It is now week 4 of our documentary and I am very happy working with Lauren and Annahita in a group. Over the past 4 weeks we have compiled a list of people to interview, practiced using the cameras and also created some music for our documentary.
The first person me and Lauren interviewed was Ben, a student at Sussex who had built his own house made of a mixture of lime, straw and sand in his back garden. He let us interview him as well as giving us a tour of the small House. After we finished the interview we continue to play around with shots to fill the documentary and convey the atmosphere of the house.
Here are a few shots of me in action:
Ben was really inspiring because of his motivation and enthusiasm to teach others about sustainable building and the use of straw, so much so that we decided to base the whole project on Straw as a material. Some of the main problems we encountered from our first filming session were 1; the light faded quickly and we were filming a lot of it in the dark, and 2; we didn't have the sound turned on and had to repeat the interview. However we learned from this and got the camera man at uni to show us how to operate them properly before we went an filmed again.
The second man on our list was Ian Brown. After doing a bit of research on the internet for places that supply Straw in Brighton I managed to find Ian who runs courses on building Houses out of Straw Bales. He also is a tutor for carpentry at City College teaching young apprentices and has a direct link to the Waste House project so he was a perfect person to interview!
Some of the main problems I encountered were that some of the apprentices at City College were naturally quite curious as to why I was there and tried to show off in front of the camera by swearing. It was quite hectic trying to film Ian whilst he was trying to keep everything under controle. There was also a lot of background noise whilst filming and we had to conduct the interview outside in a not as picturesque setting as the bustling workshops inside. However I did get some good shots of the group building thing for the waste house and Ian made some very interesting points.
Next on our list is Duncan Baker Brown the designer of the Waste House. We were informed that he too had in fact built his own House out of Straw and we aim to find out more about why, and could we see it for ourselves?
We have also been very busy in the editing sweet. These are some screen shots from our filming at Ben's House which we have almost finished putting in to a sequence for the documentary. As I have never used Final Cut Pro before Lauren had to teach me a lot about how to use it. But after sitting in with her after a few sessions I have started to get the gist of it.
Here are some pictures of us in a sound proof room at Uni which we hired out and recorded some music for the soundtrack. We embraced the fact that we had to create our own sound as not to copyright anything so we mainly used old folk tunes and songs that are well over 50 years old. Lauren taught me a song in welsh and I managed to harmonise with her. I also played some Irish and American Fiddle tunes as well as guitar to accompany Lauren singing. I think that the folk style will suit the motion picture because its very organic and rustic. I think one thing the people in out documentary have in common is that they all share a love for straw and a love for old and traditional ways of working which hopefully will come across in our sound as well.
The animation is a stop motion animation where by photos are taken in between each time I draw a small part of it. It was drawn in charcoal on white paper, we wanted to keep it simple but we thought the charcoal would add an earthy touch. First the ordinary terraced houses appear, like the many you see in brighton and we thought they were relevant to what Ian sais about current living conditions in Brighton. The straw house then magically appears being inspired by ben's house it has rounded windows and an organic shape. A seagull then glides down and sits on the roof of the straw house as the title of the doccy appear below and then our names.
