CASE STUDY - Joe Weller's Boxing Documentary
The reason why all of these documentaries inspire me and made me want to create a documentary for myself was the journey that the people went on, along with the sacrifices and lessons learned. Storytelling through a documentary is very powerful and new media (like youtube) is giving people an opportunity to share stories that would not have been possible in the past.
I found it very interesting that this documentary, like many I have watched so far, starts with a flash-forward to the day of the main event. This is the case with the majority of documentaries that follow a cinematic approach. It is a way for the documentary director to try to heighten the tension of the story and give it impact from the outset. I have seen enough of these documentaries, and how they start, to believe that the best way for my documentary to start is with a flash-forward to the race day. While this documentary includes a flash forward, it does not make much of an impact. The shots chosen to heighten the drama lack substance and the viewer is left a little confused as to where this opening scene is set in the story timeline. If you viewed this without any knowledge of what the story is about, you could be confused and think this is where the documentary starts, when it is actually showing the very ending.
I want to address the audience via the producer, rather than speaking to the camera. Joe starts off by doing this in the documentary and is clearly speaking to someone behind the camera rather than directly at it which generally creates an authentic feel, although it is somewhat staged in this particular scene. However, this ends up changing less than a minute later which is slightly confusing when the majority of the documentary is shot towards the director, not viewer. One thing I really like is the lighting in this scene, Joe is recalling what happened throughout the story and the way this scene is shot and lit creates a cinematic way of showing the person's development and enables us to see the emotion of the presenter when speaking about specific situations. I would have improved on this scene by having a handheld camera which would capture some extreme close-ups of Joe's face to highlight that emotion. We want to create a similar "Diary Room" in our documentary which will recall memories from the past as well as one after the race recalling the race, decisions and final opinions. This scene helped enable me to understand how I would like to film that diary room sequence and what I would do to improve it.
The majority of the Joe Weller documentary is shot with him speaking to the producer behind the camera. However, there is one scene near the start which breaks that rule and Joe addresses the camera directly. I did not notice this when I watched it for the first time, but after learning more about how these documentaries are typically shot, this scene threw me off as it changed the style that the rest of the documentary follows. Speaking to the camera in the manner he does gives this section the feel of a YouTube vlog in which the presenter directly addresses the audience as "fans/subscribers". When you think about Joe's audience, this scene is completely fine as it is how the majority of his normal YouTube videos are presented, but as part of a documentary, this scene feels slightly out of place, especially if you are someone who does not watch YouTube regularly. Documentaries follow a trend throughout and don't switch between directly addressing the camera and then in some scenes addressing the director behind the camera. I think this scene is slightly out of place and could have been created in the style of the rest of the documentary. It could have kept the visuals and style the same throughout which, from a filmmakers point of view, is what you are trying to do. This is a good lesson for me to learn. If we go down the route of addressing the director, we continue throughout without changing.
I like Joe's inclusion of Drone shots, they are used sparingly and with effect, rather than being inserted regularly in the hope of creating a dramatic feel. These shots are used to set a scene or show scale, but not to create any sort of drama which I feel is the correct way to use them. Many times throughout videos I have seen online, the drone is overused which takes away the effect of it being there. It is an important lesson because we could overuse a specific shot which may take away its power. I want to mix up the shots I include, but still ensure they have a cinematic feel to create the mood needed for each scene. We will use a drone in our documentary, but not that often as I want to ensure a consistent style throughout the story.
Moments of contemplation throughout the documentary allow the viewer inside Joe's mind and give us a clear and honest view of his thoughts. I think the consistency of these scenes is important in showing the development of Joe as a presenter but also as a character in the documentary. These scenes include car scenes when he is driving, as well as some of him sitting in the gym changing room after a tough session. These are brutally raw scenes which allow us to connect to Joe. These scenes are shot handheld which I feel adds to the "rawness" of them, but other scenes throughout this documentary are too staged and distance us from Joe as a character. The disappointing thing about this documentary is lack of consistency throughout. The pacing changes so often which means the viewer is sometimes left slightly confused as to what emotion the filmmaker is trying to create. Pacing is incredibly important in a documentary, especially when you are showing the development of a character.
