Making a ‘flexibly scripted’ short sizzle documentary, in 18.5 hours.
Capturing moments when story-tellers open spaces for makers’ voices from Yorkshire, Capetown to Praia to be heard.
How does one make a ‘sizzle’ for a short documentary about British story tellers @_TRUEAfrica, some with an African heritage, who engage with ‘maker-voices’ influenced by Africa?
Here is what a picture of my constraints looked like, once the editorial team at trueafrica.co green-lighted my request to make this ‘sizzle’. We had a two hour window in which to shoot. A day and same night to edit, follow up on emails; to make a call state-side in order get music copy clearance for ‘Ijo’ an ‘Afrobeat’ jam by Siji and Alix Alvarez and then have voice overlaid by sound designer Breen Turner. All these before pitching to Jody Smith, Channel 4’s multi-platform commissioning editor, the next morning as part of an assignment at NFTS’ Producing Digital Content and Formats course.
Hack week as a back-story
The week prior to this gig I took part in a four day story-making workshop run by Philo van Kemenade; a computational designer. We used photography, location visits, photo-grammetry, 3D visualisation and story mapping to explore how an audience might experience stories, in virtual reality.
The workshop was attended by Kim Plowright, course lead and workshop facilitator; Rebekah Ford, a digital developer, illustrator, DJ and designer together with my course mates, William Samaha, a film-maker, Colin Livingstone, a producer and myself. Our working principle of sharing thoughts, collaborating and prototyping ideas with professionals from different disciplines was a useful primer.
It was a primer for considering the experience of an audience when making this sizzle. In this case our reference was All4’s audience; a 16 to 34 year demographic in the UK. What might resonate with this demographic in terms of what they see, hear, think and or interact with at every frame?
08 April: its Friday, green-light
The decision to progress the short sizzle documentary hinged on the editorial team at Trueafrica.co. I waited on their decision during the week in which the workshop was being held. At the end week, Friday, word came in that we were on. I felt a sense of relief.
11 April: Monday 9.30am, making ‘ views from edges of Africa’s life’
Myself and Przemyslaw Czastka (aka PJ) my friend and videographer arrived at Trueafrica’s Farringdon base, thinking we had at least three hours to play with. Awut Atak and Fleur MacDonald (Editor and Features Editor respectively at Trueafrica.co) immediately gave us a heads up; they were flying out to Cape-Verde later in the day for a Jazz Festival. Getting on the plane with them to shoot unscripted moments crossed my mind. Back to reality. In the mean time, they were taking calls from story sources across Africa. These were unscripted moments we needed to capture flashing right past our sights. We used a draft story-board to discuss a script frame-work before bedding in to capture enough material with which to make a 3+ minutes flexibly scripted documentary.
I did not need to tell PJ what to shoot. He knew, intuitively, how to spot ‘action moments’ I watched as he followed the ‘dancing developer’ with head-bobbing moves who seemed lost in his musical nirvana. He captures Fleur picking up a call from a possible story source from South Africa, she has a rapid consultation with Awut. Awut leans toward her to listen and offer some perspective.
Wanting to ensure we had enough footage we shot as many moments of story-sourcing, reviewing and discussion related moments in the time we had. We ended up with 2 hours of material, with about 24 hours left for post-production. We had our work cut-out. As soon as we got back to base we put together a rough uncut piece which I took along to my mock-pitch session knowing it did not cut mustard. However, it will prove a useful prototype in terms of listening to reactions and critique from a ‘test audience’. We had enough material to allow the moments we needed to tell a story emerge but time was not on our side to editorially review the footage comprehensively.
11 April: later that afternoon
PJ had a day job to go to. I had to go into to NFTS to work with colleagues on the mock-pitch. Kim Plowright worked with me to structure my pitch which in turn served as a frame-work for editorial work later in the evening. I worked on sound design for an intro with Breen Turner. Breen had taken out a sound studio for a whole day; we had planned to work on a comprehensive sound design for the film but as I pointed out earlier I came in with an incomplete piece of work which we could not use for a full voice-over. However we went with the flow by recording an introduction for the piece. The piece slotted in neatly later during the editorial process.
11 to 12 April: evening to 3.00 am
As all parts of our film — film, voice-over, music — were with myself and PJ we had zero day time to log information we needed to reconcile with our editing decisions during post-production. Thankfully when PJ got in from his day-job he reviewed all the footage and chose some key moments to discuss with me later.
When I got back later that evening we reconvened to work up a narrative thread, with a pitch supporting shape.
12 April: 10.30 am; C4pitch
My take-away during this exercise
I had to consider a treatment, a proposal and a script as story-board before we began shooting. In some ways our approach was flexibly scripted. I carried out some background research into London based story tellers who make stories with and about voices influenced by Africa, to get some perspective on accessibility, availability and their take on the story-idea.
It was helpful to have a clear description of the project which resonated with Trueafrica.co. The idea was to inflect a lot of impromptu social interaction that Fleur and Awut were having with contributors and makers whose character cannot not be separated from their craft.
This approach will typically be informed by location choices. One story in development whilst we were filming is located in Yorkshire, England. Agi and Sam are a culturally mixed design duo from Tanzania and England who are creating a highly structured clothing style. Zanzibar as a base is on the duo’s radar.
In responding to the brief’s requirement for a six part series we considered the format. This meant we had to factor in how opportunities to immerse ourselves with editorial team at Trueafrica.co will work. For example with the Agi & Sam narrative we will need to capture back stories of the maker-mentality between Yorkshire and Zanzibar, assuming the move to Tanzania is realised. It is an appealing concept to chronicle Agi and Sam’s creative life in alternating scenes between two locations. The aim being to reveal their maker-mentality whilst engaging with the audience.
In context of the All4 brief, we will capture the maker-mindset on two levels: first, English story tellers editorially engaging with the source of makers’ story. Second, as outside observers with editorial team at Trueafrica.co, discover how makers turn common-place raw material into creations that have mass or personal value. It is about discovering and capturing moments in which the 18–34 year old demographic in the UK might re-arrange their expectations about the creative life of Africa inspired makers in ways they can relate with.
Where these stories are located is important for depth as well as getting to know our subjects. So is documenting snapshots of dailies with their source material, in ways that attest to their imagination and creativity.
I would argue it helps to be open to surprises with a view to revising one’s ideas and free associating them to feel alive in Fleur and Awut’s mind, for example. With a flexible framework the making of this short sizzle documentary, as a ‘pitch concept’, might have the potential to evolve around multiple locations as we all had a sense of the story-idea.
The experience with Awut and Fleur has us incubating thoughts on how a full multi-part series might evolve from this piece of work. I will be speaking with Fleur and Awut about what we might use an hour and 57.50 minutes of footage we have left for.
In the final analysis constraints became an advantage in a situation where we had to make decisions in the moment. We had to know when to throw irrelevant aspects of our initial plan away. Critically I drew on my colleagues to plug my knowledge-gaps, open-source platforms and ideas from others in-order to be pitch-ready.
I can’t overstate the importance of social connectivity and collaborators with critical perspectives who care about the project as a creative and production process.
Thanks to
Illustrators @nounproject: David Padrosso, Sasha Willins and Karen Tyler
Editorial team at Trueafrica.co
Team at ‘Producing Digital Content and Formats — NFTS
Breen Turner — Sound Designer at NFTS
Przemyslaw Czastka — Videographer and editor
Music (‘Ijo’) by Siji and Alix Alvarez
Music (‘Drum Song) by Cuttle Fish & Asparagus
