The joys of storyboarding and invading personal spaces...

Hi all! It's us again, with an update on our happy adventures into film making...

Pretty storyboarding...

So, over the weekend Lexi and I have been working on our storyboard for our film (which is due in two and a half weeks!!) and working out the questions we are going to ask the archaeologists. I drew some (pretty!) pictures of the different shots we could potentially use in order to engage the viewer with the archaeologists and what they are drawing. There's a variety of shots we've decided to use to try to create a more personal perspective of the archaeologist and their relationship to Star Carr... even if we do get in their personal space. All in the name of heritage!

Ideas of the kinds of shots we can use in the film.

To experiment with the sort of angles we could use and the overall dynamics of the film, we've shot a 'test' film of our ideas using each other and our very enthusiastic teaching assistant Kat. (We hope all our interviewee's are going to be as enthusiastic!) We found that the more intimate shots, such as their hands as they were drawing and over-the-shoulder shots, had more impact than the generic long-shots and focused the viewers attention on what they were drawing.

We then conducted interviews with each other just using the dictaphones. We discovered that being put on the spot and being asked to discuss your drawing, even when having prompts, was very challenging - there was a lot of stuttering! We've therefore concluded that it might be a good idea to let people script their own responses.

The drawings which we produced from our 'test' interviews.

We've also had a visit from Colleen Morgan, a professional film maker, who gave us a lot of constructive criticism of our ideas and the form our video will take. She made us think a lot about the practicalities of working with the archaeologists and also the practicalities of having the video in the museum.

We're now in the processes of editing our 'test' films which means we've officially launched ourselves into the wonderful world of Windows Movie Maker - happy days! Whether those days will be so happy when we're snowed under with footage is yet to be seen... we're going to remain optimistic though and we look forward to sharing our videos soon. Watch this space!