George Wing Television Blog

An editor who has inspired the editing and the way I want to edit my documentary is Lee Smith. Now, Smith doest actually edit documentaries he is a film editor. However, because his style of editing is very extrodinary and experimental, especially with the film Dunkirk, the action matches but the timeline doesn’t. Whilst again, this isn’t documentary, I found it really interesting the way this is done and has inspired the way I have edited and to have confidence in a timeline that is neither liner or chronological. In Assumed Guilty because we are speaking to so many different people it is easy to get confused with the storytelling.  The basis of some of the best documentaries I have seen recently have been brought together by the editing style, and not every documentary is as linier as it looks. Researching his style and technique really inspired me, especially with Dunkirk, which was a spectacular film with editing that really stood out for its ability to chnage time, and not h...

Today myself and Jakc began breaking down the inteviews we want to include in our documentary. Becuase interivews all lasted between an hour and two hours it was important for us to collate the best, most useful pieces of dialogue in constructing the story. We need clips that will aid the storytelling and bring together imprtant pieces of information. Logging footage was a tedious stage in our project and we knew this from the start. As a result of the long interviews, logging them would be very time consuming. I wanted to find the best way of doing this and I referred back to a book I had previuously researched in the pre-production unit The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide. It said "logging footage isn't daunting..it's daunting because it's tedious and time consuming". (Artis, 2012) What did I learn? This was an ongoing process throughout the post production process and this was easy for me to follow. It was a success in that respect, however,...

After finishing all of our shoots besides the drone shoot tomorrow, me and Jack had a tutorial with Beth and Simon individually. We first spoke to simon and gave him the start of our documentary to watch. Although there wasnt a lot to see given we had jsut filming, it was woth showing them anyway just so they can we where we are at with the edit so far and what our timeline structure is saying. Simon suggested that perhaps the two interviews from Prof. Allan Jamerson adn Jerry Hayes at the start are a bit disorientating. However, becuase there wasn't a lot new to show him, we were set the deadline of next Monday to have a rough cut finished. I believe this is achievable if we have finished shooting tomorrow. It means I will now be able to focus purely on the edit itself. We can then work on Simons feedback Monday ready for our next tutorial with Beth the following week. When we went to show Beth our edit so far this was the first time she has seen any of our filming. The last...

Today Jack and decided to film our cut-to shots of relivant 'giveaways' to the documentary. These were shot on the BlackMagic URSA 4k. We also attempted to udse a panasonic for the slow motion shots as the Blackmagic doest shoot any quicker than 60fps. We needed to shoot in 120fps in order to achieve the super slow motion shot of the hammer we were going to. We brought some chalk to try and create dust from the hammer going down. However, after test shooting this wasnt very effective and decided to try flour instead. THe result was effective but unfortunately left flour either at the start of shot or the aftermath which isn't ideal as it broke away from the the realism. I am pleased we were able to test this out but unfortunately I don't think it would be effective in the final cut. However, I was impressed with what the panasonic was able to achive in one formfactor. Such shots I would still attempt in the future, this jsut didnt work becasue regardelss of the...

The first prop I ordered was a tape recorder from eBay. This was a neccisary prop for recreations and cut to shots to demonstrate a a police interview where they tape the conversation. We wanted to get some cinematic shots with this. When it arrived I needed to clean it properly as it didnt arrive in the cleanest of condition. Cleaning this meant a lot of spray and police. I used cotten earbuds to get between the grooves of the speakers. This is a gavel I ordered from Amazon ans will be used to identify the hammer going down in cut between shots. This breaks the interviews up and therefore will keep the attention of the viewer. These police lights was an idea I came up with as a substitute for a real police car. As mentioned in previous blogs, miune and Jacks intentions were to origionally hire a mock police car with two officers for the day. The company we found do this for various films and tv shows, hence the high price. However, we don't have film...

