We Sing A Cappella (Report)

We Sing A Cappella Documentary Project Report

Subject title & code: SD3004 Independent Project Name: Law Hiu Tung, Karen Student ID: 09177064D Tutor: Calvin Chan Mobile: 9441 9960

? s i h T e d a M I y Wh

There are a couple of reasons of why I would like to make a documentary for this project.

Interest in A Cappella Though I don’t join a choir or an A Cappella team. I am quite interested in those who sing A Cappella. It’s interesting knowing how the members cooperate with each other to make harmonies and the whole structures of songs.

The first time I heard about A Cappella was from a boy band in U.S.A, NSYNC, which has disbanded already. After all I tried to search more A Cappella songs from them or other groups online. But most of them are foreign groups. So it’s surprising that Hong Kong has more and more A Cappella groups and there will be more and more performances and promotions on A Cappella.

Furthermore, I see that in foreign countries, there are professional A Cappella groups. And it seems common to be professionals on A Cappella. But it’s hard to see this phenomenon in Hong Kong. Though there are more A Cappella groups formed in Hong Kong, they all think that it is not the proper time to be full-time performers of A Cappella. Thus, that’s another reason why I made this documentary, to see the deeper reasons of why it’s hard to be full-time performers.

And I would like to make this documentary as an introduction of A Cappella, introduce this alternate performing arts to the public.

Another type of short film I understand that documentary may not be under design stream, it should be more about journalism. As documentaries often reveal the reality and facts to the audience.

I know it will be a challenge to a higher diploma students to handle a documentary, as it requires a good insight on things you do your research on, and the editing of the whole documentary. Since editing can give a proper structure to the documentary, which makes the flow more smoothly.

But I still want to try, it will be a rare opportunity for me to film my first documentary

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Considerations on Format & Style Mostly interviews will be done in the documentary, with some of the video clips showing people having weekly practices and rehearsals for the upcoming performances. And some clips of their performances as well.

Of course my original plan was not like that. My original plan is to film the “video diaries” of members of different communities. It is similar to “trace” their daily life about practicing A Cappella. If this plan worked, then I might tried to find their friends and family to have the interviews as well, so the whole documentary will be more realistic.

But there are some problems: 1) Privacy, will they willing to be followed by a strange person for a month? Also, will their parents and friends willing to appear on screen? Only these two problems can make this plan not workable.

2) Schedule of different members, I can’t focus on one member. For example, HKFYG – every rehearsal has different combinations of people, it’s hard for me to followed one specific person as he/she always in different groups. I’m afraid the outcome would be a mess, as the information of the singer is too “complicated.“

Okay, so at that time I better thought of a better shooting plan.

At last, I chose to do something similar to a quantitative research, that is to find a few groups to talk about the same questions to prove or disprove on some aspects.

I admit that the new plan is a bit too “formal”, which means there are only interviews and video clips of the rehearsals and performances. But there came another problem, which is the “clients” are not friends of mine or those I’m familiar with, so it’s hard to ask them to do “informal” things like acting or meeting their close friends.

Actually I thought of make a mix of story and documentary. That is to present their experience in scenarios. But the most important thing that they need to act, more time will be spent, so most of them were not prefer this idea. Though you may think I can find actors outside to play the roles, that means I need to handle the actors and the clients.

I don’t think I’m good enough to handle two parts at the same time. If I couldn’t handle the whole thing, the whole shooting plan would be in a mess. This could cause a disaster to the production process. So I gave up this method, and tried to do my best for the interviews and took some good shots for the performances.

Confirmed Shooting Style & Format The whole shooting will be divided in three parts, which are the “Past”, “Now” and the “Future”.

Mainly informal interviews, with some clips showing their daily practices and rehearsals of upcoming performances.

“Past” session • About before the past of A cappella team/ PU Choir/Opera & Vocal Studies programme founded, like how they were founded, who and when founded them and what were the reasons of founding them, etc.

• Similar to the foundation history • Let the audience know about the organizations first, what they did in the past and how the members joined • This part would be more informative.

“Now” session • What they are doing now, like preparing for shows or competitions> shoot the usual rehearsal, to show how the member practice and communicate with each other> show the structure and the flow of usual rehearsal.

• Members’ individual interviews before and after the usual rehearsal Ask questions related more to personal feelings, not too informative e.g. how your parents and friends feel when they know you sing A cappella? Or how did you join the team?

