Documentary Update

Gathering the amount of content I need is becoming a struggle.

I feel time is slipping by swiftly and the plan to casually take my camera everywhere with me isn’t working.

I feel there are 3 ways that I’m getting shots:

-              Taking my camera everywhere and picking up bits and pieces when I can

-              Contacting people and asking to film with them

-               Having a dedicated “content gathering trip” for a weekend etc

When I’m taking my camera with me and filming within my everyday routine I feel I’m not getting the “moments” that the film requires. Although it is just a 60 second clip, that clip might come at the end of the day, start of the day – I just don’t know when the moment will present itself.

My other reservation with the just getting footage by taking my camera everywhere approach, is it does feel like I’m getting loads of B-Roll and it feels like I’m not making a concerted point and I’m not owning the direction as much as I should. It also feels quite news.

I think the “filming for a day” at a couple of locations is the best way to find the moment, however, there isn’t many free days in my calendar so I’m going to have to be economical and try and combine as much as I can.

One of the biggest problems I’ve had with making documentaries in the past is the getting over initially reaching out and speaking to people in person. Going up to someone cold and asking if I can film them requires a certain confidence I don’t have. When I get to know people I’m very comfortable but approach in person I find difficult. I either have to find a way round this or just make a conscious effort to power through. There is a butcher in the London Road market in Brighton that I would love to just mic and spend the day filming with but I have yet to approach him because he looks permanently grumpy. I feel if I can get over this hurdle everything will be a lot easier and quicker.

I recently filmed with my oldest friend Michael Lewis. I feel he has a confidence to go and speak to people that I’m very envious about. If I could just put him in my pocket and take him everywhere I would.

This is something I will have to get over quickly or the film never get made but it feels like to do it I have to become a different person at the moment. I may have to enlist the help of some other people to expand my potential reach of different characters I can gather. I’m really trying to make 90 films which is very very difficult.

This post hasn’t made much sense but I hope when I read it back in a few years I can look at this moment and see it as a turning point.

First Review

So after filming a couple of scenes I have decisions to make:

1.        How “cinematic” do I want to make the images?

I shot the new year eve scene at Brighton Railway club on the DJI Osmo 3. It has a low profile but it does has a few draw backs; the fixed lens is very wide so you have to get very close, not great in low light and the sound is crap. I’m a bit disappointed about how it turned out from a technical point of view. From a idea and content point it is better than I thought it was going to be. I will try shooting with A7cR with a 24-70 and see how I like it but I don’t want to loose the idea over making something look nice.

2.        Audio

This is something I’m going to have to work out sooner rather than later. I didn’t create any rules around audio other than it needs to happen within the scene. I think I’m going to mic people up and capture the audio within that scene. I think audio could really make this film; the contrast between loud and quite, sound bites I could get within the shot, music, poetry. There are a lot of ideas I could throw in to it.

3.        Confrontational shooting

This is going to be difficult. When I first came up with the idea, the fact that I had my camera on a tripod in an odd place and that people would stare at it was part of the film. There is some old footage of New York where people are walking past and staring at the camera, as my film is supposed to get back to purely documenting, a tripod with a fixed lens, I envisaged images like this. It doesn’t matter if people are looking at the camera. The camera itself should be confrontational but it means that I have to be brave. I have to stick the camera in difficult positions.

4.        How much production?

There are going to scenes that I come across on a day to day basis but over that last couple of days I realised I need to target and produce a lot of scenes. Some are going to be difficult to get and some are going to be easy. I think I’m going to have to ask forgiveness rather than permission if I’m going to get my 90 shots. However, if I want to get good audio I will have to get permission and get people mic’d up.

Next Documentary

I’ve always liked making films about islands and I think the UK is at a very pivotal point to document.

I’m going to start a new documentary at 00:00 1st of January 2026 and the final shot will end on 00:00 1st of January 2027.

Each shot will be exactly 60 seconds long and the final film will be 90 minutes long. So I have 90 shots to sum up Britishness in 2026.

Every shot will be on a tripod.

Nothing stylised – no slow motion etc.

