Keep Calm and Eat Cakes: Reflections on producing an interview-based documentary

(L-R) Michael, Steph, Amber and a lot of
 kit worth a lot of money.

Back, as I am, at university for my second year, I've been thrown into more projects than John Barrowman on a Saturday night. Amongst designing my own DVD and considering the woeful ethics of reality television, my three friends Amber, Steph, Michael and I, forming a mini-production company of sorts, have embarked on making television documentaries in our Factual Production unit, starting with a two-minute short that had to focus on a single person and their presumably interesting life.
 
Steph, most certainly the organiser and "fixer" of Hourglass Productions, phoned and emailed around, looking for marks. We decided early on to find a cake maker, a profession that would lend itself well visually to a documentary. Impossibly quickly, Steph had found someone in nearby Chandlers Ford, and I decided to have a go at writing a script, using a short biography of the person and a template that was about as much of a step-up from stone carvings as the iPhone isn't from an iPod.

Shooting all the action in the kitchen!

The problem I found with writing a script based on someone's life story is that it is a complete waste of time, considering you don't know what someone is going to say in an interview beforehand. I'm not entirely sure I believe in documentary scripts in general, and on reflection, I feel they should serve only as guides of what coverage to shoot, rather than some equivalent to narrative scripts that have pre-defined parameters and dialogue.

Nevertheless, I put together an example document of the sort of shots we could cut to, set to the essay's dialogue. Cath Mitchell, our subject for the painfully short two-minute film was possibly the sweetest and most accommodating participant we've had to film. With the assorted crisps and doughnuts Cath bought us on Thursday 20th October, when we filmed, clearly in an attempt to fatten we poor, malnourished students, you'd think the four of us were doing her a favour when it was she who was kindly giving up time and allowing her living room to become a metal forest of technological sticks, cameras and blindy-bright thingies as we kept telling her to speak up, poking her with intruding (though gently executed) questions about her career.

Beautifully girly cupcakes, with
the glitter that Amber obsessed over.

As a man who eats mostly bread, I might not have appreciated Cath's work itself, but I can applaud and admire the designs and sheer effort that goes into creating bespoke cakes, especially the hilarious Cookie Monster cupcakes OMNOMNOMNOM.

My job on the shoot was to record the sound on the Marantz, an unsettling small black box with flashing lights and a strap that made it look like I was a scanning the airwaves with a Star Trek tricorder. On previous films, we'd always recorded the audio directly into camera, using it's basic built-in mic, or by hooking up the boom pole. This time, I saved the audio separately, and we later spent a not inconsiderable time during editing trying to match it up to the visuals. Sure, the sound was somewhat clearer than the camera's, but why we didn't we plug the quality boom and radio mics into the camera? Would that not be easier? Am I missing something? Answers on a postcard, please. To be fair, however, I learnt a lot about audio during this shoot, tinkering with what I've taken for granted previously when recording just with the camera's audio. My puny arms also built strength holding a heavy boom pole, so I need not get a gym membership.

Holding up a boom pole during the
 interview. Cath says I "look" like a
sound guy...

Sitting in an edit suite with Michael, our chief editor, is like watching someone else play a video game: you really want to get in and have a go by yourself, but you don't want to ruin their high score. I personally like to edit alone, and without distractions, but it was productive for the four of us to pitch in together, especially when we all 'feel' a certain edit at the same time, knowing that it works and voicing our approval with a silent look. The other member of this project, Mark, who had been unable to attend the day of filming, but took part during post production, again provided us with a useful fresh pair of eyes on the 70+ minutes of material.

This was one of the more successful projects I've worked on, and the four of us have really formed a good team, whilst being able to work with other students and outside agents. I gather that our next documentary may be about busking, so the work goes on, all whilst we finish the editing for our two minute, now entitled The Icing on the Cake.

Cute, no?