Today, we went on a filming expedition to film some much needed cutaways for our documentary. Like Liam said in his feedback to us we can afford to make our cutaways quite literal since Maggie is quite difficult to understand at times. We went as literal as we could and went driving around Melbourne’s inner suburbs on a search for street signs, milkbars and cigarettes. Along the way we filmed houses so we could do some tracking shots. These ended up being fantastic as the broke away from the very interior and stillness of Maggie’s interview and also provided a much needed break into the outside bright world, a world that Maggie is missing to some extent. We also wanted to make her cigarettes and gun story much more visual because she speaks quite visually about it so we filmed two milkbars that were closed down, which Sarah led us to. These milkbars were great because they were old-styled and had a lot of really good advertisements and decour, which provide a visual lift to our documentary in providing colour and light, especially since today was so sunny and bright. While we filmed most of these shots we got audio as well to create a more dynamic soundscape to our documentary, because we felt that a lot of the songs didn’t fit as well as we would like so we thought some atmos would be quite nice to add some change. We also filmed some interior shots of staircases because Maggie brings back staircases quite a lot through her story so we thought it would be a needed addition to our documentary. We filmed these at uni in building 2 and captured a more darkened aesthetic, which I think works really well in the context of her story. At 1:30 we went in to capture and begin editing this new footage. Unfortunately we had another break in the time code, which made capturing a bit of a pain, but we managed to get through it.
We then started to piece together our documentary with our new footage and found that it was much more visually intriguing, where these new visuals really break up Maggie’s interview and also give context. We used the drive-by footage quite extensively to break up each of the different stories Maggie tells. We also thought it would convey more strongly that Maggie was homeless in the sense of moving from one place to another, which is also highlighted through the street signs. I thought of this idea from a film that a really like called Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986), in which the film opens really strongly by tracking through the town in which the beginning of the film is set. Originally I thought we could use it only as an opening sequence, however I really like it embedded throughout to move the audience along with Maggie from not just one place to another but from one point in her life to another. It helps create a flow to the story without Maggie’s story needing to be told by her structurally.
We all agreed that because Maggie doesn’t explicitly talk about moving we thought that we needed to address this in the voice-over, which I am finding very difficult to write. However, I think I have come up with something both reflexive and informative, without over-sentimentalising Maggie’s cause.
Women’s homelessness is commonly caused by relationship breakdowns and domestic violence. We put this documentary together because we wanted to show a woman, whose experiences of homelessness break the common perception of people living on the streets. Maggie was homeless, but her homelessness was confined to insecure housing, places that didn’t represent a home or somewhere safe. She now lives in a home with 10 other women. Nearly half of the homeless population are women, yet they are hidden as images of homelessness.
Overall, I’m really happy with how our documentary is coming along as I think there is a lot of charm in its simplicitly.
Filed under: tv2 | Tags: documentary, interview, production, reflection, shoot
Well our shoot was pretty good. However, we need to do another one and have scheduled that for next Thursday. Technically speaking we had some sound issues that were rather strange and Gina called Robin to talk her through fixing the problem, unfortunately this did take some time. While this was being fixed I talked to Maggie and talked to her while Meenal got some great visuals of Maggie and her surroundings. This was the first time Maggie had ever been in front of a camera so I can imagine it was a bit of a daunting experience. Therefore I made sure that she was feeling alright and informed her of the sound difficulties we were having.
In terms of our actual shoot it went pretty well and we got some great stories from Maggie, however what I realised is that she would reply straight to me question without contextualising each fragment. Therefore next week I am going to ask questions that being with How, Why or What and avoid using Do because Do leads to yes or no answers with little contextualisation if my voice is cut out. I also found that Maggie would avoid talking about the bad things that had happened to her or would go into a story and then abruptly stop at moments and then say a comment like ‘that’s in the past…’ and when I would ask her she didn’t want to tell me. Even though these moments are interesting in themselves we need to get contextualisation for some of the things Maggie has said. For example, she focuses a lot on how she has improved and is able to do things that she never thought possible. Yet, we and the audience have little to compare that to as she is scared or feels that the past should be left in the past. Even though we have snippets of her previous life such as robbing a milk bar and a few family members and friends exploiting her and taking her money they are only brushed over. I was thinking of ways in which next week I could aim my questions to get around these points because sometimes she would answer the question if it was phrased in a different manner. Yet, would this be a form of exploitation on my part. What my solution for the moment is to tell her that in order to grasp how well Maggie is doing now the audience needs an idea of what has happened previously and this will help to get her message across stronger, as this is something she is really trying to convey. I will then proceed to ask her more open ended questions such as:
- can you go through like a timeline the different places you have lived through your life? What I established was that Maggie has never suffered primary homelessness, so was never on the streets but is a more secondary homelessness where she has had to live under different organisations, family that mistreated her and friends and for the last 10 years she has lived at Bethlehem. What I think will be helpful is to get a sense of how hard it’s been and how much she has had to move.
