Monday, 30 March 2009

Grizzly Man



Grizzly Man (2005) is a documentary that focuses on amateur bear expert Timothy Treadwell. He ventured out to Alaska every year to study and live with the bears. He was killed, along with his girlfriend tragically by a rogue bear in 2003. Werner Herzog obtained the 100 hours of film that Timothy shot whilst out living among the dangerous species and created this documentary with it.


I think it was edited really well. With over 100 hours of footage, cutting it down must of been a very hard task. Some conventions of the documentary I thought were similar to Green Gage Entertainments project. Using archive and experts opinions, in a similar way Grizzly Man used footage of Timothy Treadwell's and then back to IVs with family and people he knew. The documentary built suspense and strangely made me want to see him being eaten at the end? However I was informed there was only an audio recording of this.


The pilot however gave a graphic description of what app reared to be a bear and a rib cage, where Timothy's camp was set up. The pilot would drop Timothy off and pick him every year.


It is evident from the footage that Timothy was suffering from a mental illness. Trying to do 8 takes of one shot, with a bandanna, without a bandanna, with a red hat, with a blue hat. Another part I remember clearly is one in which he begins a normal take, and then slanders the park service and government, stating he is the only one protecting the animals. With the commentary over the top it makes it an analysis of his behaviour. Here's a snippet of the video below. Unfortunately I cannot embed it so here's the link to clip.

Sunday, 29 March 2009

Green Gage Entertainment


As Green Gage Entertainment we have decided to make a change on the angle of our documentary. With all the right content and contributors booked, we realised the documentary didn't have an emotional attachment or something to keep the viewer watching.


With that we thought of introducing an emotional story,which would make editing and linking our piece together much easier and flow better. I would be the student who can't get a job, and wants to find out why, so looks to her local MP and other experts to investigate the history of the last recession, the behaviour it caused within the British Society and if it's possible it could all happen again.


Having made this decision we all feel a lot more confident on how the final piece is going to look. Also after re-writing our script we have started to come up with the visuals we want and how the documentary will look from beginning to end.


Meeting Minutes

Green Gage Entertainment

Meeting Minutes
26/03/09

Hannah,Sean,Matt

Changes:

Now thinking about possible emotional personal journey – Hannah?
Raising question will she ever get a job as a student with unemployment hitting 2 million. Would help documentary flow better and make links easier from point to point. For example … I went to visit my local MP to find out what he has to say on the recession and unemployment. Hannah will then do VO’s etc linking the piece together and giving it more of a beginning, middle and end. All agreed on change.

Need:

- Atmos from street scenes.
- Log shots when we are next shooting – someone writes down time codes and description of shot. Next filming time 31st March Rob Mears.
- Music to use: so far, I predict a riot. To use over rioting archive and stills.
- Need to think about new title – discuss Tues.
- Book a lighting demo or everyone to go on – Sean email Karen
- Re – write script.
Green Gage Entertainment

Meeting Minutes

23/03/09

Rich,Hannah,Sean,Matt


What we now have:

- Filming for vox pops and some cut away footage done today. Release forms signed.
Have a few good vox pop answers to our questions and a variety as well. Need to shoot more cutaways on Panasonic – sort Thursday.
- Now have lots of newspaper on articles on unemployment/recession etc to use for cutaways and montages.
- Have questions for Don Foster interview on 7th April.
- Have a rough script of what we want and where. Will wait to see what interviews bring before we re-draft again.
- Some moving footage of riots and problems with recession.

For next week:

- Book all equipment needed for next few interviews.
- Questions for sociology lecture – to do with future of Britain and past recessions causing rioting and violence etc.
- Sort BNP speaker. He wants an audience but not really the angle we want – think about what we’re going to do to get him in a one on one interview.

Green Gage Entertainment

Green Gage Entertainment

Meeting Minutes

19/03/09

Rich,Hannah,Sean


What we need in the next 2 weeks:
-Questions for contributors - Everyone think of for next week.

-Script – We will work on after filming Monday

-Call sheet for filming – Hannah will do for Mondays filming

-Talk to local libraries about archive newspaper articles – Next week

-Check forecast for shooting on Monday – Done

-Print release forms for Monday – Hannah to edit and print

-Call contributors before we see them for the interview – Next week

Z1, Boom microphone and tripod are booked for Monday. Forecast is overcast but hopefully dry.

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

Montage to music

Here's a montage of images to music done on FCP. We had a screencast from Mike which I found really useful, especially when I couldn't remember how something was done, it was easy to rewind back to the chapter I needed. I chose a song by Moby to put it to because I though it fitted well with the sunset scenes and reflected the calm theme of them.




Green Gage Entertainment


So as you can see below by our minutes of our weekly production meetings, so far so good. We have a list of possible contributors, 2 of which we already have interviews set up for end of March/beginning of April. We also have a planned pre and post production timeline which so far we are sticking to.

Our idea is based around the question are we the British loosing our jobs to foreign immigrants? With a rise in BNP votes it seems more and more people think so as the recession hits Britain hard and unemployment is worse than ever. In 2008 the number of foreign workers went up by over 175,000, are statistics like these helping spark support for the National Front?




Archive footage will show the damaging effects the previous recession had on society and we will also talk to experts in sociology and economics, local lib dems and a member of the BNP to find out their opinion on the future of Britain. We will also be asking the public what they think through the use of vox pops. With narration our documentary will guide the viewer to form their own opinion.