DOCUMENTARY: Project Evaluation

I was very happy with the idea from the beginning, it was very BBC Three and is about a real problem which needs addressing. LGBT in football also fits in under the family/relationships and the community/social affaires heading which was a requirement of our idea at the beginning, along with the 'teen spirit' theme. To abide by the theme we purposely went and found a willing teenager to be our main character. This helped us aim at our audience of around 16-25 year olds. 

The pre-production process wasn't too bad once we had the idea sorted, the worst part was trying to get hold of a representative to interview as we were starting to panic that we weren't going to have anyone. The script was also difficult and annoyingly a big part - which we know now makes the editing process easier if you get the script and structure correct. It's easier having the correct structure planned out from the start instead of changing it about.

Despite the editing side being quite stressful with trying to plan the structure of the documentary, I have enjoyed this unit. I feel like we had a really good idea from the start and this unit has also taught us how to work in groups as the Storytelling and Directions unit were individual. I did enjoy working in a group because it was good to have Jack and Callum to discuss my ideas with and to hear their ideas as well. It was helpful to have a second opinion because in the editing process, Jack came up with ideas which I had never thought of before. 

What worked?

- The idea worked well from the start. It was a great story to begin with and all the way through the production stages we have tweaked and improved on it to make the story even better. 

- Our interviewees were really good. They were all great characters and had so much of the right things to say for us. They all answered the questions and went beyond some questions and told us more which we are grateful for. 

- Having such a close contact with the East End Phoenix through Callum was helpful as we were able to film them at two training sessions and a Sunday League match, whereas, if we didn't know any members of the team personally then we might not have been able to re-visit so many times or not have access to film at all. 

- Luckily, I think we got all the shots we needed (didn't need to re-shoot), all apart from Ed's cutaways but we were able to work around them.
- Working in a team was really helpful after completing two units individually, it was nice to have people to ask opinions of and for them to help with some editing bits and ideas.
- Having so many opportunities to meet up with Helen, Zoe and Sam helped a lot. Getting Zoe's feedback allowed us to see what she wants to see in a documentary about gay footballers and homophobia in football. We have hopefully produced something she wants to see and enjoys. We literally used every single bit of Zoe's feedback in the fine cut viewing to improve our documentary for the final edit.

What didn't work?

- I would say the interview with Ed didn't work as well as it could because of the lack of cutaways, unfortunately we couldn't use more than a couple of shots of Ed's because we had nothing to cut away to - however, this is a learning curve and we know for the future to always make sure we get cutaways, so it wasn't a waste because we've learnt from the mistake. 

- We struggled making 10 minutes, we managed to get about 8 minutes in the end. We were debating whether to put more shots and interview shots in to make the time up but we thought that would be too much and just putting shots in for the sake of it isn't a good idea. We were happy with the structure and the interviews that we included in the end. It was just frustrating how it didn't make the 10 minute mark. 

- I would say we weren't very organised in getting a representative from either a higher-leagued football team or campaign as we left it quite late. We did have a few we had spoken to but waiting for them to get back to us just prolonged the pre-production time. We were lucky to get through to Ed as I think he is a big part of our documentary, being a professional and all.  

What did I learn?

- I learnt about always, always, always getting cutaways - more shots the better. 
- We learnt to really plan and research our questions for the interviews. This is because, I think this is the reason we didn't make the 10 minute mark, some questions and answers weren't quite relevant in the end meaning we couldn't use some of the interviews. This is difficult though because we changed the focus of the documentary a couple of times. It started to be just about the team, then we wanted more information about Carl and now I think we're mainly about showing how bad the actual homophobic abuse can be. If we had thought about it and planned the doc just around how bad homophobia is then we could have found a interviewee who had a really bad experience to do with being gay and had the whole doc around that experience. It is a learning curve which we will always remember now for the future. 
- I also learnt to try and plan out the structure before editing as this makes the editing process a lot easier. 
- Having the structure sorted also allows the correct questions to be asked and therefore, allows time requirements to be met. 

What could I develop?

