Over the two months of the project, we have encountered many problems which began after the first pre-interview. The group were unsure of which route to go down with the documentary as there were many angles of the job that we could have used such as focusing on the body language of customers or even the philosophical side. We soon overcame this problem by going over the handouts and focusing on what would be the ‘heart of the story’ which enabled us to keep our focus onto what we really wanted out of this documentary as well as for our intended audience. Although to begin with the group were unsure of which areas of the interview to cut out, everyone put forward their ideas which helped with the editing to progress rapidly.

The only point that I feel that the group could have improved upon was the research aspect of the project as certain members did not carry out the relevant research therefore resulting to them not inputting their full contribution. This led to added pressure for others to find just as much information. I also think that the attendance of particular group members could have been better as they regularly had other commitments.

I think that the research process has been a continuous one throughout these last couple of months as I had to carry out primary research with Abdul in order to find out more about him which then later progressed into secondary research about his job and the company. I feel as though I have put my full contribution and efforts into this project as I have had to keep in touch with Abdul to keep him informed of the group’s intentions with this project. I have had to send him rough copies of the interview in order for him to mentally prepare himself as he gets nervous very easily due to him being a shy person. I have done excessive research in order to cover every aspect of the production as well as to ensure that we do not leave any vital information out. I have also taken a huge part in arranging the group meetings and keeping everyone informed of them. I have spent a lot of my time in the editing suites until late at night with Sam and Laura in order to complete the clip a week prior to the deadline to give the group time to organize their presentation.

I  have thoroughly enjoyed the highs and lows of making this documentary as it has been a great experience working with different group members as well as using equipment that I hadn’t used before such as the wireless clip microphone. This project has also raised my confidence on the editing suites as I had physical involvement with the editing in comparison to previous projects where other group members took over. I feel as though the group have made a new friend as Abdul contacts me now and then to see how we are getting on.

I am very pleased with our outcome as the documentary has followed the brief due to it being exactly three minutes long as well as it being based around the theme of a ’Profile of worker’. The group have considered the audience, the context and it’s distribution.

We have put together a brief structure for the presentation which we will go into more detail tomorrow with the whole group present. On Wednesday, the group plan to go to the room that we will be presenting in to carry out a small rehearsal to ensure that we are well prepared for Thursday.

Below is the CD cover that I have created which consists of an image of a taxi cab at night. I have edited it using Photoshop and given it a sketchy effect followed by a change in hue to a blue tint.

• cut down the slow shutter speed scene and add in another clip as it seems quite long
• change the traffic light scene into a slow mo in order for it to flow with the rest of the night shots
• use shots of out the window during the day
• the night shots of cars driving past side on at a long shot is a little boring so take this out
• the group also want to replace the back window shot to a slow shutter speed of cars driving past

Ken said that the overall structure was fine which was great news as it meant that we could focus on other areas.

We plan to make these minor changes on Monday when we meet at 12:30pm as well as begin to organize our presentation for Thursday.

I am overall pleased with the groups progression at the moment, the only thing is that the group have to make sure that they turn up to meetings on time to start with work promptly. I have been given the task of creating the CD cover whereas Aaron has been given the task of creating the DVD cover for the documentary so we will do this over the weekend to bring in on Monday to see whether the group like what we have come up with or not.

Below is the final documentary that we will be showing to the lecturers tomorrow to gain feedback on any improvements that we may have to carry out:

As a group we came up with a rough list of places that we could use to distribute our clip:

• Broadcast – channel 4 (3 minute wonders)
• Internet – YouTube, Documentary websites, BBC IPlayer (if it were to become popular)
• Festivals – Cornerhouse (Manchester)
• Screenings – ETG 34
• Cinema – Independent cinema

Below are the 5 areas that I researched to distribute our clip:

I firstly have chosen Source Tv as one of the forms of distributions for our documentary as it’s specifically aimed at students who want to produce their own programmes and documentaries. It would enable us as well as other students to view the work of others. This screening would be more on a local level as it would only be viewed by people from around Coventry unless someone from the media profession was to see it and contact us. It would give us the opportunity to start off with a small audience and gain a reaction out of them before potentially reaching out to a bigger market.

I researched independent cinemas around Coventry and found one that has recently been opened in 2009 called ‘Market Cinema’

It has two seats with an ’84inch screen which will show four free films featuring the market’. This type of location would be practical for arranging an event for one night where only documentaries were to be shown. This would be on a local level as I assume that only the locals would be the ones to know where the smaller and independent cinemas were located around Coventry, although it could possibly distribute further therefore raising increasing the audience to a national level to other independent cinemas across the country if it was to be liked. As it’s a documentary in relation to taxi drivers, a lot of public could relate to it. I think that the public aging from teenage years to the older generation would be drawn to watch our documentary as it’s in relation to taxi drivers and its services which the public have all used at least sometime in their lives. 

