Documentary: Update, Part IV

Cemeteries are not spaces for the dead, but for the living. As such, they are perfect subjects for a documentary about 'People and Place'.

• Green spaces in towns
• Victorian picnic history
• Places for reflection & contemplation
• Weathered artistic stonemasonry exhibits - monuments, headstone design
• Remembrance - poetic passages on tombstone engravings
• Biodiversity - wildlife & nature
• Symbols of life cycle

We could use a chapter convention to structure our films narrative, using the discussion points above as guidelines.

Kevin B. Lee coined the term 'desktop documentary' to describe screen-recording, crowdfunding and internet-sourced material use as modern filmmaking conventions. With the pandemic still in full force, our group decided to hold Zoom interviews with our contributors outside of Farnham. I also found archival footage of cemeteries, church graveyards and natural wildlife in general to use for our final edit. Esme went out and shot some dynamic footage of the churchyard, which we could intercut with OBS-captured Google Maps (zoom & Street View) clips.

In response to this short documentary, I thought we could do some macro close ups of cemetery/graveyard details, so I visited Farnham Civil Cemetery with my camera. I also decided to share filming responsibility as the lockdown situation has worsened and travel is an issue for members of our group, so I also practised focus pulls and composition in wide shots. Here are stills of the footage I took:

After seeing Gan-Gan by Gemma Green-Hope, I got some ideas for potential stop-motion animation sequences in our film based on the content of our interviews; could we use deconstructed flower bouquets, soil and other natural forms to illustrate the meanings conveyed through contributor responses?

I sent out emails to our secured contributors providing our synopsis and smartphone filming tips detailed by Esme, then asking them to sign consent/release forms, interview date/time preferences, photos of themselves and videos of them working. I used various public domain image resource websites to illustrate what I would do in After Effects for adding some creative flair to our project, such as animated handwritten text with the Write-On effect allowing me to keyframe opacity along a brush path. I also added to the treatment; some additions are copied below.

Title graphics experiments:

Photo by Juan Salamanca from Pexels

Photo by Mike from Pexels

Synopsis:

Weathered monuments, crafted by stonemasons long ago, standing tall among the grass in the face of time itself. Birds and worms traverse the grounds, lifetime denizens watching over souls at rest. Poetic passages engraved in tombstones, snapshots into the mysterious lives of the departed. Omnipresent as they are, cemeteries and graveyards are often forgotten natural gems, as is their history as Victorian picnic sites. This documentary explores the behind-the-scenes efforts of those working to enrich biodiversity in spaces brushed off as macabre, and asks why exactly those tending graves do what they do. 

Rationale:

We chose this idea because you rarely meet someone who says they happen to work at a cemetery or graveyard. This documentary subject is engaging because while death is a taboo subject, cemeteries are ubiquitous, and their value as green spaces is often overlooked. Revealing the views of individuals whose daily work is in these environments is a necessary step in removing this invisibility cloak. 

Google maps test (London, would remove tabs for performance optimisation and crop video, add voiceover interview about cemeteries as vital green spaces in towns & cities):