Updated shooting script - typed

- I think I could develop my story-telling skills, our story wasn't great until the last minute until we structured it properly.  
- I think next time I will research more into how to create a documentary script as our first draft wasn't very good, I was really unsure on what part of the script went under what heading and what exactly had to be in the script. 
- It was also really difficult to plan out the documentary before we even filmed it as usually I would order it in Premiere after filming, in the future I will work on planning it through in my head before filming if I ever work on another documentary. 

Solutions to problems we came across
- We weren't convinced with the script for a while after we made it but to solve this we kept changing it around and asked Helen each time, and she guided us with some of her ideas also. 
- We also kept getting let down by the campaigns, Jack had two different ones saying they were happy to help at one point and then he phoned back and they didn't pick up and he phoned again and again and never got through again. Even after one of the campaigns telling us they had someone we could talk to. 
- Throughout the editing process our structure wasn't quite right until the last chat with Zoe, to solve this problem we wrote down what should come next and then chopped up the footage and interviews on a new edit. We changed our shooting script and sync assembly  accordingly.

Final Cut

Below is our final documentary:

DOCUMENTARY: Fine Cut Viewing with Zoe

Today we had our fine cut viewing with Zoe. This viewing was really helpful as we were still unsure about a couple of things. The feedback from Zoe was:

- We should see a shot of carl after the tea shot

- Carl or the voice over should say about Carl being gay after the tea shot

- "Although the FA has been running a campaign around homophobia for fans and players alike who are gay...can still be a problem" - voice over idea

- Could mention that black, gay and women are still not seen as completely equal in sports/football

- The East End Phoenix (EEP) is a team trying to change that - football team is a mix of straight and gay

- The statistics should be up at the top with the EEP

- 'Keep it to themselves' statistic should be later - "The same survey suggested..."

- Keep looking for shots of Brighton FC as there is definitely abuse videos online

- First shot of Ed goes against what we were saying

- Get shots where we hear what the fans are shouting or subtitles OR quotes of abusive words over a photo of fans

- Set the EEP up more - possibly with James' interview at the beginning - show its a mixed team not just gay men

- Difficult with Ed as no cutaways - keep Ed's banter clip - put in-between James and Jason's interviews

- Keep Ed statistics clip

- Attitudes won't change towards homophobia in football, until someone comes out and goes onto the pitch and takes the abuse

- Structure = Carl, stopped playing football because..., statistics, KickItOut campaign - introduce EEP

Zoe also reminded us that in 10 minutes we should tell the audience three things. In our case, our three things are that homophobia in football is a big problem, then about the LGBT team trying to change this attitude and then finally about the fact there are no famous, gay Premiership footballers. 

She said we had everything there, we just need the correct structure. Zoe telling us what should come next really helped as it was the structure we were really struggling with. After a day of working on the improvements Jack and myself are really happy with what we have so far. The only problem is that we've cut a bit out and are slightly short at the moment, ideally we're aiming for 10 minutes but it may be around 9 minutes - we told Zoe this and she said she would be happier with a really good, informative documentary that's about a minute short than 10 minutes that doesn't fit right/doesn't make sense. 

From the feedback from Zoe we have now structured the documentary like this:
- We see carl first and reveal that he is gay as early as we introduce him really. This way we keep the audience interested, if we drag it out too long then the audience may not understand what they are watching
- Carl then says about why he stopped playing football
- Statistics are next and in amongst them we see Ed and he talks about the KickItOut campaign
- We next introduce the team that's trying to change attitudes towards LGBT footballers
- We then explain that Carl is going to have a go at the training session and we hear his thoughts at the end
- Finally, our last point is about the fact there is no Premiership footballers who have come out and we see our last word from Carl as our main character

Jack and myself have also planned a small clip showing fans and then some of the abusive remarks they can come out with which type out over the blurred footage.

We have literally taken every single bit of advice from Zoe and have planned out the next steps to create a documentary that she will enjoy. 

DOCUMENTARY: Viewing & Feedback With Sam

We had our technical viewing with Sam today. He was there to help us with any editing we were struggling with but also gave great feedback on the idea and if we followed the story or not. 

