personal Project

When I was told we were to create a 5 - 8 minute personal piece , I was excited to make something completely my own , but also apprehensive that I wouldn't have anyone to help me with the parts of editing or camera work that I wasn't so knowledgeable with.

The idea of making a mini documentary on Allotments came to me quite early. I've always liked to look of allotments, but have never really been involved in one, so it would be an exciting new project. Allotments had been in the spotlight quite a bit as well, the main topic being the Olympic Stadium Development which was intending to build over allotments' in Hackney.

I looked at some '3 minute wonder' mini documentaries, and although mine would be longer than this, I liked how concise it was but how much they explored.



I like channel 4's documentaries, I looked at one in particular 'My Big fat gypsy wedding'. I liked the way in which interviews were dotted throughout the doc.The story was unraveled through the piece,and as this subject was something people didn't necessarily know about, but had their own opinions, it was interesting to see stereotypes proved wrong as the piece went on.I like this 'story' effect, especially as I don't really know anything about allotments, i'm not sure as to which direction my documentary will go.

I wanted the documentary to be an insight into the culture of allotments, but as I researched them I realised the extent in which Allotments in and around London currently are being built on, yet the waiting lists to own an allotment keep rising.

I knew someone who had an allotment in West London and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to film here as she could let me in and could give me an insiders view on the allotment.

Saturday and Sunday 24th and 25th April

Luckily it was a lovely sunny day , so I packed up my Panasonic, tripod, Rode video microphone, headphones and a packed lunch and set off to Framfield Allotments in Hanwell, West London. My Boyfriend Connor also came along to help with sound, some camera work and genrally to help out.
On arrival we set up equipment and Sandra took us on a tour of the Allotments, this settles me in and I decided to film some shots of the Allotment, As I was walking round so many things caught my eye so I had alot of footage of the allotments surroundings. Whilst filming near a family's plot two children came up to ask what we were doing and after asking their father if we could film them , I interviewed them . I realised i didn't have the battery for my Rode microphone so I was hoping once this came back to the editing lab that the sound quality would be alright, as I did not want to risk coming back tomorrow and find out they are not there. This really boosted my confidence to go and talk to other people in the allotment.

On Sunday I came back with the battery for the microphone and spoke to many more others.I again filmed some more shots of the allotment.

The next weekend I wanted to film also, but it was raining and this meant that nobody was really on the allotment, and as this was such a short piece, I wanted there to be continuity in the weather, so this wouldn't really work, I also had wanted to shoot parts of London to show the contrast of landscape, but due to the rain I didn't want to wreck the camera equipment.

Whilst editing this project I was also amidst editing the group project, so I was lucky to have Final Cut Express on my Mac so I could work on the group project in the Gatehouse during the day and on my personal project at home in the evening.
When editing my second tape I realised that the cover for the microphone had been hanging down and gave a 'fringe' to all of the footage, I was so angry , but this was the role with most the interviews on and I couldn't just scrap it , so it was a lesson for next time.

I found editing at first quite hard, wondering which bits to use and which order I should put them in , but once i had filtered the footage I wanted to keep down , I started to have fun and really enjoyed making a story out of it !

I wrote a script for the documentary, this really helped with making this have a structure and tied the interviews together well.

Once I had finished I uploaded my film to IDVD, this programme was simple to use, although when I uploaded it the video was stretched, so I compressed it for Quicktime again and changed the dimensions, luckily this worked. Once I had burnt the DVD I watched it downstairs on my television, and although I was pointing out bits I wasn't pleased with , I was quite proud that this was my own work.

This is my finished piece!