laughter

To research documentaries I started watching all sorts of documentarys from ones on YouTube and 4OD to renting out ones at Blockbusters. One on the main sites I used to help me think of an idea was http://www.4docs.com . I also looked at the documentary film network. From looking at these sites I found out what makes a good documentary which is to inform, educate and entertain the viewer and also what makes a bad documentary. The type of documentaries that I really liked was the more personal ones that let you connect with the subject. One thing that makes this film different to my past films technically is that I used a higher end camera that i borrowed from college. It had far better sound and image quality then a normal DV camera. If i was to remake the film how ever I would film in less noisy areas. I used Final cut Pro to edit my film. I would say that I know my way around Final Cut pretty well but the way I edited was i different to other non-documentary films in terms of the way i cut and edited the clips together. For my next documentary film I would like to experiment more with lighting and audio reading. For my subject I wanted to pick something that really interested me but was easy to do as this was just a short one day experiment. Choosing 'laughter' as a subject really worked for me and it is a fun and light hearted subject that is fun to watch. I focused on using my fellow students as i would not need permission forms and would have greater access to what i can do with them and ask them. An another factor apart from that it was a experiment that i used a college setting was that it was a lot cheaper (free) and simpler to shoot there then in town or public buildings

With most of my films I normal have a story-board or a blueprint of how the film will look but shooting a documentary is different. As you let the footage inform the final structure i could only have a idea of how i wanted it to me filmed so editing played a bigger part in this. i found it really helpful to close my eyes and visualize how I wanted my finished film to look.

Planning as i found out is a key part of any film making, as i could not plan out what the people in my film would say i decided to make extra time controlling the factors that i was able to control. II asked the people I would like in my film beforehand, I made sure I was allowed to film in the selected locations and I booked out the items and equipment that I wanted to use the day before.

For the editing of my film (the post-production) I look at all my footage in great detail and made screen grabs of each shot so that I could make a image of how the finished film will look and n what order all the clips should be in. Doing this saved me a lot of time in the editing room.