Reflective Report

Overall I am tremendously pleased with the documentary Conor and I have produced. We set out to create an engaging documentary about pottery and Rory and I feel we have done that.

The original intention was to make it about Rory and then we drifted into thinking about making it about pottery in general, the process and eventually I feel we have managed to make it on both. There was a lot of footage from the interview that we could have used like Rory’s beginnings in pottery and how he arrived to where he is now but we decided not to use them because there was no real need for them, it wasn’t an artist profile.

The message we wanted to get across was what drives Rory to keep coming back. Ceramics isn’t for the weak hearted and you cannot give up, it’s not a career where there is a lot of money. Rory is the only one from his university class still working in clay, the rest couldn’t keep it up. I feel the message we are trying to say comes across clear: Be resilient and stick with it and every project you come to, have the thought that it’s going to be the greatest thing you’ve ever made.

I can’t fault the camerawork at all as it is stunning and definitely helps with the feel of pottery being a delicate and beautiful art, Conor did a great job. If anything, I feel the time management and organising could have been better on our part. There were times where we weren’t entirely sure when we were filming and what we were doing, despite it coming together in the end.

We edited the film in a very short period and I feel it may have suffered as a result. I wanted to get the best possible edit that we could and it is very good, but I just feel with material like this, it warrants a thorough edit. 

If I was to redo this I would definitely manage our time better and stick to a shooting schedule organised well in advance, admittedly several times we couldn’t shot were due to circumstances beyond our control. It felt slightly rushed in the end because we were running out of time and I feel that perhaps it could have been a bit better in the end.

However, for my first foray into documentary I am very pleased with what we have produced. I feel I understand pottery and ceramics to a better degree now and I have a lot of respect for any artist who pursues this as a hobby because they really enjoy it and have stuck with it.

I’m really glad we managed to get the message across and that it doesn’t just apply to potters but to any artist. Even filmmaking, proceed with the belief that whatever you’re working on is the best thing you’ve ever made at this point. The shots are really stunning and really cement the feeling that we were going for with this documentary. I feel very proud to say that I was director on this piece and currently stands among the best work I have ever done.