Vegetarian Documentary: An (Almost Completed) Evaluation.

Even though we haven't finished editing our documentary, I would like to reflect on this experience and talk about what I've learned and how we got over problems we faced.

I have been passionate about this idea from the start; however, I wasn't sure which part of the vegetarian lifestyle I wanted to delve into because I think I washed over the fact that there is so much information but at the beginning, I didn't want to believe that. I didn't want to feel like I had to pin myself down to one particular area of vegetarianism, which is why the range of questions I asked are quite broad. So throughout this process, ideas have constantly been thrown in by myself, Caoimhe my producer, and our tutor. It wasn't until we actually started editing that we were able to pin down exactly what we wanted to the audience to know. I don't particular think this is such a bad thing because I was learning so much throughout this process and I feel if I had of pinned down a certain area at the beginning, I wouldn't have learnt as much as I have done.

Our passion came through in the pitch which I had posted about before. We wanted it to be a pitch to remember so having our t-shirts with our ideas on them as well as food and beauty products brought into the meeting, done this. I do feel like we were given ideas to push us away from our original idea and while I do very much appreciate those ideas and they were great, I had a vision in my head from the start and I didn't want to veer from it too much or I would feel like it wasn't what I wanted anymore.

When we first put the ad up online at the beginning and we got two responses, I personally didn't think we would get any so when we got two people, I was over the moon. We were very organized and got to meet with both Richard and Lindsey a few weeks beforehand, we showed them the questions we would ask them over coffee and this gave them the chance to ask us any questions or express any concerns they had about it. They were both really interested in what we were doing because they've never had the opportunity to talk about or vent about being a vegetarian before. When we shot with Lindsey, we were quite happy on the day of shooting but I think Caoimhe and I both knew there was something not quite right but because we only had Lindsey and Richard, we both pushed it to the back of our minds, hoping that it wouldn't be as bad as we expected. When we went to watch the footage it was clear that no matter how much we tried to colour it, the lighting was going to be an issue as well as it not being the look I was looking for. We didn't use different angles so if we were to use the footage, we would need a lot of cutaways to cut the interview up or else it would just look like the footage was jumping, and whether that is on YouTube or a big cinema screen, it wouldn't look good and I wouldn't want people to remember "the documentary with the jumping shots". This show is the building block for us all as film makers so we wanted to make the best film we possibly can with our skills, budget and time, that we can, so I don't want my mistake of using the wrong person, dodgy camera angles and not the best lighting to ruin that. I would rather not show my work if that was the case.

I feel like both Caoimhe and I were organized, we were one of the first groups to film but we ended up being one of the last groups to film too. This definitely struck a cord with me because we had been so organized, we got an ad set up, we had our coffee meeting with both interviewees, we had very regular meetings even over Easter and whenever we were off, and both of us were very reliable. We can't say that everything goes perfect when making a film, but I think I thought that because we had been organized, that things would go smoother for us. A few people had actually said that "documentary was the easy way out", they did mean it jokingly of course, but doing a documentary is just as difficult as doing a fictional film. We may not need so many actors, but we still needed people who were willing to talk about the subject, as well as finding locations to film as well as the same problems as filming a fiction (Lighting, camera angles, people's appearance etc. etc.).

I have never been the best at taking criticism and I have had to deal with it more in this particular unit than anything else. Not necessarily against me, but ideas that we've had, footage that we've shot; when we talk about it in our blog or we say how well it went and then we're told that we can't use it or that we should try it this way, it does make you feel a little silly and makes me think "am I just trying to put a positive spin on everything even though it wasn't that positive". I'm not sure if I've gotten any better at taking criticism but I have learned not to take everything so personal, which I still think is a bonus.

I'm really happy with my producer Caoimhe, she has been there for me from the get go and even though she is producing some one else's film too and she has her own projects outside of the Final Year Film area, she has been very supportive and offering up suggestions to help make our film better. Speaking of reliability again, because we both know how people can let you down on shoots and having to work around people's schedules (In both of other projects that we are producing, we have experienced this), we thought it would be best to shoot it and record sound ourselves and I'm very glad we chose to do this. We only had the three of us to worry about, the interviewee was able to book it off work, Caoimhe was able to work us around her work hours and because I don't work, as long as I wasn't shooting something else, I was good to go. This enables Caoimhe to gain more sound experience for our sound unit whereas being on camera has always been one of my favourite things on this course to do, and even though I'm not the best camera person in the class, I think my camera ability was made better because I played around with shots and angles and didn't have to ask permission, I could just do it and if it didn't work, it didn't work, I wasn't wasting anyone's time.


