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“Production is the phase wherein you set out to capture the footage, interviews, and so on, which will form the backbone of your film.”
Darren R. Reid and Brett Sanders, Documentary Making for Digital Humanists
Production is the creation of your visual footage and initial soundtracks. You will use your storyboard to inform what you need to capture on film. Unless your assignment's marking scheme shows that the quality of your footage is important (most will not), then you do not need worry about having expensive or specialist equipment. Your smartphone cameras will be fine.
Filming your A-roll
A-roll is the primary footage in your film. For most university assignments this will either be film of an interview or of you, the filmmaker(s), talking to camera.
Filming interviews
Before you film the interview, make sure you put your interviewee at ease and that they know what is expected of them during the process. It can be worth spending some time with them before you do any filming. Some filmmakers suggest you film your B-roll (see below) first, as this give you a chance to get to know each other a bit before you start what could be the harder part of the process.
You will also need to know what you will be asking them - though this is really part of your pre-production decision making. Depending on your topic and why you are interviewing them, this could range from a very open "Can you tell us your story", or "What is your take on..." to a list of more specific questions that you need to get answers to.
Consent
It is important to make sure you have also received consent for your interview. You can use this consent form, or create your own with more details of your particular project.
This video has some good general tips about conducting on-camera interviews. The technical part may not be as relevant to a university assignment, but everything else is useful stuff:
Preparing the space
You also need to set up the space so that you get the best possible footage. Here are some tips about positioning yourself and your interviewee.
Positioning things
If you watch a documentary that involves interviews, you will notice that the person being interviewed very rarely looks straight into the camera - usually they look at the person asking the questions (even if they are not shown on the screen). This means you should position yourself and the phone/camera so that you capture them at an angle.
If you are filming an interview by yourself, using your phone, we recommend you invest in a phone tripod. You can currently get them for less than £10 and they will make your life a lot easier and produce a much steadier result. Even if you are working as a group and someone else, other than the interviewer, will be filming, a tripod is still a good idea to prevent too much wobble. You want it to be at eye-level to the interviewee too - so you might want to prop it on top of books etc.
Lighting
You don't want your interviewee to be a silhouette, so they do not want the light behind them. You also do not want the light behind you as then they may be squinting into the light. So, the main light (a window or the sun) should therefore be coming at an angle from the side (more on them than you). If filming indoors, a second light source (known as a 'fill' light) can be positioned opposite the first to prevent too many shadows on the face. This could just be a floor or table lamp. Avoid relying on overhead lighting - it is very unflattering!
Location
If possible, choose somewhere where the area behind your interviewee isn't too busy. You don't want a blank wall, but you also don't want really crazy curtains or wallpaper - or plants that sprout out of their heads! Choose somewhere that is attractive but does not contain too many distractions.
So, you need to position things a shown below:
There are a lot of other things to consider too - like advice for your interviewee (including what they should avoid wearing) and what makes a suitable background . Take a look at the guide below from the University of Oxford which discusses this in more detail with examples. Later parts of the guide assume you are using a fairly fancy camera - but don't worry, most of the advice is good even if you are using your phone.
A guide to filming interviews - from the Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford,
Filming yourself talking to camera
You can film yourself talking to your phone, tablet or laptop. This video from the University of Rochester gives some great, simple-to-follow tips:
Here is a summary of his advice:
- Choose a good location - quiet, free from distractions and without a busy background and even, natural light. Try to find a room with a good sized window - make sure you face the window and don't have the window behind you or you will just be a silhouette.
- If no natural light - keep lights at eye level - like table lamps. Try not to rely on overhead lighting.
- Try not to make the room too big as you will get a lot of echo. Soft surfaces are also good (curtains, carpets, sofas etc).
- Sit 2-3 ft (just under a metre) away from your camera.
- To frame yourself in the picture, try to have the camera at eye level - i.e. put your laptop or your phone on top of a pile of books.
- Look into the camera - not at the screen. This is very important!
- Record videos in landscape format as this is best for most computer screens. You can always crop to portrait later.
Filming B-roll
Filming great B-roll can make the difference between your film looking amateurish and it looking professional. B-roll is basically all the additional footage that is added to the film to complement the A-roll and all professional filmmakers spend a lot of time filming it. You can never have too much as that gives you more to choose from!
Use of B-rolls
Some of this will be covered more when looking at post-production (editing your film), but if you have an idea of what the footage will be used for, it can make deciding what to film easier.
B-rolls are used as follows:
- Providing visual context to the narrative: it helps establish the setting, time, and place of the documentary, giving viewers a better understanding of the environment in which the events are taking place.
- Supporting and enhancing interviews: You can use it to cover cuts and edits in interviews, making the conversation more visually engaging and seamless. It also helps illustrate what interviewees are talking about.
- Creating smooth transitions and continuity: As well as within interviews, B-roll is useful for transitioning between different scenes or topics, creating a flow and avoiding abrupt cuts. It provides a visual bridge between different segments of the documentary.
