Starting Documentary

Today we began preparation work for our documentary. We started with an exercise designed to expose our own assumptions. Students were asked to draw a doctor and a nurse, without showing each other. They were then asked how many of them drew a male doctor and a female nurse. As expected, most drew a male doctor and a female nurse. After this, we moved onto defining what a documentary is, starting by listing key words we associate with the genre, such as truth, facts, statistics and educational.

We learned a little about different types of documentaries by looking at four different types. They were Mad Hot Ballroom, Africa's Last Taboo, Bowling for Columbine and Peckham Finishing School for Girls. We divided into groups of three and different members of the groups made notes on the documentary techniques, film language, and sound in each one. We learned to identify things such as ambient and non-diegetic sound, amateur and archive footage.

As well as discussing the different techniques used by the documentary makers, we talked about how the subjects of the different shows have been represented. This was particularly interesting with the last one, as students had real life experience of the location and people to contextualise what they saw. Most felt that the worst side of Peckham was being shown, but that they also included positive elements such as young business people, the church and the martial arts community. This has given us great food for thought with our documentary, and we intend to represent an even broader range of people in this part of South London.

Girls in the Peckham Finishing School were Sarah & Cat, Alisha & Serena, Kerri & Steph and Lashan & Claire, plus Peaches who was co-ordinating the events. We will be writing this analysis up in more detail next week, and the instructions for this are on the shared area, 'Creative and Media Diploma', 'Stereotypes and documentary' folder.

Good Hair

Today we went to the Ritzy to watch Good Hair. The film is a documentary made by Chris Rock in response to a statement made by his young daughter about how she didn't have 'good hair'.

The main narrative arc for the film surrounded a Black Hair show in Atlanta, Georgia, where millions is spent every year by mainly black women on products such as relaxer and weaves. The pinnacle of the show is the highly elaborate hair cutting competition where hair dressers compete to win a $20,000 prize. Intersecting this narrative were interviews with black stars such as Nia Long, Ice T and Reverend Al Sharpton. Rock also travelled to meet the owners of some of the hair product companies and to India to investigate precisely where 'human hair' weaves come from.

Points I think need considering:

• There was little exploration of why women feel the need to go through all this pain and pay all this money to look this way? Is it a form of internalised racism? Is it patriarchal issue?
• What about women in general being victims of the beauty industry? Aren't wearing heels, make-up, having cosmetic surgery all part of the same problem - women self harming in effect, mainly to appeal to men and compete with other women. Why do men not need to compete in the same way?
• The men were portrayed sympathetically as victims of this culture - having to pay for it, wait for women to have it done, not able to touch the weave etc. Why were the men not asked if they would be willing to date women with more natural hair? Are most of these women not doing it for their benefit in the first place?
• Also, no mention was made of what the people in India working to package the human hair were being paid. Are they victims or benefactors of the industry?

8th June - Starting to Film

Today we began to film a rough version of the films to practice using the cameras and so students could learn how to edit.

Firstly, students were reminded how to use the cameras properly and safely. They learned about opening the tripod legs and making it level and how to attach the camera so it doesn't fall off. Also they learned about how to move it from one location to the next safely so it doesn't get damaged or hit anything on its way.

They learned about how to film so that there is enough room at the start and end of a shot to edit.

When filming, they practised the acting and how to light people effectively using natural light, such as how to create a silhouette effect to disguise the person's identity.

They then began to learn how to edit using Final Cut Express on the Apple Mac computers. They learned about how to connect the camera using a fire wire cable and how to capture the footage ready for editing. They then learned about putting in and out points on a section and dragging it to the timeline. Some used a razor tool to make cuts in the footage, separate the image from the soundtrack and put a new image in, leaving the sound there so it acts as a voice over.

Last lesson before half term

Todays lesson was all about finishing up the research and planning before we make our videos after half term.

Students learned about how to produce a storyboard to help with filming. They learned about how to put arrows inside the box to show the subject moving, and outside the box to show camera movement. They also needed to add the shot type, dialogue, sound effetcs and transitions.

They then got into their two groups to make their storyboards and scripts ready for filming after half term. Some finished off research on the topic and mood boards as well.

4th May Video prep

Today we started by getting into two groups - (Group A) Queen, Bisola and Roche in one and (Group B) Betsy, Yasmin and Jamilea in the other. They started to come up with ideas for their Human Rights films and drew spider diagrams. Group A would like to do child labour and group B would like to do the rights of young women in this country.

Next we finished looking at the films made by previous students on being Muslim and having HIV and suffering prejudice.

We learned about the different shot types, camera movements, mise en scene, sound and editing techniques and watched a short film by students to see them in action.

27th April Human Rights Video Analysis

Today we worked on writing up analyses of human rights videos made by young people. We looked at some on the Adobe Youth Voices website that were music videos about identity, respect and being a good role model. They were made in the USA and New Zealand.

We wrote down what they were about, things that worked well and what was less successful about them. We also wrote which articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights they relate to.

We then began to watch some of the adverts made by previous year 10 students.

Starting Human Rights before Easter

Firstly we all met in 915 to introduce the Human Rights Media element. We looked at photos, found out more about human rights and the tasks set, such as comparing our lives to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights list. We then divided up students into photography and film.

The film students came downstairs with me to look at some human rights films on these websites:
http://www.hrw.org/en/iff/youth-producing-change-2009
http://essentials.youthvoices.adobe.com/stories/video.aspx

We discussed which ones we liked and why and had a think about films we could make.