gavin, George W. and Simon. As the project has been on going we have all participated in different areas. All of us did research, putting together a watching list so we would all have the same documentaries and films to refer to, searching for people to interview etc, but after the research for the project we took on different roles in the production. George W. and Simon took the camera, Gavin did sound and I directed. 

Casting and Berlin

We split the casting between all four of us so we'd be more effective. We ended up using Kamran Vahabi as our presenter, which Gavin got through Casting Call Pro, 3 Holocaust survivors: Zigi, Miriam and Sam which George found through Jewish Care Centre and David Glenwright (social media expert), Christoph Kreutzmüller (holocaust expert) and Shahak Shapira (creator of "Yolocaust") found by myself.

I also fixed the logistics around our stay in Berlin since I was the one that had been traveling the most in our group. I managed to find return tickets with plane from London to Berlin for 30£ each, free hotel for 5 days and got a discount on car rental for the project. 

Our story

We ended up choosing my idea which was originally about "Yolocaust", but developed it together and changed it to being about our generation's opinion of the Holocaust it and the selfie culture. We wanted to find out if the ever growing selfie culture has made our generation loose touch with the Holocaust and similar events and that we've now become numb to it or not. 

Aim

The aim for this unit was to research, develop, prepare, film and edit our own documentary which followed the brief given to us: “A 10 min doc, theme - Teen Spirit, airing on BBC 3”. What was important to us with the documentary was to make something that clearly followed the genre, showing real people (both experts and everyday people), using both still and moving images, V.O and PTC and showing interesting context. 

My experiences and conclusion

I found this unit very interesting, but more challenging than I first expected it to be. I think that the main reason for this was the fact that we were working in a group. In the beginning I thought working in a group would make it less work than the other units where we were working alone, but I found myself wrong. We were good when it came to spitting up the work, but since I don’t have a job while studying and had a lot of free time both before and after the production I ended up doing most of the paper work and organisation for us to go to Berlin. I also did some of the edit since George had 1 week with work experience when we got back from filming and Gavin had days where he had to go to work. Another reason why this was more stressful than the other units was the fact that we wen’t abroad to Berlin to film half of the doc. Even though it was fun to go abroad the paper work that we had to go through was massive. 

We definitely spent the most days planning the documentary, but also a fairly amount on filming since the filming took us 9-10 days. It’s the most relaxed shoot that I’ve had so far since we all ad a good idea of what we were doing since we had been testing all of our ideas before we started filming, and instead of having few but extremely long filming days we had more, but shorter days. Although some were long because of traveling to and from location, e.g the day we were filming in Birmingham and had to leave 5 am. The most stressful part of this project has been without a doubt the edit as we had very limited time and worked around the clock trying to test out all the ideas and changes that we got from the feedback sessions that we had. 

Documentaries have always been my favourite genre and it still is. I love how this unit introduced me to more and different documentaries and documentary styles. I’ve learned a lot during the unit, and even though the unit was more stressful for me than I think it needed to be I wouldn’t change much if I were offered to do it again. I would still choose to go abroad and I would most likely choose to work with the same group since we had a lot of fun together on this project. 

I’m happy with the finished project and feel that the criteria for the unit have been reached. We managed to get the people we wanted to talk to and the look we wanted. Ideally we’d be able to re record the V.O again to make it perfect, but that wasn’t possible in this case which is a pity, but we’ll learn from that next time. All in all I’m happy with the project and looking forward to edit it some more, re-record the V.O and add in more breathing space for when we’ll be sending it to film festivals. 

Documentary - Fine cut

Today we had our fine-cut deadline and our feedback from Zoe was better than I expected it to be. She gave us praise for some parts which she found good and also gave us some good feedback on what she felt that we could change. 

Feedback:

• She liked the title sequence, but want’s some of the selfies to be more horrifying. (I’ll be fixing this shortly).
• Want’s a sentence to re-establish what the doc is about after the title seq. (Here maybe we can move one of the V.O in the beginning of the doc.) 
• Have a different V.O when introducing Shahak. We have Kamran saying “project” twice in less than 10 seconds. Try to use a different word. (We’ll go through old V.O to see if we have anything where the words are different.)
• Would be great if we could have a better sign posting when being at the memorial. Although this isn’t something crucial for the doc, but more for future thoughts. (We have talked about this and concluded that we won’t be able to change it more. We’ve already made Shahak’s interview lean towards the memorial and using a PTC where Kamran says where he is. Unfortunately we won’t be able to make more signposting that that.)
• A couple more shots of the Holocaust memorial before we move to Kamran driving to visit David. This will allow the audience to breath a little more. (We’ll fix that today). 
• Would be great to have David introduced in a different way with a non sinc clip instead of a clip where we see his mouth moving, but hear something different from what he’s saying in the shot. (His mouth is out of sync). (We’ll have a look at it, but we’re unsure if we have any footage that will fit better.) 
• Shorten Davids interview. Not nessecairly have the part with cavemen. It’s long and sync heavy. Although it’s interesting. She likes the last bit where he talks about the Holocaust. Need to see what’s relevant for the doc. (We’ll have a look at it. She suggested laer to have David at the end of the Doc instead of Christoph which I agree is better. She also suggested to keep the cave men sequence if we have him at the end.)
• She like the fact that we’ve got back on the timeline during the interview with the survivors. 
• Like how the last interview (with Christoph) is shot. 

