For our Social Issues Module, we had to create two films, one being for the Methodist Action Charity and another one for ourselves on a social issue that we care about. I went into these assignments late as I had joined the module a few weeks late, but thinking positively as I knew I was interested in the module as a whole.
The first assignment I focused on was the homeless film. I had run an idea I had past Linda about possibly creating a short monologue on two homeless people who my Mum was looking after in her B&B. Sadly she denied it as they weren’t based in Lancashire. Therefore I had to think of another idea. Thankfully, my friend Caitlin said she had an idea for a film for the assignment and she would happily work with me as I could do the sound as I am good at that. Her idea was to do it on people living on the streets through animation, which I went a long with as I was running out of time. (1) We looked into the Methodist Action Charity to really understand what they did before we went any further.
We had to create a presentation to pitch to Peter (from the charity) and Linda. We pitched it and the feedback was that everyone was focusing on people on the streets and it wasn’t original. Linda brought up my original idea of focusing on the people staying in my B&B and Peter seemed very interested in the idea and they allowed me to do it. So myself and Caitlin stuck to the idea of a monologue with animation but just based it around the homeless people staying in the B&B.
Caitlin started working on the animation as soon as she could as it was going to take a long time to create. I told her the story of the people so she could work from the main factors that I told her for the visuals. I organised to record the homeless people one day, and the day I was going to record, they refused to do it, so we ended up getting no monologue. As soon as I got the news that they wouldn’t do it, I became stressed and myself and Caitlin sent off an email to the Methodist Action charity to ask if they kind find us someone to tell their story. They didn’t reply, so after a few days of waiting, I asked my Mum if she could tell her story of the situation. She agreed and we had somewhere to go from.
I went to record my Mum and we went through the story and I told her what to include and what not to include as we were only planning on using a minutes worth of monologue for the animation. We then filmed, only dealing with a few difficulties and I was able to fix them quickly and easily.
The next task for me was to create a the Foley sounds, so myself and Caitlin looked at the animation and listened to the edited down monologue and decided on sounds that would work for it. I created a list and spent some time coming up with ways to make noises that matched well but in an abstract way as we wanted that approach. Once I had organised how I was going to create each sound, I organised getting the sound equipment out and spent the day creating different sounds. I found that the recording was successful and a fun process as I enjoyed the creativity that was involved.
Editing in the sounds was very easy as everywhere I filmed I made sure to record atmosphere so it was easier to edit the sound in and out. I was very pleased with how the animation and sound worked together.
Overall, I am happy with the outcome of this short film. Caitlin was very good to work with and dedicated a lot of her time to creating the animation, and with the time she had, she did a very good job. I think we made a good team and made something very nice.
For our second film of the module, we had to create a 7-10 film about a social issue we care about. (2) I decided I wanted to create a documentary as I had created one last semester and enjoyed it. My idea was initially Feminism as it is something I am passionate about. I had to decide what area I wanted to focus on, and I ended up thinking about women in the workplace. I asked a lot of men and women if they had ever been objectified or felt uncomfortable in the workplace and both men and women said yes. The only problem was, no one wanted to take part in the documentary as they could risk their own jobs.
With this idea tumbling down, I decided to pick an easier subject as I was running low on time as I had spent a lot of time on the last film. I thought about another idea I had already had, which was focusing on vegetarians and vegans in society and the media. I wanted to focus on this as I had grown up vegan and I didn’t like the way I had been treated sometimes. I also wanted to educate people who always ask the same questions to me, but instead of answering them, answering through a documentary format.
Seeing as I was low on time, I asked my Mum, who brought me up vegan, if she would be in the documentary and she agreed. I then asked my best friend who had recently become vegetarian to take part because I thought it would be good as him and my Mum would be on opposite ends of the spectrum. I also asked another vegetarian friend who I thought would be very good as I knew he was well educated in the matter.
I organised the interviews so they’d all be in the same week, back where I live. I booked out sound equipment and tried to book out lights but there weren’t any available. This meant that I would have to use all natural light. I wasn’t too worried about it though as I knew that it was going to be a sunny week and that the sun stayed out until late.
When I filmed Jason (the new vegetarian) I was just using my own camera for the first time in a while. I forgot how sensitive the focus was and the footage ended up being very blurry. Thankfully, I noticed straight away and we redid the interview. The same incident happened when I was filming my Mum so I had to reschedule her for a different day that week as she was very busy. I made sure to be very careful with my Mum’s second interview as I had no more time to do hers for a third time.
A big problem came about in this week where my car had to go to the garage and I thought I wouldn’t be able to do anymore interviews but thankfully, my other interviewee said they could drive to me. With the third interview I made sure to double check the focus as the person I was interviewing could only be there for a short while. Thankfully, as I kept checking the focus, it ended up being a very good shot and we didn’t have to re-shoot.
My plan was to then talk to my friend Caitlin in an interview as she wasn’t vegan or vegetarian but had tried, and I wanted her opinion on it. I interviewed her but her shot ended up being a lot darker than any of the other shots as I still had to rely on natural lighting.
When it came to editing it all together, it turned out I had a lot more footage to work with than I thought I had. The answers ended up coming to about twenty minutes altogether. Because of this, I discarded Caitlin’s interview as I thought it would make the documentary look messy having a random different point of view in there. Also because her answers were messy and quite unclear.
I edited all the answers together, discarding ones that were too similar to others and discarding answers that didn’t teach anyone anything. Charlie’s shot was the brightest so I had to brighten up my Mum’s and Jason’s shot to match with it. I brightened the cutaways as well so they fit in well with everything else.
Overall, I am quite happy with my final film for this module. I do think it is simple and I could have experimented if more time was given but I feel like it was a very factual documentary that gave people information that they might have not known about vegetarians and vegans.
References
- Methodistaction.co.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.methodistaction.co.uk/empty-property-programme [Accessed 13 May 2019].
- YouTube. (2019). Matching Lives: 16 Years On – Short Documentary. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rxLihBVKjE&t=34s [Accessed 13 May 2019].
Chantelle Smith 