Sam Baker Production Blog

Week 2:

Here it is! The beginning of our documentary journey. During the week we formed our group for the project. It consisted of myself, Thomas Kelly, Lachlan Mayfield and Lachlan Pasfield. The group was sort of a no-brainer as we had all done significant work with each other since our first year. Knowing each other’s working styles and skills, it made the delegation of roles between the group relatively easy. Thomas was the one who came up the idea for the project. Citing a story that he was once told by his dad, that had always stuck with him; The Story of the Jew Boy Gang. Once we had agreed upon telling this epic bushranger story, we went to the library to read up on the gang. We borrowed a number of books on the topic and each began summarising all that there was to know about the relatively forgotten Jew Boy Gang.

Week 3:

At the start of week 3 we began to further flesh out our pre-production. We created the bare bones of our website for the production using Wix as the builder. We continued to further our research so we could narrow down the main events we were going to focus our narrative on. From this as a group we were able to start to discuss the visual and narrative style we were going to go for. Deciding that this production wasn’t going to follow that traditional formula of a lot of other documentaries, instead we wanted to give it a different flare, one that would instead be told through a lot of imagery and re-enactment. We knew that we had to find a balance however to ensure that we didn’t fall into the territory of short film. As the producer I began to collect and organise the pre-production documents I’d need to submit. In case we weren’t able to pull off the visual/narrative style we wanted, we found a local historian that we could possibly interview, who had significant knowledge about the Jew Boy Gang. It is exciting times!! The project is slightly starting to take form and I couldn’t be happier with my group.

Week 4:

A lot of this week was spent finalising our pitch presentation for the project, which was our first initial assessment for the course. Doing the presentation really helped us nail down our visual style, thanks to a great mood board created by Lachlan Mayfield. We also decided to cut down the initial scope of the story we wished to do, deciding to focus on the Scone Robbery and the gang’s swift downfall following it. The presentation overall went reasonably well except we definitely needed to be surer of ourselves and cut down our explaining. It seemed our nerves slightly got the best of us as we sometimes definitely waffled and weren’t as succinct as we could’ve been. However I still feel we were able to communicate our passion and excitement for the project, which was very important for us.

After the presentation, Tom began applying for locations. We faced some difficulties along with some extortionate prices. We also made the decision to not interview anyone and instead focus on finding a person to act as the guide/narrator for the documentary.

Week 5:

There wasn’t a lot of excitement this week. We were all relatively busy with different university commitments and assessments but we did get some certain things done. The huge news was that we had secured the actor to play our Teddy the Jew Boy!!!! A local talent called Luke Consani was on board and he was just exactly the type of person we needed. We also wrote up a draft documentary structure and further got our pre-production jobs done and documents written.

Week 6:

This week we began to test film which was exciting! We booked out a small space in the ICT building and brought in a shower curtain and began to experiment with lighting and depth of field. Here we were really able to work on our visual style and really experiment with new things with no pressure. We spent around 2-3 hours working there, getting a bunch of different shots so we would have an idea of how it was all going to look once we started to properly film. I continued to work on the pre-production paperwork here, specifically writing out a thorough risk assessment, so that we had absolutely every possible hazard covered.

Tom later on in the week began to work on some rushes from the test footage we had shot. This really helped us further our storyboard now that we had visual stimulus to work from.

Mid-Semester Break (The Big Shoot)

This was going to be the biggest and busiest point of the production for us as a group and honestly it was either going to make or break the production. We decided to all take time off work and meet up every single day to ensure we got what we needed to get done, done.

On the Monday I was unfortunately not able to join as I had to see my parents down the coast and wasn’t able to get out of it. The rest of the crew boys met up though and worked thoroughly on the storyboard and short list. As there was already an idea in place for the visual style which was reinforced by the test shoot, it meant the boys were able to put together the storyboard relatively easily. They also decided to really narrow down a focus in the story so that we can could realistically create a piece of work with the uni budget we had. They also gathered together a list of props/costumes etc that would be needed for the shoot days.

On Tuesday I was able to make it and work with the group. The day went really well. We were able to go through all the pre-production documents that we needed to, on the day the mains ones that truly needed organising were the crew contracts which we all signed. The group also showed me the props they had managed to gather together, this included some props weapons made out of wood, that looked awesome!! Unfortunately, on this day we also got the news from Screen Hunter that filming permissions were looking unlikely unless we wanted to spend a lot of money, which we obviously did not have. This was when we began the discussion about using archival newspapers and documents from the time to direct the flow of the story.

Wednesday was our first big day of shooting and definitely was going to set the tone for the rest of the shoot, so we really wanted to nail it!

We managed to book out the television studio at the university which was awesome as it gave us a really big space to work in which was nice. The set up was a little longer than it possibly should’ve been but we still plodded along and got everything together. This first shoot was rather experimental, involving a lot of trial and error to ensure we had a lot to look at and work with. It was a really great group to work with, as we all performed numerous jobs across the day, each doing what needed to be done for every given scene. At the end of the day we were super happy with what we had managed to do. We knew the next day would be even more efficient as we were allowed to keep our set together overnight, which would eliminate the set up time the next day allowing us more time to shoot.

Thursday was a great day of shooting. We had obviously got over our nerves on our first big day of shooting. We were super-efficient in our movements and overall it just felt like we got significantly more accomplished. Throughout the shoot, Lachlan Mayfield had the great idea to play music which really gave shooting our scenes that extra excitement and really helped us to get into the right headspace. Throughout the day we continued to experiment with different setups, props and even worked with depth of field, which made certain shots look incredible in our eyes. We ended the day with around 12 separate shots being filmed. Overall it was a super great day and we couldn’t have been happier.

Friday unfortunately I was called into work despite asking to have all week off, but my boss wouldn’t allow me to get someone to cover. So unfortunately, I was unable to be a part of the final day of production.

Here you can find rushes from each of our filming days

Day 1 - https://youtu.be/_AoIbl0hQTI

Day 2 - https://youtu.be/vygHI2mT1AU

Day 3 - https://youtu.be/q1f4_HLxl0s

Week 7

This week consisted of all of us being delegated a different main event in the story and from here we began to hunt for the appropriate news articles to accompany the event. As we would be needing these articles for the overlay and storytelling throughout the documentary. I was delegated the ‘Scone Robbery’ and began my search. I managed to find a website called Trove which really helped in aiding my search as it is a massive database of archival newspapers and from here I was able to locate a number of articles relating to the Jew Boy Gang. While some were too old and illegible in terms of being able to read them. I located a number that were of great quality, and began summarising them and grabbing screenshots that we would be able to use in the film.

Tom and Lachy also began to put together a rough cut of the footage using the newspaper clippings that we had begun to