Feedback from Sam
- Have shots of team to build up Jason's introduction as it's difficult to see who Jason is.
- The shutter was left on so there is a weird light rolling down behind Ed, this cannot be changed but it's not too prominent so just a future thought.
- He understood the story which was a main concern of mine
- He thought we should have graphics of famous footballers promoting the fact they're not gay

DOCUMENTARY: Documentary Filmmaker

John Scagliotti

John Scagliotti

A documentary filmmaker I have researched into throughout this unit is John Scagliotti. John is an Emmy Award-winning American film director, producer and radio broadcaster. He has received donors for his work on documentaries about gay rights and LGBT issues, these include 'Before Stonewall' and 'After Stonewall'. The majority of his work was about gay rights and homosexual people as he also created 'In The Life' for America, this was also America's first gay and lesbian national series. John, himself, is openly gay and was with Andrew Kopkind, who passed away. He also produced a radio show with Andrew, called 'The Lavender Hour'. 

I watched an interview with John about his series, 'In The Life' which was, like I expected, really interesting. He mentions in the interview about knowing that his show was one of the first, in the early 80's, where you could go into someone's living room and feel comfortable with watching something about gay people. He had received letters from viewers, some 16-years-old, who thanked him for allowing them to feel comfortable with their sexuality watching his show around their family. From then on John said he made it a priority to make shows which let people feel comfortable with watching them, all around the world, rather than feeling awkward when watching a gay TV show. 

He also says about at the time there were so many exciting things going on in the LGBT community. John said that the editorial choices were important in his show because they were able to put together different stories at the beginning to make viewers feel comfortable to carry on watching. 

I think this is really important because you never think about making people feel comfortable when talking about issues such as LGBT as you just want to get the point across but maybe viewers weren't interested in listening because they didn't feel comfortable watching gay TV shows. By making people feel comfortable with watching them, it's letting them listen to what it's about and ideally giving them a better attitude towards LGBT. I know I haven't really thought about making my audience feel comfortable in our documentary because we just want to get out about how bad homophobia is, as soon as we reveal that the documentary is about LGBT in football some viewers may think 'no I don't want to watch that' and turn off but that's up to them. 

Dangerous Living: Coming out in the
Developing World, 2003

In relation to my research, the other documentary which interested me by John was 'Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World', which came out in 2003. Once we decided that we wanted to look at LGBT in football, this was another one of the documentaries I looked into. Initially, I looked at this one because I wanted to see how difficult it is to come out, especially around 15 years ago when this was aired - it's supposedly meant to be more common and more acceptable to come out in 2017, as gay marriage has now been legal for a few years, so it must have been really difficult coming out back in the early 2000's.

This documentary gave me an idea into the life of a homosexual and how difficult it is, is the view we want to give to the audience. We want them to think, 'oh actually, coming out is really important and it's time that people should be able to show who they are without being scared or feeling judged'. 

Our documentary and researching 'Dangerous Living' and other documentaries have actually changed my thoughts towards homophobia in football. I never realised it was such a big issue, it's not the sort of thing you hear when watching Premier League games and I just assumed everyone just treated gay people as equal, I now know that sadly this isn't the case, because of this I want to produce a great documentary getting the word out there about homophobia in football and the abuse gay people receive. 




1. UCLA. (2014). In The Life. Available: https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/collections/inthelife/clips/john-scagliotti. Last accessed 17th May 2017
2. Cinema Politica . (2003). Dangerous Living: Coming Out In The Developing World. Available: https://www.cinemapolitica.org/film/dangerous-living-coming-out-developing-world. Last accessed 17th May 2017

DOCUMENTARY: Documentary Review

'Queer Britain'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p050zvxs

The documentary I have chosen to write about is 'Queer Britain', this is a 30 minute, documentary TV programme exploring what it's like to be gay in 2017. The presenter Riyadh Khalaf uses his own personal experiences to look at the issues affecting many young people, between 16-35 years old in the LGBTQ community. Riyadh describes the programme as inspiring and moving and "The series pulls no punches and goes straight to the heart of the issues facing LGBTQ+ people in the UK today. At times it’ll make you feel uncomfortable, shocked and maybe even upset, but overall I think you will see the beauty and diversity of this community in its full glory. This is a raw representation of modern Queer life - the highs, the lows and the high heels!" (AJ, 2017)

This documentary shows a different side to coming out than 'Dangerous Living: Coming Out In The Developing World' because that was about what it was like back in 2003 and 'Queer Britain' is about 2017, and to be honest I don't think it's changed. People still feel just as scared to come out and show everyone their sexuality which is wrong. 

