Re-filming

In our rough cut screening the class and Paul himself thought that there wasn't enough focus i.e the documentary was crying out for a protagonist. The class had about 12 people and between throwing shots of the mob laughing and cutting to another shot of the girls sharing some biscuits it's rather dis-orientating. I do not disagree with them.

In hindsight, I remember suggesting right off the bat in week one or two to focus on just one character. I don't know why we went off-kilter and decided to focus on the entire class instead. But I'm not blaming everyone. It's a team effort, and Bree and Alex are just awesome.

Deciding on a protagonist wasn't going to be difficult. The only student who really warmed up to us was Robert Davies. He's always the friendliest and had a ready smile for us. I'm too polite to ask him what his learning difficulty is or what his disability is as he's VERY normal. If anything, he can pass of just as another university student, walking around campus with a group of friends.

So we schedule the interview with Robert on a day where he had classes. Pauline, the lecturer, was so nice and allowed her student time to 'cut classes'. Now that's one lecturer I'd like to have more often than not!

The interview was conducted in a quiet part of the school; Pauline had arranged a room for us to film Robert. As Bree had to work in the morning, it was up to Alex and I to conduct the interview. I really didn't do much preparation in terms of questions; Robert has always been really friendly with us and the ice was broken a long time ago. Alex and I just drew up a rough template of questions to throw to Robert five minutes he walked in. I knew it was going to be easy.

And easy it was. Robert was rather shy in the beginning, but as the interview went on he warmed up to us and opened up. I was afraid we'd have to ask him a lot of questions but he went on and on about his life. I didn't know what the structure of the documentary was going to be, but as Robert went on his spiel he began to talk about his past and how he was bullied a lot.

I realised there and then that we have an angle for the documentary. Robert became so comfortable with himself he slipped into a 'chatting over coffee' mode. We wouldn't have looked out of place in a cafe sipping coffee.

Post-interview, I lined up Robert for a series of shots along Flinders Lane. Robert was obviously not used to be in front of the camera, and kept looking into it. I didn't like it at all but both Bree and Alex commented on how that's part of his goofy nature and appeal. So I stuck to it.

At the end of the day I'm just glad we chose Robert. We couldn't have chosen a better protagonist.

Now it's time to sift through more footage. God help us.