Liverpool - Day 1

Liverpool - Day 1

On the first day after we had met up and checked in to the hostel we decided not to waste any time and went straight out with a camera, a tripod and the sound equipment to get a feel for the city. We originally planned to get a variety of Recce shots on this day and then return to the hostel to plan properly for the remaining time. Although, we came across multiple buskers and decided it was an opportunity we couldn't miss. We only got chance to get a performance of a violinist and an interview and performance of a guitarist - Toby Parker. This was because we had a limited amount of time before we had to get back to the hostel for a tutorial with Debbie. 

Our confidence was boosted greatly by finding these buskers on our first day when we didn't intend to look for any then, and we were a lot more prepared for what to do the next day when we would find more. 

However, after our meeting with Debbie, she was still not confident that would would find all the contributors that we needed and felt that the interview we had wasn't long enough so we wouldn't have enough to work with when it came to editing it. We also discovered we had a problem with the sound from that day and it was pretty much unusable because some of the settings were wrong on the zoom. We could still use all the camera shots we had got, though. This was by no fault of our sound recordist, who had never really worked with a zoom on her own before and it was a learning curve for all of us so at least it happened on the first day and we realised then rather than when we got all the sounds back to Sheffield.

Buskers: For Love Or Money

Buskers: For Love Or Money

This film captures what we set out to achieve in our film; the heart of busking and how it brings people joy and that for some it is a hobby, for some a stepping stone onto bigger and better things, or a practice for another venture they are already involved in, or for others it is simply a way to make a living and get by.

Final Treatment

Final Treatment

Our documentary explores the town center of Liverpool through the eyes of the buskers that perform there. We have a number of key characters who will share their busking experience and allow the audience to peek into this aspect of their lives. The characters will all be different from each other in terms of appearance and experiences which will add depth and variety to our documentary. We aim to include all kinds of buskers and not just musicians and singers.
The core subject matter of our documentary is to help the audience look at buskers in a way that humanises them. Buskers are often seen as a 'nuisance' and are often dehumanised by the people walking by. Through this documentary, we will try to portray the real people behind the performers and get an insight on the daily struggles of these hard workers by asking them personal questions and understanding their side of the story. Buskers, very often, are talented people who have experiences in life that many people don't have. The main inspiration behind this documentary is an article we read about the changes in busking laws. These changes meant that a few laws were scrapped including the need for a permit costing £20 and the 'Simon Cowell clause' which meant a busker could be 'unplugged' if they were not good enough. We plan to ask the buskers about their views on these changes and whether or not the previous laws affected them.
The overall mood of our documentary will be cheerful and merry as we intend to show the audience how even though the buskers work hard and may have problems in their personal lives, they still deliver something uplifting and vibrant to the people and make the streets come to life. Our documentary will include some emotional interviews, however, which means there will be more than one mood to the documentary. Our documentary style is observational with interviews, however the interviewer will not be heard in the final piece. We will also include iconic shots of Liverpool as transitions between the different buskers' interviews. This will reinforce the fact that our documentary is set in the town center and streets of Liverpool, as well this, they will work effectively as transitions. The interviews with the buskers will be done on the streets of Liverpool, where the busker was based that day. We will be using DSLRs to record our documentary as we think they will successfully capture the vibrant nature of the Liverpool town center. We will be using two, one for recording the main interviews and performances, and the other to capture close up shots and other details. Also because we will only be in Liverpool for 3 days, we want to capture as many iconic shots of the town center to use in our documentary. We will take tripods just in case, however, we want our documentary to be shot handheld to emphasise the 'street' nature of the film. We will use the performers' own music as the soundtracks after getting consent from them. As we aim to record a large variety of street musicians, I think this will work really well when the mood of the documentary changes. Atmosphere sounds will be a big part of the soundtrack of our documentary as it will add to the busy and fast paced mood.
The main, initial inspiration for the idea of the documentary was 'Dark Days' by Marc Singer. This documentary follows the lives of homeless people living in an abandoned tunnel. Our documentary, even though it'll be much shorter in length, aims to follow these buskers and allow the audience to get a feel of their lives. Also, by including what the buskers have to say about the people walking by, it allows us as the audience to understand them on a more meaningful level, similar to what Marc Singer successfully does in Dark Days. Many people's only source of income comes from busking which emphasises on how the buskers and the people featured in Dark Days both live each day as it
comes. Our second main inspiration is a documentary called 'Buskers: For Love or Money' by Chad Taylor. This is a very interesting documentary, as similar to our idea, it explores the lives of street performers in a way that the audience may not have seen before. It also raises the question of whether they busk for money or for the love of performing which we also aim to explore to some extent by asking the buskers why they do what they do.