I specifically watched the 'Search for the Perfect Body' documentary, as it is about the gay people wanting to find the perfect body to fit in with straight people and our documentary talks about our characters not being able to fit in within straight football teams. 'Queer Britain' also talk to many different types of people for their interviews. This is similar to ours where we have two gay men talking and then a straight man with the same views, then finally an older straight man who also has similar views.

The audience 'Queer Britain' is aiming for is the same age who we are aiming for with our documentary. Roughly, the 16-25 age group as this is when teenagers are really considering who they want to grow up as, whether it is a gay man/woman, bisexual, transgender or are happy with their sexuality being straight. Knowing that they are both focused to the same age audience, watching 'Queer Britain' helped me see what young people want to hear and how to make our doc/the interviews more appealing to that age group. At the beginning the doc straight away gets into the story and we are introduced to a very energetic presenter. I feel we get straight into it with our doc, our 'voice of God' gets straight into introducing our main character and the second bit of voice over goes straight into saying about how he's gay and has found it hard to fit in and feel equal amongst other people and sly comments. 

1. AJ. (2017). BBC Three explores what it means to be queer in Britain in 2017. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/queer-britain. Last accessed 17th May 2017
2. BBC Three. (2017). BBC iPlayer. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0513gl2/queer-britain-series-1-2-the-search-for-the-perfect-body. Last accessed 17th May 2017

DOCUMENTARY: Using Brighton FC In The Edit

From the start we knew we wanted to include something about Brighton because they can be seen as the 'gay capital' in Britain with all the LGBT events they host. However, this does mean that they receive a lot of homophobic abuse and this is the sort of abuse we wanted to include in our documentary.

We did try to get in touch with Brighton & Hove Albion FC to see if we could meet them and film a football game but we were unsuccessful. We still want to include the abuse though so we have looked for stock footage to use and credit. 

The first video we found was riots through the streets of Brighton around a piece of art across the famous Clock Tower by Finnish artist, Kaarina Kaikkonen, for the Brighton Pride festival. The piece is made entirely from old clothes donated by people in the city, called 'Time Passing'. The shock is the football fans shouting abuse about it! If they say bad things about a piece of art then the homophobic Brighton and Hove Albion get must be terrible. The crowds can be heard shouting "What the f*ck is that! What the f*ck is that? I want my shirt back, I want my shirt back". Maybe because the tops were rainbow colours which links with the LGBT community is why the fans we so offended by it and felt the need to shout abusive remarks. 

Time Passing installation 

Watching the video, Jack and myself were shocked with how rude the fans were being. There was no need for the horrible words but they felt something should be said. The installation wasn't doing anything wrong. 

Below is the video which we are going to feature in our edit to show how bad the abusive remarks can be in Brighton. This should also help our documentary show how bad homophobic abuse is still, after years of battling that LGBT people should be treated just as equal as everyone else. 

Screenshot of youtube video

The second video we found was from an actual Brighton game and we see the fans shouting abuse down to the pitch and in some parts the stewards actually have to take people out because they are being so abusive. 

Steward escorting two abusive fans out

Again, we were shocked at the remarks they were making and how horrible some people can actually be. Brighton FC was definitely a good shout because we never realised how much homophobia abuse there is around, especially as I personally never hear it being shouted.

I am very happy that we have thought to include this in our documentary as it really shows how far people can go. Our idea is to create little sub-titles with what they are saying as it is hard to hear. We are also planning to blur the videos with peoples faces in them because of confidentiality and their privacy. 

