Institutions for our Film

The Distributor company we chose was Soda Pictures (a Thunderbird Company) because they support indie cinema and they had been a part of many good documentaries which we used as research for our opening sequences such as Teenage (Dir. Matt Wolf).

Soda Pictures is an Anglo-Canadian film distributor of art house, independent and world cinema. 

Furthermore Soda Pictures has been known to work with indie producers so they will fit well with our company of 'The Documentary Producers' they believe in the three E's...Experience. Expertise. Excellence. They believe in first time filmmakers and documenting major parts of history, this is why I feel this would work for our doc because ours is about a culture shift of generations to do with tattoos.

New Script

After the feedback from Mrs Field that had one point that our script focused too much on that every one conformed to the norm and that we weren't really presenting that the documentary was about expression within society and that sometimes the use of big words can become pretentious and bore the watcher/listener. There fore we re wrote the script, keeping it simple and with the key values of the documentary in mind.

Peer Feedback

This is feedback from the media classes on my First draft of my opening sequence for media

Holding Shot steady where appropriate
Everyone said this was excellent, that all my shots were steady where appropriate, that the camerawork was excellent.

Framing a Shot
All the framing of the shots was said to be excellent including everything that was relevant and appropriate.

Using a Variety of shots & Distances
I used all the shot types (extreme close up, close up, mid, long shot, extreme lone shot) and did so at different angels (high &low). I used the shots appropriately keeping interest through the montage but apparently there were too many close ups, I will look at a way of taking out some of the close up although some said that the close up were like-able.

Using Titles Appropriatly
Titles were seen to vary from Proficient to excellent, they were known to be appropriate in style, font and colour, the simplicity of them shows how it is a high budget film and goes along with the documentary feel of the film but it was thought the spacing of the titles needed to be looked at.

Mise en Scene
The mise en scene of the tattoo parlour helped with giving to the topic of Tattoos being focus very clearly. The colours overall of the films were apparently very nice, it wasn't all the same colour throughout making it nice to look at but some people said the constant light to dark changes of the shots was not very good.

Editing so that the meaning is apparent
My editing was applauded and appropriate for the genre of a documentary. It was said that the opening starts more generally around the subject and then gets to the point, that the shots are in a good order. The interview is a bit too long though because it feels like it is the end of a film.

Shot transitions and other effects
Shots cut a lot because there are no real transition effects on the narration montages but apparently this goes well because it goes along with the narration and what the narrative that is trying to be put across and because of this it flows well. Also because of the transitioning from shot to shot being fast it gave the film pace which is what I wanted I wanted the fast pace top replicate the craziness of society and then to slow down once the complete narrative had been dropped.

Using sound with Images and editing
The music is really good and sets the atmosphere but sometimes the narrations. The tattoo parlour sound is loud and what is being said can barely be heard, something needs to be done here to improve. Subtitles could be used during the interviews.

Teacher Feedback on First Draft

Mrs Brookes

WWW - Camera shots, Editing and Mise En Scene.
EBI - link between intro and tattoo where is that? Voice over a little to complex maybe shorter and shorter. When you walk into the parlour, you need intro. Job title needed. Lower tattooing sound. Cut out "yeah". Need more tattoo scenes.

Mrs Field

WWW - Shots are very well done. Editing is good.
EBI - Need to simplify the narration at the beginning of the film opening. Improve sound of the tattoo noise. Job titles should be added. Need to remove the constant "yeah".

Mr Amato

Really like the titles but can be positioned better.
Feels TV Documentary rather than a film, this could be because of the instant voice over. More instant talking and change the font that you use as it goes on and on and I do not like the late titles. Subject matter hands you some potentially beautiful shots that wait really evident.

Improvements from Feedback

It is clear we need to make the link between the montage and the tattoo parlour footage more obvious or apparent. Mrs Bond as said we could do this by focusing on the script of the narration, to simplify it maybe so it doesn't get lost in the big pretentious words that we used. It is also clear that we must remove the "yeah" responses from the video because they constantly come up and maybe distract from what is being said by the person being interviewed; this is easily done through using the background noise recorded in different shots to fill the space where the "yeah" used to be. I am afraid there is not much to be done with the background noise in the interviews, we can lower the sound but then we do not want the dialogue to be lost so we are going to put subtitles onto the interviews, this may play in our favour making the piece look more like a documentary.

