Immersion Documentary Presentation

1. The Hunt for The
Campus Cat
Billie Williams
Connor Albinson
Adeleke Adewale
TJ Tvedt

2. Initial ideas and research
• Something different that
stands out
• How to work within the
brief (equipment and
shooting during a specific
week)
• Something challenging

3. Synopsis
• The original synopsis
- The Hunt for The Campus Cat, a contemporary, detective documentary, tells the story
of J. Callahan, a hard-working, hard-smoking, 1920s-detective, on the hunt to solve a
seemingly unsolvable case - who, what and where is the Campus Cat? A student
documentary team follows Callahan as he desperately tries everything to investigate
this mysterious feline, and it’s origins. After multiple interviews Callahan discovers that
there might be more to this case than he originally thought. Is the cat even real? Could
there be more than one cat? Or could it simply all be an illusion created by tired
students, desperate to feel a connection to anything living?
• What has changed? How is the final edit different?

4. Treatment
• Camera style – handheld and tripod
• Sound design
• Differences between vox pops and interviews
• Noir influence

5. Storyboards

6. Influence
• Film Noir
• Modern and classic
“The Big Sleep” (1947)
“Sin City” (2014)

7. The Shoot
• Challenges: Daylight, injuries, time management
and poor weather
• Anything is possible through positivity and team
work!

8. Post production
techniques
• Colour Grading - Use of the colour wheel to add
blue tones to each shot
• Brightness and Contrast – Brightness lowered and
contrast raised to create shadows for noir style
• Editing – Fast paced vox pops followed by slower
paced interviews. Title Sequence to match the
piece.

9. Sound
• Sound track and the balance of all the sound
elements:
• A film noir soundtrack
• Voice overs
• Ambient noise
• Challenges

10. The Final Product
Strengths:
• Made changes to make it more informative
• Better structure
• Added more personality of the cat

11. The Final Product
What could’ve been better:
• Time keeping
• Sound recording
• More archive footage
• More focus on shot framing

12. Summary
• Don’t make documentaries about cats
• Preferably have more time to shoot
• The mixture of the two styles may not have
blended together too successfully at some parts