Todays shoot was a success but one of the main issues we came across was the lighting. It was dark outside and somehting we hadnt tested was the blackmagic URSA in low light. ALthough reviews informed me it was ogod in lov light the production cinema seemed to handle it a lot better, which was odd. Luckly we had both, htough the production cinema as we anticipated didn't last long on one charge. THis meant we had to swithc cameras. So we shot all our gimbal shots with the Production Cinema and when it died put it on to charge so all our static tripod shots would be filmed on the URSA. The battery charged quickly so this wasn't an issue it just took some level of planning. In terms of our cast we used some of Jacks friends who were free; the difficulty was casting osmeone ot play Gary Newlove. Having spoken to an actor who has performed in other student projects before, I got talking to him and inquired about his interest previously. We simply needed hiim to play the role of Mr....

Today, Jack and I went to the UCA Library to try and book it out for an interview shoot for Liams interview on Sunday. Origionally we had panned to film in the House of Commons which was lookign pretty likely as we had spoken to their media team (see Previous Post). However, as a result of Brexit and the desisions being made the week we are filming so it couldn't. The first stage was contacting the House of Commons to get informaiton on who to contact. It was difficult to contact the media department directly on the phone as there always needs to be a letter or email in writing. Following this up I was led to contact various people before finally reaching the media department. Once I did I was informed we needed a member to contact. We would be able to use rooms but the member needs to be there to supervise. That meant we would need Liam Allan to contact his member Nigel, who would potentially be able to help us.

After months of trying to aquire a prison to film in and having no luck we were resorceful and managed to find a prison escape room. This location would be adiquate for our needs and we weren't completely restricted for time or access as what we would for a real prison. We brought Chelsea, a photgrapher studying Photography at UCA with us to photograph some behind the scenes and also action stills. This location was ideal material for a poster, and having plannd a design of how we wanted to have a shot of a prison cell we decided to also give her the poster brief (see blog on posters). When we arrived we phoned the place, and the first problem we were hit with was we were told we would need to come back another day as the managr wasn't in. Because we had already arrived we thought we would go in ourselves. This was something we booked in advance and were specifically told to come along this day. We found the manager who was happy to help us and gave us free access to film a...

After a lot of struggle in finding a shoot location, me and jack were successful in contacting an old friend of Jacks who is a commissioner at ITN. Jack met Rachel at a work placement before he joined uni, and after struggling so much in finding a loaction this was ideal. She offered us a gallery to film in which considering Liam is based in London and we needed to film him outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Traveling to Kent to film the interview would have been difficult and more costly. This location was also ideal as Liams case was very heavily publicised in the media and being a tv gallery fits in with that. When we reached the location we were required to sign in at reception and went to recce the loaction. Amongst the gallery was a voiceover ecording studio which was small and whilst looked nice, didnt offer much room or relivance. Once we worked out the best spot in the gallery which wasnt too overpowering/distracting with monitors (this is an operating galle...

Today we went top the Temple Chambers, London to shoot our interivew with Barrister Jerry Hayes who has spoken out openly about the trials and cases which have gone wrong or where real miscarrages of justice have taken place or nearly taken place. Blackmagic URSA mini Lens: 50mm ISO: 200 Shutter Speed:1/60 Kelvin: 6000 Frame Rate: 25 FPS Blackmagic URSA mini Lens: 24mm ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/60 Kelvin: 2000 Frame Rate: 25 FPS We allowed enough time for the train and everything. We liased well with the receptionist and organised to leave our equipent there whilst we headed off to get some lunch. We had panned a lot for this shoot perparing questions, and needed to know the all the details surrounding Jerry and his job. Given he was involved with the Liam Allan case it was important to acknowlege some Liam specific questions. When we recced the room we found it was a great space. There was a huge table in the centre of the room making it a litttle awk...

Introduction: The introduction to this documentary should captivate the audience and make them want to watch more. This is therefore the best opportunity to tell the audience what this documentary is about and what I will be including in the main section. Most documentaries have a short introduction at the start to introduce the topic, the characters, and subjects. So if we introduce with news clips which introduce the stories and we also include interview extracts so the audience is familiar with our subjects. The documentary could also include a short introduction with a voiceover to introduce the audience to the making of the film. In our case we include extracts of our experts talking making some key points also.  The introduction will also include clips from interviews from the main section to introduce the cast and crew from the film. This gives the audience a little taste of what is to come and what to expect.  The body or main section: This is where we tell the sto...

