During the Multi Media Project course, I gained a lot of interest in being the Director of Photography for our documentary, not only because it's just a task, but because it's one of the most creative roles of a crew. As a combined honors student, my second course being film and cinema technologies, I managed to understand the whole concept of filming a documentary and its technical difficulties. My main interest was in working with technical equipment, being able to solve any problem in almost every situation. My interest in this project was well-defined by my ability to propose new concepts and improve ideas in order to create the best material.
My role in this group is a very challenging one, because I have to make sure the documentary is both interesting and understood by the audience, and also I need to work closely with all the other people from the crew in order to get great results. Throughout the whole semester, we had regular meetings which were very useful in terms of planning and communicating ideas within the team. Choosing an idea for the project was not an easy task, because we're different people with different views and understandings about documentaries, and also because we had to analyse every idea in order to find the best one that works both with the audience and festival judges.
Each one of us had to bring two appropriate ideas for a documentary. My main idea was to make a documentary about people's perception on the difference between corporations and local businesses. This was quite a difficult concept because I wasn't able to explain very accurately what was on my mind, but I knew how it should look like, therefore my idea was rejected. The second one was a rockumentary about bands around Hampshire which would be analysing what they have to do in order to become famous. For this one I was very inspired by my passion for 90's music and also by many documentaries such as "1991 The Year Punk Broke" and "Lemmy". This idea was rejected as well, but during the next meetings Sam managed to bring an interesting idea, which we all agreed with, about the docks in Southampton. This was a great suggestion because it covered a lot of themes and issues of British culture. However researching for this documentary was a little bit harsh, and also the idea was rejected by the people from the docks. Shortly after the fail of our first idea, four members of our group came with another one which was about a taxi driver that they knew, called Mohamed. He is a teacher from Pakistan but he works as a taxi driver in UK. He had a very interesting background, which is why we all agreed with this idea and started researching more on the genre, style, modes and other similar documentaries. I also volunteered to create the soundtrack for this production because I have an expanded knowledge about music and the necessary equipment to record it. However there are some other artists that already agreed with us using their music in our documentary. During the research for our last idea, I managed to understand more about the DSLR filming and also being able to book the Canon 550D, I improved my skills in working with middle range professional cameras. Also I did some more research on how to film with Bullet cams, as Ben suggested it would be very interesting if we could use one for our documentary. My first thought was to buy the GoPro camera, but considering that this one was very expensive, we had to go for something cheaper and we found the Dogcam, which is a very small, wide angle, HD camera. Also by using these cameras we can get shots from a lot of different angles and Top Gear-like shots. As I learned from the course, the Canon 550D has some issues with hand held shots, that’s why it needs a tripod, steadicam or shoulder mount. I made a small budget for next year, when hopefully I will be able to buy a decent DSLR kit and also a shoulder mount with focus wheel. Also one of my aims for when I finish this degree is to have the top of the range equipment that is being used in modern television.
Another assessment for this module was to create a photoessay using a DSLR camera. For this photoessay I have chosen a quite different theme compared to the others, which I think was not the best idea but it works in terms of technicality. I went to take photos of the Portsmouth sea side during the sunset. I thought this might be a challenging task because it combines both creativity and technical skills.The photoessay’s main theme was loneliness, and I managed to gain a better understanding of using the ISO and the shutter speed in photography. However, the outcome of this experience was not as positive as I was expecting it to be. Unfortunately, due to my financial situation, I couldn’t afford one more trip to Portsmouth, so I had to stick with the original photos. The raw processing in Photoshop was one of the most engaging experiences of the whole course because it stimulates the creativity and it gives the freedom of trying new techniques with an existing photo. Also by changing white balance or saturation of the colours, I could give a totally different meaning to every single picture.
Overall the first semester was full of practical and theoretical work. I managed to learn new techniques which made me aware of the new media tools for material promotion and also the film industry. I think that in order to create a good documentary, I need to understand which direction is the media and television going and most importantly, where is the audiences' main interest. Also I need to watch as many new documentaries as possible and concentrate on learning and understanding the new visual styles and techinques.
