GRADUATE REFLECTION - CINE1122 CW3

TEASER

A documentary film about language and communication in Britain's criminal justice system

BEHIND THE SCENES

Research and Development

‘No Comprendo’ is a present-time narrative about a 16-year-old boy who was not given fair access to justice during his trial and was convicted for a murder he did not commit.

A short-authored documentary film that questions whether Britain’s criminal justice system is fit for purpose in a 21st century multicultural society by interviewing people who have gone through the criminal justice system and professionals who are recognised as members of the law. Following on from the results and findings explained in the CW1 Research Paper, I went on to direct this documentary film with a presenter-led approach. As the director and presenter of a story with an aim to raise awareness about social injustices, the development of this production depended on the rapport established with the participants; particularly the mother of the young man (Shane Lyon) in prison and his solicitor. Prior to interviewing the participants, it was important for me to check-in with them over the phone and via email for an update on any progress or changes to Shane’s case and life for him in prison, anything which could be relevant to document for the film. This contact would happen on a weekly basis and on some occasions, it was recorded, which contributed to shaping the story in post-production.

Pre-production

Once confirmation of the participants involvement in the documentary had been received, in the shape of consent forms, I proceeded to write the 5th draft of the script to include the new findings. It is my opinion that writing a script for a documentary film can be time consuming. I struggled to understand the purpose of this requirement given to me by my lecturers. Although it was helpful to have the script to understand exactly what the story in the documentary could be, I felt as though this was forced. At the time I wrote each draft, I was aware of the problem we were going to investigate and I knew the questions I wanted to ask the participants. It did not feel ethical by my creative standards to script what the participants would say and how they would appear prior to interviewing them. Besides the script, the other documents I developed throughout the course of pre-production was the director’s notes (treatment) and storyboard. These documents assisted and informed the creative and practical filmmaking processes, such as the location recce and casting (legal professionals), before we commenced production.

Production

We scheduled to shoot for five inconsecutive days. The first day was for the crew to familiarise themselves with the equipment we were using and to shoot an actor in front of a green screen. During this shoot we noticed how useful it was to recap on how to use the equipment competently. In the very last hour of the time we booked to use the studio at the University, we managed to capture what we needed from the actor, which we later used in post-production for our film poster. The other four days of filming was for the master interviews with our four participants, Eloise Taylor (and Shane Lyon), Andrew Stewart (Shane’s solicitor), Stephen Akinsanya (a barrister) and Catherine O’Neil (an Intermediary). We had two (FS7) cameras in each interview, one fixated on me and the other on the participant. After each interview, we would capture cutaway shots of the location and, although we did not use much of this in the edit, a small amount of the participants body language. What I noticed in post-production that I failed to capture during production was shots of myself and the participants in the same frame. Instead of having a camera constantly on me, I would have asked the director of photography to capture a two shot for a few minutes during the interview.

Post-production

This production group consisted of a director and a producer on the same course at the University and a director of photography from another group came to assist us on two days out of our five-day shoot. Every other member of the group are experts and freelancers we sourced from outside the University. This was down to unforeseen circumstances during pre-production nevertheless, with the support of the University, we were determined to see this project right to fruition. Exceeding our Crowdfunding target on Indiegogo was a major contributing factor to being able to get the people we needed at the right time. We did not expect to pay members of the crew for the production days and an editor and colour grader for post-production and it took us over the target we exceeded by approximately £500. Fortunately, between myself and the producer, we had the funds to cover the extra finance we needed in post-production.

The editor began with an assembly of the interviews which I transcribed and time-coded for the first edit. The duration of the first edit was 45 minutes. I went on to shape the story, which needed to be a third of this duration by the final edit. The second draft of the edit was only down to 39 minutes and we were approaching the deadline for submission to the University. At this point in post-production, receiving a second and third opinion from lecturers at the University and experts in the film and TV industry was imperative to forming a clear and cohesive short film. I found this stage of the process to be the most challenging because of the wealth of material we had gathered. The duration of the third edit was down to 18 minutes. The feedback from the lecturers and experts was extremely useful and assisted with cutting the material right down to what the story is, about someone not understanding the law and being misunderstood in court. We were down to a duration of 15 minutes by the fourth edit and the film was ready to be colour corrected and graded in time for submission.

The journey does not end there. The plan now is to work through our marketing strategy and submit the short documentary to film festivals in the UK.