Development of Documentary Treatment

Development of Documentary Treatment

Additions to the treatment will be made in red

Working Title – Pins & Needles

Genre – Documentary

Duration – 5 mins

Target audience – 18 – 50 years of age and those both with an interest for tattoos and those who are new to it.

Tagline

A documentary illustrating the personal stories behind peoples tattoos. Expressing the art as more than just an image it’s a story with complex emotions behind it.

Outline

In this documentary we hope to illustrate the thought and care that goes into the art people put permanently on their bodies in the hope it may subvert some premade assumptions. Keeping each story personal to the subject it will form individual complex narratives for each person. The film will be heavily influenced by James Lees short film 'pockets' because I love the stylistic way it shows the subjects in the film. The use of shallow depth of field allows for more focus on the smaller items which I feel would be a great way to show the tattoos. I have also been influenced by a few documentaries I have watched recently such as Tattoo Age from Vice which are incredibly informative and have as a result informed my decision to make part of the narrative for the film cover artists and what it’s like from their point of view.

This film will be made with a montage of tattoos in close up, it will be shot on the Canon 70D DSLR camera with a ring light around the lens allowing for a brighter, sharper and clearer image. It will be shot with a 50mm and an 85mm lens with a shallow depth of field so that the background is blurred and out of focus. This draws the audiences eye to the main focus of the frame which is the tattoo itself. The camera will be mounted on a tripod to allow for a still image, it will also mean that the fact the camera. I wish to experiment with using some different colour grading techniques so have downloaded a profile for my cinematographer to use while filming. The profile allows for a larger dynamic range between colours allowing for a brighter and more colourful images.

In terms of the recorded audio we will be record short interviews with a number of contributors to find out, why they get the tattoo? Why it’s important to them? What do they think about when they look at it? By keeping the questions personal so that the film is more about the people and their stories than about giving a general answer as to why people get tattoos. It will be recorded on a mono track hand mic and a shotgun mic. After talking with the sound recorder and designer we decided it would be a cool idea to add a number of sound effects to a few of the tattoos to bring them to life a little. We decided that it wouldn’t be over bearing sound but the effect would underline the image combined well with the music and narration interview.

Setting

The film will mainly be set in the high street in Sheffield as that is where we plan to find most of our contributors but it may also be filmed in other locations depending on contributor availability. However, due to the fact we plan on blurring the majority of the background out it won’t make much of a difference. I plan on also filming in a number of tattoo studios, although the location won’t be noticeable it’s the interviews with the artists that will make all the difference.

Examples of characters:

Harriet – A 19 year old girl dating an art and design student, she allows him to practice stick and poke tattoos on her legs. She has a variety of different images from him and a few tradition and abstract pieces.

Dalton - A Fine Art Student who has a lot of classic art based tattoos, as he aspires to be as good as the classics one day.