Documentary and Commission - Working practices and skills review

in this document I'll outline some of the professional practices put into place by our team at various times throughout the production, I'll also outline where these broke down and where we should have acted differently in regards to professional conduct.

My opinions on the key pieces of professional conduct that need to be observed when shooting a Doc are varied and numerous, in this first section I'll outline what I believe to be the key elements that a production relies upon to be successful.

this list is based upon what we've been taught in lectures, experience pre-unit, experience from performing the tasks set in workshops, and experience from the production process as I experienced it.




Initial Research -

 From my experience, performing formative research is key. this doesn't only include subjectual research, it includes almost any factors that can effect a production. I've known the value of good research for a long time and this is reflected in the production's initial subjectual research, in the list posted at the bottom of the page that's (HERE) are the various online locations where I found useful information for the original planned production. notable are things you wouldn't expect like navigational charts, tide times and marine exclusion zone maps. these were key to that version of the production due to its maritime themes and narrative subjects. for example: if we where shooting seals from a boat, everyone on board including the boat's crew need to know how close they can legally get to the shore and how close they can get to the seals. Its key for the director to know this as well, when directing a chartered pleasure craft you need to know that your directions to the crew dont put them or their well being in danger. with a good pilot/captain it shouldn't be a problem, however you cannot guarantee that people are innately competent. this example also works well in terms of respecting the rights and freedoms of others, a core ideal of working in actuality.




Risk Assessment - 

assessing risk is what I'd describe as the second most important thing you can take into account during every stage of a production, maintaining a safe working environment is absolutely vital on ANY production, in documentary it is literally the most important thing. this is due to the unexpectedness of actuality or the real world. an example that has stayed with me over the years was experienced by a colleague of my uncle(worked in the industry before retirement).

he was working as a camera operator for a news programme in Manchester at the time, His reporter and him were covering a riot, on the ground with the rioters, during a shot a person approached from behind them with a metal pipe, aiming for the cam operator, thanks to the timely intervention of the reporter who was spotting the camera operators back while doing her PTC, only the camera was damaged, the camera OP dodged enough that he wasn't hit on the head, the blow caused the entire rear half of the camera to snap off the forward part, the extremely heavy battery pack dropping off the back of the camera. it was thanks to brainstorming risk beforehand and managing those risks that the presenter(a rookie) knew to spot for the camera op. saving his life in the process.

Risk assessment doesn't only cover the safety of your crew, in many situations when shooting actuality it also maintains the safety and comfort of the public and the condition of the location where your shooting. for instance: when shooting a documentary on the great barrier reef you have to be sure that your transport is shallow enough on the drought to not cause damage to the reef through "bottoming out" or chopping it up with the propeller. another example: if your shooting vox pops its important to be courteous and professional when interacting with the public, by not doing so you can damage reputations or end careers through rude behavior or inappropriate conduct. this again ties into the concept of respect.

my risk assessments are available (HERE)
the first was for shooting from a boat and was written specifically for the initial proposal, following that are the ones that were regarding actual shoots.




Reconnaissance - 

Like some of the others mentioned, proper reconnaissance is key to any production, however with documentary it has a far wider scope. in this document I define reconnaissance as not only Recce-ing the locations, but also getting correct information regarding the personality of all contributors or contributing organisations.  the attitudes and opinions of these groups effects how balanced your production is or becomes. Knowing what it would take for an organisation to get involved can give you a significant advantage when inquiring about their availability, equally, knowing whats inappropriate to ask of, or to an entity can allow for proper respect to be observed.

location reconnaissance is equally important to the above observed social reconnaissance, and this is something that I didn't properly observe at a key point during the course of this production. during the second planned production I improperly recce'd a key location, a walking route. the satellite images I used to recce the route indicated that a key segment of the route was of reasonable width and maintenance for our uses. it wasn't, the pathway was badly maintained and overgrown, some parts had subsided into the river(it was a riverside path similar to a tow path) what should have taken an hour took four, a brief look at further sections of our planned walk showed that the route hadn't been in use as a public footpath for some time, and had been relegated to a "Right of way" rather than a marked path. this put our team behind schedule, and when added to the mis-forecasting of the weather doomed this planned production.

this illustrates the need for a "proper" Recce, a member of our team should have attempted to walk the route previous to our shoot date. thus time would have been saved in either finding an alternative route or redesigning the production again.




Communication And Conduct - 

I've mentioned I and My teams Issues with inter-team member communication many times earlier in this blog. so I'll skim over this first part with the following sentence:

"Try and communicate, if they dont message you?, message them. if they dont reply in a timely manner?, phone them. if they dont answer their phone?, visit their house, if they are definitely in and not answering? leave them a note explaining the situation. if they dont respond to that? go on without them and continue to try and contact them until they explain why. it might be something of deadly import. just try and maintain team cohesion and maintain ownership of the product,"

the second part of this is extremely important, when communicating with anyone related to the production who isn't a part of the team, you need to be formal, professional and un-opinionated. professional attitudes, actions and vocabulary allow for a better dialogue with organisations and contributors. its a sign of respect, your showing them that you take them seriously, that you take their responsibilities and opinions into account when contacting them, and that you respect them. equally approaching them with professionalism shows them things about you and your team. It shows that you are serious, that you are respectable, that you are competent and it allows for a positive first impression.

