Production Analysis

Due to the large amount preparation that we had done during the pre-production
process, the entire group knew exactly what kind of filming equipments we would
require for the filming process, along with the types of shots that we were going to
capture. For example as written above, it was established early on that we would be
using three-point lighting to illuminate some of the interview scenes that we were
going to capture. Therefore, this gave us ample time to book the lighting equipment,
for us on the day itself. Our documentary also featured many different shot taken
from many different camera angles, particularly those of the action sequences. These
include low angled shots that we used to film Nick doing his press up, wide angled
shots to film the tracking shot of the entire gym and even several close-ups of one of
the people working out at the gym lifting weights along with Nick doing several
bench presses. There were also two different shots of Nick running up a flight of
stairs, one captured behind him and another in front of him which we edited and
used to great effect in our opening sequence. However, one of my favourite shots
was a shot of Nick executing some dips on a dip bar. What was special of the shot for
me was that it was captured behind Nick with his back towards the camera. As the
gym was covered by many mirrors along the walls, the shot also featured the
reflection of Nick’s front view onto the camera. I felt that this shot really helped to
express the intensity, and the amount of concentration he puts into his workout
routine, thereby allowing the audience to gain a glimpse into his passion to train his
body and mind. This particular shot was not included in the original shot list as we
didn’t know about mirrors in the gym. However, our recce allowed us to come up
with several new shots based on our knowledge about the layout of the gym along
with the equipment and accessories that it possessed.

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All the interview scenes featuring Nick, Mike and Wayne were shot in a single room.
Upon watching the documentary, one might notice that whilst all of Nick’s interviews
were shot in an unlit room, with the three-point lighting being used to illuminate
him, the interviews with Mike and Wayne do not utilise lighting equipment at all.
Instead, the lights in the room are used to provide a much brighter setting that the
scenes with Nick. The reasons why we decided only to use three-point lighting for
Nick was because we felt that the different aesthetic look that his interviews had to
others would firmly establish him as the lead role of the documentary. More
importantly, the dark and bright interviews provided a good binary opposition with
what he says to what Mike and Wayne say. While much of Nick’s interview is him
talking about his dark past and the man he once was, Mike and Wayne’s interviews
are based on the man he has become today. It was important for us to show this
transition on camera and I believe that we established this really well.

Although much of the filming went on extremely smoothly, there are certain things
that I’d wish that we were able to go back and correct. Perhaps the most evident flaw
of some of the footage that we filmed was annoying buzzing noise that plague
certain scenes in the documentary… particularly the interviews featuring Wayne. The
noise was so evident and loud that at times Wayne’s voice sounded distorted and
distracting. The most disappointing thing was that we realised this problem even
when we were filming Wayne’s scenes. My teammate, Michael who was listening to
the interviews via headphones pointed out that the buzzing could be heard through
the microphone. However, as we were in the middle of filming and were not
favourable to idea of a reshoot, we decided that we were not going to cut the
interview halfway and would instead get rid of the buzzing noise in the post
production stage of the project. Till today, I am not exactly sure what the underlying
reason behind the persistent buzzing noise was. However, this might have been the
biggest mistake the we did as had we taken just 5 minutes to restart the camera or
re-attach the microphone, things might have turned out quite differently and we
could have had a clear and crisp sound throughout the documentary. I think that we
were too dependent on the idea that editing could solve any of our problems. In this
case, we learnt the hard way as although we were able to minimize the level of
buzzing in the scenes, we were unable to do this completely and the noise is
therefore fairly evident and distracting in several scenes of the documentary. The
editing also affected the sound of Wayne’s interview as a whole as his voice often
sounds muffled at certain part of his interview.

Another problem that we faced was the fact that we did not conduct a white balance
test prior to filming the scenes featuring Nick training in the gym. This was actually
done intentionally as we were planning to use the training footage only for the
introduction sequence which would be in Black and White. The problem arose during
the editing stage when we were recommended that we use some of the additional
training footage for the body of the documentary. This was a challenge for us as a
group as we would be showing the training footage alongside the scenes featuring
the sparring match between Nick and Wayne, which was captured with a white
balanced test done. By putting the two different scenes one after another, it would
be extremely clear to the audience that there was a big difference in the colour
between the two scenes. The original plan was to make the training scenes in black
and white… just like the introduction. However, this idea was ultimately debunked
as we felt that the black and white scenes were best left as an aesthetic look for the
introduction only. That meant that we had to edit the saturation of the colour for the
training sequence in order to make it seem more consistent with the sparring scenes.
Although I felt that the editing of the scenes were done fairly well, the result were a
number of slightly darker scenes as we had to bring down the brightness and
contrast in order to compensate for the loss of saturation to the footage.