Taste Of London - Lyndon Woods. (Directors Cut. The experience)
By the time I had reached the third food experience I had pretty much ironed out a system to which the documentaries would run on sticking to my rules and guidelines which I created.
The best thing about Lyndon’s documentary experience is that it showed me that within the guidelines I created I also had a lot of freedom to experiment with different shooting styles. This was a good thing as it meant that each video would have its own differentiation based on location, use of technique in filming and visual creativity but still ensuring to maintain the same flow of structure always.
Overall I was really excited about filming Lyndon’s food experience as this was a joint family contribution.
Prior to the food experience I had a brief conversation with Lyndon where he got to inform me of his food selection for the documentary and the story behind it. Understanding that the project was about him being a family man, I inquired more about his family.
This gave me a great idea. The idea would be to feature his family in the introduction of the food experience and also to include them maybe in the one to one interviews relating to Lyndon as a family man. I also had other ideas such as to get his family to participate by having a family meal with him.
Inspired by these outbursts of creative ideas I asked him if he would want to include his family in his food experience to give his story a little more substance.
He had no issue what so ever and his children seemed really excited to be a part of this experience but his wife on the other seemed hesitant to be a part of it as she did not feel comfortable being filmed on camera.
On the day of the documentary filming, I did get a chance to meet the family upon which I made an attempt to speak to his wife again explaining my art direction behind the food experience.
After much persuasion Quillian agreed to be in the introduction of the family and to introduce her self but opted out of playing any further roles in the documentary and gave her consent for the children to be featured in the documentary.
I took advantage of the opportunity to put my ideas forward and it turned out just as I had expected.
The weather unfortunately was not on my side as it was heavily raining so I could not obtain any
location shots.
Throughout the documentary we did experience a few noise interruptions which meant that we had to shoot certain scenes more than once but they were quickly resolved once I had done a reshoot.
Learning from my past experience on the previous two documentaries I made sure to arrive at Lyndon’s home as early as I could so to cover as much of the documentary within the morning/early afternoon.
One thing I aimed to do before each documentary experience which I believe was the reason for the success in my documentary this far was to watch as many documentaries as I could focusing more on watching cooking shows.
I had watched food documentary cooking programs such as: “The Great Bake” suggested to me by my lecturer, Rachel Allen “Home cooking”, “Saturday Kitchen Live”, “Come Dine With Me” and “The Delicious Miss Dahl”. I also looked at other documentary programs such as “Blood Sweat and Luxuries” and “Welcome to Lagos” as reference to film techniques.
As I had never been involved in a film project of any type, these programs and documentaries acted as my teachers, reference books, inspiration of ideas and guides.
Throughout these documentaries I was able to learn about interviewing styles, camera angles, lighting, filming techniques, camera to person positions, transition techniques, voice over effects, location shots, and variations in dynamic shots, some of which inspired the guidelines and rules I initially created.
They gave me an insight into how documentaries were conducted and I sought to these videos for inspiration of ideas for my own documentaries.
In the end result the children got to be a part of the documentary as they agreed to sit down to a meal with their father for the documentary and it was a pleasant sight. With giggles and laughter the children were a pleasure to work with.
In the previous experience Lydia let her nerves get the best of her but unlike her Lyndon managed to keep it together. He was nervous at first but eventually found his confidence and sailed through the experience telling his story very well.
All in all the documentary took a total of 4hours to conduct (including the time taken to brief the family, the in-between filming for photography, the interview and time taken to fix technical issues or correct film bloopers) and compared to the previous documentaries with Carole and Isabelle’s food experience being the longest, this was certainly a positive outcome for me.
I had found my confidence in my art direction and was more aware in directing the documentaries after this food experience with Lyndon.
Overall I enjoyed my experience, it was fun, straight to the point and his story was clear and interesting to listen to.
