I've decided to look at some short documentary films that are similar in length to what I'm going to make to see how they squeeze enough information into a short period of time and keep it to the point and engaging.
The first film I looked at was 'The Ghostvillage Project' that I found on the BBC Film Network.
This film is about a village in Scotland that was built for oil workers to live on but, for a reason not explained, never came to be inhabited by them and has just been left empty and abandoned ever since. Now a group of graffiti artists have come across it and want to change it into a piece of art by painting pictures all over it.
This film is simply composed and is made up of still cutaways and establishing shots and then interviews.
The film starts with a static shot of old rusty keys hanging on a wall and it is filmed using a fish eye lens which gives it a warped look and therefore is already setting the scene for something quite unusual. A voice then comes in telling us about it over more still shots and then we see the person which is one of the graffiti artists.
Shots through a fish eye lens are used sporadically through the film and I think they decided on using it to reflect the subject and people they were showing. All the guys were quite alternative with that kind of skater style look and to choose to be a graffiti artist as a way of life meant that they obviously weren't your average people doing a 9-5 job so the film needed to match this with it's style as well.
The pace is very slow and there are a lot of static shots with many of them being quite long as well. I think this helped portray the nature of the work, it looks as if it is quite a laid back job to do and way of life and also each picture seems like it's quite painstaking and can take along time to do. If they were to use quick cuts and action shots with lots of movement it wouldn't have reflected the nature of what they do and who they are.
Each of the artists were interviewed in their own little patch that they were working on and all of them were framed slightly differently with some being close ups, some mid, some looking straight at the camera and others looking down. I think this helped to give each one individuality and show they have all come here to do this together but they still all have their own styles and different stamps they want to put on the place. It also helps it look more interesting visually and again show these aren't normal people doing a normal job. I noticed that in most of the interviews each person was looking away from the camera, I think this was deliberately done as I got from it a sense of this people being quite alone and also alone with their thoughts and by looking off camera it kind of shows they can't or find it difficult to connect with people or the outside world - they are in their own little bubble while they work on this project. It also makes them look quite contemplative which is something you would be if you had been left alone with your own thoughts for days on end and being in a solitary and abandoned place like this.
At the end they used a freeze frame of each person and put their name by it which I also like the idea of maybe for an introduction instead though so you know who the people are before the film starts. I will only consider using this technique though if we use a number of different contributors as they have done here as I don't think it would be worth it with one or two.
The style reminds me a lot of Eva Weber's 'Steel Homes' with the drawn out static shots and the voice going over the top of them. Also the atmospheric high pitch music that runs most of the way through is very similar to the music in her film, it is quite eerie and is good at giving that sense of isolation
The shot below is my favourite in the film and was a time lapse that lasted a little while, I liked the way it was framed, a wide static shot with a person working on a picture tucked away in the corner with the clouds rolling over and people walking about down below. To me it showed how isolated this small community of graffiti artists were and how out of the loop of everyday life they seemed to be but also how dedicated they were to it as the sky was constantly changing but the man remained there. When I saw this shot it reminded me of something Susannah said last semester about aiming to get one really good shot in your film that stands out and people will remember, this is definitely that shot for me in this film and it has inspired me to think big and try and different shots for my film. The producer, myself and the cinematographer have been talking about using the Go-pro and trying to get some really intimate and close up shots for some of the animals, especially the more exotic or dangerous ones so maybe that might be our big shot.
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