• Group interviews(Arranging)> ask questions more related to a group, like do you have any conflicts with team members • Upcoming performances> shoot the final rehearsal, interview the feelings of mem- bers and instructors right before performances, what their expectations in the shows are

“Future” session • Expectations of the team/studies/their own, • Future developments, what people think/ do in the future, how they further enhance their skills • Short-term and long-term plans • Maybe this part will be done by interviews of both instructors and members

?

How Can I Find Them

In a documentary, the most important thing is that you can find the people involved.

I started the “Singers search engine” at the beginning of February. I found that there are many problems occurred during the time I was finding the singers.

At the very beginning, I found three groups of people: 1. The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups (HKFYG) 2. The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) 3. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Students’ Union Choir (PUChoir) Actually, HKAPA was the representative of the Choir part, as my original structure is the comparison between Choir and A Cappella. HKFYG would be the representative of A Cappella part.

Then PUChoir would be in between Choir and A Cappella, since the students in the choir sing both Choir and A Cappella, so they can be the in-between.

In Public Relations (PR) Why do I say that?

Things changed a lot when I was finding the singers, since every groups had different arrangements and requests, especially their time schedules.

I had tried to match all the groups’ time schedules, so the shooting process would go smoother, and kept close contact with them to have the latest news.

How could I contact all the groups?

I better show them in flow-charts, to show all the process and issues I encountered.

HKAPA

Actually my first contact to HKAPA is on 24/1/2011. They were the first group I tried to approach.

Above is the email I sent to Ms Nancy Yuen, Head of Vocal Studies, School of Music, HKAPA.

I sent an email about my further ideas on shooting schedule, and an email asking her if she would agree to be interviewed.

However she didn’t replied me until the mid-February.

She called me instead of replying email.

She said that I could go and visit her on 24/2/2011. She told me some general information about the programme and the schedule.

I went and watched their class on 28/1/2011, to have a look of how it looked like when the students were having lessons.

After the first visit, I developed a new shooting schedule and I sent an email about this on 2/3/2011.

Then she replied me on 4/3/2011, saying that no interviews is allowed until the late March, after their performance on 22/3/2011.

I immediately replied the email asking if I could shoot some clips of the lessons and practices instead. I tried to tell her if everything was postponed after 22/3/2011, my schedule would be tight too.

No Reply Anymore

However, after my reply to Nancy. She didn’t reply me anymore, not even a phone call.

I still don’t understand the reasons. I tried to phone her for a few times, but most of the time she didn’t answer my calls, maybe she was having lessons.

Time to Give Up It was already the beginning of March, I had discussed about the arrangements with HKAPA for a month !

But I still couldn’t get any response from HKAPA, and Nancy seldom replied me email and answered my phone calls. So I was thinking about giving up on HKAPA and tried to find other groups.

Right before the interim presentation, I gave up keeping contact with HKAPA and decided to find other groups for shooting.

HKFYG Back to beginning of February, I had contacts with the one who responsible for HKFYG Hong Kong Melody Makers, Kenneth, through my school mate in my secondary school. It’s a bit surprising that she is now one of the members of HKFYG’s A Cappella group, so I could get the contacts easier.

My first visit to their place of weekly rehearsals on 10/2/2011.

After that, mostly I used email and phone calls for discussion on arrangements of the shooting.

The MAIN REASON why I felt so worried at the beginning of this project was that the “clients“ always replied me so late that my process of my production schedule was too slow.

The only thing I could do at the time was just waiting for their response and tidied up the questions I would like to ask.

Then, “interesting“ things happened. In fact, this is not interesting at all. Since they caused my shooting schedule left behind.

The Music Instructor of HKFYG, Kenneth Lee> he was too busy for other things> KEEP UPS ALL THE EMAILS I SENT

IN FACT, the person in charge is Patrick, the director of the team My schedule needed to be approved by him.

Tried to contact: Simon> a senior member of the team Una> my old school mate, member of the team

I believe Kenneth may want to have a look of my shooting schedule before forwarded it to Simon or Patrick, as he is the music instructor of HKFYG. I understand he needed to be careful about what I was going to do.

But the problem is that he kept all the emails I sent, that means I had wasted my time for nearly half of a month. This seems a bit stupid.

