Diary Entries for Documentary

11th October 2016

In the morning, we went to Eaton Fine Art Gallery in Solihull Town Centre. There we got several clips of artwork and the gallery for background footage. Also, we conducted a formal interview with the Gallery Director, Karen, who answered our questions concerning whether or not it is worth studying arts subjects.

In the afternoon, we took some background footage of various pieces of artwork and classrooms in the Art and Design building at Solihull Sixth Form. We have now decided to use the art building at college to conduct our vox-pop interviews.

13th October 2016

We filmed a Solihull Sixth Form student performing music on guitar and piano, in one of the music practice rooms, so we can use it as background footage when we are talking about the musical side of creative subjects. We may also use it as a part of a montage when the presenter says “coming up after the break.”

14th October 2016

Today we went into the Dance Studio and Drama Studio at the Sixth Form, we shot a little bit of background footage but mainly focused on shooting the introduction to our documentary with Amy as the presenter. We shot the introduction in both the dance and drama studios to see which one looked better and we have settled on the one that took place in the drama studio as we could set up lighting and use props to make it more entertaining.

17th October 2016

We went to the Dance Studio at Solihull Sixth Form and filmed a girl doing various dance routines as a part of our background footage. Also, this may be used as a part of our montage towards the very end of our piece.

18th October 2016

We went to the Core Theatre in Solihull and filmed the studio and theatre that they have there for background footage. We tried the various lighting effects they had there. We tried having a person on stage in the shot, to see whether it looked better than just having an empty stage. We moved around chairs and blackout screens for dramatic effect in our shots. We attempted to be creative with our shots, using a range of pans and zooms and also put our camera behind a stage curtain and pulled the curtain open to reveal a stage – this shot would ideally be where we would put statistics and transition to the next shot.

21st October 2016

Today we collected several vox-pops from students at the 6th form, some were done individually and others were done in pairs. We tried to capture these vox-pops in various places around the college in order to avoid it looking bland. We also made sure we got a range of opinions on our subject matter. In addition, we collected opinions from an assortment of genders and ethnicities in order to capture the college's diversity.

Furthermore, we filmed some transitional footage and an outro speech from our presenter. We filmed the same part in various locations, to see where we could get the best quality. We made sure our presenter was dressed in the same clothes to avoid continuity errors.

1st November 2016

We went to Birmingham Town Centre to gather some background footage. We filmed various street art around Digbeth and The Custard Factory. Also, we filmed some of the architecture and landmarks around Birmingham such as The Art Gallery and Museum and The Library.

4th November 2016

We have filmed a choreographed dance routine by a dance student at the 6th form, to add to our background footage and montage at the end of our documentary.

We have also filmed some more transitional footage and introductions of our presenter, in order to ensure that the documentary flows well. She was wearing the same clothes to avoid lack of continuity.

17th November 2016

We filmed two separate drama classes as they performed their midway case studies for their performance coursework. This will mainly be used for the outro montage at the end of our documentary. However, it can also be used as transitional footage throughout our documentary.

6th December 2016

We interviewed Julie Maitland, a Student Development Coordinator at Solihull Sixth Form College, as an expert for our documentary. We picked her as we knew that all of her children are varied in their career paths, some doing art and others doing sciences. Also, her role involves giving students advice so we thought she would give us her opinion on what she would tell a student.