The final edit of my production is a re-imagination of the draft edit that I did initially.

My goal with
this edit was to improve on points that were not his in the draft and build upon the foundation laid
down by the draft. The feedback I got from peers spoke about how. The interview setup that used
for my narration could have been improved and this is something that I agree with. The place that I
had planned to shoot originally cancelled on my so I had to make the decision to do a more
conserved interview set up in my room. Although this was a downgrade from the original location I
feel that I worked well with what I had. I had to look though some of the conventions I did on
lighting interview sessions indoors and tried to use some of these Ideas to up the professional look
of my production.

One of the conventions I tried to utilise was the use of natural lighting in the interview set up. When
doing research one of my main points of reference was the “in conversation with” series done by
negative feedback. When the location the shoot the interview got cancelled I had no other option
but to shoot indoors at my house. The way they used lighting in their interviews was something that
I knew I wanted to include in my interview set up. In the image on the left they use one directional
natural light to light their subject and get the nice even lighting on the face. I tried to use a similar
setup utilising the one sided natural light set up. The black arrow in the picture on the right
represents the natural light coming from the window that provided majority of the light and the red
arrow represent the direction of light that was coming from the fill light that I had set up mainly to
light the shelf in the background which was there to add some relevant context to the interview set
up through the cameras that I placed on it. To improve this setup I think a wider shot that showed
more in the frame could have been more effective, alternatively a second angle on my interview set
up would have allowed me to switch back and forth to cover transitions better and give the
interview section of my production a bit more variation. Other improvements suggestions from
feedback suggested that I could have worked on talking about the Photographers that I was looking
for a longer part of the production going more in depth with the explanation of their career history.
This is something that I thought about doing when I was writing the narrative script of the
production, however, when I got to the part where I was writing what I would say about the about
the photographers history I decided to cut it short to allow for more time looking at my recreations
of their work which was the main focus of the documentary. I wanted to keep my documentary 10
minutes long and this was the only way I was able to do this.

When I asked the respondants which part of the producion they liked the most the answers I got
included answers like “The picture comparisons”, “A lot of information fit into 10 minutes” and “The
diret inclusion of B-roll”. The one of these answers that I remember deliberatly remember trying to
include in my production was the footage of us shooting the image right before it has been taken.
4:17 of my final edit is an example of this and shows the footage of the exact shot that was shown
shortly after at 4:19. I felt like this was the best way from me to get smoothly flowing footage with
my edit.

The client that I used for my production was Viibe productions. The guideline that they gave me for
the creation of my production was relatiively simple. The only requirements that they asked for were
that my documentary be more than 10 minute and exclude any use of nudity or drugs which I kept
to.

Throughtout the duration of my research I kept reffering back to productions that were similar to
mine and productions that resembles the idea of the production that I had in my head. The
productions that I kept looking at were the whole series of “7 photographs that changed fashion
photography” which was one of the main motivators for the whole premise of my final idea. One of
the main areas that I refrenced most frequently was the structure that the show used and they way I
could mirror that with my production. The structure that I got from the produciton was the exact
structre that I used in my final edit. His video started off with a breif description and breakdown of
the photographers work life and then went straight into his journey creating their work. My goal
when referencing his work was to compress this idea down into a 3-4 minute version of the same
thing which would allow me enough time to create an overall intro and outro for the video to assess
my work that was done in the documentary. For conventions I also looked at documentary like Dries
which followed the journey of a fashion designer thoughout the creation of one of his new
collections. In a similar way my production followed my jounrney creating the images included in the
documentary. I think my documentary fits into its genre quite well and because of its simple style
and referenced structure.

The topic research that I did looked at:

 The History of Fashion Photography

 People Within The Industry
 Fashion Photography Now
 Making a Photo shoot
 My Target Audience
 Documentary Research.

Although I didn’t end up using all the research all the research I did helped me to create the
production I did. The knowledge that I got from the research helped me understand my topic better
which influence the decision I had to make on what would and wouldn’t make it into my production.
I think I would say that my production did my topic justice because it used direct information from
my research page. I think the piece of research that had the most significant impact on the outcome
of my production was the research that I did on the making of the photoshoot. A main focus for this
research was Mango Street’s series which literally made to show their audience what important
steps you would need to take to make your own photoshoot. This mostly benefitted the planning
phase of my production which would end up being a vital part of my production because it’s the part
of my production that was recorded and makes up about 50% of my footage.

