Sean Dunne's documentary (above) was a great inspiration. I'm taking a lot of the approaches used in this film and applying it to my own, for instance, the two locked off interviews. These simple set ups and the results they produce has enabled Dunne to gather the majority of information he needed in order to tell this man's story. With the dialogue captured, there's a lot of freedom for him to fill the film with inserts and cut away's of the archive itself, important as in order to show off the collection it's necessary for the audience to understand it's scale. 

Dunne uses a lot of voice over's and manages to cram in a lot of information without it feeling dry, this is done through the visuals as much as it is through the interviews. This is a method I plan to adopt when filming in Castle Market, to prevent the film from being a continuous talking head, I will use voice overs captured from a couple of set up interviews and play it over a lot of footage of the market its self along with the traders 'trading.' 

The interview with the wife is important to mention as its another method Dunne uses not only to break the continuous sound of Paul's (the contributor) voice but it's also used to give the story a different perspective and trigger an emotional response in the audience. To see her crying on screen really reiterates how big of a deal the archive is to them. 

In regards to the soundtrack of this film, due to the subject matter it's important that music plays a big part. In Castle market however, the predominate noise is coming from that of the traders and customers, therefore, I feel it would be wrong to layer a music track and essentially take away from the interesting and often amusing sounds of the markets' occupants. This isn't to say music doesn't play a part of market life, the building is fitted with dozens of speakers that blare decade spanning pop music. Perhaps this is an element to play with, although being that all the interviews are having to be recorded in the market, inevitably these songs will be picked up to some extent in the background noise. An issue that may cause problems when I come to cut the responses. Hopefully the voice recordings will be clean enough so that by layering atmos tracks over the top, the chopped-up lyrics can be disguised.          

The Archive. Film. 2009. Directed by Sean DUNNE. New York: sean@veryapeproductions.com

*Update (24/10/12)

We've now been to the market and filmed lots of footage of a number of stores. I'm pleased with the results and I feel it matches my expectations of how I want the documentary to look. However, one aspect of The Archive that we have yet to mimic if the use of tracking. Dunne uses movement to better portray the space and to gain understanding of the scale of the collection. It would be good if we could use this method in showing the scale of the market and create a sense of the audience actually being amongst the organised chaos. Without having access to dollys or actual tracks we'll have to experiment with trolleys wheel chairs etc. Hopefully castle market will allow us to bring a trolley inside and use it to create steady shots. Failing this, its possible they have wheel chairs in the event they should need to offer one to a customer. This isn't unusual in super markets, shopping malls etc so there's a chance we'll have some luck.    

BBC Inside Story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00rzx5w/Inside_Story_1999_Fish_Tales/

Sound: This element is an aspect of the film that is most useful to me, in regard to it's style of footage, the handheld, following of action isn't something that I will try and emulate. While appropriate for the inside story, it just isn't necessary for my own work which relies on formal interviews and cutaways. The soundtrack however is useful in regard to envisioning how my film will sound. The round-the-clock hub-bub of Billingsgate is a relatively similar environment to that of where I'll be filming and unlike Dunne's film, very little music is used apart from during the brief periods of the piece, a devise to establish pace. The vast majority of the soundtrack seems to have been recorded on location either as sync sound or as atmos tracks to layered over the top. A method the directors used when introducing a character or going back to an established one when in the chaos of the market is to increase the're speech volume gradually. In this way they're able to achieve the effect that important information raises out of the general, inaudible speech naturally, not abruptly. This allows the film to flow from shot to shot without the audience being aware that the speech has been cut. I'll experiment with this when creating the soundtrack for Castle market. 

The voice over used in inside story is a big aspect to mention as it's the predominate driving force of the film and gives the audience context when a new location is shown or a new character introduced. It's also used to highlight themes and ideas of which the contributors then confirm through formal interviews and during the 'action' sequences. It's also important to note that the V.O is appropriate to the film being that it's narrated by a man with an east London accent, something to think about if we deem it necessary to include a V.O in our film, finding someone with an accent that conveys the right message is essential. Having said this I don't think our documentary will need one due to there being really only one theme and one location, I'm hopeful that we can cut the responses in such a way that the audience will understand what the contributors are talking about with very little context given. Perhaps the use of text in the opening sequence simply explaining the up-and-coming closure, summed up in a couple of sentences, would suffice.

Structure: Being that my documentary is going to be considerably shorter than that of inside story the structures of the two films are going to be notably different. One thing i can learn from it however is the importance of character establishment. The audience need to get to know the characters before they can start to really connect to them therefore getting the most out of what the film maker has been able to capture. This will be the case in my documentary, there is little point launching straight into the hard topics such as job loss, providing for a family etc if the audience don't care about the contributors. With this in mind I feel it best to use the first couple of minuets of the ten I'm permitted showing the audience my contributors at work, combined with sync and non-sync recordings. By showing endearing footage or recordings, for example a butcher bartering for the sale of meat or a trader explaining his love for meeting new people, I believe the audience will be in a better position to empathise with those contributors who have shown some of their charm and character. 

I'll need to cut the film into define sections too, as inside story does, starting with introductions then moving onto their history then identifying their problems and finally seeking to find how the contributors plan to resolve them. After talking to a number of the traders it seems a lot of them have similar stories, they have worked in the market for a long time, they have families to support, they don't want to move etc. Due to similar answers being given to the different questions we've asked them, I don't see it being too hard to divide the film into sections where we can jump from person to person and still produce a cohesive narrative for the documentary. Even those are are looking forward to the move still have their worries, in terms of us trying to document the process this is a good thing, as if there was a big divide in peoples opinions it would be hard for us to fairly portray this in only ten minuets.     

Inside Stories - Fish Tales. 1999. TV, BBC1. 1999, Jan 20th