Writing the Script

In the class that goes along with this project, Documentary Production, we briefly talked about writing the script. Basically there are two types that could be used for a documentary.

There is a single column script, better known as a "film script" and then there is a two column script.

A film script looks something like this...


This film script is compliments of Waggish.org If you are the author and would like me to remove it please email me at lniecg72@mercyhurst.edu

Film scripts are very fun to write, but very hard to write for a documentary style film, especially when you do not have all of your interviews completed. This is because a single column Film Script only allows text and no pictures. Therefore I would have to try my best to predict the scenery of the interviews, and what the interviewees are going to say in their answers. If I couldn't write a lot about what I thought they would say and what the image was going to look like I would have a very short unclear script.

Luckily the storyboard I started during a group work day looked exactly like a two column script ready to be made for this documentary. First I printed the half complete storyboard I had originally typed into my computer. Then I started adding more cells to the story board, drawing in little pictures to create a vision and adding ideas for audio to make it flow.

When I was done drawing in all of the pictures, and wrapping up the story, I went back to my computer and filled in the blank table. This time I went through the entire video column and added "Roll Graphic, Name, Year etc." in each of the blocks that I want to add a graphic to.

Blogger does not allow you to post PDF files so I uploaded the file to my Professional Website, so if you would like to read my whole script you will have to click the link below. Sorry for the inconvenience.

CLICK HERE TO GO SEE MY SCRIPT AS OF TODAY!! (IN PDF FORMAT)

A graphic could be any still image or text to go in place of the video, or compliment the video. Usually used as a title or a name.

For this documentary our group has decided to add a small graphic in the lower right or lefthand corner with the name and title of each interviewee, or the name and year of the performance.

A common mistake that most beginning filmmakers make is having the graphic up too many times or for too long.

The graphic only needs to be up for about as long as it takes to read through it twice.

If you show the same person more than once you do not need to show the graphic every time. I have learned that you should show a graphic text once every four to five time someone appears on screen.

The next part of the script writing process for me is going to be searching for and selecting B-Roll video I would like to use.

Since we are going to have a limited number of interviews we have decided to make the documentary more exciting by adding several clips of past programs in the PAC's history but we have yet to find any to add.

See You Next Time!

Story Boarding

This past Thursday our group got a lot of work done. Right off the bat we split into 3 groups. One group was sorting through hard copy pictures, choosing ones that we could use for B-Roll, another group was searching through the PAC computer systems for digital photographs, and a group member and I were story boarding the documentary.

The storyboarding started after I found a picture of the D’Angelos and Andre Watts, a pianist who played on opening night. A few weeks ago Earleen Glaser, the school library archivist, was telling my group a story about opening night.

It is opening night, and the audience members are excited for the first performance of the PAC. The curtains open and there is Andre Watts dead center on the stage with his custom piano, delivered here from Pittsburgh, Pa, earlier that day. Watts waits until the applause quiets down, and then he presses his fingers down on the keys. Nothing happens. He plays a little more and there is absolutely no noise coming from the piano. Opening night of a brand new Performing Arts Center and the piano breaks right on stage. Luckily the Performing Arts Center had it’s own piano backstage and ready. Stage crew brought out the other piano, and Andre Watts got on with the show.

What a great little story to have to open the documentary. It fits right in with the 3 part chronological method, it’s interesting, it’s funny and best of all there are 2 great pictures of Watts, the D’Angelos and Dr. Garvey, the former college President to scan for the opening B-Roll.

So after seeing the pictures and thinking out the first part of the documentary, I immediately grabbed a pencil and a notebook and started to storyboard.

For the storyboard I used a Two Column format. In the first column is the video that will be shown and in the second column is the audio that will be heard.



Here is my the first page of my storyboard. Originally only the copy in my notebook had actual pictures in the video column but for this, I decided to add pictures from Google images to help you get an idea of what it should look like. Below is the first page of the storyboard I have on my computer, without any actual pictures, just words to describe what will be in the video column.



CLICK HERE TO PRINT AN EASY TO USE TWO COLUMN STORYBOARD TEMPLATE

Within no time we had filled a few pages with pictures and audio.