One of the main problems that I face most frequently when shooting my documentary was
cancelations I had two models cancel on me and one of the locations I planned to use become
unavailable. Thankfully I had backup locations and backup models that were used in the final part of
my project that practically saved its outcome and in many ways made my production better than I
think it could have gone. At the start of the production during the research phase knowing what I
needed to research was one of the things that I really struggled with. This was before I found any
productions that resembled my idea so I wasn’t able to reference anything to get ideas on what I
might look at. After some deliberation, I had a clearer understanding of my what production would
be about which lead me to find some productions that were similar to mine and in the end I was
able to find things I could research effectively and know that it would be going into my production.
Rankin’s “7” Photographs that changed fashion photography” was one of the productions similar to
my idea that heavily influenced the outcome of my production.

Comparing my pictures to the work of the professionals I looked at, there are clear signs that there is
still much room for improvement in my work. Although the concepts I chose were fairly simple the
photographers have developed their interpretations of the concepts immensely and looking at the
images side by side lets you see this example first hand

On the right is my interpretation of the work of Richard Avedon. When I was doing my shoot my
focus was on making the movements of the models hair the main focus and I think I did that, but, in
doing this I neglected the potential to show movements in other forms in the image. Avedon’s
picture on the left shows how he used the full body of the model to show motion in his image. So
much so that the feet of his model are not touching the ground. This is a much more extreme
interpretation of the concept of movement and is something I didn’t consider while I was shooting. If
I wanted to improve my interpretation I think showing more extreme, full body movements the way
Avedon did would have been a sure way of doing so. Giving my model a small platform for my model
to jump off before getting into frame would have been a more effective way for me to show
different directions of movement and make my images much more sophisticated than they turned
out in this shoot. The dress we chose was also controllable variable that played a part in the
restrictions we had when trying to create motion in the photos. Choosing a dress with more
character would have elevated the complexity of the images and also would have given me another
element to experiment during the shoot.

The concept of storytelling by Peter Lindbergh was the more difficult idea to recreate and for that
reason gave me a lot more things to think about while shooting.

The main theme for this shoot was storytelling. When I look at Lindbergh’s photo on the right
instantly I get the immediate idea of an Angel that has fallen out of heaven looking up into the sky
from where she came. This is the first image I think I have seen that looks down on the figure of an
angel. In the image the majority of her surroundings are dark and impure compared to her bright
white figure that is prominent in the image; symbolism of an imperfect world. Every aspect of this
image is used to create the greater impression of story I believe that Lindbergh was trying to create
when he shot this picture. When I look at my image I don’t get that same feel. There is no obvious
story that goes along with it. When planning this shoot I was inspired by the aesthetic of this
Lindbergh shoot but I don’t think I fully took the story of the images into consideration when I was
working on my shoot. What I could say is that my image is split in two with the darker side on the
left and the side of light on the right which could be interpreted as religious symbolism, however,
this is not something I thought about when I took this picture which is where I believe my images are
lacking. If I wanted to improve, I think I should have had a better understanding of the story I wanted
to tell and thought a bit more about how I would tell in each image.

I think if I was to produce this documentary again I think there would only be a few things that I
would change to improve my production. One of the main things that I noticed that no respondents
mentioned was the fuzzy noise that my microphone would make. This made the transitions that I
made in my editing process somewhat difficult because any cut in between the narrative parts of my
production would have a jagged start of fuzz that was noticeable to me. A second improvement I
would make would be to include the use of more than one camera angle in both the interview
sections of my production and also the practical parts of my production that showed me working in
the model. I think this would have made the overall outcome of this production much better given
the edit a more professional look giving me more materiel to work with. In an Ideal scenario I would
have had interviews with people who had a better knowledge of the photographers I was looking at
which would give the information I was using in my production a bit more validity and made for
some good variation to the overall outcome of the production. I saw that other productions did this
to get the best sources of information they could sometimes getting people that knew the
photographer personally.