Liverpool Day 1

Liverpool Day 1 

On the first day we wanted to give ourselves a head start so we tried to shoot as much as we could of graffiti we came across as we explored and got used to the city and street art areas. When we were shooting a piece of wall graffiti a woman came out of her house and explained the meaning behind it and who did it. She went on to explain that he is a well known street artist from Liverpool called Tomo. We then actually got in contact with Tomo through the people that owned the building he was tagging, as they were friends of his. Our Producer Hannah talked to him on the phone, but he was at first reluctant for an interview, as he is the type of graffiti artist who has tagged a lot of illegal spots so the police are to a degree looking out for him. The owners said they'd try to convince him to come around.

Day 1 was also a good day to try and get to grips with the dolly tracks we booked out, since no one in the team had ever actually used them before, but working together we sorted them so we got quite quick at setting up and dismantling them. A problem we faced during the whole process of the film was that the track we very heavy and irritating to carry around with no transport and a vast area to cover and film.

The original plan was to record vox pop interviews with the public as a back up if there was a shortage of footage, but when we discussed it I said it would just be a waste of our time. This became more apparent as Hannah started getting more messages from people linked with zap graffiti who were able to come in on wednesday and be interviewed.

In the first meeting when we got back to the hostel we decided to scrap our originally planned 6 man interview setup idea. This is because we thought 6 people around the interviewee would be very intimidating and make them much more nervous, making the interview worse. We decided to send Oliver (Sound Editor) and Saul (Editor) who were initially assistance which we didn't need, to go out and get more shots of the City and graffiti as that would benefit the production much more, while we conducted our first two interviews on Tuesday We also heard of a new location with more of Tomo's graffiti in and since we had potential contact with him this would be a good thing to match as a cutaway with his interview when we edit.

Also in the meeting we ran over the questions to ask the interviewees and tweaked them slightly so that the questions aren't closed yes/no and instead would give them a chance to elaborate. We also wanted to make sure they definitely fitted the idea of prompting the subjects to talk about a celebration of street art and not dwell on any negatives.

Alex K bought his laptop to Liverpool to make sure we could backup footage from each day so it was all in one safe place. This first day also confirmed how well we all worked as a team, as everyone helped each other out in their specific sections. 3 different people bought their DSLR's with them so there was a lot of footage captured, which is helpful as we want as much footage as possible to help the edit. And we helped with other roles such as I helped setting up the tracks and stabilising the camera when needed and also set up the backdrop and interview space as Hannah and Noah greeted the interviewees.

Notes from day 1.