Did you read that comment?
Which one?
Living On a Shoestring on that documentary?
Which one?
The guy said, “oh cool sunnies crap teeth!”
I first met Jools when I was walking around the streets because I was trying to use a camera that
I had just bought, it was the a7s II, and I met him on the street, he was busking and I was just
filming him, and after he finished he called me over and we had a chat. And then the documentary
that I did with him in 2016 was called Living On A Shoestring and it was just about him, it was more
a profile piece than a mini-documentary but that's essentially how we met.
Ah now we're cooking on gas. We're getting there now, that's it, the picture is building.
The documentary, Together Again, came about because I got in touch with Jools
during the pandemic. I wanted to find out how he was getting on what he was doing
and because most of his income comes from busking on the street I wanted to find out how it was
affecting him, because obviously the country was in lockdown, the whole world was in lockdown
so you know you couldn't go outside, and so I just wanted to catch up with him, see how he was doing
and then we started talking. We thought, you know, we talked about, we talked about making
another documentary based on the stuff that he was doing and so that's how Together Again came about.
I think what it is is you can't really hear the guitar enough to hear the chords right,
so we might have that ladder it might be a bit too long…
Filming Together Again definitely took longer than I was anticipating but that was only because
of the pandemic and we started filming the first part, which was in the studio. So Jools had booked
some studio time to go in and record the song so I went and I basically filmed that whole,
that whole process. For that I used the a7s II because I still had it at the time
and I used my Assassin, my Ninja Assassin my monitor and also used my NTG4+ to just
capture the b-roll sounds and also I used my monopod. So I love using my monopod when I’m
just getting b-roll sometimes because it allows me to use the pan and the tilt fluid head
but also it kind of gives you a handheld vibe but without it being really shaky so I love using the
monopod, so I used that and then I also used the tripod at some points but I think most of the
time it was on the monopod or there were times when I was actually using the camera handheld.
Filming in the studio was just before Christmas 2020 and
literally after that the country went into another lockdown so I couldn't then film the interviews,
which is what I was hoping to do next and normally what I do tend to do is film interviews first
so that I can get a sense of what's being said and where the story's gone and how the story is going
to come together, and then I filmed the b-roll afterwards but in this case it just didn't work
out that way just because of the timings and when the studio was booked. And it worked out
fine it was absolutely fine because I knew that I was going to need studio footage anyway, so
we couldn't film the interviews until summertime 2021 when restrictions had kind of been lifted
and everything was kind of back to normal,not fully back to normal but you know people could
interact with each other again and so I went and I filmed Jools, Jools's interview
and we were actually going to film it in the studio but something happened on the day,
we couldn't get into the studio so we went and, we went to a pub that Jools likes to go to
and we sat in the garden and we filmed the interview there which was really nice,
but the only problem with it was the fact that there were birds chirping and that
really annoyed me in the film because I can just hear these birds chirping, and so
that kind of it didn't give me the cleanest audio which was a little bit disappointing.
So that's what inspired it
and so then what happened was, I mean a few little things that happened…
But for the gear for the interview with Jools I used, by that time I’d gotten rid of my a7s
ii and so I used my a7 III and I had two of those so I actually had a dual setup going on so I had
my a7 III with my ZEISS Batis 40mm and then my second a7 III with my ZEISS Batis 85mm.
So one of the reasons why I wanted to have the dual camera set up, the multi-camera setup was
because during an interview you want to be kind of chopping and chopping up the
dialogue and so when you do that you don't want it to look really jumpy and with Living
On A Shoestring I only had one camera so when I wanted to chop up the interview, the dialogue I
had to kind of punch in and punch out and punch in and punch out and I don't really like doing that
so it was really nice to actually have two cameras and have two cameras that were exactly the same
so there wasn't much to color correct and color grade between the two of them, and so the camera
settings were set exactly the same, and for the audio I actually used the Hollyland Lark 150 for
the interview because it's got two transmitters – yeah two transmitters. It meant that I could
have one of the lav mics on and so, if I did want to include anything that I said or like for the
BTS video anything like that then it meant that I could, I could do that and have clear audio.
And then I also pretty much had the same setup when I was filming Proff Barrr’s interview as well
and that was also outside. The challenge with that was that there was a plane that was flying around
and we just had to keep stopping and then starting again but it was, it was all right because he, he
interviews really well and he just picked up from where he left off and there was no awkwardness or
anything so that was really good, and it was great having a chat with him and actually finding out
more about the Surgical Laser Trust Fund which is what the documentary is fundraising for.
Let's hope he doesn't start doing circuits…
In terms of editing the documentary, so because I had shot the studio footage I was basically
sitting on it for a good six, seven months and as soon as I shot the interviews then
the editing started to happen, and so I the first interview that I cut was Jools's
because I knew that was going to be the main part of the video and so I just went through,
and with Jools I didn't try and steer the conversation in any way I just let him talk
and he's very good at talking, but he's also very good at articulating what he wants to say as well
so I just let him talk and tell me his perspective of things and the story kind of came together,
just based on his timeline of events and the way that he was telling, just telling me his whole
situation throughout lockdown, so I didn't feel like I had to steer it in any way and I think that
the narrative that we got was pretty much what I would have wanted anyway.
