Documentary Unit: Historic Dockyard

On Monday we went on an outdoor camera workshop to The Historic Dockyard. We began with a quick tour of the place, then each of our groups were dropped off at different points along the way. My documentary group was dropped off at the boat HMS Cavalier; a retired C-class destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was laid down by J. Samuel White and Company at East Cowes on 28 March 1943, launched on 7 April 1944, and commissioned on 22 November 1944. She served in World War II and in various commissions in the Far East until she was decommissioned in 1972. After decommissioning she was preserved as a museum ship and currently resides at Chatham Historic Dockyard




We first set up the camera, boom mic and tripod to get some establishing shots of the boat, something we would consider opening the documentary with. We then went on to get some GVs on deck before managing to get an interview with an expert on the bat. At first he was a little nervous to be interviewed, but we successfully managed to reassure him, and filmed a successful interview. We needed to film parts of the boat he talks about in the interview, so we listened out carefully for this closeups.
We also needed to film inside the engine room, and interior shots of the boat. We did a close up of Gavin ringing the bell, which required us to ring don the channel volume, to prevent any distortion in post production.

This lesson was good practice form filming our own documentaries. When filming the interview I zoomed in on the interview slowly when I thought he was going to say something emotional, but unfortunately didn't making this zoom a little pointless; something I would bare in mind in the future. It was good experience overall and gave us all a chance to take on different roles, rather than our set documentary unit roles.


During Wednesdays lesson we looked back at our footage from our outdoor workshop as a class to give each other constructive feedback

 Alex's group-  Good establishing shot,  pull reveal zoom out shot, shows scale but sometimes crash zooms can be very stylised, less for docks more for corporate work. Nice cut in shot, following the rope. Need more rope shots as will be spoken about a lot in documentary. 


  • Pin 45degrees max
  • Motivated movement 
  • Reveal
  • Tripod, tripod tripod!
  • Have an end point
  • Histograms/zebra to check detail 

We received our feedback and found that there was a fair bit to work on. We needed to use the tripod a little more, because some of the handheld shots failed to make the final cut, despite them being important shots. We cannot allow for this sort of mistake in our final documentary. The iris needed adjusting in the outdoor shots; because it was so bright outside, we dimmed it down to see, which created problems when watching it not big screen; looked a bit brown-ish. This was easier to see in hindsight, but when we were actually outside the LCD screen didn't show very well, and through the eye, it also didn't show up.  White balance for the interior engine room shots needed adjusting-too orange. The walk around POV was quite effective for this part.





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