Anyway, I got contacts with Simon and Una, the process became smoother now. Though the time I got back the contacts with them was already the end of February, I believe it was not too late to arrange the shooting.

Therefore, before the interim presentation, I got back the contacts from HKFYG and confirmed that they agreed to be interviewed.

HKPU Ch oir At the early stage, I found three groups of people only.

And I think the production process of HKPU Choir was the fastest and smoothest among the three groups.

The reason why I found them is between the members sing both Choir and A Cappella. It would be good to be the singers in-between, which makes a balance between Choir and A Cappella.

I sent an email of invitation to PU Choir at the beginning of February.

The reason why I say the process contacting PU choir was the smoothest because the president replied me at night of the day I sent the email, saying that they needed to have discussions with the members and they would reply me one week later.

Luckily, they really replied me one week later saying they accepted my invitation and helped me for the shooting.

So I started my real shooting for my FYP with PU Choir first.

The process was pretty smooth, and things matched the shooting schedule I planned before, that was interviews with clips of rehearsals and performances.

Because of PU Choir, I met the forth group that would like to be interviewed, which is ZONE D. It’s because the members of ZONE D are actually a combination alumni and students of PU. And the interesting fact is that all the members are/ were members of PU Choir. So it’s easier for me to get contacts with them too.

As ZONE D members have their weekly practices at PolyU. It’s convenient for me to arrange the shooting for them. I met them at the mid-March, but I finished their part of shooting at the beginning of April. This is the group with the fastest shooting process. All I needed to do was to prepare the questions well, as the shooting location would be at PolyU, the whole arrangement comes easier.

Right before interim presentation, as I gave up contacting with HKAPA, I had only three groups left for the shooting. I was wondering if this was enough to make up a 15-min short film with equivalent contents.

Thus, I tried to look for more groups online. I was thinking about focusing on A Cappella only, as I could look into deeper issues if I focus on one performing arts.

I found a website that is called Contemporary A Cappella Society of Hong Kong. I found it very useful as there are many A Cappella groups links, which I could look for suitable A Cappella groups.

At last, I found the remaining three groups on this website: 1. Senza A Cappella 2. Musepaper 3. Orange

Then the following process would be I sent and receive LOADS of emails and NUMERUS phone calls on discussing my project and shooting schedule.

The arrangements of these three groups were mainly done using emails and phone calls, so the process was much faster then I thought, and the shooting in March became more and more.

I spent the whole March for shooting most of the groups’ interviews and rehearsals.

Oh my classmates thought I had many shooting, it was because the target group of every shooting was different.

Normally, I had three to four shooting for one group. I properly had nearly twenty shooting in two and a half months. It sounds crazy.

<-- My shooting schedule on March, very full shooting schedule

After a period of discussions with groups, at the mid-March, I confirmed that there will be six groups that would be agreed to be interviewed.

1. HKFYG Hong Kong Melody Makers 2. Orange 3. Zone D 4. Musepaper 5. Senza A Cappella 6. HKPU Choir

At that moment, I noticed I had I big affair to deal with.

Questions for the Interviews

My collection of questions for each group.

Actually I found out some problem in designing questions. Some questions may be too general and useless.

I noticed this problem when I was having interviews, so some questions of the later parts of interviews were changed, that’s why I used more interview clips from the groups who had interviews later.

The first group that had the interviews was PU Choir, I didn’t use the interview clips very much not because they didn’t answer well, it is because the questions I designed were a bit boring and useless. It’s hard to put in a documentary to attract people’s interest.

I missed a chance to hear one more group’s opinion on A Cappella, because of the questions I designed had problems.

Also, I didn’t use the clips is because my focus is now changed on A Cappella only.

Difficulties

Shooting I must say that I was a bit lucky that I didn’t encounter many problems during the shooting.

I admit that there are less technical issues needed to be cared in filming a documentary. All I needed to focus on is the interviews with the clients.

Of course, sound recording would be very important in documentary, so I paid much attention to the sound recordings, I usually had two separate recorders during the interviews, so I would have two sound recordings for one interviews. This is a secure way to make sure that the sound recordings for the interviews could be used. Since once the audio of the video clips is bad, audience can’t hear of what the interviewee says, the whole clip would be useless..

That’s one of the reason why the memory used for my footage folder is so large.

