Our school was chosen to team up with a professional educational production company, Action Dog to produce a documentary based on the Indian landscape, garden and paintings at the British Museum over a period of a week. We started by looking around the Indian garden and paintings to give us an idea of the event. After, we brainstormed our ideas as a group with Action Dog and came to the decision that we wanted to produce a docudrama. This was because we thought the documentary side could involve giving facts and information on the history of the plants and paintings and the drama aspect could include our modern interpretation. I found being able to work alongside a professional team producing a docudrama was the biggest highlight of my experience. As, it was a new experience and one in which students rarely get the opportunity to be involved in. Also being able to see how a real film crew work was quite interesting. The most disappointing part of my whole experience was not being given the chance to take part in any post-production tasks, as this meant we did not get to experience th
e whole production process of making a moving image. Also we did not get to take part in any filming as it was all done by the directors; this meant we did not get hands on experience with any camera equipment. Before we started the project we carried our research at school by looking at information on the British Museum website, so we had a background idea on what the project was about. As we only had 5 days to complete the docudrama we had to work at a fast pace. We came up with a timetable and decided we would spend the first day brainstorming our ideas, second day developing these ideas in school which included storyboarding, third and fourth day filming at the museum and the fifth day back in school editing the footage. I think two days was not enough time to carry out all of the filming as we were sometimes rushing parts, which could get frustrating as they were then not to the best of our ability. The fifth day was not as productive as it could have been as we were not given the chance to edit, but instead were just given ideas on how it might have been done.
The most significant thing I learnt was seeing how a real production company works and what is involved in producing a small scale docudrama. The aspects which will be most valuable in my next moving assignment are the tips I picked up while being filmed. This includes filming one shot several times at different angles in order to get a variety of shots and the best shot. Overall this experience was very interesting and beneficial as I now have to produce a teaser trailer so can use all the knowledge and skills I learnt during this project.