"Editing should mirror the story’s symmetry and also create its own. In the story arc, the downslope is kind of a mirror image of the upslope. It goes up to the climax, then comes down. That kind of symmetry should go as deep as you can take it into the finest detail in your film." (Peachpit, 2014)
This is where strong communication in our video with George as the editor will help create the end product that I want. It will be so important for the film to be consistent and any variance will drastically affect the pacing and feel of the film. To make sure George knows what style and mood I want to create, I have worked with him while in Pre-Production on helping the group come up with a cinematic style. I have shown George what I think works and what does not and he has shown the editing style he wants to use, all of which will work together and I feel the pacing and tone will be realistic, which is what I want.
The Joe Weller documentary is a large mix of shot styles which works in some places but is confusing in others. It uses handheld shots, tripod shots, stabilised handheld shots, drone shots and fixed Go Pro shots. There is nothing wrong with mixing all of these cinematic styles, but when they are cut together in the same piece it really did affect the tone of the piece in some areas. For instance, There was a lovely shot created with a DSLR being used handheld with the help of a shoulder rig. But in the edit, this was cut together with a really mediocre Go Pro shot which really killed the cinematic approach that they were building up to via an intense boxing session. To conclude this point, I realise how important shot diversity is to show the full picture of the story, but it is so important to know which cinematic style you want for each scene because some shots do not work when cut together. This means important work and planning beforehand, including camera test and location scouting will enable us to know which cameras to use for each situation. This is where teamwork and prior planning will enable us to not run into the same issues in the edit that they found with editing this documentary.
The use of photos to show snapshots of moments that happened along the journey is also important in helping the viewer get the full scope of the story. We are in an age where smartphone cameras film in 4k and take very high-quality pictures, this enables us as a group to take advantage of that and if we ever find ourselves in a situation where we need to film an important moment of the story, but we did not expect it to happen, we have the use of the Phone Camera. We do not want to rely on the phone at all, but we cannot discount the possibility that something happens out of our control and which means we need to shoot some video on the Phone. We can never forget this, as it may give us an opportunity to keep the documentary authentic, with as little staged situations as possible.
I was disappointed in some of the Joe Weller scenes, especially training in the ring, as they were overdrawn to such an extent that they became boring for the viewer. This made me skip through a few minutes of un-needed training footage to get to the next part of the story. This destroyed the pacing of the documentary, which up until these scenes was moderately fast paced. However, the inclusion of these very slow scenes meant the whole documentary was probably 5 minutes longer than it really needed to be. To keep with the cinematic style that was used from the start, he should have cut down these sequences into a montage which speeds up the story and maintains the intensity. With this, the documentary would have felt a lot more professional and I would have enjoyed it as a filmmaker a lot more. Some of the scenes also featured some terrible cinematography, it is hard to know if this was an error or was intended, but some scenes featured shots that seemingly had no planning and were filmed "off the cuff" This is another area where the documentary lacked depth. The apparent lack of scouting and test shoots meant that this documentary was not as visually pleasing and detracted from the viewing experience.
On the other hand, the documentary did have a couple of scenes which felt "behind the scenes". These are scenes that were probably not expected to be filmed and actually give the viewer an insight into the world of Joe just before the fight. These are not particularly beautifully shot scenes, but they enable us to see a side of Joe that we saw little of throughout the documentary. For 95% of the documentary, Joe would have known the camera was filming, so in essence, those scenes are staged to an extent. This scene and a couple which are similar give us the clearest and most honest version of Joe that we see throughout the documentary. I don't feel any documentary should rely on these moments to push the narrative along, but they are nice to show a little bit of humour or some seriousness on a human level, without any knowledge of the camera being on.
The scene that sticks with me the most throughout this documentary is the training scene on the exercise bike. This scene has clearly had a lot of thought put into it as the shots create an intense scene where the presenter is pushed to the breaking point. The crew had seemingly scouted the location and understood the filming conditions as the scene is definitely one of the most cinematic seen throughout this documentary. I want to have a scene like this in our documentary, where you see myself as the presenter being pushed and pushed and possibly cracking. To capture that emotion will be very powerful for us and help drive the narrative and meaning along throughout the documentary. In general, it shows the importance of pre-planning as this scene obviously had some planning before the shoot which enabled the scene to be incredibly powerful and actually affect the viewer. However, this dedication to the project was not shown throughout, as some scenes have little to no impact whatsoever.