As a documentary maker it is important to understand the sequence of events  and the full story so we have a full understanding. In this research there were two c ritical areas and that was the timeline of events of what happened in Eddies case. It was also important to understand the amount of suicides with pregnant women, somehting that wasn't considered in his trial as it was unheard of. Now more mental health research has come to light in recent years it was more common than what the Jury was lead to believe. The information below is not my own writing but has been re-interpreted in some instances. However, it was useful to read in order to gain a full understanding. TIMELINE: 4th June 1992 The body of Paula Gilfoyle was discovered hanging from a beam in the garage of Grafton Drive. The marital home of Eddie and Paula Gilfoyle. A Coroners Officer, a Police Surgeon, Detectives and a Scenes of Crime Officer attended at the house. 8th June 1992 Eddie is arrested and inte...

Today me and Jack went around to some of our shoot locations for the shoot next week. We went along to the UCA Library and booked it out for our interview with Liam on Sunday. We checked the room out to check out some good potential locations and being on a Sunday, meant that the library would be ety. THe lights in the room were automatic but could be controlled manually at a switch as well so this will mean we have full control over our lighting setup.  We would like to include a studious background as Liam is still in university studying Crimanology. We would have filmd at his university but this was tricky to book previouslyt which is why we jumped to this.  The books make a good backdrop. Having writing like 'VOGUE' written on may cause confusion so we need to be sure to blur this backgorund properly with a shallow depth of field in order to avoid anyone reading these books. After visiting the library, we went to HMP Swaleside to hand in our letter to t...

Today we had a meeting with Simon to discuss where we were at with our project so far. We went through some of our footage form interviews and explained the basis of what we have done. Simon gave us some great feedback. He recomended the interviews we have left to film we keep them less so having a noose forensic expert would only make it more complicated. We need people who can talk about all the cases not just the ones speciafically so they can act as a thread for the entire documentary. Something else we were told was to film the interviews around the questions whihc is something we have doen with the mental health expert and the DNA expert but need to do the same with Liams interview and Jerry Hayes. We also don't need to over-complicate recreation of scnes and we keep them simple like we have with Eddies Wife Hanging recreations. This means we may not need to shoot the police car which would be expensive to hire properly. All this feedback was useful, and we needed to create a...

Today we had a catch up meeting with Simon to discuss where we were at with the project now and show him where we were with the shoot schedule, post-production schedule and also how the edit was going in general. After showing Simon the shedule Simon commented on our dates not neccisarily being accurate to the timetable. For example, our fine cut would clash with the Easter break so we would need to adjust that. This is a guide and not neccissarily something to stick to so accurately, but it is an aim so the dates need to corrilate. In terms of the edit Simon was very pleased with the aesthetic and after showing him some extracts from Eddies interview he can see where it is heading in terms of its style and the feel it would have. However, it also needs to have an equally well established timeline of events. Meaning in terms of where the story is taking us and how things are going to cut between the interviews and exactly what we are going to include in terms of each of the intervi...

In designing a poster for our documentary I wanted to test different ideas to see what would suit the idea. This also allowed me to ammend the working title to see how it would work with somethig else. By using key words/phrases I would see what would suit a title and poster. These are some of my origional poster designs form the Pre-Production Unit. Whilst I like these designs in terms of the netflix look. However, this was jsut a test of ideas and not the final posters. The people in it were to represent that anyone could be affected by this issue, but for the purposes of this project I feel if we did that having the actual people would maek more sence. However, shooting special photos for thsi would seem a little too gimicy and a bit fake in my opinion. If I was to do that, I would consider using archive photos. This one I sketched was 'Miscarages of Justice' with an image of the arm of lady justice, but with the scales uneven to show the system is lacking balanc...