2. 11th October 2016
In the morning, we went to Eaton Fine Art Gallery in Solihull Town Centre. There we got several
clips of artwork and the gallery for background footage. Also, we conducted a formal interview
with the Gallery Director, Karen, who answered our questions concerning whether or not it is
worth studying arts subjects.
In the afternoon, we took some background footage of various pieces of artwork and classrooms
in the Art and Design building at Solihull Sixth Form. We have now decided to use the art
building at college to conduct our vox-pop interviews.
3. 13th October 2016
We filmed a Solihull Sixth Form student performing music on guitar and piano, in one of the
music practice rooms, so we can use it as background footage when we are talking about the
musical side of creative subjects. We may also use it as a part of a montage when the presenter
says “coming up after the break.”
4. 14th October 2016
Today we went into the Dance Studio and Drama Studio at the Sixth Form, we shot a little bit of
background footage but mainly focused on shooting the introduction to our documentary with
Amy as the presenter. We shot the introduction in both the dance and drama studios to see
which one looked better and we have settled on the one that took place in the drama studio as
we could set up lighting and use props to make it more entertaining.
5. 17th October 2016
We went to the Dance Studio at Solihull Sixth Form and filmed a girl doing various dance
routines as a part of our background footage. Also, this may be used as a part of our montage
towards the very end of our piece.
6. 18th October 2016
We went to the Core Theatre in Solihull and filmed the studio and theatre that they have there
for background footage. We tried the various lighting effects they had there. We tried having a
person on stage in the shot, to see whether it looked better than just having an empty stage. We
moved around chairs and blackout screens for dramatic effect in our shots. We attempted to be
creative with our shots, using a range of pans and zooms and also put our camera behind a
stage curtain and pulled the curtain open to reveal a stage – this shot would ideally be where we
would put statistics and transition to the next shot.
7. 21st October 2016
Today we collected several vox-pops from students at the 6th form, some were done individually
and others were done in pairs. We tried to capture these vox-pops in various places around the
college in order to avoid it looking bland. We also made sure we got a range of opinions on our
subject matter. In addition, we collected opinions from an assortment of genders and ethnicities
in order to capture the college's diversity.
Furthermore, we filmed some transitional footage and an outro speech from our presenter. We
filmed the same part in various locations, to see where we could get the best quality. We made
sure our presenter was dressed in the same clothes to avoid continuity errors.
8. 1st November 2016
We went to Birmingham Town Centre to gather some background footage. We filmed various
street art around Digbeth and The Custard Factory. Also, we filmed some of the architecture and
landmarks around Birmingham such as The Art Gallery and Museum and The Library.
9. 4th November 2016
We have filmed a choreographed dance routine by a dance student at the 6th form, to add to
our background footage and montage at the end of our documentary.
We have also filmed some more transitional footage and introductions of our presenter, in order
to ensure that the documentary flows well. She was wearing the same clothes to avoid lack of
continuity.
10. 17th November 2016
We filmed two separate drama classes as they performed their midway case studies for their
performance coursework. This will mainly be used for the outro montage at the end of our
documentary. However, it can also be used as transitional footage throughout our documentary.
11. 6th December 2016
We interviewed Julie Maitland, a Student Development Coordinator at Solihull Sixth Form
College, as an expert for our documentary. We picked her as we knew that all of her children are
varied in their career paths, some doing art and others doing sciences. Also, her role involves
giving students advice so we thought she would give us her opinion on what she would tell a
student.
