Imogen Polycarpou TV Production Blog

My group: Rosie Penn, Ida Frank, Imogen Polycarpou My roles: Writer, Producer and Sound Woman At the beginning of the unit I was extremely stressed out. I was worried about what it will be about and if we will find anything interesting. Development of idea:  Originally we were thinking of doing it on bears or barn owls but Helen suggested to do it on the cliffs. The next day after our meeting we went straight to the white cliffs of Dover to have a look and speak to the management at the cliffs. Since they were unavailable that day we followed up withe mails and contacting them. Soon we arranged a day where we could meet the operations manager, Gareth Wiltshire. During that meeting we signed the contracts to be allowed to film on the cliffs. We also asked Gareth specific questions to help us with our research on the cliffs for our script. Writing the script: Since it was my job to write the script I did a lot of research into the cliffs itself, the nature living their, th

Feedback from Helen on the Rough Cut: Things to change Swap order of interviews - Gareth first instead of Robbert Use Gareth interview throughout documentary (in a way he becomes second presenter) re-arrange the script so it will make sense with Gareths part (there is a separate blog post on this) Add in more commentary - so it it is smoother when you change subject Use footage (cut aways) which is relevant to what is being said Positive points Gareth The opening Presenter Feedback from Helen on the Fine Cut:              Things to change:  Pull music back a bit when presenter is too low  Change a few images which repeat if possible  Tighten it  a bit (a few walks)  Positive Points:  End is enjoyable  Material is handled well  Clear story  Colour correction:  As the cutaways had a yellow colour to them we edited them so they suit the rest of the documentary. Below are the results: 

After showing Helen our Rough Cut we were told that the script order should be re-arranged so we can have the interviewers used as voice over as well. Below are images of the re-arranged script:

Our interviews were very long so I wrote up all the interviews and then saw which bits we could cut out to make sense. Below is the Sync Assembly from our interviews: (the highlighted bits, is what we used in the documentary)

18th April 2016  This was the day where we were going to film all of the presenters bits (so the script) without filming the cutaways. We began with our interview with Robbert Sonnen who is the specialist on flowers and butterflies of the cliffs. We were hoping that while we would be interviewing him, we can get him explaining each plant we came across, but unfortunately no flowers had blossomed and due to the bad weather (strong winds) there were no butterflies or birds. We then carried on with all of the presenters parts, but as the day went by it became darker, more windy and very cold. As I was the sound woman I was concerned about the sound and if the presenter will be heard. But when listening to his voice on the headphones while recording he sounded clear with the wind in the background. I feel that this made it sound natural but we shall see when we edit it if it is okay and we don't need to re-record our presenter. We managed to finish all of the presenters parts.

Shot List Script 

For this work shop, Tim who is a professional in this industry when it comes to editing documentary came to teach us. We were given footage of a documentary and Tim observed us whilst editing and helped us when we asked and gave a few pointers. Below is my edit:            

For this workshop, we went to Faversham and had the opportunity to make a mini documentary on one of England oldest Brewers . The reason for the location workshop, was so that we knew how handle various situations. the loud sounds inside the brewer how to handle people when they come up and ask you what you are doing  Below is the what has been edited from my groups footage (Ida, Imogen, Laura, Josh B) Filmed by: Everyone Edited by: Imogen Polycarpou Everyone edited their own version.