Marketing Campaign (Improve)

Our target audience is 16-24 year olds but obviously anyone could watch the film. Therefore our marketing will be based on what influences the people of these ages. We believe that most young people who would be influenced or interested by a tattoo documentary usually use all kinds of social media. Therefore we will advertise our film on the most popular social media sites that these ages would constantly use. Such as:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Tumblr
• Reddit
• Imgur

We would most likely advertyise through banners, film posters or pictures or short clips of video from the documentary on these social media sites and then on YouTube we would advertise a short trailer or the opening sequence to the audience to gauge interest on a another format.

We would also create a website for our Documentary as a way of finding us. Our website would include such things as :

• Home page - short introduction of the documentary.
• Newsletter about the production of the documentary.
• Links to our social media
• Trailer Tabs
• The team portfolio 

Diagram Plan of website :::

Risk Assessment

This is the risk assessment for our weekend shoot...

Shooting Schedule

This the shooting schedule of everything we shot, when and where.

Letter of Permition

This is the permission letter that our teacher wrote for us in case we got stopped at any point and someone would need information but when we were filming we were either in the tattoo parlour where we had permission from the owner and customers to shoot or we were on the highstreet of town, a public space where it is completely legal to film. We ran into no problems.

Mood Board

Location Recce

These are picture and descriptions of a few specific places from places that we plan to shoot in.

This is the tattoo parlour which has agreed to let us interview inside and film the surrounding shop area.

 This is a main road which is great for a time-lapse or shots of hustle and bustle that are at the beginning of the storyboard.

This is where we will shoot the tracking shot of someone taking a picture, for the creative part of the montage and narration. It works two ways with the graffiti art in the background and someone taking a picture - two creative things.

This is another place where we will film the montage shots of hustle and bustle, it is a busy high-street on weekend (when we plan to shoot) so it will be perfect.

Script for Narration

Here is the script I wrote for the narration of the beginning of the opening sequence. As you can see there are annotations put on there splitting up different montage/scenes of the opening sequence, what shots to get, there timings etc.

Props Research

There were no specific props we would have to get for the story/opening scene, most things used in the shots/scenes we get would just part of the mise en for example ::::

So for this shot we were trying to show how we are creatively inspired from the online world so we needed a computer and pc in shot; it wasn't a prop but part of the scene that was needed.

This is the same throughout the opening, just look at the storyboard and you can what parts made up scene sand this is what my team and I discussed when creating our shots. More examples are the tattoo needles in the tattoo parlour, art equipment in the artists scene etc etc.

Music Research

For our music research we decided to look for YouTube supported, royalty free music. This means we face no copyright issues and are allowed to use the music in our film opening. We looked through many different tabs, to change genre and mood, to find the best song(s) for our opening. We have found two songs that we feel best fit the mood and enigma we wish to create in our opening. We have chosen a dramatic/ambient song with a deep baseline to create enigma and a dramatic mood. And we also chose a happy upbeat piece to create a positive vibe about our documentary.

Fonts & Title Ideas

I've looked at many documentaries online about tattoos and all seem to have feature words to do with skin, ink and tattoos. However we wanted to create enigma for our documentary, so we decided not to add any words like that.


Titles I feel we could use:
Living Canvas
Living Ink
Tatted Generation
Painted People

We were also thinking of the fonts we could use for our title. We used the title 'Tatted Generation' as an example but it is still currently a working title. These are the fonts we decided we could:

Title Research for Documentaries

Title Research 

We researched the films McCullin and Ed Hardy : Tattoo the World
In my research I have discovered that titles come in this order:

Production team (This is always first and usually has 'In association with' before it.)
Who filmed the documentary (Usually saying 'A Film by...')
Cinematographers (Usually with 'Cinematography....')
Music (Who created the music for the documentary, usually with 'Music...)
Who edited the film (Usually with 'Film Editors...')
Who produced the documentary (Usually with 'Executive Producers...')
With interviews the names and their role in the documentary comes up as they are interviewed.


