Our Documentary on Baldock (part 4.)

Our half term was jamm-packed full with our filming!

We had finished the granny scene at Rosie's house one day after school, but other than that, everything has been done in our half term!

The granny scene took us about half an hour to do. We (myself and Gemma) made sure our hair and uniform looked relatively childish, and then checked that the granny (Rosie) was all wrinkled up! We had the granny sitting in an armchair with the bookshelf in the background reading a book, and then the two children came bouncing in, interrupting the Granny's sleep. They are then told the Story of Baldock, and the camera will zoom in on a picture to bring the story to a reality. The end scene will have both children falling asleep- this took a few scenes to get the rght angle, but it was done relatively quickly.

On Sunday we filmed the scenes to do with Tescos, all except for the scuba diving one. We filmed the bits all about Tesco's history outside it, in our talking to the camera documentary fashion.
We talked about Kayser Bondor and it's facilities, and then did a dash around Tescos in a trolley.
We then filmed the church in the dark, because we wanted to add a spooky side to the filming! We went there and did some night filming of the church and talked about the graves. It wasn't filled with information, that was done in the day- we just thought it would be interesting for the viewers to see the church at night, and see if anything really would happen to us.


Two days later, we met again, and filmed the church in daylight. We gave a few facts on the history and the archectectual side of the church too. We decided to go from different areas of the church to make sure the viewers got many different scenes and saw as much of the church and it's grounds as possible.
After that, we filmed on the high street. We had our coloured microphones, which are our themed thing for the interviews, and the 'logo' kind of thing for our whole documentary. We then asked people if they wanted an interview and if they didn't mind talking to us with the camera there, we went ahead and asked them the following questions:

• What do you think of the newly refurbished high street?



• Do you think it was money well spent by the government?



• Do you think the traffic has decreased since the refurbishment?



• Do you think it is now safer?

The people we interviewed certainly had a lot to say! They were very happy to talk to us and say exactly what they thought, (which was sometimes a very long speech) and they were all very chuffed by the camera- they all made jokes about being on the 6'o'clock news!

After our funny interviews, we went up to Clothall Common and filmed the bypass and talked on the history of the Common. We wanted to have the view of the Common as a background because we thought it would be quite picturesque and nice for the viewers to see the whole area from a higher point rather than just filming some houses that could technically be anywhere. We said about the land it was built on, and it's said myths. We added a bit of comedy to this bit, so that the audience wouldn't get too bored! It was good fun actually- there are a lot of outtakes! We visited the area behind the Primary School on the edge of the common and talked about the discovered roman remains found there just over a year ago!

On friday, which again was two days later, we filmed the introduction to the film on our high street. We have the opening scene, (the one with the Granny) and then this one. This one is the introduction to the town and the statistics of Baldock. We filmed this on Friday and then went home- it didn't take very long at all.

The last few things for us to film involve an Extra called Charlie, who will pretend to be an old fashioned man and pretend to be in awe when Gemma does her Marilyn Monroe based character and flashes her big pants outside Tescos (the old langerie factory, see the link?). We will do this scene at lunchtime today. Charlie needs to look really old fashioned, as he is supposed to have been around when Kayser Bondor was, so he will wear a white shirt, top hat, bow tie, and perhaps have a pipe.

We need to film me outside Tescos in a scuba diving suit, which has to be done on a sunday so that it is not busy at all- Tescos closes at 4pm on a sunday. More filming we need to acheive is that of the interviews from people who remember Kayser Bondor. Gemma knows a few people that could help us create a picture of what the factory was like, what is was to work there, and how it played a part in Baldock's trade and so on, so we shall go along and interview them.

It sounds as though we have quite a lot to do, but really, they can be done quickly and efficiently, and shouldn't make the finished product any further out of reach, despite the fact there are 3 or 4 things left to film.

In music today, we filmed the voice over from the book of Kayser Bondor. There is a chant that is all about the factory, so we thought we would do a montage of various images from the book and then have the chant as a voice over during the montage. We practised a couple of times and then got ready to record, using a microphone, and editing the volume on a programme called Audacity.

We now have our theme tune for the documentary! It is a short clip called 1960's that we all love, and feel it really fits in with our recordings.

I shall keep you well and truly updated with our sucess and maybe our unsucesses as we near the final weeks available in the creating of our documentary.