FARM CRITICAL REFLECTION

Brief

Our initial brief was to produce a five to ten minute documentary under the heading "Land". As a group, Charlotte Clarke and I were assigned 'livestock farming' as our focus.

Concept

Our documentary, entitled 'Farm', had a very clear concept from the very beginning. We wanted to explore the difference between life and death and demonstrate how important this factors in the farming industry. We were concerned with achieving a clear difference between the light and the dark - the life and the death. As we discussed the concept more, the idea of showing produce from field to plate - that is from life in the field or the barn, to death in the abattoir and finally to plate in the kitchen. We quickly decided to film at two farms - one that was predominately chicken based, and one that had a diverse range of poultry and other animals - and an industrial kitchen. Initially we wanted to film in an abattoir but were refused access on several occasions due to health and safety risk and the sheer distrust of journalists in such a restricted environment. In light of this we attempted to source footage elsewhere and gained permission for a video (which I shall detail later in 'Permission').

Influences

When given our brief we researched farming through online forums and directories, and also through specialist farming magazines such as 'Smallholder' and 'Farmers Weekly'. Coming from a background that is miles away from farming, getting a good basis in the kind of things that were happening in farming was greatly beneficial. From the magazines we took images, especially those of chickens, and incorporated them into our filming. The websites were also extremely useful in sourcing possible film locations, as we researched Hampshire Farmer's Market and their members. As we learnt more about the brief, and the 'Art House' aspirations of 'Land' we began researching into darker texts and films. Our title sequence was directly influenced by the opening credits of the cult film 'American Pyscho' and the overall feel of the film, particularly the sharp cutting, was influenced by Christopher Nolan's style of editing and choice of music in films such as 'Inception' and 'Momento'. Our sharp cuts are taken from the editing style of Guy Ritchie - harsh cuts without fading to black. We actively used this concept in our documentary, for example our cut to black that is achieved by lying the camera on the floor and covering the lens with straw. Finally, the way in which we have edited in the advertisement we received copyright for is very much reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984 and the voice of 'Big Brother'. We took further influence from George Orwell's work throughout the production and included the quote "Four legs good, two legs bad" as a homage to this.

Our music was inspired by emotion and the feelings surrounding life and death. We wanted to achieve a reaction from our audience and felt that music was the ideal way to lead them from one section to another i.e from the light to the dark. Therefore we found a variety of music with jolly tunes, slower more instrument based songs, instrumentals and more folky songs. Our music was sourced on copyright free websites and was found by narrowing the search down to key words that fitted our chosen emotions.


Planning/ story boarding

Before filming it is crucial to plan and story board. Our initial story board was based on our research outlined above. As part of the planning process we contacted local farms to ask permission to film. Of the farms that agreed we visited the farms to get a feel for what shots would be good, what access we could get and we took photographs so that we could plan more thoroughly.

We chose the two farm locations - Fairacres farm and Smilers Farm - because they had a diverse range of animals. Fairacres specialises in chickens and cattle, and it was here that the interview with Ian Constable-Dakeyne was filmed. Smilers Farm had a much larger range of animals including pigs, goats and geese which we wanted to show a real spectrum of live stock farming.

Our third location was the industrial kitchen at Winchester Rugby Club. I have had contact with the rugby club for some time and was given permission to film their chef preparing and cooking chicken - very apt for our film as our focus is on chicken and poultry. We chose to cut out the chef's head, making him a faceless, nameless man, thus adding to the atmosphere of our piece. The kitchen met our needs perfectly, as it has stainless steel work surfaces, the correct butcher's knives and an industrial size oven (of which we filmed the gas hob).

Permission 

Gaining permission to locations and footage and avoiding copyright infrictions were a constant thought on the production. The farms were incredibly willing to allow us access to film. We have verbal consent to film at both farms and arranged our dealings over the telephone.

We obtained the music from the following copyright free website:

http://dig.ccmixter.org/

The website was ideal for our production as it has a wide variety of sound tracks and has no legal restrictions.

In 'Farm' we use an advertisement for the charity 'Compassion in World Farming'; an organisation that is concerned with animal welfare in the farming industry. We came across the film whilst researching for our own production and Charlotte contacted the charity and the writer directly, who both gave us written permission. Of course, to avoid any complications with copyright, we have credited the charity and writer with a caption whenever their footage is used. Although we have used footage from a charity, our intention is not to advertise their cause or portray any bias.

Filming


When filming for the documentary we had our story board clear in our minds. We wanted footage that could be cut together in short, sharp moments to contrast the light and the dark. Our overall idea was to shock the audience - cut from a close shot on a piglet's face to a loud chop of a knife. We also wanted to give the documentary a sense of realism and avoided pans and zooms, opting instead for still shots of the animals and the setting. However, the nature of filming is such that our hand held shots are too shaky to use.

As much as possible we left the camera still and moved away, to encourage the animals to behave naturally. Using this tactic we achieved the close up shots of the geese and ducks - we positioned the camera safely and threw seed to attract the geese to the lens.

Editing

During the editing process we experimented with speeding shots up, slowing shots down and colour correcting. For example, our closing credits are a reversed shot sped up to four hundred percent, which achieves the frantic motion that we desired. In order to create a more professional overall feel we also downloaded several fonts, the best of which was 'Haymaker' which can be seen in our titles.

During the editing of our opening title sequence in particular, we wanted to emulate an Art House style.  We used a slow, folky song as the soundtrack and filmed on a white screen, so the audience's entire focus would be on the meat. In the edit we added lines on either side of the screen to frame the meat, further emphasising it's importance within our documentary.


Conclusion


Overall 'Farm' was executed and delivered well. Our film has a journey; a story, and is edited to maintain interest and intrigue. We see the animals go from life to death in five minutes, which is exactly what we set out to achieve.