Filming 'Generation Y' Documentary

Visual stimulation

The experience at Liverpool city has astonished me with its magnificent charm of huge buildings, progressive architecture and the feeling of the wide open space at Merseyside waterfront was refreshing.

DAY 1:

James, Mike and I did an exploration around the town and discovered St. James Cathedral, walked around the graveyard and did some location scouting. Places we explored are shown in these pictures:

Dolby hotel, found a restaurant that didn't have any food at 14:00

Ended up eating in China Town, at a restaurant called 'Arch', had beef in oyster sauce with rice

DAY 2:

Filming took place at the Narnia Experience at St. Georges Hall, Ykids headquarters, a coffee shop relating to Ykids, a kitchen at Bootle. I had a list of questions I've written down to ask in the interviews, to receive content for the documentary in which I thought it would be ideal to focus on the religious aspects of these altruistic organisations and people. This is a copy of the questions I decided to focus on when asking the interviewees:

Documentary film-making surprised me with its sense of adventure, exploring deeply into strangers' minds, interests and discovering real people, finding out about their lives, asking questions to provoke passion and their beliefs caught on camera is what made the film process enjoyable. The staff at Ykids said that their biggest motivation is to spread the Christian message at the Narnia experience, and during this journey they unify other christian volunteers. My favourite part is the interview with young volunteers called Jack O'Hare and Rosie Bunn, the way they answered their questions about faith was inspiring, although I'm agnostic, I still found their beliefs precious.

A still from Jack and Rosie's interview

They were in Narnia costumes with the lion logo representing Aslan, they said it represented Jesus in a symbol. Watching this filmed live was an entertaining experience along with learning about the thoughts and feelings of individuals. It was almost like I was a psychologist for a day with the type of questions I was asking. The most generic one would be: How does that make you feel?

Some behind-the-scenes of interviews snapshots:

Jack and Rosie's interview

Kate Yates, staff at Ykids interview

Actors of Narnia experience interview

Claire Morgans, CEO of Ykids interview

Some pictures taken of our documentary film adventure: 

The crew

After the Narnia experience at St. Georges Hall Liverpool, we took a train to Bootle Strand, which was about 15 minutes away. 

We met Claire Morgans outside the train station and she took us around in her 6 seater car, went to her office and around some abandoned houses with a church burned down by troubled youth. Did some urban exploration, saw burnt-out buildings, urban decay and graffiti-strewn walls:

Then it was time for us to go back to the Hatter's Hostel, after a long day's shoot and filmed about 1.2 hours of footage, which is a lot to work with for a 5 minute documentary. 

Chinatown Liverpool at night time

A fortune cookie I opened, I thought it related to film in some way

On the final day of the Liverpool trip, Amy, Louise and I went to town to check out the Narnia experience but it was all booked out. So we decided to roam around the city and we saw a bunch of film trailers and asked what was going on. The film they were shooting was about Christina Noble Children's foundation, she had just done a film shoot in Vietnam and now in Liverpool. Unfortunately, we couldn't get in the set but saw an A.D outside, we had a chat with him and left to the Liverpool Limestreet station.

Onset.com film trailers 

My favourite photograph: Aspiration