Documentary: Dreams of a life

Dreams of a life


Quick facts
- Written by Cairo Cannon & Carol Morley 

- a film that tells the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, whose body was found in January 2006 decomposing in her bedsit in Wood Green, North London, after she apparently died unnoticed in December 2003, surrounded by unopened Christmas presents with her TV still switched on

- won awards from 3 different film festivals



We were shown this documentary during a lecture and it was one of the most moving things I've ever seen. Partly because you cant help but put yourself in the position of the main characters. The creators captured the emotion from all the characters and there are multiple techniques used throughout to evoke emotion. 

  • First major thing to note is the use of reconstructions to further illustrate the settings and what kind of life the main character (Joyce) was living.  

Here is an image of the reconstruction of her home. 

  • I noticed that they had a lot of set up interviews with real people who knew her throughout their life. Although it was a set up interview, the way they were positioned and the use of lighting allowed you to focus on what they are saying. Even though it was structured, there were times where the camera would hold onto their facial expressions and their reactions. It made you form connections with the characters. By showing their real emotions, it heightened the accuracy of the film, it separated the reconstructions from the reality.
 
  • Here you can see one of the speakers are centred, looking at the camera. The lighting is deep and intense and makes you focus on their eyes. 

The whole thing made me think about how you can show people's personalities. They did not have a narrator and instead it was the voices of the interviewees that told the story. So clearly the creators of this documentary would've had specific questions to ask them. questions that they knew would allow the interviewees to give elaborate and in depth answers. It just made me realise that if this is the style we end up going for, its important to know what angle you are trying to portray and to know what questions you should ask in order to get the answers you need. This goes for all projects and not just documentary 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Directions: Drama: SFX make up

Image
For my production I wanted to create prosthetics to heighten the believability and the quality of my zombies. I watched a lot of youtube tutorials and I realised that there is a technique to creating such pieces but I was really willing to try it out. Usually you would need to make a a cast for the persons face but I decided to simplify it for myself and just use  plate. I learnt that this could be just as good after watching someone create a brilliant prosthetic that way.  In the video here you can see that she has moulded the clay in to the desired shape and preps it for the covering of the liquid latex. I then proceeded to doing the same.   I was using coloured, oil based clay for mine. I was then required to sprinkle flour over mine to thicken the layer of the latex. I would repeat that until I was happy with the thickness. In the same tutorial, she moulded teeth for her zombie and I thought it would've been cool to do the same. For this, I had to bite d
Read more

Directions: Self Portrait: The Development of the idea and Test Footage

Image
I had an idea of how I wanted my self portrait to look, I wanted to incorporate nice imagery from a collection of places that I have been and I wanted it to have a double exposure effect, almost like it was imprinting on me. I learned that in order to get that effect, I would need to be in front of a plain background, green screen would be best. I watched a few tutorial on this;   But I later found another tutorial where I learned that you can also achieve this look without a green screen, the background just had to be plain. After learning about this, I was relieved because it would be easier for me to do it on a white background, especially when I realised that the studios had plain white walls with good lighting after a workshop. I wanted to conduct some test footage and try out the design to see if it was actually plausible. Here are some stills of the test footage. After shooting this I realised that the only shots I could practice on were the ones wh
Read more

Major Project: Table Read with actors

Image
What the meeting consisted of;  This part of the unit was really important as it required me to take my directing skills to the next step. the official definition for a 'Table Read" is described as " A table read is when actors sit around tables in a large room (or sometimes your living room!) and read through the script aloud.  " - Backstage.com (2014) I knew it would really require me to know exactly how I wanted my actors to portray their characters.  This table read consisted of me arriving at my actress Sigourney's house and Moses would meet me there. Both actors where able to meet each other for the first time so that was really good. We then sat around the table and read through the script but most importantly we focussed on scenes that needed to evoke the most emotion or scenes that required a certain emphasis. I took some recordings to allow me to listen back if I ever wanted  I had to make sure I was listening carefully to every word and pronunciati
Read more