Though sometimes I might ask my classmates to help, usually that day would be for interviews, as I had to ask questions and hard to be the cameraman at the same time, most of the time I was the only one to go shooting.

Since there were six groups, the locations for rehearsals and performances were always different for every shooting. And most of the time the rehearsals and performances were at night, it’s not easy finding classmates.

So if I spent time of finding classmates, I better went shooting on my own, as the chances of shooting were sometimes rare like the groups having performances. Their performances were done on specific days only. And I think there should be a variety of shots showing the reality of the groups, so I would go and have shooting if I was available that day.

The difficulties for shooting part are the hardest, I do think editing a documentary is definitely a challenge.

Editing I finished my shooting at the mid-April, luckily it was on schedule. As the whole March is used for shooting and other projects of other electives, I seldom edited the video until my shooting ended.

The most horrible thing is that I have more than 240 GB footages in my folder, what I had to do first is sorting, cutting out all the interviewees answering the questions and synchronized all the sound recordings with my video clips.

My equipments were not “powerful“, only a SONY A1P and NIKON D90, they don’t have external microphone plug-in. You may say that SONY A1P has an external microphone, but I found it was not always stable. So I had to record the sounds in another recorders to make sure the sound recordings are okay.

After the horrible sorting of video clips, I had to do another sorting based on questions I asked. I had to put the answers on same questions into one sequence so I could arrange the structure and flow of the whole video in the final stage.

I spent most of the time on this part as I had to hear every single word the interviewees say for editing a complete sequence for answering one questions. I spent nearly one week to produce more than 10 sequences of different questions.

Then I believe the hardest process was passed away, after the sequences were produced, I started to arrange the structures of the final sequence.

If I put all the question sequences to the final composition, the whole clip would last for nearly an hour. I had to do sorting again to composite a structure of the video.

45 minutes...35 minutes...20 minutes...17 minutes...

I narrowed down the whole sequence by deleting questions that I think were a bit boring, and cut the main sentence of the interviewees only to make the rhythm become faster, then the video would not be too boring.

I trimmed down the whole sequence to 14”55 minutes (the first version). Then I started to add shots of their rehearsals and performances. Another horrible began, I had to search and choose better shots. I didn’t have sound recordings for some rehearsals, so I had to find those that didn’t have much noise.

Generally, that’s how I edit my documentary.

This project is memorable to me, not just it’s my final year project, but I also made my first documentary short film.

Self _ Evaluation

There is a minor reason why I chose A Cappella besides those I mentioned at “Why I Made This”.

It is because this is the first time I made documentary, if the topic is too political, it will even more difficult for me to handle. Performing arts topics are more relaxing compared to political issues.

I think what I have learnt most is communications, I admit that it’s a bit stressful when I stuck at the time that I gave up contacts with HKAPA, and HKFYG hadn’t replied me until the beginning of March. I felt lost about what to do if I had only one group to be interviewed, HKPU Choir.

And I felt that I was a bit lucky that the emails I sent to the groups (Senza A Cappella, Orange and Musepaper) worked since they all accepted my invitations for interviews. And at that time I got back contacts with HKFYG. I was working with HKPU Choir already while the members in Choir introduced me with Zone D.

So at last I could have six groups for interviews. I know that it seems too much for interviewing six groups in 15 minutes. But I think it was a chance for me to explore more singers on how they feel and think of singing A Cappella.

They may have the same point of view on some issues but some conflicts on others. Editing is important to arrange the opinions in proper proportions and orders.

By the way, after this documentary, I am thinking about if I will produce one more documentary on my own. Though documentary is not really under design stream, this challenge is worth taken, as documentaries help me to know more about the particular people on particular things, in this case, the singers singing A Cappella.

This documentary will not for any projects, but just for myself. If I really did one, I would like to do a documentary on female directors. I remember I mentioned this topic at the beginning of this project, when I had to decide what topic I did.

I like this topic actually but due to the tight schedule of the project and my experience on filming documentary, I gave up this topic.

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if I could handle it or not, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if I had the source of finding female directors that would accept the invitations from a student. The most important thing I have to do is to edit six individual versions of my A Cappella Documentary, as I promised them to return individual versions. It sounds terrible to edit six more versions, definitely a challenge.

282.82 GB, 1511 items, the largest project Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever did.

Anyway, thanks for reading such a LOOOOONG report.

END.