- Tell her to tell us about her photos. Maggie has a photo board on her wall that has photos from different aspects of her life from childhood to now. Maggie’s biggest avoidance was her childhood where she only really claimed it was a shambles and that she never went to highschool. I know slightly more than this but feel that she needs to tell the camera. I think that maybe if she talks about some of the photos when she was little we will get a better sense of this and also she will be more accustomed to the cameras.
What I found truly inspirational about Maggie was that she could feel lucky in comparison to others when her life has been fraught with sickness and constant exploitation along with being a mother to her son Rodney that she had when she was 24 and who got taken off her. She still feels that she has a lot to live for, yet still a lot to overcome. However, I also found a contradiction within this where even though she says she’s beyond it and doesn’t think about it she finds it extremely difficult to talk about things she can’t laugh about. There were moments when she went into these moments and her talking really slowed and you could see that she still has to deal with the past. I also thought it was enlightening that even the simple tasks that we take for granted such as walking down the street were daunting prospects for her, where once she was too scared to go outside that she didn’t leave her room for a whole month. I also found it incredible that she wasn’t angry at the people that exploited her she just sees it as mistakes, where she at one point claims that everyone makes mistakes.
Overall, I am really excited about seeing the footage and getting a sense of structure from it because I think there is a lot in there. I also want to look for those moments of contradiction and any moments that reveal so much about her character. Meenal told me that visually she saw a lot of contradictions between what Maggie said and her facial expression and more explicitly there is a photo in her room of her step-father that was a horrible man and her son in a frame that says friends.
I think with next week’s footage we will have a great combination of happy and sad that will bring our documentary together to create something that is truly meaningful. I learnt so much about the process and believe that our next interview will be even better.
wrapping up for the day
Just a brief overview of our shoot on Saturday. Everything went smoothly, well relatively. We started hlaf an hour late, but that was ok and caught up on time by lunch and hour ahead of schedule. We finished 2 and a half hours early, which was AMAZING. Everyone worked hard and well, and having the other group help out, especially with catering really put the stress away from us having to organise things outside the film itself. In terms of getting the shots done we covered everything rather extensively, making sure we got all the angles. I constantly had the shot list and was ticking off everything we covered, to make sure we did absolutely everything. It was really exciting ticking everything off and watching how productive we were being throughout the day.
me being productive
We created a lovely office-like atmosphere by confusing the white balance and using a cream piece of paper that made all our scenes have a blue-ish tinge. We were really on the ball with the white balance making sure we did it everytime we move lights, entered another room, etc. It was exceptional. Our ambitious Donnie Darko esque shot was also a success, even though Renee’s arm nearly fell off. We looked at it when we were capturing today, and apart from a slight shadow issue it looked lovely, and wasn’t overally shaky, which was good. I really look forward to speeding this up to see the effect. Everyone was really on the ball in our production, however everyone was also having a really good time, laughing and cracking jokes. I have learnt so much from the experience and strongly believe that nothing should be taken too seriously, we were planned and organised so there’s no reasom why we shouldn’t have a good time. There was a lot of singing, which is always nice.
The location was better than I ever could have imagined, especially because it was such a quiet street, we had a few planes, beeping buses and birds, but overall there were no audio problems. In fact, when we listened to it in post today the sound was amazing, crystal clear. We also managed to get a lot of our sound fxs on location because we finished early, such as clocks ticking, photocopier sounds and the buzzing of the computer, which is really good and always better than having to scout for our own sound fxs.
In terms of our actors, they matched the location perfectly and I thought costuming was brilliant. They also did exceptional jobs.
So what I learnt was this: There are two things to worry about when shooting and I think they go against each other coverage and time. You need to get a extensive amount of coverage but you also need to be wary about time constraints there fore it is integral to get atleast 2 takes and more, and if a take is brilliant get another one. But there’s really no need for 3 takes. I also learnt that it’s all about creating a nice environment to work in so keep people fed with drinks but also keep it fun. If it’s not fun then it’s not working. Have a break and get back into it. I also learnt that it’s important to give people time and be aware of other people I was constantly concerned about time, but I also had to consider the amount of time people take to do things right.
Overall, it was a really fun experience one that I hope to do in the near future again.
And that’s a wrap.