The shots that don’t make the final edit I’ll post on social media.

I’m hoping this will get me filming more, having something to show for it after 12 months and remain consistent throughout the year.

Lets hope I keep it up. Maybe I’ll do a monthly round up on here to keep myself accountable.

AI and Creativity.

I’ve heard a lot about AI taking away creative jobs. I can understand the worry. With 2 minutes of prompting an algorithm, anyone can create mock ups without any technical skills. My opinion at the time was - video killed the radio star. Yes, new things will come along but creative jobs won’t disappear, everything will co-exist.

I had to write a cover letter last week. I stuck it through Chat GPT to see what changes it would make and it spat out the perfectly written version. Fixed all my dodgy sentence structures, GRAMA - perfect and made me sound more confident. I thought shit, this could just wipe it way through every sector, let alone the creative sector. We’re all in trouble.

Then I read it again and although I was impressed, I realised it had taken out all of the personality. When it again, I decided it came across as quite boring. It felt like a robot had written it. I ended up going with the version I had written myself because I genuinely wanted the work and wanted to communicate who I was.

I have no doubt that in the future AI will be able to do a full personality analysis of me, my writing and get a lot closer but authenticity and human mistakes still win for me now.  

A cure for diabetes would be good. If we train the algorithm so I don’t have to smash a bottle of Lucozade at 2am because I went for a jog last night, that would be good.

This is my daughter and I at a recent Mart Parr exhibition. I’m not sure Martin Parr could be re-created by a computer.

Campaign Films

I think of all the different types of content I make, I walk away most proud of the campaigning films I’ve helped produce and probably the first thing I will show my daughter when she’s old enough.

 I produced this for River Action and although I look back and say “oh, I wish I could have done that differently” and “I wish I could’ve spent time on that” I am very proud to have been a part and contributed to this campaign.

Reading and the Internet

Today we went to Waterstones in town. We went to the kid’s section to see if there were any classics for my daughter.
There were loads of kids up to the age of around 7 engrossed looking through all the different books. As we slowly walked through the shop, the kids section changed to teenage books and there was a large section on online safety, pressures of social media and even now AI.

It was a very physical view of children enjoying an activity - reading, which we have done for generations. And then adults came along, invented mass communication, which has had such a detrimental effect on the happiness of children its got its own section in Waterstones.

Having worked on marketing reports written by youth organisations, that are all around the unhappiness of young people/the internet/social media I think the charity sector is guilty itself of just feeding this fire.

I would like to see a campaign for young people that is a social media blackout. My daughter is so happy and inquisitive when she’s reading a book, if there was an opportunity to get back to that moment in life I think everyone would take it.

Next Project

I have been thinking about what major project I want to do next.  

The large, time consuming, documentaries that I have produced myself have all been about place. I have rocked up somewhere, knowing roughly what the themes will be about but then slowly documenting what’s in front of me.

I like making those films. I like the process. And I think patience is the one of the most underrated skills in being a filmmaker.  

I think I need to start making another film. I know it will be about a place but I haven’t worked about what the place will be.

I know that it needs to have a natural narrative (like the football documentary – start of the season to the end of the season).

I know I need to be able to film at the weekends.

Anyway, I’m going to have to be proactive in finding the next project, the next one won’t just fall in my lap.

Documenting Being a Dad

I recently became a Dad.

I’m pretty sure my daughter is the only person that will ever read this so - hi Mabel.

I’ve tried various different ways to document this so far. I started making videos like these:

We were in the pub a couple of weeks ago and this guy came up to me as I walking around with you and said “keep a diary. Everyone always says, no one does it.” So maybe I’ll just try and keep bits of diaries, collate them on here and hopefully they’ll all smash together to become something coherent.

Reviewing Old Work

I think its always healthy updating your website. It’s a good way to look back on projects that you’re proud of. Sometimes I feel I’ve got a little distracted in the last 15 years and I wonder what 23-year-old Adam would say. But going back over stuff I came across some random video experiments that I used to make. The idea was that they were only one minute long and had to be in some way different. I remember carrying around a camera a lot during this period so I need to get back into doing that.