Group Project - Building the structure

Recently acquiring our film locations and contributors, we pondered what else a documentary would need to contain. To do this, we first had to visualise a draft structure for our documentary, in order to proceed. So we all knew that interviews were the key part to the film, but a film needs a little more structure than shoving interview after interview together. We need a general introduction, an introduction to each person. Cut-away shots of the interviewees involved, along with other cut-away material, which will be needed during an interview.



The use of a cut-away is to feed the viewer with interesting shots related to the documentary subject. An example would be; an RAF interviewee, talking about his time in the services, could have shots of particular RAF planes layered into selected parts of the interviews. This offers the audience a break from the basic, and somewhat static, shots of the interviewee talking. While at the same time, this also adds informative pictorial delivery to accompany the interview.



So how were we going to acquire the cut-away shots that we needed for our project? Well first of all, we found out that using copyrighted images and stock footage of World War II was a big “No-no”, using these images and footage would require permission from the companies and individuals that had created them. This can cost a lot of money and time, and being students, we definitely didn’t have the money to buy the material ourselves.



We came to the conclusion that we would have to pick out locations in the local area that would be suitable for our documentary. So on discussion the first things that came to mind, was to film the buildings which occupied our contributors, which fortunately had flags and memorials, which would be a good cut-away feature for future editing. Also, there were a lot of paintings, photos, and engraved hang ups within both locations we intend to film in. so we made a note to do so during Easter.

We went to the Jill Dando gardens in Grove Park, Weston-super-Mare, as we were aware of a couple of war memorials, dedicated to WWI and WWII. We decided to get some shots there, obviously focusing mainly on the WWII material available to us. These stone memorials displayed names of men and women who died during the Second World War. The names were of men and women who were; civilians, involved in military, and the RAF, during the Second World War. We found this memorial to be a good asset to our project.



At this point we were struggling to think of more locations that were usable. Then we remembered the small Weston-super-Mare museum was available to us. We thought we would take the opportunity to speak to the staff in hope of gaining permission to film within the building. So we went to the museum, and managed to negotiate a student price entry along with the permission to film.



Although the museum only offered a small WWII display, it was enough to get a lot of good cut-away images, which we were striving for. Along the way we picked up some useful knowledge on WWII and enjoyed the rest of the displays while we were there. After we browsed the exhibition, we purchased a small booklet based on WWII in Weston-super-Mare for research purposes.