Alloa Tower

Alloa Tower :

To begin my documentary I had to do some research. I didn’t do much, just went on the internet and googled Alloa Tower. It was mainly for a bit of background information to get me started, and to give myself a rough idea on the camera shots I would try.

3 useful links on documentary makers –

http://www.superflex.net/floodedmcdonalds/

http://www.downanddirtydv.com/home.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video

Digital video can be stored in 3 different ways

1) Encoding ; This is compressing files so that it can be displayed in specific situations ie the internet

2) Tapes ; Although now mostly obsolete, vhs or smaller tapes are sometimes recorded onto for storage of DV

3) Discs ; The most widely used method of storage used today.

Digital Video can be displayed in several different ways. Here are 3 of them

1) Cinema ; Through a projector on the big screen

2) T.V ; Where we see most of the documentaries that are made

3) Internet ; With the internet vastly growing, a lot of up and coming documentary makers try and be seen using the internet.

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Story, four of the top eight highest-grossing documentaries of all time.[3] In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections.[4] He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth.

Moore is a self-described liberal[5] who has criticized globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works.

Phil Grabsky is a British documentary film-maker based in Brighton, East Sussex. His company Seventh Art Productions has produced award-winning documentaries for television and cinema.

Grabsky’s work such as I, Caesar, Spain - In the Shadow on the Sun, The Great Commanders and the Tim Marlow on... series, has been broadcast on various U.K. channels such as BBC, Channel 4, Five and Sky Arts, and internationally around the world.

His film The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan was released in cinemas in 2003 and tells the story of 8-year-old Mir and his family living in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The film has been shown across the globe and won 13 awards including the Gold Hugo in Chicago for Best Film and first prize at the Valladolid International Film Festival. Phil is continuing to film Mir and his family in Afghanistan.[1]

John Paskievich is a Ukrainian-Canadian documentary filmmaker and photographer from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Paskievich's 2006 National Film Board of Canada documentary Unspeakable explores stuttering. Paskievich himself stutters and he narrates and participates in the film, which won a special jury prize at the 2006 Whistler Film Festival.

His other directorial credits include My Mother’s Village, in which Paskievich delves into the experience of other Ukrainian-Canadians, The Gypsies of Svinia, If Only I Were an Indian and the Genie Award-winning short film Ted Baryluk's Grocery.

Born in Austria, Paskievich emigrated to Canada at the age of five. He studied at the University of Winnipeg and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. An accomplished stills photographer as well as filmmaker, his photographs have been exhibited at prestigious galleries and museums across Canada.

His photographs have also been published in four books: A Place Not Our Own, Waiting for the Ice Cream Man... A Prison Journal, Urban Indians and A Voiceless Song.

In October 2007, Paskievich's first book, The North End: Photographs by John Paskievich, was published.

The process that we followed to produce our film was as follows :

1) Research on Alloa Tower and watching various documentaries to give us a rough idea about hot to go about it

2) Storyboarding and scripting so we knew what to do when we got to filming

3) Getting permission to, and doing the actual filming

4) Editing, which includes adding music and titles

5) Putting the final piece onto a DVD

Adam Easdon