Fulfilling my role as Director

"The director is the person in creative control of the documentary- the creative decision maker. He or she decides when, where, and what to shoot and, in consultation with the camera operator or director of photography, how to shoot it. The director of a documentary will normally stay with the production from preproduction planning through the completion of postproduction. He or she will select the narrator or spokesperson, supervise recording of narrative and music, and work with the editor in organizing the elements of the documentary for presentation to an audience." (Hampe, 1997, pg 152,)

Looking back on my role, this is a quote I came by at the beginning when researching the role of a director. I have reviewed it again to see and compare what I have done and if I have carried out the role as best I can.
In terms of the creative decision making this is something I did do as I chose the subject of filming at the refuge and I also planned what we would shoot in the preproduction stages by doing marked up scripts, shot lists and storyboards. I have also worked closely with the rest of the group but mainly cinematographer and sound person to make sure they were clear on what to capture and how it would fit within the film. For example me and the cinematographer did a shoot at a nearby farm so I could make sure she knew what to do and how to film on the shooting days.
Although I did complete all the paperwork to deadline, in hindsight I should have started it a lot earlier and I should have thought more specifically about the story as people were still unsure of it even during the shooting weeks and for a short period afterwards. So I definitely need to make sure I am as organised as can be and very sure of my idea because if have any doubts then that will be passed on to the crew and then I potentially won't get the best out of them if they are not 100% confident.
 On the shoots I tried my best to keep control of the crew so everyone knew what to do and what was expected, although at times this did become a bit chaotic as soon as my attention was on one member of the crew for a sustained period as others would wander off. This was at times learning curve for me, and despite my best intentions - having briefed the crew on what we would film and it what order, this always never ended up the way I intended once we got there. This was due to the nature of the place, and the nature of filming a documentary in general really because people would be available at different times or they might suddenly be needed for something and all manner of problems so this would throw the schedule out of sync. The hardest thing I think for a documentary director to get to grips with is having contingency plans and if you don't, find some quickly. You need to be able to think on your feet and act fast because even if your stood there for 5 minutes thinking of what you could do instead the crew will start to disengage, which firstly makes it harder to get back into filming mode again and also makes you look unprofessional and like you don't know what you're doing. Sometimes I think it would be better to just fake it because even if you're not filming perhaps the exact thing you wanted at the time at least you're being productive, and could find something you didn't think of, and it keeps the crew in confidence of your abilities to lead and direct. This is not something I would advocate to do a lot because it could mean you filming absolutely nothing you you wanted it therefore throws your story out completely and when you come to look through the rushes you find you have a lot of footage that isn't really anything.

When on a shoot I always tried to remember this:

‘In many cases, you may be filming a scene or sequence without knowing exactly how it will come out or how the overall story will ultimately be structured “But you should be asking yourself, what seems important, who’s compelling, how might the story be structured” –  Steven Ascher (Bernard, 2007)

I tried to keep this in my mind as much as possible so if I ever thought we were filming something that wasn't really that interesting in the grand scheme of the film then we would move on rather than wasting too much time, it was something I didn't always get right though as Steven Ascher also points out about new filmmakers:

 “They haven’t done it enough to think about, what is a narrative spine, what is structure, how will scenes get distilled? They tend to overshoot and at the same time not shoot in a focused way that makes themes emerge” (Bernard, 2007)

This was definitely true of us and I think it was even harder due to the location of being at an animal refuge, surrounded by lots of intriguing and unusual animals.

 Ultimately when you're filming at an exotic pet refuge, on the first couple of shoots it is difficult not to get overwhelmed by all the different animals and try to film them all, which is inevitably what we did. I think at some point we were all guilty of spending too much time trying to get an interesting animal shot for ages rather than thinking of the bigger picture. In some ways this did pay off because we did end up with a lot of good footage of the animals to choose from, which is what the audience will find interesting. At the same time though we ended up with a lot of rushes which took a long time to trawl through and much of it was unusable or wasn't really of anything.

“Note that you’re not randomly shooting everything possible; you’re making sure that you have visual information that conveys basic narrative information: what, where, how. You want to establish the time, place and people, looking for visuals that might let you cut back on verbal information. Look for the telling details that reveal character, whether it’s the cigarette burning untended or the pile of liquor bottles in the recycling bin. Look for shots that show how people behave in relationship with each other and how skilfully they handle the tools of their work. You might want to look for humour.” (Bernard, (2007)

The quotes above and below below highlights some of things we did do and some of the mistakes that were made that lead to some of the shots being unusable. I worked closely with the cinematographer to make sure a variety of shots were being captured in order to give context and story information as stated. Examples of this is I made sure we got plenty of long and wide shots as well as the close ups, to make sure the refuge itself was established so you could see how it looked and where things were, which was important to the story to show how dilapidated parts of it were and also to give the cages context in relation to each other so you the audience can see where the animals are and what it looks like. Also when conducting interviews I made sure someone would film the interview and then either during it or after we would capture things in relation to what was being said, for instance when a volunteer was talking about a monkey with no toes I made sure we filmed him and got a close up on the toes.

With regards to the unusable shots, some things hadn't been filmed for long enough or steady enough meaning we couldn't use them because they wouldn't have been shown long enough in the film for the audience to establish anything from them.

"within any given scene, you want wide shots, medium shots, close ups, and cutaways, making sure that the shots are long enough and steady enough to use. You want to be able to create visual scenes that give context and other story information." (Bernard, (2007)

When it came to the post production, as I have previously stated, I did work very closely with the editor. The majority of the story came together at this point so I needed to be heavily involved so I could pin down the structure and narrative as we went along. This mainly came through watching all the interview footage and picking out the sections I found most interesting, informative, entertaining and also funny. I also had to make sure that they could be linked together because if they were too random it would be hard to make a comprehensive story. It was a time consuming task to do as again we had filmed probably a lot more than we needed to and had conducted some interviews more than once with the same questions being asked so that meant we had more decisions to make, like which bit of interview conveyed the information more emotionally or more concisely. Once the interview had been cut down and sectioned we then spent a lot of time piecing it into a coherent structure which again took a long time and was an ongoing process as things got moved around during the rough cut as we would find some things flowed better than others. With the interview in place it was then a case of slotting in the cutaways and images to help tell the story and then also the music which I sourced from SoundCloud and also placed in the right parts of the film for maximum emotional impact.

I then accompanies the sound recordist in the sound studio to record the audio for the narration. I did not get to choose the voice actor myself as the producer already had people in mind who he had worked with which meant there was less hassle finding one so this worked out OK. I was able to direct the first two actors we recorded, giving them pointers on how to say certain parts, like things to emphasise or not and also change any words around if they thought it didn't flow or sound right. Unfortunately I had moved back home when we recorded the third actor, and this ended up being the one we used as his voice suited it much better than the previous female voice and Irish accent. 

Overall after evaluating my role and what I carried out I feel I have achieved everything within the job specifications to the best of my ability and also have learnt some very valuable lessons along the way which I hope to take forward on to the next project I direct.




Sources:

Bernard, Sheila Curran (2007) Documentary Storytelling – Second Edition. Focal Press, USA

Hampe, Barry (1997) Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos. Henry Holt; New York