Final Documentary: BENEATH THE SKIN

Beneath the Skin

After exploring other ideas we decided to settle on documenting the community that inspires the reasoning behind getting a Tattoo. Here is the completed production and my personal feedback on my performance throughout the production process.

Beneath the Skin 2016

The film is a Participatory Documentary, when considering Bill Nichols six modes of documentary. This was the style that we chose to use because it allowed us to explore the theme of community directly through the members participation within it and by allowing them to tell to the audience in their own way and from their own experiences. We found that using the Participatory format, it also allowed for a natural sense of humour to come across from the cast which is likely to connect well with the audience.

Self Evaluation 

My assigned role in this production was Camera and Sound Operator. Leading up to and during in the production proccess we had to face many obstacles, both within the team and in the production environment. Overall I felt that we developed as a team, overcoming these obstacles and were able to produce a documentary that we are all proud of. Additional, I felt that I had learned how to delegate tasks to other team mates when my skills weren't adequate and to make sure that tasks were completed on time, and also how to complete tasks as an individual, learning key skills throughout the process and ensuring that deadlines were met.

One skill that has developed significantly would be how to deal with conflict in a team. I came to realise that it was important that disagreements were resolved quickly to avoid any delay in production. And also to consider that I might not always have the solution, and that it can be important to look elsewhere to find such a solution and always considering my team mates opinions.

I believe that it was vital we worked as a strong collective workforce, and that our time should've been divided equally within our assigned roles in order to avoid conflict or delays. However we lost two members of the production team due to unforeseeable circumstances, which made it much more difficult to allocate tasks and complete them efficiently and on time. I found that the lines between the roles had blurred and the challenge of doing tasks originally intended for a team of five with just three people created a large obstacle. Regardless, this did force me as a individual to take on tasks outside of my role , that I may have otherwise had little involvement with - such as Risk Assessments and creating call sheets. I had in fact handled tasks carried out by and Editor, and Cinematographer.

A problem we repeatedly faced was bad communication, and sometimes a lack of it. We had decided to handle all communication through Facebook Messenger, which I now realise probably wasn't the best platform to make production arrangements on. For instance, meetings were occasionally not circulated through the team which would mean that a member would be left out, causing conflict and miscommunication of progress and outstanding tasks. In the future I will probably find a more efficient method to communicate, such as sending meeting confirmations via email and finalising all decisions throughout the entire team in person before moving on.

Editing was another of the issues that we faced on the technical side of the production. We had problems with the software itself throughout the production, which led to the loss of unsaved data due to hardware malfunctions causing devices to overload and freeze. In the future I would use a Cloud Storage service, and have all data backed up at all times rather than my physical hard drive. Additionally we faced a problem where the sound had failed to encode onto the file, which lead to a delay in editing - however these issues was eventually resolved.

Overal I feel that the entire process was a positive learning experience, and that I was able to find a solution for most of the obstacles that I faced. Often anything that I did not know how to do I was able to either research the solution or delegator to another team member, which demonstrated successful team work. If I was to chose one thing that I think needs improvement, that would be my personal organisation and communication - I need to work on keeping to a schedule, and communicating more confidently to other members of the team.