Hair - Documentary (FMP)

Evaluation

Before I finalised my idea for “Hair” I was toying with the idea of a video installation about “Love”. I was going to create a 4 part installation to represent “North” , “South”, “East” and “West”. I thought about how the audience would perceive this by putting on the instillation on 4 different computers placed in different directions. The concept behind my original idea was to take the audience through the different directions of love, but I decided to keep my idea simple so I don’t over complicate it.

The theme for my documentary was Hair; at first I Was going to create a documentary to inform people about the hidden culture behind weaves and wigs but the idea developed into “Does hair perceive the way you see beauty?”

The first thing I created was a mood board as part of my primary research because as a visual learner it has always helped me to visually break down what I would like to include in my work.

As part of my primary research I visited “Hair” by Sam McKnight an art exhibition held at Somerset House, where I took pictures and videos, which I then put into a slideshow. I enjoy visiting exhibitions because I find them more informative than reading articles online because it’s a first hand experience.

Although I did different forms of primary research I regret not using Social Media to find out what my audience want to see, I should have created a Facebook Page and added everyone in to comment on what they though about the concept, the execution and the poster. When I next create a film/documentary I will communicate with people/the audience through social media as it is the best form of communicating with anybody and everybody in 2017.

I held two separate focus groups, one with boys and another with girls. I found the focus groups to be very helpful. The discussions I had were really informative as the girls and boys were telling me things that they would want to see, which is the best thing to do when creating a film. And it made me realise that I needed to redefine my target audience to girls – generally because girls are more interested in hair/beauty than men.

For my secondary research I watched a film with a similar topic and genre called “Good Hair” by comedian Chris Rock. I was amazed to watch the 90minute documentary to see how much was included from the consumers buying the weaves to the people shaving their hair for spiritual salvation.

My documentary should have included a documentary with a friend who’s recently shaved her head but I ran into a few technical difficulties due to my own unorganized habits, a chunk of my interviews and cutaways got deleted from the SD card purely because I was sharing it with my Father; unfortunately he deleted the footage of the SD card to create space for him to use it thinking I had copied the footage from the SD card – I had not. This taught me a huge lesson because I then had to reshoot with a different person because the first person wasn’t available the second time. This set me behind by a great deal because I wasn’t aware the footage was deleted until 2 weeks after. Next time I will ensure I have my own SD card with all my footage on there, and on the computer I am using.

When looking back at the scenes of the female hairdresser, I realised that all the shots looked incredibly shaky- so shaky it was uncomfortable to watch so I decided to use a tripod for the rest of the interviews, which was the best decision I made.

Sound + Lighting

I took out a microphone from college to enhance the sound in my interviews just incase the environment (salon) was noisy, but to my disappointment it wasn’t working although I put new batteries in etc., so I ended up using the in – sound mic on the camera which worked well enough. Next time I will use my voice recorder on my phone and place it near the interviewee just so I can have a separate file of sound taken.

I used natural lighting for all the scenes in my documentary being very mindful of the mise en scene, if I saw something in the frame whilst shooting I wasn’t afraid to take control and cut the scene short in order to remove what was misplaced. As a director I was telling my interviewee’s to speak louder when their voice would quieten down, which I don’t usually do because I feel uncomfortable telling people what to do, but I realised that is the role of the director and therefore need to start being comfortable doing so otherwise my work wont look how I want it.

I kept the editing very simple with my documentary, I only included music for the intro because the documentary is purely based on interviews, and also when I got feedback from my peers we came to a collective decision to not add music even as non diegetic sound as it would be distracting.

I will be presenting my documentary on all major social platforms such as Youtube and Instagram as that is the quickest and informative way to reach out to a large audience. I will also be entering this documentary into a few festivals such as Open City Docs Fest in London on the 5-10 September 2017 as well as presenting the finished documentary to my peers.

Poster for Hair

I am really happy with how my poster for my documentary "Hair" and everything that I wanted it to be was achieved i.e

minimalistic

sleek

aesthetically clean

It didn't take me long to set up the photoshoot as i used my own wig and wig head stand.

I decided to use an Iphone 7 Camera to take the picture for my poster as a camera was unavailable but it suffices well enough,

This poster represents what my documentary is about without giving too much away. I wanted it to remain anonymous (therefore shooting the back of the wig head)

I wanted to keep the colours of the poster very simple and minimal and no to better colours than black and white. I feel that black and white compliment each other.

Feedback from my class is below

https://studentsouththamesac-my.sharepoint.com/personal/emma_ashton_south-thames_ac_uk/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=14c39abdf3ebe42709cad7dd331770a8f&authkey=AUkgUaD9HrQtq4DR29MLuMc