She suggested to change the timeline to have the Holocaust survivors after showing the memorial, have Christoph after the survivors, then a bit of a montage of Kamran walking around in Berlin/a clip of a survivor we haven’t used. And then have David at the end of the doc. 

So:
Shahak -> Memorial -> Survivors -> Museums guy (Christoph) -> Montage of Kamran walking around in Berlin/a shot of survivor that we haven’t used -> David -> Conclusion 

I agree with most of what Zoe said and we’ll be working on it as soon as possible. It’s nice to see that we’re finally getting near a final edit. 

Documentary - Feedback

Yesterday we showed Helen our updated rough cut to get some feedback before our fine cut deadline on Wednesday. We had changed quite a lot in the edit from what we showed Zoe, making the edit less linear in the sense that we were no longer focusing on the trip, but focusing more on the interviews, finding the most suitable place for them to be and the storytelling aspect of the doc. 

We showed it to Helen and received more critical feedback and suggestions for changes that we thought we would since we were all very pleased with the edit and thought we were nearing a final cut. 

Things that Helen said need fixing:

• More atmos in the beginning. The sound is a bit off. She also felt that the images shown in the beginning don't work to the voice over that we’re having. 
• Cut out some of the pre-title sequences. She pointed out that we have at least 3 starting points in the beginning so we need to find out which one is the best one. 
• Slow down the part at Kamran’s house. Try to have him speak more laid-back. We won’t be able to redo the V.O since Kamran is on vacation, but we can see if we can cut some of the audio up to make a bit more spacing, creating some room to breathe. 
• At the Memorial: Go straight to the PTC in the beginning. Cut the establishing shots. With the VOX pops we should start with the couple, not the Asian guy.  
• Helen also didn’t like some of the commentary and suggested us to get a voice over artist for the commentary and have our presenter only talking at the PTC’s. We’ve talked about that as a group and we all disagree as we want to keep the commentary as it is and work around it to make it work instead of getting another person to do it. 
• Work on the way we are introducing Shahak. 
• There’s some lack in signposting in the documentary which makes it easy for the audience to get confused/lost. 
• Not having an as linear structure as we’re still having. 
• Make the interviews less sync heavy. Show cuts that underline what they’re talking about. 
• Have the Museum guy coming in earlier. We’ve talked about this but can’t find a spot where he fits better/ someone else that fits to be at the end. 

Today we went back to uni to get some feedback on our new edit and our title sequence. We spoke to Sam and showed him the edit. He pointed out some technical stuff, such as some of the clips didn’t have right frame size which we hadn’t noticed. He praised us for having a strong body of work but said that the biggest downside was the dibs in audio which we already knew about and will be working on tomorrow. 

He suggested having either the VOX Pops appear more than once in the documentary or the Survivors, change the font in the title sequence and add text showing who the presenter is talking to. 

Documentary - Character profiles, interviewees

For the documentary, we ended up interviewing 11 people, 8 whom we’ve decided to use in the final edit. 

Using for the final edit

Main interviews

Shahak Shapira is an Artist and best known for his ‘Yolocaust’ project where he photoshopped inappropriate selfies taken at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin into archive photos from different camps during the second world war to show people what they were actually taking pictures of. The project went viral and was seen by 100 million people. We interviewed him about the project and the motivation behind it. 

Christoph Kreutzmüller is the curator for the permanent exhibition at the Judische Museum in Berlin. He’s well known for his knowledge both on Holocaust and Nazi-time. 

Our aim with his interview was to find out more about what Germans thinks about selfies taken at places such as the memorial, concentration camps etc and what could be done to prevent people from taking these selfies. 

David Glenwright is a social media expert, working as the Head of Training at JC Social Media, and has a background in War Studies. He was selected this year by Facebook to be one of only 8 trainers in the UK to be flown to their Dublin HQ to receive specialist training under the ‘She Means Business’ campaign. David is our main expert for this documentary and we used him to get a better picture of the selfie culture and what role it has in our society. 