- Illustrating concepts or ideas: it can visually demonstrate abstract or complex ideas discussed in the documentary - perhaps animated diagrams or even still images, making it easier for the audience to grasp the information being presented.
- Highlighting details and nuances: You can focus on specific details, expressions, or actions that may be missed in the main footage. This helps in adding depth and richness to the storytelling.
- Building atmosphere and mood: Whether it's through landscapes, cityscapes, or close-ups of objects, it helps set the overall tone.
- Depicting the passage of time: B-roll footage is often used to show changes over time, such as seasons, weather, or the evolution of a particular place or subject.
- Adding visual variety: Anything that adds diversity to the visual elements of the documentary will make your film more effective. It prevents the film from becoming monotonous and keeps the audience engaged.
- Accompanying voiceovers: B-roll can be used to complement voiceovers, ensuring that there's something visually interesting happening on the screen while the narrator is speaking.
Examples of B-roll footage
Imagine you are interviewing a vegan café-owner about the perceived high-cost of vegan food and the difficulties of making ethical decisions during a cost-of-living crisis. Your B-roll could include things like:
- Footage of the street where the café is located.
- Footage of the interior of the café.
- Close-ups of food in glass counters.
- Close-ups of food being prepared.
- Footage of the plant-based food sections of local supermarkets (with close-ups of prices).
- Footage of anything that your interviewee talks about - this can be stock footage, not necessarily something you film yourself. It can also be animated diagrams or a series of still shots that provide evidence of what is being discussed.
Recording voiceovers
Most films will need additional voiceovers to argue your points and explain what the viewer is looking at. Before you record them, make sure you have a script so you know exactly what you are saying - even David Attenborough does not ad lib!
Whilst professional filmmakers may have fancy microphones or dedicated sound recorders, for student projects, most people will use their smartphone or a laptop/pc with an integrated microphone or one that is part of a headset:
On a smartphone
Most smartphones have free apps like 'Audio Recorder' or 'Voice Record' that you can use to record voice and save as MP3 files or WAV files which can be imported into most video editing applications - where you can cut parts out, make general edits and layer over moving or still images. Experiment with positioning the phone at different distances from your mouth to find what sounds best. Alternatively, if you have earphones with a microphone in the remote (half-way down the wires) you may get a better sound recording into that.
On a laptop or PC
Most laptops come with built-in microphones and many headphones have microphone attachments. The University Library also have some microphone headsets you can loan if you need to - just ask in the Reading Room. Audacity sound recorder is available on most open-access campus machines and can be downloaded onto your own laptop (Windows, Mac or Linux): Download Audacity here. Basic edits can be done in the program and then exported as MP3 or WAV files to combine with your visuals in video editing software.
Where to record
This can make a big difference to the quality of the recording.
Choose somewhere quiet
It can often be better to record sound at home where you can control the background sounds better than you can at university. Some people like to record these quite late at night when road sounds are lessened. If you need to record on campus, take note of the point below.
Choose somewhere that is not too echoey
The best sound recordings are done in a relatively small room, where there are a lot of soft surfaces so that the sound is not reflected back from walls, tables and hard floors. This can be difficult at university where the quiet spaces are often quite 'hard' (for example the Group Learning rooms in the Library). Home may be your best option - or, if you can do it on an evening or weekend, one of the pods on the first floor of the library would be good as they have soft padded walls (note these are not available to students 9:00-5:00, Mon-Fri). There are some other pods around campus - for example in the foyer at the front of the Business School - which may be available during the day.
Capturing natural sounds (nat sounds)
Natural sounds are anything that isn't voice or music - the ambient sounds going on around what you are filming. Including them in your film will enhance realism, help set the scene, create depth and influence the mood, You will capture nat sound as part of most video recordings but it can be worth capturing some separately too to replace anything that is not quite right and make sure you have plenty to play with during post-production. It is probably best to capture nat sounds on a smartphone due to their mobility. The same apps mentioned above for voiceovers can be used for this.
What sort of sounds?
Anything related to your story or its setting! The list of what these could be is infinite but they could include:
- Road and street noises
- Birds chirping
- Lifts opening
- Voice chatter in busy places
- Crowds cheering
- Water lapping
- Industrial sounds in factories
- Food prep sounds in kitchens
Like B-roll footage, most of it will end up not being used, but it is best to have too much rather than too little.
Improvising a windshield/screen
If recording your nat sounds outdoors, the biggest problem will be reducing wind noise. You can buy specialist wind-shields for smartphones or other microphones but you can also improvise them quite well. Think about:
- Cutting up an old fluffy bed sock (the fluffier the better) and putting it over the end of your phone. You can hold it in place with an elastic band.
- If you have a mike in your earphone remote (the bit halfway down the wires), cover it with something fluffy. The video here shows how effective this can be - although it did involve giving an unsuspecting gonk what must have been a dramatic haircut!