At the end of the workday I typed up what I had of the storyboard and sent it to all of my group mates and now we have a very clear direction to steer towards during these final weeks. Unfortunately, I did not finish the storyboard yet, but I have gotten to the middle of the present section and so far everybody seems to be pleased with it.

Scheduling Meetings

So a few weeks have passed and our group is realizing that we do not have as much footage as we would like to have at this point. What does this mean for us exactly? We have about 10 more days to get footage, and if we don't get something we want, we will just have to scratch the idea entirely.

You might think "why can't you film anymore after 10 days? The project is not due until May 18th." Well if you have never edited footage before you might be surprised to know that it takes a VERY VERY long time. I timed myself during a previous project and it took me on average 10 minutes of editing to get just 30 seconds of finished product, and that was with sound-bytes ranging from 30 seconds to 1 minute. Therefore a 30 minute final product will take about 600 straight minutes of productive editing without changing my mind or messing up the editing.

Normally I would never suggest having 30 second to 1 minute sound-bytes, but for that project I only had 4 interviews so I had to make best with what I had. A good sound-byte in my opinion is between 7 and 15 seconds long. If it is any longer make sure you have B-Roll to play because without it you could lose viewers interest.

I'll talk more about these processes when I get to the editing phase of the project but for now it's back to how hard it is to schedule meetings.

Right now we have about 2 1/2 hours of total footage. Half of it is from a Student Outreach program that the PAC is involved with and the other half is from the Ailey II show.

2 1/2 hours may sound like a lot of footage, but to fill a 30 minute documentary it is far from enough.


James Cameron’s Titanic has 240 hours and 45 minutes of footage.

The average 45 minute TV Show shoots about 60 to 90 hours of footage per episode.

TO LEARN MORE LITTLE FACTS ABOUT FILM CLICK HERE!!


We probably are not going to shoot 58 more hours of footage, so instead we are going to try and get as much footage as we can in 10 to 15 different interviews. We have decided to break the documentary into 3 chronological parts: the past, the present and the future. For each one of those 3 parts we are hoping to have about 5 different interview pieces. We probably could get away with having just 10, but I believe a documentary will have a better effect with more variety in interviews.

To decide how we are going to get these interviews our group has broken down the chronological parts, and started to list people who would be good to talk to.

Ailey II

So right after our first meeting with Ellia, we learned that the last big show of the Performing Arts Center was going to be in two days. The program was Ailey II, a dance show from the popular New York City dance company of Alvin Ailey. This gave our group an excellent chance to get good footage.

During the day the Ailey II dancers did a dress rehearsal and they invited students from Mercyhurst Prep School to watch and even participate. I was not there myself but John, our videographer was, and he got almost an hour and a half of great footage of the dance company and student interaction.

Later on that night the Ailey II dancers went on stage and did their performance. Me and three other group members went to film the show and get some interviews with the audience members during intermission. The publicist said that we could film the show for B-roll, but when we got there they said that they had changed their mind. At first I was upset because I thought that gave us a chance to get some great footage, but instead it made us rely on the audience members and what they had to say. Before the show we got a chance to interview these two guys who are always dressed in outrageous outfits riding a tandem bicycle around campus. Their names are Jesse and Ricardo and they love the arts and being cultured. During the interview they gave so many good answers that would fit perfectly for the documentary. Unfortunately I did not have a tripod with me, so I had to film by hand, and I forgot to charge my camera so we had to stay near a wall outlet when filming. This did not ruin the shots, but they did not turn out as nicely as they could have. Either way the audio from the interview will provide me with some great sound bites to add to B-roll.

A sound bite is just like a VO except it is not narrated it is captured from another source, like an interview or just the natural sound from the background.

Sound bites should not be shorter than 7 seconds or longer than 13 seconds. There is nothing worse in a documentary than endless amounts of talking with no B-roll so please if you are going to have a long sound bite, break it up with lots of good various B-roll.

After we interviewed Jesse and Ricardo we interviewed a few dancers, a long friend of the D’Angelos and several students. Everyone gave us so many great answers that it will be hard to end the documentary at 30 minutes.

Here is a video of the awesome Ailey II dance company. Like I said before I was not allowed to film any of the show, so instead I grabbed this from Youtube.