We used the above order researched from the documentaries to make our own title sequence.
Order of appearance in our opening scene:

Soda Pictures (With logo, on a black screen)
A Group production logo
A film by Nathan Henton
Cinematography, Aaron Hunt
Music, Octagon
Film Editors, Nathan Henton & Ben Griffiths
Producer, Poppy Johnson

Evidence of Planning

Photos showing parts of the planning process with the group :::

 This the beginning of creating the post it note storyboard, where we just drew shots or wrote down a description of shots we needed/wanted.

We then stuck the post it note together into different sections, going together into :

Interview shots
Filler Shots
Montage of Narration

Here you can see the layout of the shot groups more easily and how we started looking at the script and doing the storyboard properly using the shots we drew already and the script as a guide to what we were making.

Email to Tattoo Parlours

This is the email we sent initially to the tattoo parlours that had email addresses for. We also called a couple of them to see about arranging a meet up or coming in at the weekend to interview.

We then preeceeded to call them and set up that we would go in and film on the following Saturday.

Evidence of Genre Conventions

Evidence of Planned opening going with genre conventions :::
The conventions of documentaries were mentioned in the film pitch.

• In the narration video I mentioned a script, the script will be a piece of narration that goes over the top of the opening two minutes. This is a common convention of the documentary genre with voice overs in a clear distinctive voice helping the narrative of the film and encouraging the watcher to listen and think.
• All of our footage will be "real footage" none of it is acted or re created for the film. Interviews and real places that are not fictionally made will be included which is a must with most documentaries.
• We be using archive footage on two occasion, one is the video of the catwalk (which is shot 8) and the other is in the form of a photo collage (shot 27) of hipsters all looking the same which will be collected online.
• Interview exerts will be used to provide thought provoking opinion and information. Which is mentioned in the narration video right at the end of, it will be one of the last shots we get.
• We will have non-diegetic sound throughout the whole of the opening, maybe taken away for interview exerts, to add an ambience and atmosphere to the opening.
• Visual Coding - the Mise en Scene of the whole opening sequence will add to the realness, hint at narrative and go along with narration. For example in the interviews the person being interviewed will maybe have tattoos or piercings or in the background there might be tattoo art all in the background on walls etc.

Shot List

Shot List 

Shot 1 - 6 will be a short montage of a 'hustle and bustle' of people walking, a cashier, buses. This could vary depending on shots which could be 1 second instead of 0.5 seconds.

Shot 7 - This shot will last 4 seconds and it will focus on a young and old person at a bus stop, this will be a still long shot.

Shot 8 - 11 will include 4 shots that last 2 seconds each which will show a catwalk clip, someone reading a celeb magazine, a girl looking at herself in the mirror and a extreme close up with a blurred background.

Shot 12 - 18 will include a shot beginning at a extreme close up on someone typing on a keyboard then transitioning to a mouse, then a fast zoom out to a high right angle facing down, then to a mid shot over the right shoulder slowly going closer to the computer then to a POV shot of looking at YouTube and Instagram.

Shot 19 - 23 will begin at a foot and then slowly go upwards from the shoe to the person looking through a camera, we have done this to present the creativity of our generation. Then there is a transition which is from zooming into the camera and transitioning to someone grabbing a pencil presenting our generation is artistic, then zooming out to present the person drawing.

Shot 24 - 25 will be someone drinking from a Starbucks cup then quick cuts back and forth from a Starbucks cup and a Costa cup to show similarity.

Shot 26 will be a long shot of a group of people and all dressed very similar.

Shot 27 will be a series of images showing hipsters to fill up screen with a collage.

Shot 28 this is where our film opening will tell the audience our film opening is about tattoos as this will be an interview about tattoos and this will be presented in a mid shot and we have chosen tell the audience this late is so enigma is created throughout the film opening.

Shot 29 This is where the title will appear and the title will be surrounded in tattoo related images.

Shot 30 (possibility) We could have a final clip after the title scene but this will be to create enigma and we are not sure what it will include.

Storyboard Narration

This is the talk through my story board of the film opening me and my group are doing.

This is the first page of our storyboard, consisting mainly of montage shots going along with the narration.

The 2nd page as more montage shots, which go along with the script that we wrote.

The last page finishes the montage going along with the narration and then go into  the interviews scenes from the tattoo parlours.