Overall, this has been an exciting but stressful experience for me. I got to work with someone who I'm very good friends with, who was reliable and who was there to back me up when it came to talking about our documentary. The situation with Lindsey and the problems arising there did make me feel like I had done something wrong but I soon learned that this is just the way the business works. I have had different problems to this arise in past projects so I'm not totally oblivious to sorting problems out. I believe that I researched this subject quite well, I could have researched it further but due to other projects, I didn't have time but if I ever felt like I wanted to expand on the documentary in the future, I would know what other research I would like to go into to further the information I want. I'm extremely happy with the second interview footage we have and editing is one of my passions, for the majority of the time, it's quite relaxing so I don't find it a burden. Both Caoimhe and I are producers at heart you could say. Some just think about the story but don't think about the pre or post production work, whereas we thought about the pre and post as well as filming itself and this helped us greatly. The edit isn't finished yet but I can't wait until it is because so far, we are both very happy with how it is shaping up and when it's on the big screen, I will probably still be a little embarrassed, only because it'll be weird seeing my work up in the cinema, but even if it hits home with one person or if it makes one person think twice before making a vegetarian joke, then I feel like I have done my job: made an informative documentary that is still enjoyable and that people remember.

Starting to edit (again!).

Last Tuesday (6th May) began the editing process again. I imported the clips onto Premiere Pro which took longer than expected, then I sorted the interview into bins, so when I was going back to each clip, it would be a lot easier to find it. So Tuesday was more of a logging and organizing day for me.

Wednesday afternoon (7th May) after another class was when Caoimhe joined me and we started clipping and cutting pieces together. We're both really happy with the footage and the way it's visually told on screen that it sometimes kills me having to cut something up, even though I know I have to do it due to time constraints.

We have a lot of information from Richard's interview that we can't all possibly fit in to five minutes which is a shame but as we were editing, we decided to try and keep in the information about parmesan cheese in because we are assuming that most of our audience don't know that this particular cheese isn't actually vegetarian, despite restaurants serving it as vegetarian. We want our audience to walk out of the audience finding out something new, and we think this will do the trick.

We also have some really nice shots of Richard talking about the Vegetarian Society and labels on food and as I was shooting this on the day, I moved in to see the labels and it auto-focused for me. We're using these shots because the audience will be aware of the different types of labelling in stores and we think it's something that some people may not be aware of.

On the Thursday (8th May), we showed Sharron our rough edit and I would say she was quite pleased with it. Caoimhe and I came up with some other titles because we personally didn't feel like "Green Beans and Everything In Between" fitted the documentary anymore. These titles were "Suitable for Vegetarians", "Vegetarian Options Available" and "A Vegeducation". However, talking with our tutor, she thought the title added quirkiness to the film and if we made the start quite quirky too, it would fit in quite well. We also had a lot of footage of Richard talking about the cheese which I didn't really mind but after our tutor telling us that the audience may start to think the film is about cheese, we thought it was best to cut it down but still have an appropriate amount of information still in there so the audience can understand why it's not vegetarian. 

Because of other on going projects during the week, we know from Thursday, we will not get any time to do another edit or go out filming apart from possibly next Wednesday afternoon so we do intend on editing more next Thursday (15th May) during class while the tutor is going over other people's work. 

The negatives and positives.

On Thursday 10th April, we had our weekly meeting with our tutor and I felt really silly if I'm being honest. She asked us how shooting went and I said it went well, the lighting wasn't great afterwards, but overall we were happy with how it went.

For this post, I'll post the negatives and positives of the meeting.

Negatives
She sat us down and told us that she thought it would be best if we didn't use the interview footage we had used. There's no doubt that the answers Lindsey gave us were very interesting and I was excited to explore them more throughout cutaways.

She listed her reasons and in the end, both Caoimhe and I agreed with her and why it would be best not to use it. One of the reasons was the lighting and we had tried out best to change it in the editing programme we were using, but after an hour, we weren't getting anywhere with it. I am very disappointed and I can understand why we can't use it, but I felt so optimistic about it all that even though I get the reasoning why, it's still a little disappointing.

Seeing that we were quite down about this conclusion, Sharon got in contact with her friend Julie who lives quite close to me, who is also a vegetarian. She seemed really up for being in our documentary so we got quite excited by it. Unfortunately we knew that she was very busy and it was coming up to Easter so we felt the dates she was available up to her and she never got back to us; and because of it, I didn't want to be on her back because she had a family and was generally very busy.

