Research-Biggie & tupac (2002)

Biggie & Tupac is a feature-length documentary film about two icon in the rap industry. Tupac Amaru Shakur known by his stage names 2Pac, Pac, and Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor. Shakur was shot four times in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 7, 1996. He was taken to the University Medical Centre, where he died six days later  Shakur has sold over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2007. 


Biggie best known as The Notorious B.I.G., was an American rapper. He was also known as Biggie Smalls , Big Poppa, and The Black Frank White. On March 9, 1997  four bullets hit Wallace in the chest during a drive by shooting. Wallace's entourage rushed him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, but he was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m.


This documentary was released in 2002, after many years of investigations into this touchy case no one has yet to be charged for the murders of these at the time young men. This doc looks into how this war began with the two former friends and the East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry.

Preparation-Research into documentaries

Because I was working by myself i sat down and discussed which genre would be the most easiest and effective to film with my Media Studies teachers. We ultimately came to the decision of the documentary genre and started looking at trailers and film makers on YouTube. As I already knew about Sir David Attenborough i also wanted one more person to research and my teacher suggested to me a man called Nick broomfield and from there I began to piece different areas of film- making/documentaries.

Background Into Research

Over the summer holidays I spent around 3-4 hours a day watching different documentaries to try and understand the forms, norms and different types of documentaries. The three main documentaries I watched were: Planet Earth, Nature's Great Events and Life. These are all nature documentaries but gave me an idea of how to carry out filming and things to include, over the next 3 months I began to watch more real to life docs which included Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents (which is based around young men and women 18-21 going out and having a fun time), Kurt and Courtney (1998) and Biggie & Tupac (2002).

First Draft - Evaluation

I felt that I knew what I wanted to do with my documentary, so putting my first draft together gave me a better plan to try and add new things to make it better and more fluent and more documentary..

First draft

This is what I had put together at first as a draft to note if i need to make any changes...

Research

The reason I chose to do a documentary was because I spend a fair amount of time watching them and i felt that i would understand the norms of making one and because I was working by myself I was able to input all my ideas and pick, twist and change what ever I wanted and at any time.
I looked into two main in the documentary world...Nick Broomfield and Sir David Frederick Attenborough.

Nick Broomfield: He is an English documentary film-maker. He is most known for making a documentary film about slain rap icons The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, an investigation of the deaths of the two icons, which some people claim were orchestrated by Suge Knight, head of Death Row Records.



















Sir David Frederick Attenborough:  He is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years. He is best known for writing and presenting the nine Life series, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, which collectively form a comprehensive survey of all life on the planet.

Location

I wanted to film in place in where I knew that there would have been a small amount of people walking up and down and wouldn't disturb us, these places were Chelsea riverside walk, City London university campus and at Westminster City Boys School. Not only because of the limited amount of people but I wanted to keep the location in a clean/neutral space and make it relevant to where young people would go and hang out with friends.

Props (mise en scene)

The look we went for was a Hip but modern presentable look for both the presenter and the people being interviewed. The look I wanted Clarissa to have was a well off attractive girl, simple but eye catching. Also not to make them look too "loud" but also letting people know that its aimed for 16-19. Through out my doc most of the young people I interviewed has the look you would feel appropriate for people of that age to look like and because of this many people compared my doc to something BBC Three would make.

Casting

For the casting it was pretty straight forward into who I was going to ask to be involved, knowing that my documentary was going to be about girls who are smart approaching these young woman was second to none. I spoke to Sara and Shukri face to face and they agreed to be interviewed, but I also wanted a girl who has been through it already and so I spoke to my ex girlfriend who is now in university and went to Grey Coat Hospital which is an all girls school and has been there since 2006 and also went to the school sixth form but came to WCS on consortium. All of these young woman have been to a mixed and or all girls school and I believe that they are all strong minded and know what they want and so it made sense in picking them over other girls still in WCS and in other places.

Below is where you can see that I asked Clarissa and Irma to to in my documentary.

Filming Times

Well because the main girl in the documentary is in university her timetable was inconsistent, so finding times to film with her was a lot of trouble. Also the other people in my documentary had different lessons and others were away and or at work so therefore I would have to stay behind after school hours and turn up before school to film the parts with just me talking.

Most of my filming times would have been during my media lesions and free periods which were:

Monday: Period 3-4 and after school
Tuesday: Period 3-4 and after school
Free Wednesday from 10:55am onwards
Thursday: period 1-2/12:55pm onwards

Making a timetable was not need as it is a documentary and I didn't want things to have been set up (fake) as that would have lead to a "mockumentary" which is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format.

Solutions with iMovie-Title box

Because I've used iMovie for two years now I did find ways around my problems...

Title box
It may have only been my PC but every time I went to scroll down to get different titles it would close, so to avoid this I only used the ones at the top plus they were the ones I need do it didn't make that big of a problem, apart from when it closed down.

Problems with iMovie

Many people in WCS may have had problems whiles using iMovie (if they use it) e.g. film lags, iMovie sometimes closes down when trying to edit and other times it would freeze and take about an hour to come back.

Problems with Mac

Over the past few months there have been a few problems whiles using mac, because other student come into the media suite and switch between Mac and windows the PC will burn out and crash, thus leading to the PC tec having to wipe  the PC whole.
Because of this everything I had edited had been taken of my main PC, but lucky I had my footage left on the camera i was using, so in my spear time and during my media lessons i would sit down and upload everything then re-edit. The picture below is what I first found out that everything on my desktop.

Rough Draft of Script

As its  a documentary there was no script but my questions were...
How has coming to a boys school changed you.
How has it made you thing about boys.
Have you changed in the way you think about them, and the way they ac.