The final scene is the other one which I think had a lot of planning go into it, as the shots and use of slow motion helped create another powerful scene. Slow motion is used very little in the build-up, but in the main fight, it is used multiple times to help create the feeling of drama and pain. The mix of slow motion and real-time gives the scene an authentic look at what happened, alongside some stunning visuals which build up both the fighters into two people who trained like crazy to achieve an end goal. The editing to music, including cuts on the beats helped set the pacing for this final scene which was actually quite slow. This could be because of the end result, which was a loss for Joe. I suspect if he won, he would have had a quick cut to this final scene which would show him as "the mighty winner". This is where planning hits a wall, as you do not know the end result, it means you cannot plan exactly how it is going to be edited in the end. If it was an upbeat tone throughout and then we saw a loss, it would leave the viewer confused and disappointed that they had been misled by the tone throughout. I think this was shot well and they did a good job to leave themselves with an open ending with the visual style that decided to approach this scene with. This meant they could go either way in the edit, depending on the final result.
Moments of reflection at the very end of the documentary give it a fulfilling conclusion. The presenter is able to clear their thoughts and show what they have learned and I think that is vital when the whole story is about a personal journey. Some documentaries forget to end with lessons learned which defeats the point of a journey like this. However, for the overall thoughts on this project, it tried to be very cinematic and powerful in areas, but in others, it was very basic. This means the documentary as a whole does lose some credibility as it is not consistent throughout, which as a viewer and documentary maker, I am disappointed by. There are a lot of scenes that could be removed or condensed which would improve the viewing experience. I think the story told is great and I am inspired to create a documentary which shows such a vast personal journey. But I hope I can learn from this documentary and spend a lot more time planning scenes, or at least understanding how it will be filmed. We need to strike the correct balance as otherwise it could end up being too scripted and look artificial or boring! Clear planning of locations and camera equipment will be key to capturing the real moments and with that prior planning, it will enable the film to look great, but also keep the feeling of being natural, honest and real!
Reference
(Peachpit, 2014) Accessed on 29 October 2018 - Importance of pacing: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2233986
The final scene is the other one which I think had a lot of planning go into it, as the shots and use of slow motion helped create another powerful scene. Slow motion is used very little in the build-up, but in the main fight, it is used multiple times to help create the feeling of drama and pain. The mix of slow motion and real-time gives the scene an authentic look at what happened, alongside some stunning visuals which build up both the fighters into two people who trained like crazy to achieve an end goal. The editing to music, including cuts on the beats helped set the pacing for this final scene which was actually quite slow. This could be because of the end result, which was a loss for Joe. I suspect if he won, he would have had a quick cut to this final scene which would show him as "the mighty winner". This is where planning hits a wall, as you do not know the end result, it means you cannot plan exactly how it is going to be edited in the end. If it was an upbeat tone throughout and then we saw a loss, it would leave the viewer confused and disappointed that they had been misled by the tone throughout. I think this was shot well and they did a good job to leave themselves with an open ending with the visual style that decided to approach this scene with. This meant they could go either way in the edit, depending on the final result.
Moments of reflection at the very end of the documentary give it a fulfilling conclusion. The presenter is able to clear their thoughts and show what they have learned and I think that is vital when the whole story is about a personal journey. Some documentaries forget to end with lessons learned which defeats the point of a journey like this. However, for the overall thoughts on this project, it tried to be very cinematic and powerful in areas, but in others, it was very basic. This means the documentary as a whole does lose some credibility as it is not consistent throughout, which as a viewer and documentary maker, I am disappointed by. There are a lot of scenes that could be removed or condensed which would improve the viewing experience. I think the story told is great and I am inspired to create a documentary which shows such a vast personal journey. But I hope I can learn from this documentary and spend a lot more time planning scenes, or at least understanding how it will be filmed. We need to strike the correct balance as otherwise it could end up being too scripted and look artificial or boring! Clear planning of locations and camera equipment will be key to capturing the real moments and with that prior planning, it will enable the film to look great, but also keep the feeling of being natural, honest and real!
Reference
(Peachpit, 2014) Accessed on 29 October 2018 - Importance of pacing: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2233986
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