Positives
We still have Richard scheduled to let us interview him for Saturday 3rd May which we are very excited about because when we met with him for the first time, we was really looking forward to answering the questions because he'd never been able to have an outlet to talk about being a vegetarian.

We still plan to use Lindsey's interview but as research only. She gave us some fantastic answers and had a great story to tell, so we're hoping to look back on her interview as research for Richard's to help us improve in lighting techniques, camera angles as well as changes to questions.

Day One: Lindsey's interview.

Filming day had arrived (Saturday 5th April) and both myself and Caoimhe were really excited. I picked them both up from Belfast and brought them up to my house.

It didn't take us too long to set up, and it was a really nice day outside so the sun was coming through the window nicely. Caoimhe was on sound, while I was on camera as well as asking the questions. We had originally planned to stop at every fourth question and change camera angles, and had fully intended to do this but we were too interested in her answers and it was just flowing like a real conversation, that we completely forgot to do so.

We then got her to cut up some buns that were vegan as well as gluten free, and I wanted these to be cutaways for when we were taking about desserts and buying food in general.

Caoimhe and I were really happy with how the day had gone, all three of us got on great and the answers that Lindsey gave us to our questions were great and quite eye opening.

Pitching Time!

Thursday (27th March) was pitching time! We had briefly gone over what we were going to talk about in the pitch on the day, just to keep it fresh in our memory. Below is a photograph of Caoimhe and I after our pitch and you can see our t-shirts.

On Caoimhe's t-shirt, I wrote "Vegetarians Do Eat..." because a lot of people think vegetables just eat vegetables so I listed a number of different foods (including vegetables) below this and on the back of the t-shirt, I drew and coloured in a few foods.

On my t-shirt, I wrote in big letters "What is a Vegetarian?". This was my first idea for the documentary; I wanted to dispel the myths and find out from vegetarians themselves what others think when they hear they are vegetarians. So on the front and back, I wrote questions and phases that vegetarians are likely to hear when people ask them about being vegetarian. 

For our pitch we talked about a number of different topics:

The title: "Green Beans and Everything Inbetween", I actually give credit to Pearse for this quirky name because he came up with it and we thought it wasn't a generic name for a vegetarian documentary but it was enough for people to be interested, just by the name.

Subjects: Lindsey Mitchell and Richard Andrews. We spoke very briefly about how we were glad to have a man and a woman involved so we could get two different perspectives. Richard has been a vegetarian since he was born, so he didn't choose the choice to be vegetarian, whereas Lindsey did make the choice so it will be nice getting those two different sides too.

Audience: We want these to go out to a wide range of audiences. We want people to watch this who are skeptical of the vegetarian lifestyle or don't know much about it. We want people who are interested in getting involved in becoming a vegetarian. We want vegetarians to watch and feel like they're not dislocated from society like a select few make them feel.

Research: I feel our research has been strong; we watched a film called "Vegan Love" about a guy who wanted to make a documentary about his best friend who was vegan, and trying to find a vegan girlfriend. I also ordered a lot of resources from the Vegetarian Society including leaflets, pamphlets and posters which I had posted about before. 

Themes: Both our themes and locations are heavily dependent on our questions and our subjects answers. Our themes include whether it is their choice to be vegetarian or not, their lifestyle, the reaction of friends and family, common myths and their experiences eating out and shopping.

Locations: As I previously mentioned, this will be dependent on our subjects answers. For example if Lindsey said to us, she did it for the animals, we would go somewhere like Streamvale Farm and get a few shots of the baby animals. However, if she said she did it for the health benefits, we would get shots of health food shops. A few examples of locations are; Holland and Barrett, St. George's Market, Streamvale Farm, supermarkets.

Interview locations at this point are depending on shooting dates; we have Caoimhe's house and my house down as possibilities but when we know when both subjects can film, a decision on interview locations can be confirmed.

Shooting Dates: We were thinking the 4th or 5th April for Lindsey's interview and 8th April or 12th April for Richard's interview and then going on the 13th April for cutaway shots once we watch the interviews back. We feel this will be much more productive due to time restraints, instead of going to get a lot of cutaways at all different places, at least if we know their answers, we can base locations off them.

I was really happy with how our pitch went; we had an innovative idea with the t-shirts and no-one had the same idea. It stood out, it was memorable and we were able to explain how our original idea started in a more colourful way.