After searching specificly for documentary festivals, I came across Sheffield Doc/Fest which is in association with The Guardian.

The festival runs for five days between 3 – 7 November 2010 which means that there would be plenty of time for the group to enter their clip. On the website it states that this festival is an ‘industry session programme and marketplace offering pitching opportunities’ which would be ideal for gaining tips as well as meeting new people and helping the group to build connections. It would also allow us to view the work of others which would help us to gain inspiration to use in our future work. I think that this would be my first choice of place to distribute our 3 minute clip as the British Documentary Industry would be present and they may be looking for emerging talent or students with new fresh ideas to share so I think that this would give the group the greatest opportunity. Although once again it would be a local event, different people may come from across the country or even the world to attend this event which would open up the opportunity to possible distribute this at an international level if it was to be liked.

An excellent source that would easily distribute our clip on an international level would be the use of YouTube. It enables you to share content with anyone, everywhere and at any time. Audiences would have to type into the search engine a documentary related term in order to view our clip which would mean that they had an interest for it in the first place to be specifically looking for it. Media industries may spot our clip on the web and decide to take it further which is also a positive about publishing it on the web.

Lastly my choice of using the UK Film Council was another option as they are in partnership with UK distributors which means that with help the 3 minute clip could be shown at a national level to audiences all around the country. I think that this would be ideal in achieving the purpose of this documentary which was to give taxi drivers a voice and create awareness of the abuse that they have to suffer whilst doing their job. ’The UK Film Council is the Government-backed lead agency for film in the UK’ which has funded for ‘Touching the void’ for example. The UK film council has a ‘prints and advertising fund’ which is ‘designed to widen and support the distribution and marketing strategy of ‘specialised’ films’. ‘The UK Film Council’s Prints and Advertising Fund has an annual budget of £4 million which aims to benefit audiences by widening:

• access to the range of films available;
• opportunities to view such films across the UK; and
• audience awareness of the range of films potentially available

I looked at the requirements to be able to take part in this and it stated ‘we only support documentaries that we believe have the potential to draw a cinema audience on release’. It would be a challenge to see whether this clip would be liked or not, but as a media student you have to try your bestest to get your work recognized so this would definitely be the second option that I would go for in trying to distribute our documentary.

I did further research to find out more about distribution and came across Gordon Films UK which is a company that is happy to ‘research, write, film, edit and present your documentary video production’. They have created small documentaries themselves and so this would be another place to go to if the above 5 areas did not work out.

I also researched UK film distributors and found a website that came up with a list of different companies some of which are well-known and some of which aren’t. There were also addresses of these companies also so I thought that if the group were to be very serious and adventurous with distributing this then it could be possible to visit some of these companies to see what they thought of it and to even gain feedback on how to improve it. Website: http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/distributors.html

Review of the documentary:

As Abdul talks about the highs and lows of his career, you witness a journey through the perspective of a taxi driver who began his career as a shy man but soon developed into a confident and positive person after 15 years of being in the taxi trade.

Myself, Sam, Laura and Aaron all met up at half 6 which was when it began to get dark. Unfortunately James couldn’t make it due to being ill. As we had booked out equipment earlier in the day, we were able to immediately go to the loan shop and take out the equipment. We took out:

• 2 x PDX10s
• Tie Clip Mic
• Tripod
• Headphones

On the way to the train station, Laura and Sam did some handheld filming of the cars driving past at night as at this point their headlights were on. I carried the tripod whilst Aaron carried the PDX10 cases. We used the camera on the tripod when filming the cars on the bridge near to the train station. The angle in which we were filming at looked similar to the Google image below:

We experimented with exposure and shutter speed to get different effects which would allow us to pick the best one when it came to editing it down.

We recorded around an hours worth of footage in total which we plan to completely cut down and use in the ‘scary exprience’ scene.

We are meeting as a group today at 12 o’clock to get the rest of the editing complete, add in the new footage and also add in titles and credits. We then plan on showing this to Steve and Ken to see what they think and how it could be further improved.