Zigi Shipper and Miriam Freedman are two Holocaust survivors that we got through Jewish Care Centre. Ziggi spent 5 and a half year in different concentration camps and Miriam was hiding in a basement for years trying to avoid capture. We were interviewing them to talk about their opinions of our generation and the selfies taken at places such as the Memorial. 

VOX Pops

Asian guy, polish guy, couple. We decided early that we wanted some VOX Pops for the documentary and decided to do them at the Memorial to see if we could speak with someone taking a selfie and ask why they’re taking it. We ended up talking to 5 people and decided to use these 3 for the edit because they were the ones giving the best answers. 

Not using for the edit

German couple, Hawaiian girl, Vox pops. 

We decided to keep these 2 out of the edit because when filming the German couple we had some issues with sound which we weren’t able to fix in the edit and the Hawaiian girl we had trouble understanding what she was saying.

Solomon (Sam) Freiman, main interview

Sam is another Holocaust survivor that we got together with Miriam and Ziggi, but we decided to not have him in the final edit because of limited time for the doc and lack in answers that we could use. He gave a great interview, but because Ziggi and Miriam covered more of what we were asking we decided to use them for the final cut. 

Documentary - Re-recording V.O

After listening to Zoe's feedback on the voice over on Friday we decided to go nd re-record it. I contacted Kamran to see if he was up for it, which he was. My aim was to re-record it on Tuesday next week since we then would have a much better idea of what we'd need since we'd be close to the final cut. Unfortunately, that wasn't possible since Kamran will be going abroad on a vacation for a week, not returning before the day after hand in. We therefore decided to do it today. Meeting up at Kamran's house just a couple of hours before he'd head off to the airport.

We had an updated script with the V.O needed with us together with our rough cut so it would be easier for him to see where each of the clips was going to go and how much energy he should put into the different parts. When we recorded the V.O the first time we had him sitting down reading from the script. This time we had him reading while standing up, letting him use hand gestures while speaking, which made him a lot more believable.

I'm pleased with the new V.O that we've got and hope it will do for the final edit. I know we should ideally record it on Thursday next week to have it as close to the deadline as possible, but none of us in the group were thinking of setting off a day dedicated to record the V.O when we made the schedule. I wish that someone would have mentioned to us while we're planning everything that we should set off a day to do it since none of us in the group has been doing a proper documentary before and therefore didn't think about the fact that pre-recorded V.O might not fit the finalised edit. But the good thing is that no one in our group will ever forget to dedicate a day for it next time we make a doc.

Documentary - Rough Cut

Today we showed Zoe our rough cut. We’d listened to a lot of what Helen suggested when seeing our sync assembly, having the doc less linear to make it more interesting to watch and have some of the more important characters appear more than once in the doc. We also shortened most of the interviews quite a lot, making the rough cut 15 min instead of 25. 

Zoe liked a lot of what she saw but gave us some good feedback on what she wanted us to change. She said we should make it even less linear, wanted to have sync clips in the beginning before the title sequence to tease the audience to what’s going to happen and have some of the survivors or other important characters in the film make the conclusion, not the presenter. She also wanted us to re-record Kamran’s V.O since it didn’t have much energy to it and sounded almost robotic. 

She liked the VOX Pops and how the documentary was shot, but suggested us to have the VOX Pops earlier in the doc, same with the survivors, since they’re some of the most interesting characters in the doc and will help keeping the audience’s attention. 

Documentary - Transcript

On Monday we had a transcript workshop to get a better understanding of how to edit our interviews on paper. We were given a script, transcript and a premiere file, and asked to edit the interview on the file. 

I was quite negative in the beginning to the idea of transcribing all our long interviews which were 6 in total, and an average length of 30 min, but the workshop kind of opened my eyes to how useful transcribing them could be. We decided therefore to split the transcript between me, Simon and Gavin since George wasn’t done with syncing his part of the clips yet. 

By Wednesday all the interviews were transcripted and we had sat down underlining all the parts we wanted to have in the documentary. It was really nice working with the transcript as it was a lot easier to mark the places we wanted to use and make sure that everyone in the group was on the same point in the script. 

We then showed Helen our Sync assembly which was 25 minutes long. She suggested to not focus on the travelling and have it in blocks like we had done, - going from the start in England to Berlin and then finish in England. She suggested that we should swap around on the clips showing some bits of the Holocaust memorial quite early and have the survivors later in the doc. We also obviously have to shorten the sync assembly for our rough cut. 

We also told Helen that we’re having 2 people editing the project, Gavin and George, instead of only one person. She recommended having just one person editing the whole project to avoid confusion between two editors. I agree with her in a way, but are still thinking we’re best off having 2 people editing both because we have so limited time and to be able to share the amount of work between us better instead of having one person overworking himself with the edit and have another doing nothing.