That's a wrap... for now!

As of last Friday we have completed principal photography for our documentary! Having shot the bulk of the 'drag' segment of our doc, which was the interactive/performative part of the piece, we only needed to shoot the interview with our subject and we were good to go, provided reshoots weren't necessary (After looking at the footage from last Tuesday I'm happy that we have all that we need)

Now comes the edit. Since both shoots we've been throwing around some ideas for editing techniques and music. During the interview Glenn (our subject) mentions a couple of celebrities or figures in the media who are associated with the things he discusses. A few pe
ople of note are Eddie Izzard, the extremely cross-dressing comedian, known for performing his comedy sketches in drag but not being gay himself. Another is Rob Halford, the lead singer of the British heavy metal band 'Judas Priest', an openly gay man who one might not normally associate with the heavy metal scene.

One of the main points that we discussed and that we'd love to focus on in the edit is the idea of how the media portrays sexuality stereotypes, e.g. a gay man would be portrayed as very flamboyant and camp and a gay woman will be portrayed as very masculine and butch. Despite this preconceptions by the media, in our society we have very masculine gay men (Rob Halford) and very feminine gay women (e.g. Portia De Rossi, wife of openly lesbian TV presenter Ellen Degeneres).

Photos from set

Just a few touch-ups before the camera rolls.

The team + our sublime subject.

Last-minute wind machine!

The set coming together, featuring the first of many additions

The makeup table, a labour of love.

Big updates coming soon!

The past few days have been crazy, with the big shoot on Tuesday and all other work involved with college, so it's annoying that I haven't put aside the time to dedicate to my blog! This is just a quick post before the shoot today, where we'll get mainly interview footage.

Over the past couple of weeks we've been watching documentaries, both famous and lesser-know, to help gain an appreciation for the genre, but also to give us ideas and techniques to implement and emulate in our own pieces. One documentary we watched yesterday in class was 'We Are Not Afraid' (dir. Declan Keeney), a hard-hitting artistic look at the lives of those affected by the Siege of Sarajevo that took place from 1992 to 1996. Keeney's use of colour struck me the most about the film, with scenes splashed in red just as a subject discusses her dislike of the colour, and colder tones of white and blue.

During the shoot on Tuesday I made an on-the-spot decision to incorporate red gels in my studio lighting set up, something that went down quite well with both my colleagues and our peers who happened to come into the studio. Watching back the footage, the set is often bathed in a deep red or a warm pink, both feminine colours to a degree, which gave the look of the footage like a barbie house dressing room, albeit with a drag queen!

More inspiration

I mentioned the show RuPaul's Drag Race in an earlier post, but I didn't quite stress how OBSESSED I am with this show. My life feels like a countdown until the next series or episode and I wouldn't have it any other way. If you're familiar with America's Next Top Model, then the format for Drag Race will be very familiar to you, albeit with Drag Queens rather than female models.

A good chunk of an episode will feature Queens getting ready in their makeup and costume, something which we'd always talked about filming for our piece, and afterwards we see them strutting their stuff on the runway to be judged.

This idea of transformation brings me back to the theme of hands. Even the most feminine and gorgeous Queen cannot escape the masculine trait of big hands, and one of the Queens I'm following the most right now, Courtney Act, posted a picture that sums this up very well.

"The problem with drag selfies is the clutching man hand in the foreground."

One thing I can draw from this is the idea that no matter how much we change or transform, there will always be an aspect of who we were beforehand, be in minuscule or large. 

First day of shooting begins.... tomorrow!

This blog's been painfully silent the last couple of weeks because, well... a couple of snags have been hit in the process!

Our initial plan of filming Drag Wars didn't work out due to money and time constraints so we were in a production limbo of sorts while we tried to find an alternative subject, but no more!

We may not have a real drag queen (yet, i'm holding out on a few names!) but we've got a couple of people who are willing to get dolled up for us and strut about, while we film of course. It's not 100% what I had in mind, but it's something (and we really need something) and it's pretty exciting!