• Boom mic
• Boom pole
• XLR cable
• PDX10 x 2
• Headphones

Today the group met up at 10 o’clock and we firstly edited down the ‘scary experience’ section of the documentary and deleted the audio areas that were unneccessary to include. As Abdul repeats himself by saying ‘you know’ and stutters in certain areas, we decided to cut these out. We then left blanks on the video of where the night footage will be inserted. We decided to only use nights shots as he talks about his scary experience to act as a kind of re-enactment of it. The group then decided to use day footage throughout the rest of the documentary as we had some good shots of inside the taxi looking out the window. After doing this, we started the introduction of the documentary and took into account the advice that the lecturers had given us. We used a clip of Abdul driving with is voiceover of ‘I like driving’. I feel that we have made thorough use of the daylight shots and I think that they all work well with what Abdul says. As we needed some footage of the police station, myself, James and Aaron took out a PDX10 and a tripod and walked over to the police station whilst Sam and Laura continued to edit. Each of us took in turn to film areas and I decided to do a pan of the street followed by a very slow zoom onto the police station sign. When we returned to the girls, they had completed the ending and so we captured the tape and added the new footage into the timeline. As a group we then watched the whole thing. I noticed one section where there was a slight jolt on the video as audio had been cropped out and made to fit with the video, but we soon resolved this as Laura re-marked out the video and re-added it which worked successfully.

Tomorrow we are hoping to meet up after our workshop to add in the credits and titles and adjust some of the timeline. Overall the group are progressing well and we hope to have the final documentary completed by Thursday in order for Ken and Steve to look at it and give us their opinions on it. If we are completed by Thursday, it also gives us a week or two to prepare for our final 10 minutes presentation.

Firstly Ken commented on the content and said that we needed to build up to the story and not just jump straight into ‘Abduls’ experience’. An example for the build up could be for Abdul to talk about the drunken customers that he has faced. Ken said that there were certain areas where the audio quality wasn’t very good due to Abduls’ plastic jacket rubbing against the mic. The group will try to cut these bits out. Myself and the group had a big concern with the lighting of the mid-shot interview with Abdul, but both Ken and Steve liked this and thought that it gave the documentary a certain mysterious atmosphere. This was great news as I truly believed that we would have to re-film the interview over again. Ken and Steve didn’t like the shot of Abdul stood with his taxi visible behind him as he was to far to the left of the screen which I agree made it look unprofessional and slightly messy. Ken and Steve both liked the tracking shots of the outside of the window and suggested that we extend these shots a bit more. I suggested that we could possibly begin the documentary with a still image of Abdul and his manager holding the ‘Trinity street taxi’ poster along with Abduls voice introducing himself in the background. Steve suggested another idea that I preferred which was to start with a shot of Abdul driving the taxi along with a one liner in the background ’I really enjoy driving’, I really like this idea as it’s different and I think that it will add impact to what Abdul has to say as well as like Steve said ‘giving him some space’ instead of the conversation rushing into one another. Ken said that there was visually enough to make it work and that it was technically good. Steve and Ken were very positive about the work that we had done so far and said that there was a good variety of shots of inside the taxi. Steve also liked the story and the aspect of the ‘scary experience’ along with the character that we had found.

From the feedback that we have gained today, I think that the areas that we could improve upon could be the addition of more inside car shots and the experimentation with nights shots as Steve had suggested which I had been keen on to add in since starting this project. This could work as a type of re-construction of Abduls story. Steve also suggested possible stretching out some of the shots to add emphasis to them which the group also seemed keen on doing as it would enable our good 4 second shots to be made to good use.

I think we really needed these constructive comments today as we now have a better idea of where to go from here and the type of approach to have towards the editing.

The group watched and listened to Abduls ‘scary experience’ again and picked out 5 main points that we could focus on to help us find footage that would go well with it.

These are the points below:

• ‘I dropped someone off in Hillfields’ (Equilibrium)
• ‘Normally turn around but dropped someone off in a dead end’ (Equilibrium)
• ‘Heard tap on window, looked and saw a guy in a mask pointing a gun at me and someone was stood in front of the taxi’ (Disequilibrium)
• ‘I started revving the engine and moving around’ (Attempt)
• ‘Don’t expect what they can do’ (Enhanced equilibrium)

The group have loaned out a boom pole, boom microphone, PDX10 and a tripod to carry out some night-time filming tomorrow as well as hopefully being able to get some inside car shots at night as well.

Transcription

We transcribed all interviews verbatim in order to log what was talked about in each section.

Introduction: 14 Seconds

1:00 – Made new friends, confidence, learn new things everyday

1.22 – Introduced to business by friend, work when he wants

2.12 – I like driving, sociable hours

2.35 – Good/Bad customer: 90% all good until 2:53

3.00 – Kids 18/10 worst when drunk

3.34 – Police, few warning

3.48 – talking about held at gunpoint up until 5.05

5.24 – Don’t know who to pick up, cautious

5.56 – Get panic attacks when in long journeys and the customers in the back

6.37 – Bus driver, not financially good

7.23 – Change – stop issuing licenses, lots of taxis and not enough work

8.55 – Future plans

9.05 – Good trade to be in

9.47 – Best day christmas

Paper Edit

We created a rough paper edit in order to put it into a rough structure of what the documentary is going to consist of.

