Video link https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00049b1
The first thing that struck me with this documentary was its use of music throughout, to evoke an emotion in the viewer. The introduction builds up intrigue into the project thanks to a mix of intense music and soundbites from throughout the documentary that follows. I muted the opening to see if, without music, it would bring out a different emotion in me, and it was clear to me that a lot of the power in this scene is thanks to the music which is heightening the drama. This evidence made it clear to me that we need to focus a lot of our efforts in the edit towards music and sound design, as it will undoubtedly transform our piece. Thanks to this research, I have been speaking to the crew about the importance of a consistent but powerful soundscape for our project. This has led to us changing a few songs in our edit to ensure the film does feel the same throughout, not a number of different sequences with different tones set by the sound design. There is still progress to be made with this, but we are getting closer to having a similar style throughout our documentary and I hope further feedback from Simon will show the progress we have made.
This introduction also uses a mixture of video, interview snippets, voiceover, tv talk show footage/audio and powerful video to draw the viewer in. The idea of this introduction seems to be to bombard the viewer with powerful audio and visuals to ensure they are engaged in the subject and realise how important the issue being covered actually is. This tension is needed as without this the viewer could be led to click away and ignore the documentary. After realising the importance of a powerful introduction, I looked back at my plans for our documentary. I had planned to cut straight to raw audio of the race, but due to the events of last weekend, we may have to play it a slightly different way. I feel we have to cut the opening raw audio, in-car clip and go to an opening voiceover with a backing track that I originally planned. As long as the introduction contains a powerful message and is backed up with an intense backing track and similarly powerful visuals, this will engage the viewer in the subject and allow them to understand the journey I am about to go on. I have been working with Cailan on our introduction and after re-recording the voiceover it is certainly in a better place. I feel it needs some better visuals to show the journey I am about to go on, but after that, I feel it is in a good place to bring the message of our documentary home to the viewer.
I had noticed it in my pre-production work, but the power of silence is certainly something we need to capitalise on in our documentary. After a powerful introduction to "Climate Change - The Facts", we are left for a moment before Sir David starts speaking. This moment allows us as viewers to take in what we have just heard. This silence could include a very light backing track to heighten the feelings we are taking in. This could be a low mellow tone or a baseline from the introduction that continues as a transition from one scene to the next. Nonetheless, this moment is powerful as it gives us a moment to take in what was said which ensures the viewer is on the same wavelength as the production team and presenter. We can certainly capitalise on this in our documentary as well, especially after the events of last weekend. Looking at the edit we are aware of areas that could do with a moment's rest to ensure we have a moment to reflect. However, our time issue is currently not allowing us to have these moments, so I have been speaking to the team and we have agreed to implement a few of these moments before we next speak to Simon to see if these are justified in going over the time limit. I personally think we need to have these otherwise some of the meaning and a lot of the sombre tone will be taken away from our documentary. It is certainly only a small edit change, but it can make a lot of difference to how the viewer perceives the scenes in our film.
I noticed a few small details that will help us in our documentary. Things such as name cards can be used to introduce a character and allow us to save time in voiceover building up to an interview. It also allows the scenes to transition well as you aren't constantly setting up one scene after another, they simply merge into one. This will be helpful in our documentary as we currently struggling to perfect the transitions from one scene to the next. We will be spending time over the coming weeks on these transitions so the documentary feels like one, and the use of detailed name cards will be part of this process. Along with this, when talking about something, visual clues or reference will allow us to emphasise the point we are making. It may sound obvious, but a lot of documentaries I have watched forget to capture enough b-roll. This leaves the viewer distanced from the message, so I am very happy that we recorded a plethora of footage we can use, we now just need to ensure it is placed in the right areas through our documentary to ensure the viewer is never left confused as to what we are speaking about. The team and I have been very proud of this content and I want to ensure it is used in our documentary, even if the footage doesn't go where we initially expected due to us cutting a number of scenes. The use of archive material in "Climate Change - The Facts" allowed the viewer to understand the backstory of why this documentary is being made. I had always wanted to ensure we had something similar in our documentary, but to this point, I had forgotten to compile this. This will be one of my urgent tasks as a contributor because without these pictures the viewer could lose some sense of the scale of our project, especially how much this subject matter means to me. I see this archive material being used in the diary room sequences as well as possibly in the introduction to our documentary. It is up to me to source this and give it to the edit team, and I will show where I think it will work, but I am happy to follow their lead if they think differently.
An area of "Climate Change - The Facts" that caught my eye was the use of audio from TV segments speaking about climate change to back up the points made in the documentary. This audio also helps fill a gap where the important video shows. Without the context and use of these audio clips, these scenes could drag on, which negatively affects the documentary in terms of effective use of time. However, the use of audio allows this scene to be powerful because it provides a supporting external opinion for the filmmaker. A key decision that I made on the previous race day was to record audio from the commentary team when they were speaking over the race I was due to compete in. Because we have obtained this audio, we are able to make the race day sequence much more intriguing and it allows the scene to have little to no "dead-space" where we do not hear anything that affects the story. I am very happy I made this decision as I feel it has revolutionised the edit of this race sequence. The commentary is so powerful and allows the viewer to hear a different voice speaking on the issues, one that is external and can deliver the bad news in a much more neutral way. This audio has been placed into the race day edit and transformed it. I am very happy with how the edit is progressing and I feel without this commentary, the race sequence could have easily been boring. The tone set by the commentators allows the sense of disappointment to be processed through my emotions and facial expressions which I see as being very powerful. My decision on the day has allowed this sequence to be vastly more interesting and I am very proud that I thought of this in that moment.
