assignment 4 - constructing a narrative

For this assignment you'll gather documentary footage and use it to create a short documentary sequence representing a portrait of a place. You should try to capture the spirit and feel of the place as well as representing what happens there. 

Preparation

The place I've chosen for the documentary was El Rastro, in Madrid. This is a street market with many years of history that is set up every Sunday morning in Madrid city centre. 
I had two other places as possible subjects; the park close to Calderon Stadium - I was walking one day after a match along there, and it was beautiful to see all the Atletico supporters flooding the place with their football outfits, I thought it would be a nice ending for the documentary about the life in the park through the day - and the square in El Matadero, an arts centre where activities are organized all week, with different ranges of acitvity. 
Finally I thought El Rastro would give me more narrative opportunities, as I think it happened in the end. 
For El Rastro, the timescale that should be approached is obviously one day. So the documentary is not so much about El Rastro but about the area where the market is set up, as I would gather images of the market in the early morning and how the market evolves and finally ends through the day, leaving a quiet neighborhood.
Below is the first sketch of the narrative, with the essential shoots I should have tried to film. 

I recorded, despite the recommendation, too much footage. Editing and discarding images to "clean" and clarify the narrative has been quite difficult, and I've begun with a documentary of 9min that has been sequentially reduced to 5.40 min.
The edited previous sketch, with the key little stories that I have captured through the day and I want to include, is below.

Documentary

Music:La llave de mi corazón, Hechos Contra el Decoro
Hora de la Re Minor, Marian Badoi

Evaluation

Act 1

For act one I've filmed El Rastro in the early morning. All merchants are setting up their stalls and there is still not too many people. For the sequences of people mounting their stalls I've chosen a rhythmical music with gipsy reminiscences, combined with a rapid sequence of shots.

I think this introduction succeeds in presenting what will be a busy day for the people who works in the market. We can also appreciate how usually these business are family business and how young kids would help their parents in preparing for the day. 

The impression given is that everyone is in a good and calm mood, for instance when we see in the last scene of the act the policemen walking down the street in the background, at a leisurely pace.

Act 2

The act is open quite nicely with the man smoking the cigar and walking in front of the camera, which momentarily follow him. It was casual that he walked by, but the result has been very good in my opinion. The music has stopped and changed to a more tranquil rhythm.

In this act we see mid shots to demonstrate how the number of people is building up and the sellers shout out their goods.

Among these images, we see the street of the birds. This is one of the very typical areas in El Rastro that was within the planned shots. It is typically not very busy, this is why I have placed it early in act two. A close up of a bird and the ambient noise show that it must be a thematic area.

Down the street I found this old lady selling paintings, patiently placing them for viewers in a rope on the wall. To show that some time passes from the first image of the lady to the next, where we see her selling a painting to a couple, I've placed another shot in between (there are actually a couple of hours in between sequences).

With the next sequence I want to show how time has passed, how we are moving to a time in the day (noon) where the market is very busy.

• We see an armour sitting on a trunk,
• We see the armour in the same position and location from behind,
• Fade to black and music stops, finally
• We see the armour sitting on a chair, with a cane.

I'm not sure how successful is this sequence to achieve its purpose, as I showed the documentary to my partner and had to explain it. There would be more obvious ways of showing this time passing. We recently watched an old episode from Seinfeld, which is filmed backwards. Humorously, they show Kramer eating a huge caramel in different scenes, and the sweet grows bigger and bigger to show what has happened before and what happened after.

I think my scene is too subtle, as the shots are wider and more things are going on in the frame, the armour missing our attention.

Then we see a couple of scenes that just show how the market gets busier and busier. Edward Scissorhands is the first scene where we have loads of people. Then we move to the  people walking in the main street, the camera moving along with the crowd from a subject point of view.

Back in the square I have chosen to introduce another very typical area of El Rastro - the area where you can trade cards - using a close stall that was playing the music of Sinatra.

• The scene begins, we see the peculiar owner of the stall sorting out his goods. The camera begins to rotate to the left,
• Then I change to shots of the children and parents trading cards,
• Then we go back to the stall to end the camera movement. The scene ends with a man sitting on a chair.

I think that for this sequence, though images and ambient music are nice, it is not clear that the trading cards are close to the stall, nor that the first and second shots of the stall correspond to same place. If the merchant was probably in both sequences, that would have made the trick. Also I should have tried to pick up an angle where you could see the card traders.

The continuous music helps to understand that the activities are happening simultaneously.

Next sequence is a time lapse. Again, I'm not sure that the transition between images achieve the intended objective: time has passed and we are now in the late afternoon.  We see the camera tips from the sky to the ground and fades to black. The next scene is the same square, emptier.

The problem is that the camera angle is not the same in both scenes, and it is not obvious that we are in the same place. Also the opposite camera movement would have been more efficient, i.e. camera tips from ground to sky, then fade to black and then back from sky to no stall. Unfortunately I did not thought of using this images for a time lapse…

The next scenes are my favourite from the whole day. And old man is breaking down his stall, and carrying it back home.

I was quick on getting the sequence filmed from different angles, which has resulted quite nicely.

A couple of - possibly too long - scenes show the cleaning force taking care of all the mess left behind by the market.

Finally we move to scenes of the people having lung (it is approximately three in the afternoon) and the streets going back to normal, kids playing, sun going down.

Act 3

To move between acts I was lucky enough to get this shot of a pizza delivery man, and later at night this couple walking their dog up the street.

This is followed by another shot of a quiet square, a woman walking by, and the documentary is closed with a shot of three men sitting on a bench watching a police car pass by. Life is back to normal in the neighbourhood.

Editing was quite difficult because, despite the recommendation in the notes, I filmed loads of sequences.

To sum up I think I have achieved creating a narrative, though I thought it would not be easy with the images filmed. I have been able to place within the little film some stories that show the character of the place.