Over the past week iv had to start thinking about the documentary module more realistically and thinking about people closer to me, who have an interesting story to tell. And that would be available and willing to discuss their stories with me. Sometime the best stories are right there in your face you just don’t realise it.
After thinking and going through my family and friends closest to me, For my Documentary I’ve decided to base it around one of my closest and longest friends Tom Busby who lost his dream of competing in the London 2012 Olympics due to a shoulder injury, representing Team GB in Boxing.
I have some visual ideas that I feel would work really well for the style of what we are going for, in a gritty boxing gym in Coventry on location shooting, I feel like any shot would look great! I Also want to add some archive footage of some of Toms matches which he has at home on DVD from the age of 9 when he first started.
There are a lot of other shots I’ll be trying and experimenting with as access to Tom is good as he only lives down the road from me. I was going to try a shot in his shed at home where he has his own punch bag, of lighting him like a silhouette and see how it turns out. If it turns out well I may try to implement it into the final edit.
The meaning of this documentary is to bring out the emotion and passion Tom has for boxing and how he felt when he was told he wouldn’t be able to compete in the event he had been working up to for some years. The end of the documentary should emphasis that Tom is on the road to recovery and the fight to get back into the ring. We were also asked to create the feeling of a sweaty and manly smelling gym through the use of visuals.
First off we went to film some of shots at the gym. I organised with Tom, when he was going to the gym. We organised with equipment and headed off, when we’re about to reach the location about 15 minutes away I received a phone call from my friend who said that its really busy at the gym and he doesn’t think we could film much.
But learning from we have been told at university, we went anyway even if to just film establishing shots or sound we would get something! Luckily when we got there the gym it had slowed down so we could film everything we wanted. We managed to record the sounds of the gym to bring across that sweaty and gritty atmosphere. With sounds of boxing gloves connecting with bags in the background, after that we then filmed Tom on his training routine in the observational documentary style. After this we then did some cinematic shots of him doing certain training disciplines, doing his gloves and tape.
Once we had finished filming Tom at the gym we then moved onto the cinematic establishing shots such as pulls of focus and panning shots. That was a wrap for the Gym shots.
After that we then needed to film the interviews and silhouette shots, the lighting was really difficult to set up as the shed with Tom’s punch bag in wasn’t the largest. After filming the best we could with the space I had of the silhouette boxing, we moved on to the interview and got the lighting looking really good with the punch bag just to the side of the shot, Tom gave a lot of good and inspirational lines and was really confident on camera in a participatory style.
I then did some cinematic shots of Tom’s trophies and gloves that will look really attractive in the final video. Moving onto the editing process now as a group, we decided to go of and do some editing each. With my edit I went for setting the scene in the first 30 seconds with the sound of the gym heard with gritty shots of old gloves and rope layered over the top. After that I wanted Tom to introduce himself. Whilst editing I was having a massive problem with Toms audio as he doesn’t pause or take a breath in his interview all the words follow on to the other so it has to be a really sharp and blunt cut. Tried getting around it as best I could, with the shots of Tom in the shed I wanted to create the dark contrast with the light mainly on one side of the punch bag and his face. This was up for some discussion between the group as Michael wanted it brighter so we did two different edits to see which the group preferred.
I tried adding as many different visuals on the top of the interview as possible to break it up, we did a lot of handheld stuff on the shoot at the gym especially in the ring but in quite a phew of the shots a mirror was playing havoc! After showing my edit to the group I was pleased that everybody enjoyed and engaged with the documentary. There were some criticisms about the pacing of the piece, also about the lack of other visuals but other than that it all went down well. I went back and told the rest of the group; Mike was currently doing an edit and applied the changes from our feedback.
Overall I’m thoroughly happy with how the piece has turned out, I think we have achieved our goal of creating an emotional and sense full piece. The visuals are all there and managing to squeeze that story into 3 minutes was a huge challenge, the audio was spot on and so was the lighting. The documentary turned out pretty much how I had it in my head, which is how it should be.
Matt-Media 