I decided to focus on another episode of "SHIFT CHANGE" That I have previously mentioned in my work. This episode is about how there is a struggle to make bad jobs better.
Something I have noticed throughout my research into VOX is now a lot of their project are heavily graphics and text-based. This means, in reality, there are fewer decisions to be made by the director in terms of shot footage.
As a director, however, you can see that VOX uses these graphics and text to help evolve the story and I needed to make sure I collaborated with Cailan about what graphics we were going to use. We decided to have less of a focus on graphics in our piece because of our time constraints and that Cailan did not have as much experience making graphics. This meant we had to be clever with the little time we did have, and have our documentary more presenter based instead of graphics and text. We still followed VOX's guidelines throughout, but with a small amount of time to do multiple jobs we decided not to over-stretch ourselves and have a worse project because of it.
As a director I had noted down the style of graphics that we would need in our show, this included computer recorded shots of the computer screen, scrolling and cropped in found footage that would help prove the facts that we talk about in this video. We knew from the outset that we would not have the time for all of the flashy content that VOX uses because they have large teams and months to edit singular videos, but we managed our time well and decided upon making it somewhat simpler for Cailan in the edit.
One thing that Vox does in every single video is its use of very bold shots. As a director, I knew varying shot sizes would be important, but after understanding VOX more I understood it is vital to creating the visual flow that every VOX Video has. In my storyboards, I set up a large range of shot sizes and upon further meetings with course leader Simon, I implemented more shots on the shoot day. Having a range of shots is not enough for VOX Though, they all need to link and cut together in a rapid way. You can tell that the VOX Directors work closely with the editors in the projects as they always have a fast and flowing sequence.
In the majority of the interviews that I have watched on VOX, they are all directed in a similar way. The person is speaking to someone behind the camera and not directly to the camera. This was vital to understand because if we set up the interviews directly to the camera it would feel way too set up and hard to watch. Vox videos are directed in a way to make the viewer feel at home and that they can relate to the subject. The choice of shots also varies from interview to interview. In some cases, I have seen them leave a huge amount of headroom to make the interviewee seem small in the frame. What makes the directorial decisions so bold in VOX is that they are very unique to them, and little other creators follow a similar route. I took this knowledge into my storyboarding and made sure each interview had a shot where the person that was talking to the camera wasn't directly addressing it. In the vox pop segments, I also planned for a side on shot with both the presenter and the member of the public in the shot. I knew VOX uses a 2 camera set up, meaning my second camera which was focussed on the interviewee and was bold and changed from interview to interview. I mixed up the shot sizes to show that I had learned from Vox that variation is key to creating interesting content. I mixed in close up, mid shots and sometimes two shots of the presenter and interviewee, albeit at a different angle to the side on shot which did not work.
I followed these directorial decisions when creating the storyboards for the contributor segment. The front on shot has Katie looking to the right of the shot, and the shot itself is slightly off centre to show I have thought about what side of the frame Katie is on. Throughout the contributor segment, Katie is on the right of the frame which is a mistake I have made in one of my 1st-year projects.
The use of cutaways is interesting from a directors point of view because they are used rather randomly throughout the piece. Sometimes the cutaway has little relevance to what is being spoken about in the voiceover. This is useful because In our filming I decided to film various time lapses of movement when in Tunbridge Wells which fit really well into our project. I understand that a lot of the time these filling shots are there to show movement and the mass of people. I feel I did a good job in making that directorial decision on the day to record these time lapses as they were very important when it came to editing. I did not go to the location knowing exactly what I was going to film which may have been a mistake, but the time-lapse footage I did create was well directed and interesting.
VOX Does a good job of capturing candid moments of whoever is on the screen which can be left in later for the edit. I talked to Cailan about VOX does this and I decided we should leave the main camera rolling while Louis was finding people to vox pop or while he was learning his lines. This ended up working really well in the editing stages as we had so many nice candid moments that we could slot into the project later on. These are not the style of shots you can script and storyboard, but the awareness as a director to make sure the camera stays rolling was key to capturing these moments.
The framing of some of the shots in VOX is very important. Shots like this interview are bold because of the very bold background and also how it contrasts with the person who is on screen. Although I planned to have shots as bold as this we did struggle to get anything to this effect. I did try some shots which I did not storyboard and they came out good (ie - panning shot from Louis to laptop & also slow pan down to keyboard) and I was happy I challenged myself when the occasion arose. The lack of such a bold shot was down to the eventual location that Cailan had chosen. It did not offer us the opportunity to have something like what is shown on VOX. Saying this, thanks to my strong planning beforehand and quick thinking on the day, the PTC was shot really nicely and Simon remarked at how professional it looked. It is hard to comprehend what a small shooting area it was, but we made a great shot out of a tough situation.
Finally, the use of found footage is very important from a directors point of view. In vox, the found footage really helps move the story along and has bold and meaningful messages. The clips are often very frank. I liaised with Cailan throughout this project about what found footage we should use and he came up with a really good list that worked with his edit. I agreed we should go forward with the footage he had found and it worked really well in the edit, after some video manipulation to make it unique.The director's job may not be as prominent in VOX videos as it is in other video creation, but I found doing research into the video very important when informing my own approach to filming. I often followed examples set by VOX but then changed it a little to make it my own stylistic approach.
Vox's unique approach to storytelling is one that interests me greatly and I am very happy with our final result. I feel this research was vital in creating a project that was similar to VOX in terms of style as well as putting a little bit of a spin on it through my own directorial decisions.
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