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaOWAPbndzA

- http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id_11510.aspx

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXu8ap0J-YE

DOCUMENTARY: Editing The Doc & Rough Cut Feedback

I am in charge of editing the documentary and at the moment it is going really well. The structure at the moment is like a football game would be, we have a whistle sound to start the doc and one for half time, starting the second half and then to finish the documentary. At the moment, we look like we are going to meet the 10 minute requirement which is always promising. I haven't put in James and Jason's interviews yet as I haven't finished transcribing them. The edit so far looks a bit boring but it should look better once their interviews are involved and we add the sounds and sound effects. I have changed it ever so slightly from the original sync assembly as it didn't look right once it was all put together, nevertheless, it's looking good. 

Our rough cut is going to be seen tomorrow by Zoe and I think we are ready for it, we are happy with it so far so it'll be interesting to see what Zoe thinks. We were so happy with the outcome from the interviews, they all did so well and have allowed us to start creating a piece of work we are really happy with.

Screenshot of editing process so far

Rough cut feedback
After Zoe watched our rough cut we went for a chat with her. She said the look of it was really nice and the interviews were shot really well. However, we need to structure the story slightly better. To start with we had Carls interview and journey to the training session and then his after interview so we could structure the rest of the doc the same way a football game is structured. Zoe suggested we use Carl throughout the doc and place his after interview at the end to finish it. She also said we need more on the other characters, Carl's build up was really good but the others just appear and aren't really introduced, or instead of this, use Carl more as our main character throughout. 

As Callum and Jack didn't get any cutaways with the interview with Ed because of the time we are unable to use a lot of Ed's interview, which is annoying as he says a lot which would work in our doc and gave a great interview in general. 

I think the route we will go down to improve our doc for next week will be the idea of using Carl more as we are unable to re-film the other characters as they're based in London and it's a bit too late to go back, and we have a lot of footage with Carl.

DOCUMENTARY: Time-codes, Transcript & Sync Assembly

Jack recording the V.O

Today we did all we could do towards the transcript and sync assembly. We still need to film tomorrow evening at another training session to get James' and Jason's interviews. Apart from these we have completed all our other filming, as we recorded the voice over today also.

The voice over went well, we found Jack would be the best voice for the documentary and we recorded a couple of lines, introducing Carl, stating the statistics and talking about the East End Phoenix. 

Time-codes
I created the time-codes for all the interviews. This included Carl's before and after training session interview and Ed's interview and James' and Jason's interviews. 

This was a very long and boring process but as we learnt it has to be done to make the editing process a lot easier.  

Sections of Carl and Ed's time-coded interviews

Transcript

The transcript is every single word which was said during all the interviews. It was also a long but essential process. Some bits I took from the time-codes as I copied the majority of the time-codes word for word as well. Below is our full transcript:

Sync assembly
We highlighted all the speech we found important for the documentary on the time-code sheet and put it in the right order. This is our edited documentary down on paper, now all I need to do is put it together on Premiere to create the base of our actual documentary. We changed the plan from the original script, we knew this would happen but we've changed it quite a bit and are a lot happier with it now. 

Finding the correct order for everything was the hardest part as we originally planned to structure the documentary as a football game, e.g. the first whistle to start the game blows at the beginning of the doc and then half time whistles and then the full time whistle to end the doc and cut to each character while the game is playing. We then had to put in Carl's training session somewhere but it would have been confusing if we were cutting from a real Sunday League game to a training session with different people, different clothing and a different location. Therefore, we decided to get Carl's section done at the beginning and take him to the training session then and then blow the first whistle for the actual match footage and place the other interviews in between. 

Screenshot of the start of the sync assembly

The only problem with this is that some things that Carl and Ed say link quite well together and ideally would be nice cut together in the edit but we need to keep Carl at the top and Ed in the middle so we aren't confusing our audience, which was slightly annoying.

Once we agreed on the structure we created a shooting script which is what we followed to place everything in the correct order in Premiere. 

Paper sync assembly

           





Once Jack and myself highlighted and agreed on what should go into the edit, I started putting it together on Premiere Pro. We followed the shooting script to help us structure the documentary for the first edit. 

