Since the project changed from a drama into a mocku-mentary, I thought that if I was going to look at documentaries for research for the project then I would use it as an excuse to watch one of my all time favourite documentaries; The Cove (2009). Going into the film I hadn't really had anything in particular in mind for the research of our project, but from the beginning of the project I had always wanted to use this project as a excuse to use the Merlin Steadicam, and was still very keen on using it for the mocku-mentary, but what I became aware of when watching The Cove, is that there was lots of moments where you had lots of camera movement, not also particularly smooth and the visuals of gain etc... in low light conditions; and I thought to myself that the Merlin Steadicam really doesn't fit in well with this project at all. Documentaries are about documenting your subject and being ready to move and capture the footage and at times you have to move very fast if something is happening there and then, as unlike drama where you can have a controlled environments and scripted action, documentaries can be unpredictable and as a crew we have to be able to adapt to moments of life and activity. And though we are shooting a mocku-mentary, for me after watching The Cove, I started to think about the mocku-mentaries I had seen in the past, and the ones that really stand out are the ones that stay true to the style of documentary film making, you wouldn't be caught up in the motion of something happening and conveniently have a Steadicam perfectly set up to capture those random moments, therefore I have dropped the idea of using the Merlin Steadicam, though Rob has a shoulder rig that I think we can make use of, as it is a very portable rig and extremely fast to set up and in the right moments can be justifiably used in our film.
Though we are dealing with Zombies, which aren't real; I don't want to break the illusion that we as the film makers are actually a documentary film crew.
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