Challenge

This project was intended to be a 5 minute documentary film exploring one artists connection with paper, as part of the Art of Documentary (AOD) one day doc competition.

The Art of Documentary is an online film making academy set up to help film makers become better documentary film makers, without having to go to film school.

The One Day Documentary competition is part of this, and gets those in Art of Documentary creating right off the bat with the challenge being that you have one day to shoot but you can spend as much time as you want within pre-production and post-production, up to the point of submission.

How it went

I found my subject Clare within a few weeks of the competition being announced and she agreed to be part of it. With this set in stone I started the process of planning out how I would shoot and edit the documentary with the time given and what I wanted it to look like in an ideal scenario.

After I had that rough plan in place, I set up a meeting with Clare at her studio to get an idea of if it would be a suitable place to shoot the documentary, paying attention to the space available, light, sound and other artists workspaces. The last point was particularly important as Clare shares a space with other artists who luckily were not around during the shoot which gave us more freedom.

While I was looking at all of the things mentioned during the meeting, I was also preparing Clare for shooting by having a pre-interview to get more of an idea of who she was as an artist, her motivations and what I could center the story around.

From that meeting I was able to further nail down what I wanted to shoot and the questions I wanted to ask. We set a date for the shoot and I got to work ensuring I had all the equipment I needed. Spoiler I had more than I needed...

Shooting

The shoot taught me a lot in terms of knowing what I would need for it. If I had a small crew it would make more sense with the amount of gear that I brought, but as I didn't it meant I had a lot to monitor. I quickly realised this and decided to simplify the set up slightly, using natural light as it was quite nice in the studio and using one less sound recorder.

This made things a lot easier to handle but retrospectively this could have been simplified even more.

We managed to get all the locations and shots that were necessary and a few extra nice to haves. But if this was a real world client and not a competition, I might have shot some things on a different day or over a couple of days so that I had more to use in the edit.

The Edit

Now the plan was to get the footage down to 5 minutes, I managed to get it down to 7:24. This was under the maximum 8 minutes but that extra 2 minutes will haunt me slightly.

That being said I don't think it would have worked without all of the footage included. What I will say is that it would have worked better if I were able to let some of the footage breathe more without the 8 minute cut off looming over me.

It was definitely a balancing act.

I am my harshest critic however and those who have seen it enjoy it. Unfortunately I did not win the competition which had 100+ entries and only 5 winners, but it was not about winning for me it was about the process and learning which I did.

If you have a spare few minutes feel free to watch the mini documentary below, and if you want to create something together reach out.