This video was not filmed by me. I found it on Youtube, on the AileyOrganization channel.

The Plan

So we have now been working for about 3 weeks on our video and things have been going very smoothly. Each week of class we spend Tuesday watching a documentary, and then Thursday doing group work. On our first group work day we met with Michelle Ellia the assistant marketing manager of the performing arts center. The group members and I sat with Michelle around the conference room table, broke out our notebooks and got right to planning the documentary according to what the client, the performing arts center, wants.
After about an hour of questions and discussion, we have come to the conclusion that we will be making a twenty to thirty minute documentary celebrating the fifteen years that the Performing Arts Center has been up and running.
2011 will be the 15th anniversary for the Performing Arts Center, and to celebrate the birthday the staff is planning to have a big get together to show off the upcoming season’s programs. Also at the big unveiling of the 2011 programming they want to show the documentary we have made. Yikes, that kind of seems like a lot of pressure. Even more intimidating is that for the unveiling they are attempting to fill every seat in the PAC… that’s 800 seats.
After talking with Michelle the team decided that we are going to use a simple three part chronological format for our documentary. The first part will be the past. For this part we are going to have to sort through old footage in the basements of the school library and the Performing Arts Center. Hopefully there we can find a lot of good stories and B-roll for the film.

B-roll is video or still pictures that you show during VOs

VOs are voice overs

Together VOs and B-roll make a SOT which stands for Sound Over Tape

TO LEARN MORE FILM JARGON CLICK HERE

Also for the history segment we have assembled a list of important people to contact when it comes to the history of the PAC. These people are the former President Garvey, the Guelchers, Dr. D’Angelo, and many more who were there or helped out when the building was erected.

The next segment of the three part theme will be the present. For this section we will interview the current staff members, i.e. Michael Fuhrman the director of the PAC, student regulars who attend the PACs shows for their benefit, community regulars and season ticket holders who come to the performing arts center to experience culture, and finally students who have performed on the PAC stage.
Also during the present section we hope to go over this past season’s programs showing footage and images from the events.

For the last section we have decided to show the upcoming programs, and where the Performing Arts Center is headed in terms of growth, programming and influence. Ellia told us that the budget for the Performing Arts Center has went from about $80,000 in its first year of operations to $700,000 this past year! That is a tremendous amount of growth over a 16 year period and we are sure that it will keep growing so we are going to do our best to predict the future of the PAC.

Pre Production

For the documentary project my Documentary Production class has been split into two groups. My groups topic is the Mary D’Angelo Performing Arts Center at Mercyhurst. At first I was not very happy about being assigned to this particular team. The other team’s topic is on an Erie Immigrant Relocation Project. They get to talk with immigrants from all over the world, and help future immigrants by making a video that shows them what life is here in Erie, Pa. I have to make a video celebrating 15 years of the PAC. Even worse, when meeting with the Manager of the PAC they informed us that they would be showing this documentary to about 800 people as they unveil the upcoming 2010-2011 program list. A little bit of pressure there. Luckily the way my professor split the groups left my team super stacked in comparison to the other team.



Here is a shot of the PAC. It was not taken by me and if you are the photographer, and you would like me to remove it, please email me at lniecg72@mercyhurst.edu

When my group sat down together for our first class work day, it became very obvious that we each had something good to bring to the table. Me and another group member have had a lot of experience with non linear editing systems, so we are going to act as the chief editors. One girl on the team is a very organized person, so she is going to be documenting the meetings we have, and organizing our group timeline. One of the boys in the group has volunteered to shoot the most of the footage with a pretty sweet camera of his own, and I will help film when I can to add additional angles and perspectives. The last male group member actually does his work study at the Performing Arts Center, so he has volunteered to schedule all of our meetings with the staff of the PAC. Another girl is a graphic design major and she is going to handle all of our videos graphics, and any CG we need. Lastly, there are two other girls who do not necessarily have a specialty, so they have agreed to be extra hands whenever we need them.

It almost seems as though this group has been made with success in mind, and so far we seem to be working well together and I am very excited. Sometimes you think of guys in group work being lazy or just kind of sitting back and letting the girls do the most of the work, but the guys in the group have been awesome so far and I can tell they are really excited about the project.