And then, so his interview I cut that first and then after his interview was pretty much cut
I did Prof Barr’s interview and I was keen to put more of Prof Barr in the in the documentary but I
also didn't want to make it too long, I was also conscious that it was already quite long so I,
that's why I did a separate interview, a separate interview video for Prof Barr’s full interview
because he gave so much good information that I didn't want to just kind of bin the rest of the
interview so I just created, just just decided to create an entire video of that on its own. So
yeah that's something that you can check out because it talks more about the Laser
Trust Fund and what they do and how they do it and that kind of thing. So once I had cut
both of those interviews together and I basically had the narrative for the documentary,
then I started putting the b-roll on top of it and this part I kind of did the first draft
and then I went over it again and I was really keen to put bits that wasn't just b-roll on top
of the narrative but parts where I had filmed Jools whilst he was in the studio and he had,
he was talking to me in the studio, so having little excerpts like that.
And I quite like that and I think it kind of breaks up the documentary.
And the other thing was filming Jools in his van as well so that also happened in the summer time,
and with some of the b-roll I did already have the sound effects but with some of the other stuff it
was, it wasn't clean, the the sound effects weren't quite clean enough so I used Audiio
and Epidemic Sound to just get the sound effects I wanted, so for example at the beginning,
him walking towards his car, getting in the car, closing the door, they were all sound effects that
I added afterwards, and for the music apart from the last song which is obviously Jools' track,
the music was from Audiio, and I love that site, it's just so good it just has
such a range of tracks and you can just easily find what you need. So
the music that I used for the documentary which wasn't the Together Again main track was all from
Audiio and also the music that I used in Prof Barr’s full interview videos also from Audiio,
and then once I had basically got the music and the sound effects in place and everything
was kind of looking how I wanted it to, then I went to the color correcting and color grading,
and for that I used FilmConvert Nitrate. You will hear me raving about FilmConvert Nitrate
so much because I absolutely love it, I really do just love it, it's just such a great plug-in
and it just really allows me to get the look that I want for the videos that I create, so yep
color corrected, color graded with FilmConvert and then that was the final, the final piece.
I’m nervous, Tamara. I don't know why.
I'm really nervous, my legs are shaking.
I think one of the challenges with the documentary was that I didn't get as much b-roll as I wanted
to just because of restrictions and not being able to film at certain times, and one of the things I
really wanted to do was actually get some footage of Prof Barr in the hospital or working or doing,
you know, doing that kind of stuff but I wouldn't I wouldn't have been allowed in
the hospital because of the restrictions and everything so that was really disappointing,
because I kind of wanted to have that over the top of what Prof Barr was talking about so
that you could actually see him working and see his colleagues working, and that kind of thing
and I also, because I was, I felt like I was on quite a time limit and I can't really multitask,
I couldn't get as much behind the scenes footage as I would have liked because I do like to put BTS
videos together because I actually find it useful for myself when I look back like a year from now
or a couple years from now just to see how I shot something, but also just for you guys as well,
so I didn't get quite as much BTS footage as I would have liked and when I was filming in the
studio I did have my, I had my second camera set up in the corner and I just kept moving it around
just so that I could get something and show you guys in the beginning me setting up my gear and
what gear I was using and whatnot, and that also reminds me that I also used the DJI RS2 when I was
outside. So the shots where Jools is, Jools and his friend are doing the dry stone walling, that
was shot using my RS2 with my a7 III on the gimbal and then for the drone shots I use the DJI Mini 2.
But yeah they're the main challenges and like I said, also not having access to the studio
that day to do the interview so hearing the birds chirping in the background and whatnot.
Anyway that's the license for Princess Hay in Exeter, when I want to go and play there now
for a couple of hours to just pitch up, and that's an audition license,
took about two months to get and it just rolls on and rolls on…
I'm definitely happy with how it turned out, I think that I've come a long way from how I filmed
and cut Living On A Shoestring. So, you know, it's all still a learning curve I'm still learning as
I do things and learning different ways of doing things and trying to find my style and all that
but one of the things I really want to focus on in 2022 is shooting short narratives so
I think I'm going to park the documentaries for now and then focus on doing some short
narratives because I want to do something where it's going to be really creative and I can get
my mind going in that creative way, and just come up with something completely fictional and, and,
and do that, and it's just a completely different process as well I think when you're shooting
a documentary to shooting a short narrative, so yeah that is Together Again, and check it
out if you haven't already, the links are in the description and yeah see you on the next video.
I mean Dwayne you know my Caribbean producer from London,
when it came to my voice he said you're like marmite, you either like you or you hate you,
so I went oh… so he used to try to get me to sing as little as possible.
Not that I minded.
I think we're done.