Although I found the process of making this documentary very
rewarding and enjoyable, there are certainly some changes I would
make in the preproduction process if I decided to make a second
documentary. I would definitely spend more time with my subjects and
interviewees to develop the best possible rapport before shooting. I
would also endeavour to undertake much more research because I feel
that if I had been more informed during the process of shooting this
documentary then I would have had a better footing to tell the best
possible story.
Originally I had planned to shoot in the Oddessy cinema, the
Queens Film Theatre, The Tudor Cinema and in college but, due to time
constraints, communication problems and a few other factors, I was
only able to get footage in one of these four locations. At the last
minute, however, I was able to find another subject. A colleague of
my mother's, as it turns out, used to be a projectionist at the
Curzon Cinema in Belfast – before it was demolished. Which leads me
to the third change I would make to the preproduction process; I
would tell everyone I know that I am making the documentary.
Particularly because Belfast is such a small community, I should have
known that there would be someone close to me who would know someone
related to the topic. I suppose that business cards or flyers would
be the most effective way to get the word out, and social media of
course.
Another change I would make in the preproduction process would be
to confirm shooting permission with all locations in writing
well in advance of going to shoot, because on the day we were due to
shoot at the Oddessy Cinema, our permission was revoked by
management. This in turn set the project back in terms of time.
The post-production process was
not without it's own hiccups. Having recorded the footage on my Sony
a37 and recorded the audio on a zoom h4n, I obviously had to sync the
data in the editing software. The problem is that the build of
Premiere Pro CS6 which I have seems to have a bug which prevents it
from opening sequences which contain merged clips. Although, after
much scouring of Adobe forums, I did stumble across a work-around;
for two or three hours it looked like I had lost quite a lot of
progress. In future I think the best prevention for this issue will
be to merge clips in a separate project and export them each
separately before importing the new merged clips into my main
project.
I definitely would consider
making another documentary, or even expanding on this topic further
as I feel that, due to time and permission issues, it has come out
quite light on information. My subject, Jim McKeown is confident that
he can secure shooting permission for me in the Tudor Cinema, Comber
and I would love to explore that opportunity. I would also make
contact with the QFT and Oddessy cinemas again in the hope of coming
to better agreements and getting them involved.
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