Final Project
Fencing is a short documentary and reflective wiki that I co-created with my colleague, Thomas Wiltshire, for a final year documentary project as part of my BA (Hons).
It was orchestrated from October 2012 to April 2013 and ended up being awarded a first.
The project is comprised of a 6-minute documentary, a 40-second trailer and a 40,000 word wiki chronicling and reflecting on the process of formulating the documentary; in addition to deconstructing and reflecting on the documentary medium as a whole.
Fencing is also a key precursor to my MTA concentration in Creative Producing and Entrepreneurship; as well as many of the projects I orchestrated in in Being a Creative Producer.
With the film formulaic presentation of the documentary we endeavoured to be progressive and experimented with the inherent theme of duality inherent in the film and within each of our approaches while making the film.
But Fencing is not perfect and is very obviously a shaky student film.
Also, in hindsight, I wished myself and Tom had bothered to colour correct the footage so that the final product would have more of a polished shine to it.
I also wished we had brought one of the university’s music students on board to create some original music for the documentary instead of using stock music from the Apple library (which turns in SO MANY videos online).
However, the overall project was a very enriching experience that not only increased my theoretical and practical understandings of documentary filmmaking, but also served as a good sandbox in which to get to grips with the challenges of project management and creative producing.
Both Tom and myself had to build the Fencing Wiki, but the wiki definitely ended up being more of my baby and I took a lot of pride in building it into a comprehensive overview of the Fencing documentary.
The original wiki was originally hosted on the Bath Spa University intranet, but I eventually reposted all the Fencing Wiki content as a series of posts on my film-centric blog, Something to do with Film…
Fencing HQ: The Wiki of Fencing
Finding Fencing and Documentaries: The Research of Fencing
Facing Fencing: Reflecting on an Unfinished Character Study
Focusing Fencing: The Preproduction of Fencing
Filming Fencing: The Production of Fencing
Figuring Fencing: The Postproduction of Fencing – EDITING LOG
Fixing Fencing: The Postproduction of Fencing – Colour Correction and Technical Concerns
“You reflect deeply and incisely both on the page and in spoken commentary [see reflective commentaries below]… As I read through the various pages of the wiki… I can’t help but feel your careful consideration and reflection has developed formidable power. I wish that all my students had a fraction of your application and drive to dig deeper”
– Mike Johnston, module tutor
The original plan for the documentary was for Tom to edit the first three minutes and for me to edit the last three minutes.
I did start to edit my half of the documentary, but I was struggling to focus my efforts on it as I was concurrently also working on EYES, my BA (Hons) practical dissertation.
Also, upon reviewing what we had each edited, it became apparent that we both had different styles of editing that would have been very jarring if the final product was just a case of Tom’s half glued together with my half.
Therefore, I gave Tom my blessing and he worked with what I had already edited to finished the documentary with his editing style.
However, my original 2nd half of the documentary together with my more cerebral style of editing can be viewed below…
As part of the preparation for creating the documentary, we were required to create a short character study piece.
Tom and myself shot some footage with one of the fencing coaches and his students specifically for this character study and then I edited it together.
While I never got round to fully finishing the character study, it was still a very useful exercise to perform and also established the cerebral editing style I brought to the project…