Pitch 2 - The Albert Dock

Pitch 2 - The Albert Dock

The second idea was to do with the Albert Dock and the expanding businesses there, and also focusing on the exhibition at Tate Liverpool called Welcome To My World. It features young artists from around Liverpool. This is the treatment for the second pitch:

'Liverpool stories' is a documentary film based around Albert dock and its significance towards art and culture within the city. Our documentary will follow the observational style and will feature and showcase the artwork of young people from 3 areas of Liverpool in collaboration with Joann Kushner. 'Welcome to My World' is an art show at the Tate which will be on during the time we are in Liverpool.
Our project will explore Albert Dock as a foundation to our film and we will include conventional interviews in a fly-on-the-wall style to show the audience the up and coming businesses and art shows around the dock and what the public think of them. We will start off the documentary by briefly interviewing people who are running small, local businesses around the area and see how art and culture scene has improved their profit. As well as this, our documentary will start off with an establishing shot of Albert Dock as well as shots of the boats and the businesses surrounding it. We plan to use a variety of cinematic techniques such as time-lapses and a montage of scenic shot to grasp the artistic Liverpool scene. We will contact an artist featured in the Welcome to My World gallery to get permission to interview her and ask her what it is like being a young artist in Liverpool and what inspired her artwork. We have also been in touch with the Tate Gallery in Liverpool, however, we have not received a reply from them yet.
Our documentary mode is going to have an Expository and Participatory style to it. The reason for this is because in our documentary we are planning to have voiceovers to get our messages across to our audiences, as well as narration to pin point some facts. In our documentary we are going to include some pictures and newspapers articles to inform our audiences, as well as this we will be including interviews with the public as well as an artist featured in the gallery. By doing this, we will be incorporating a variety of different visuals for the audience to see, which will keep the viewer hooked in our documentary while still successfully making it informative.
Art and Culture these days has a niche audience, especially as now many teenagers and young adults have adapted other hobbies, therefore our target audience will be a mature audience who understand art on a deeper level. However, this does not mean that teenagers and a younger audience cannot enjoy the documentary. This is because the gallery consists of work done by other students which may be able to inspire other young adults who are aspiring artists to showcase their work.

Pitch 1 - Music

Pitch 1 - Music

We came up with the idea of filming buskers in the street performing and interviewing them on their life and why they busk, we also thought we could include The Cavern Club and make it more of a general overview of the music scene in Liverpool with performances from live bands and linking the two ideas as a progression of people's musical careers. We intended to film people performing, interview them and get some shots of crowd reactions and the general area of liverpool for establishing shots. We also considered visiting record shops. This was our original treatment for the music idea:

Liverpool Stories is a film about the streets of Liverpool, especially the busking and music scene. We came up with this idea after looking at an online article in the Liverpool Echo about busking laws changing in Liverpool. Our documentary will follow the observational style with a series of interviews and performances to showcase the benefits of previous busking laws being passed by the council. This means the audience will be able to find out about the contributors' lives through their own words.
The way we intend to project this is by exploring Liverpool through the eyes of the performers and passerbys. Because it is an observational documentary, we will film the performances, real crowd reactions and crowd interviews as well as including facts and figures about busking laws. Our film will start with a blank screen and you will hear sound such as footsteps in the busy Liverpool High Street. The sounds will then get quieter and gradually change to the sound of a street performer's music. This is when you'll be introduced visually to Liverpool's town centre followed by shots of the busker performing. This is will led to an interview with the busker, however the interviewee will not be heard in the documentary. We then plan to transport the audience through the streets and navigate them towards a variety of performers/performances through a montage of shots. As well as this, the producer is in the process of contacting different artists and the Cavern Club in order for us to film there. We have been in touch with a couple of current buskers as well as former buskers for this documentary.
We’re going to try and mimic the atmosphere of the Liverpool busking scene with an overall vibrant and upbeat editing style. We want to use fast cuts to segue between interviews/ points of interest/ topics, and interject interviews with footage of actual busking as well as the local area. The busking scene in Liverpool is generally seen as a positive thing (although not without naysayers) but the overall tone of the film will be dictated by the buskers themselves - they’ll be the ones providing the majority of the screen time and therefore the audience will empathise with them and their stories. We intend to use original music as part of our soundtrack that the buskers produce.
Music has such a broad audience that we are not restricting our target audience to a minority. However, realistically, a younger audience would be able to relate more with the buskers and members of the public more than older, mature people. Therefore, our main target audience would be young adults. As well as this, other buskers and former buskers are also our target audience, regardless their age, as they can relate to this documentary.

Initial Ideas

Initial Ideas

We met up as a group today and assigned the roles and came up with some ideas.

The roles are as follows;

• Director - Me
• Producer - Kirean
• Cinematographer - Rabia
• Editor - Andrew
• Sound Recordist - Ellie
• Sound Editor - Danayet

We came up with two ideas, the Albert Dock and the Exibition 'Welcome to My World' and Buskers and The Cavern Club.

Future Shorts

Future Shorts

Future Shorts is a film label that produces short films, some are drama and some are documentaries. Ii watched some of the films that feature on their YouTube channel and really liked Infidel, Waste and Lift.