DOCUMENTARY: Shoot Week

Like I said in previous posts, after numerous emails and many, many phone calls we finally got through to one of the 5 football clubs/networks we were trying to contact! The Gay Football Supporters' Network (GFSN) got back to Callum and they agreed for us to talk with someone on Monday at their office. The chairman of the network we are interviewing, Edward Connell, also knows the opposing team the East End Phoenix are playing on Sunday , which is the match we are filming. Jason, one of our interviewees, knows Ed also. I think the fact the representative has a connection with the other people in our documentary is good because it builds a nice relationship between our interviewees.

Shoot Day 1

- Today Jack is filming Carl's interview at his house and then Callum and Jack are taking Carl to the training session with the East End Phoenix. We may also be getting Jason's interview tonight at the training session. Lastly, they will be getting his after session interview. 

Day 1 Feedback
- Todays filming went really well and we are on schedule at the moment. Callum and Jack completed Carl's interview and successfully took him to the training session and got his after session interview also. We all agreed it would be easier to get Jason and James' interviews on Sunday when they film the match. 
- Carl's interview was amazing, he's such a character and answered everything and more for us. We are so lucky he was willing to be apart of our documentary and went to try the training session. 
- He also had a plain wall for us to sit him in front of. We wanted some things to do with football around him, unfortunately he didn't have any trophies or any photos as it was a couple of years since he had played. As a result of this we set him next to the television and put a football game on. The look on the camera was slightly yellow because of the cream walls but we can change the creams to whites in post-production which will make the shots look more aesthetically pleasing. 

Carl's living room - interview area

Mile End Stadium

- Like I said in my 'Documentary: Location Development' post, we had to film outside the fence however, it was still quite a good view and I am very happy with the shots they got. 
- The after match interview isn't very long as the battery was about to die and the memory was nearly full from filming all day and filming Carl and the team training, nevertheless, we have some footage of Carl's after thoughts which is better than not having this interview at all. 
- Callum fiddled with the exposure during filming to get it right so some shots are slightly lighter and darker than the others. I should be able to even these out in post-production, if not I will be careful not to put a light shot and a darker shot next to each other to stop the jump in lighting. 
- Nevertheless, so far so good and we are ready to film the match on Sunday. 

Shoot Day 2
- Callum filmed the East End Phoenix playing a match from their Sunday League on our second shoot day.

Day 2 Feedback
- Unfortunately, we had a problem with the clip mic's and Callum couldn't do anything about it. Due to this, we were not able to follow our schedule and interview James and Jason today but instead he just got the footage of the match and close ups of James and Jason. We managed to get the match footage which we wouldn't have been able to another time so today was still worthwhile. 
- The shots from the match are really good, we can definitely use them as cutaways and points to talk about in our documentary.
- We have planned to do the interviews at their Thursday training session. 


Shoot Day 3
- Today included meeting with the representative from the Gay Football Supporters' Network, Edward Connel and getting his interview about the work he and the network do and his view towards homophobia in football. 

Day 3 Feedback
- Despite some sound problems again at the beginning of the day, todays shoot went really well and went according to schedule. Ed was really lovely and answered all our questions and more. 
- Callum and Jack didn't get any cutaways in Ed's office, I am hoping I'll work around this but it may mean we can't use some of the interview with nothing to cut it to. 
- This can also mean his interview may be quite boring but I should be able to find stock footage of the GFSN in action which will go with some of his points he said in the interview.
- Everything Ed said was relevant and he couldn't have answered the questions better, he was very interesting and finally having a professional/someone from a real campaign is a real bonus to our documentary. 

Shoot Day 4
- Callum is filming the interviews with James and Jason on our last filming day as we were unable to film them on day 2. Once this is done all our filming is complete and we are ready to put our all into the edit. 

Day 4 Feedback
- Day 4 went really well. Callum filmed good interviews with James and Jason. A couple of times they both went straight into answering the actual question rather than using the question in their answer. 
- I should be able to work round this, e.g. by using footage of subject they're talking about at to link with the interviews. It'll also be nice to have visuals linking with the words for the audience. 
- The interviews weren't very long, they were both about 2 minutes. They said the right things but if we had added more questions maybe we would have got another view of something else which could have taken our documentary down another path. 
- Nevertheless, we have their interviews and can start the post-production process.