Phone footage from contributors added a lot to "Climate Change - The Facts" as it showed an honest and real view of the events. Not every part of the show can be filmed on a state-of-the-art television camera, therefore the use of such material allows the documentary to have further proof of the facts being spoken about. This is somewhat of a relief for myself, as we were not always able to capture key moments on our best cameras due to regulations and safety precautions at some of the locations we visited. This meant that certain aspects of our documentary had no choice but to be filmed on a phone. The fact that even the world's top documentaries have to use phone footage in extreme cases eased my fears that this may be looked down upon in our project. This does, however, highlight an earlier thought about using whatever you have available to capture the needed footage for your documentary. It proves to me that it is better to get a shot in worse quality or with small issues than to not get the shot at all. I am therefore pleased with the work we have all created through this project as we have always got the access needed to get the right shots. When that has not been the case, we have used sources like our phone, to get the required, real and honest shots.
A few more noticeable and powerful tools used in "Climate Change - The Facts" were the use of L Cuts and specific colour grading. These are techniques and storytelling methods that are present in the edit rather than the filming, but they are equally as important for me to understand as they are part of the story that is shown to the viewer. The use of L cuts in the edit allows scenes to transition far more naturally than they would with a plain cut. Letting the audio be in the next scene before the visuals are there, or vice versa, allows the scenes to feel like one. L cuts can be very powerful and were used in "Climate Change - The Facts" typically to ensure the viewer is given all of the facts without the visuals jumping all over the place. We can use L cuts in "Dream Chaser" in many areas to allow our current scene blocks to be more cohesive. A great example of this is would be the sequence with my Dad which follows on from a Diary room about the same topic. Right now they feel like two separate sequences when in reality they are supposed to be one. We are working on an effective way to use the L Cut to merge these scenes and make the documentary as a whole better. It's a small tool that we can use to our advantage and ensure we broadcast the story in the most fluid way possible.
Another thing I noticed in "Climate Change - The Facts" was the use of colour grading in different scenes. They increased the reds in scenes which show fire which brings out the sense of danger and in the scenes speaking about marine life, as you can see below, they toned down the colours to give a sense that all is not well in the ocean. The lack of blues and green in this scene ensured this shot had an impact on me as it is certainly not what I would have expected and added to the mystery and shock about what climate change is really doing. For our documentary, we have been told not to mess with the colours too much as it would make the documentary feel odd in places if we were continually changing them. My idea is to have a base tone which is consistent throughout our documentary and in certain scenes which stand out (The South Downs for example) we could accentuate the colours to make sure the scene brings out the tone which is supposed to come across in this scene. I will be working with the editors on this and together we will choose a typical grade that will suit our film for the majority. For scenes which highlight a certain message, I do feel we should challenge ourselves to ensure they do stand out. This will be somewhat trial and error until we find a grade that works well and does not look too different from the rest of the film. The importance of grading has been shown to me and I am excited to speak to Nathan Caws in the coming weeks. He will be able to show us how we could use colour grading to enhance the tone of certain scenes throughout our documentary.
Finally, this documentary compounds its incredible and insightful story with stunning visuals as well as attention to details in its interviews such as depth of field. The visuals in this documentary would be hard to match on a student budget and our limited filming access. However, something I am very proud of in our documentary is the sheer amount of relevant footage we have available to us in the edit. I spent time before each shoot carefully planning everything I wanted and that has really helped us out when forming sequences together. We seemingly have a number of choices for every scene we create and I am really excited to see how the final project looks as I think we have done ourselves proud, especially in this aspect.
"Climate Change - The Facts" also spends a lot of time on its interviews and you can see how important the depth of field is in sequences like this. Once again, I am proud of the majority of choices I made in relation to our interviews, with the focus being clearly on the contributors in these segments. I spent a lot of time sharing the importance of depth of field with Cailan before we started filming and in the majority of cases, the depth of field looks great. It allows the viewer to know what they are looking at and ensure they focus in on the person rather than something in the background. Saying this, I was always aware that the backdrop needed to be interesting otherwise our interviews could look like any other. I ensured that all of our interviews had unique or interesting backdrops and I think I did a good job in this regard. The Diary Room, especially, is something I am proud of because I worked really hard to create a dynamic and interesting shot and I feel I exceeded myself in this and did better than expected.
Overall, this documentary brings home a lot of important messages that we should be following in the edit as well as allowing me to relax in terms of the footage we have, as I have followed a lot of the right codes and conventions for a documentary. I am proud of the work I have created in this unit and I am pleased a lot of the footage we have is of a professional standard. It is now a big group effort to ensure this is placed in the timeline in the right way to bring across the right story. A lot of what I learned from "Climate Change - The Facts" can be put into the final stages of the edit of "Dream Chaser", meaning our finished piece should certainly be something we are proud of.
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