Team Meeting Notes
Here is a page showing our team meeting notes. We met over the summer to discuss our ideas, which is displayed more detailed in the blog. We mainly communicate through text messaging, as it's the easiest way to get into contact with each other, but of course we also have our all important lesson time.
This is a short video that Tamuka made as practise for our short film. It includes a young boy from our local area, Sonny, who skates as a hobby. The video shows Sonny skating in our local, public skate area - Lloyds Park.
TA Media's First Team Meeting
Today we met up to discuss the genre and content of our film. It was a vital planning day, as we considered all of our options regarding this short film.
Our initial planning took place at Tamuka's house where we discussed all the genres of short film and which ones we liked the most. It was agreed that we both wanted to do something creative and unique, thus the idea of a documentary came about as they hadn't been done for years in our sixth form.
I mentioned that I watched a lot of documentaries on television, mainly on BBC3 and Channel 4 by journalists like Stacey Dooley. Tamuka then mentioned that he liked watching documentaries about sports, particularly skateboarding, in which we then watched a film called 'The Motivation'. The film was based on the lives of skateboarders, following their every move as they prepare for an upcoming Championship Competition in New York.
Tamuka then showed me a short video he made in our local skate park - Lloyds Park, Walthamstow. I found the topic of skateboarding interesting and since it was out of my comfort zone of documentaries I would usually watch, I liked the challenge to create one about something different.
Practise Filming Session
Today we decided to do an experimental filming session before we decided to started shooting the real short film.
We also discussed possible locations for our skateboarding topic.
Locations discussed:
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Slam City Skates Store
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Southbank Skate Park "home of skateboarding"
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Lloyds Skate Park
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Hackney Skate Park
Photographs from filming below; we captured more images than footage.
October 7th 2015
Discussion of first location - interview with a worker/owner of 'Slam City Skates Store':
Here are some of the interview questions we asked:
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What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about skating? (Response was "creativity")
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How long have you been skating?
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How long did it take you to learn an "ollie" (skateboarding trick)?
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Do you think dedication is important?
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What are the benefits of skateboarding?
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Why do you skateboard?
We also documented some of the merchandise available in the skateboarding store via a panning shot e.g. bearings, skateboards, trainers and streetwear branded clothes
Filming at our first location - Slam City Skates Store, Bethnal Green.
We decided to get long shots outside the store, whereby actor Reece Williams allowed us to include him in the footage.
October 14th 2015: First Editing Session
Today we edited the first part of our documentary short film, which included the "interview with an expert" - Khi Graham. We asked him a set of questions and filmed some street view shots outside Slam City Skates Store. An issue occured when filming: memory card wasn't big enough, which made the editing process a lot longer, as we had to work with the interview footage we had; the camera cut out in the middle of his reponses quite often.
4th November: Film Session 2 at Lloyds Skate Park with Daniel Jacobs
5th November: Film Review Workshop with Charles Gant
12th &13th November: Editing Days
16th November: Team meeting discussion that we need more footage.
Blue Cross Symbol - other key dates
Red Cross Symbol - filming and editing sessions
12th December: Film Session 3 at Southbank Skate Park
14th December: Editing Day
20th December: Audience feedback session at the near halfway point at 2.8mins mins of edited footage.
HOLIDAYS
CHRISTMAS
9th January: Southbank Skate Park (Day 2 of Filming)
11th January: Editing Day
14th January: Film Session 4 at Slam City Skates Store, Covent Garden
(This includes a short interview with a skateboarder from the event.)
15th January: Editing Day
Gather audience feedback / Create ancillary texts / Start evaluation questions
Mock Exam Week - No Lessons!
Key Date: 13th January - Title Decision Finalised!!
Our finalised film title is 'It's Not Raining' - a motivational phrased used by Tamuka and his friends while skateboarding; it was said to make them forget about the bad weather, thus encouraging them to carry on skateboarding despite it. This title will be explained at the end in a voice over by Tamuka himself, in order for the audience to grasp the actual meaning.
We think this is a catchy, unique name which we hope will make the audience think (a key part of documentaries) and make them curious to watch our short film.
By doing these team meeting notes we could easily keep track of the different tasks we had completed and those that were still to be done.
We decided to make a 'To Do Checklist' to help us keep on track on the next few tasks.
Add voiceovers to short film
Gather more audience feedback
Brainstorm ideas for ancillary texts
Construct both ancillary texts
Brainstorm creative ways to answer evaluation questions
Add a "home video" to explain title of short
Research into short film posters and magazine reviews
Do creative page to answer Question 1
Create a poem to answer Question 2
Create a radio show style page for Question 3
Do a prezi for Question 4
Our final 'thing to do' is to check over the website ane read through for any punctuation errors and any other general mistakes/amendments that need to be made.
By Ashley Fontaine