1.   A visual short introduction to Abdul with an outline of what he does through audio/visual together. (2.12 – likes driving)
2.   Looking at positive aspects of the job (2.12 – social able hours etc)
3.   Good customer (2.35 – 90% all good) 
4.   How he deals with bad customers (3.00-3.40 – kids drunk, kick bad customers out and police)
5.   Gun point experience (3.48 – 5.05 whole story)
6.   Panic Attacks that he’s suffered (5.56 – used to have when customers in cab)
7.   Each day is a new day  (5.23 – never know who picking up – always cautious) 6.37   Wouldn’t take up another driving job – suggests Bus Driver did think about it
8.   Summary of Job – enjoys (9.15 – good trade)

Myself and the girls begun with looking through the various footage of inside the taxi, the office and the bus station and taking out the areas that we thought would look good to include. I was then able to put this all onto one timeline. We then looked at the interview footages’ and picked out the areas that we wanted to include from it into our 1 minute clip to show tomorrow (interim critique). I suggested that we use the majority of the different shots that we were unsure of to enable us to ask the class for their opinions and feedback on whether to include them into the final piece. There were times where the video was not in sync with the audio but we soon resolved this by zooming in onto the timeline and cutting out unwanted areas.

We constructed the video so that when Abdul was talking about specific areas, his voice would be played over different video footage such as of him turning the steering wheel. I think that this worked really well as it made the documentary a lot more visually interesting rather than having Abdul stood there talking. After spending nearly 4 hours editing this down, we rendered it, squeezed the file down and saved it on a memory pen which Sam then took back with her to upload onto YouTube.

Below is the rough footage that we have come up with so far.

Editing was a very time-consuming job today but I enjoyed the experience and now feel a lot more confident with using Avid after being taught the shortcut keys also. I think that the video we have come up with includes all the necessary shots that the group had initially wanted and works well within the set theme of ‘Working Lives’.

After carrying out this first interview, the group found out that Abdul did actually work for a company called ‘Trinity Street Taxis’ which he hadn’t mentioned to us before, so from this I was able to do some in-depth research using the internet about the company. Along the way I found out information about the change of location plans for taxis due to the increase of taxi licenses around the area which was what I had previously found out and had asked Abdul.

Due to the confusion of what the heart of the story was going to be to begin with, it enabled me to research a variety of different subjects related to taxis during the ‘research process’ and I was then able to narrow it down as we found out more information.

The production of the filming has been very hectic due to the first filming day ending with rain and lack of technical skill preparation. We were able to learn a lot from this which helped us with our second attempt of the interview. I specifically picked a sunny day after looking at the weather forecast to ensure that this would not happen again. As the group were stood by the media loan shop whilst I was talking about the tie clip microphones causing problems due to the unprofessionalism of the wires hanging down from Abdul, one of the media loan staff overheard and recommended to us that we use a wireless clip microphone. I hadn’t known that these were available to loan so this was great news. It enabled the cameras to be at a further distant without the view of the cables getting in the way. We were prepared several hours before Abduls’ arrival which meant that any last-minute adjusting was able to be done. Everyone was very organised and had a role in the production. I was in charge of holding the boom microphone whilst at the same time comforting Abdul and making conversation with him as group members packed various equipments away. I definitely think that this helped him to relax as it took his mind off the cameras having been focused on him.

To our delight, Abduls’ manager kindly allowed us to visit the offices and so we were able to take some great footage of what went on behind the driving. Sam and Laura took video footage using the PDX10s whilst I took digital photographs of the relevant areas that I thought we could include. Whilst we were in the taxi, we all took roles to film as myself and the two girls had different ideas of what and how we wanted to film. As the equipment was handed in back on the same day, it enabled the group to relax after a busy day. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of the filming as everything flowed well and I think that the first filming that we did enabled us to take on board the areas that we needed to improve on for the second attempt of filming.

I have noticed that the girls in the group have been more involved with the ideas of the visual side of the documentary such as camera shots and the editing itself whereas the boys have been more involved with the technical side such as the exposure on the cameras and the sound levels. This has enabled everyone to focus on a specific area that they enjoy the most. I personally think that I have taken a major part with the general ideas for the filming as I have expressed my opinion on the areas that I thought we should include (research wise) as well as the type of shots that I felt were important to include. I have been in charge of the paperwork behind the production and ensuring that we follow the rules and regulations.

Overall I am very happy with the progress of the documentary and feel that the group have shared similar feelings and thoughts of how they want certain areas of Abduls’ job to be portrayed.