However, from my experience informal communication is just as important, to be able to communicate to an individual on an emotive level elevates the quality of your narrative, it allows for you, and thus the audience to connect with the narrative on a deeper level. rather than just an intellectual exchange, the narrative can become an emotive and thought provoking exchange.another use of informal communication is to ensure that contributors are relaxed, a shoot should be as painless as possible for your contributors, they are doing you a favor by being involved, they deserve a certain level of respect and care, to be imparted by the crew members and especially the persons who must interact with them directly.




Varied Planning - 
proper planning is essential when deciding how to present your content and when your designing your shoot and scheduling your production, this almost goes without saying, however my experiences on this unit have shown that there are three not-so-well known actions that are vital to a successful production. it was through the auctioning of two of these that has allowed my team's documentary to be produced at all, the third action listed makes the other two somewhat less important, however the auctioning of all three can be vital to a production's success.

Flexible, Redundant Initial Plan- of the three planning actions listed, this one should be the most obvious, initially your plan must be flexible in regard to all elements(from scheduling to content to narrative) until you have "tied-down" your contributors and resources you cannot guarantee your schedule, you cannot guarantee your content and you cannot guarantee your equipment. your initial plan must be detailed and have extensive redundancy built-in. the redundancy allows for flexibility and clarity, if something goes wrong you need to know what your options are. I learned this during the planning stages of our first idea's collapse. I and the team didn't keep a record of our plan's redundancy, we didn't build in much to be honest and as a result of basic miscommunication we all lost our clarity in regard to the plan, causing its eventual collapse.

Backup plans- like the previous point, I learned this during production primarily, we as a team where too focused upon the benefits of our idea that we overlooked the concept that it might collapse under us, if we had written up backup plans properly and developed them alongside our primary then it would have taken far fewer work-hours to reconfigure and adapt our production when the main plan failed. what actually happened was that we where forced to design a completely new concept in an extremely short time, from the ground up. this effected our scheduling and didn't allow for proper, thorough planning. as a resultant of this, the second production collapsed as well, this time after an almost-wasted shoot day. thankfully however we had managed to create an extremely basic backup plan within the chaos of this, this backup plan germinated into what is now our final production. without it we wouldn't have been able to complete the unit.

on-the-fly planning- when your in actuality, your plan becomes a guideline, because of the nature of the universe and Murphy's law, you must be ready to adapt your plans at any time. especially in actuality. this skill has been Vital to our production. without it you, as a production team can find yourself in an untenable position. This skill is key to ANY shoot and is something you have to develop if you want to be able to react to unexpected events or circumstances. when used in conjunction with the other planning elements you can create success out of some of the worst circumstances. An example of this can be seen in this project, in this production we have been able to overcome every obstacle, work around every missed opportunity and rise above ALL of the issues we have faced in this production(of witch there where MANY) of all the skills I've developed or trained in this unit, this skill is my personal favorite. a skill that has been instrumental in our production.



Time Management -
This is a skill I wont dwell on, its one of my professional failures and, while i have had some development of this skill over the course of this unit and this year, I'm still terrible at it and its one  of the leading causes of this project's issues, to me time management is something I'm getting better at every day and is a skill that I dearly want to change into one of my strengths, this unit has illuminated just how far I have to go, however it has also brought the most development in relation to it of any unit so far.



Respect - 
Respect is my all-encompassing term for Clearance, Credit, Representation and Balance.
as a concept it covers all of the mentioned areas, respect for other's work is clearance, respect for other's effort is credit, respect for others is representation and balance is respect for the truth. I apply all the elements of respect when working professionally, I remember the rules and laws surrounding representation because to mis-represent something or someone can be detrimental in a broad range of ways. During this project I have applied the rules of "respect" to the best of my ability because its so key to a production. subjectual rules are even more key. in the most basic terms, if a person or object is a "primary subject" then permission must be gained, and permissions must be checked. I value this rule innately as I emotionally agree with its meaning.

Becca' my colleague should have uploaded our clearance and permission form(s?) to her blog, if she has not by the time of hand-in and I dont have a copy I'm afraid their not available to view, but they WERE done.


Conclusion
I hope this post explains what I've learned most in this unit, the subjects talked about above are all areas in witch I've learned to either do better or learned fresh. I understand the theory, but what I've learned has been above and beyond this. en-merging theory and practice takes a person only so far, learning professional skills and practices are more important in my opinion, both in relation to professional and personal growth.