We'll be using the studio tomorrow morning to shoot this segment, expect a post detailing our exploits!

Hands

Overall, the main theme for our doc as dictated by the brief is 'Hands'. When I think of hands in the context of Drag Queens, I think of the hands that transform a man into a woman, and also how the hands are the one masculine element that is normally recognizable (unless you are blessed with small hands of course).

What got the ball rolling was a student in our college who we were referred to by our lecturer for our doc class. He dresses in drag and will go out to clubs etc., so aside from hooking us up with contacts we plan to have a transformation segment of our film where we show him transforming from a cis gender male to his female drag persona.
Today we touched briefly on how this would be shot. It was unanimous that the studio would be best and we could dress it up to look like a dressing room and have Matt (our subject) perform his transformation in front of a mirror. It's a good way of using what's open to us and at this stage it seems relatively stress-free compared to tomorrows shoot in Lurgan.

One Day More...

Yes, one day more 'till we shoot the bulk of our film tomorrow at Drag Wars in Lurgan!! Very exciting, but also a very un-exciting and stomach-churning notion that it's happening tomorrow with the prospect of messing it up and not getting the opportunity to re-shoot...

Pessimism aside, new details of the event have been received!

Set List of Performers:

• Misty Falls (Our leading lady and previous winnder)
• Fefe Geisha (Another previous winner)
• Wee Hannah Crush (Hostess)
• Onya Becks
• Mez Moneypenny
• Alexis McQueen
• Sandy Kandy
• Ivy Rivers
• Penny Cillan

The Burn is right beside the Ashburn Hotel, 81 William St. in Lurgan. It's conveniently right by the train station so I have a good idea where it is.

I've been informed that none of the girls apart from Misty and the organizers know that myself and my team are filming but there should be no qualms about us filming. I've got the visual consent forms regardless, can't afford to take any risks at this stage.

Questions to ask the performers:

• Why did you start performing in drag?
• Would you say that your character in drag is a completely different person or an exaggerated aspect of yourself?
• Why do you think people enjoy watching drag performers?
• How do you think drag culture reflects the LGBT community?
• Would you dress up drag in your free time or is it strictly performance only?
• How do you deal with the inevitable nasty comments from people?
• A lot of people aren't aware that there's a thriving drag culture in Belfast and all over Northern Ireland, a place better known for it's political and religious trouble than it's entertainment. Do you think it's important to have this culture exist in a society that has been so divided?
• What's next?

Some of these will need to be reworded and/or condensed, so these will need to be run by Anya before we can go any further.

A little update

Our subject didn't get back to me until today about the pageant happening on Friday in Lurgan, so until now we've been toying with the idea of a backup plan of another Queen. That being said, I did get a response today so the ball is officially rolling!

Drag Wars is taking place in The Burn club in Lurgan and as far as I know we have access all areas. Unfortunately we can't film the girls getting ready as they're all doing their hair and makeup in different places before the show. Doors open at 7pm so I've asked Misty to see if we can go down earlier in the day so we can get a feel for the space and decide our set up etc. It's important that we don't get in the way of the performers and the judges of course, so getting that sorted is vital at this stage.

Tomorrow I shall go over arrangements with my team in regards to questions to ask the Queens. Consensus is that the girls are alright with being filmed and being asked questions as a lot of them have been filmed before in regards to promo/doc/film work, but this needs to be discussed further tomorrow just so we can adhere to ethics etc.

Apart from a few tiny details that need working out, everything is set to go!

More info yay!

The event is called 'Drag Wars', a charity event being held in 'The Burn' nightclub in Lurgan.

Will try and find some pictures of the performance space to get more of an idea of what's available to us. Still to hear back from our subject again, gotta arrange a coffee to meet face to face.

We have a Queen!

After much turmoil and rejection, we now have a subject! The lovely Miss Misty Falls has agreed to take part in our film and is willing to hook us up with the opportunity to film at a Drag competition in Lurgan. There's a lot that we need to consider aesthetically and technically.

• Camera set up
• Visual style
• Interview set up
• What we actually film
• Structure

One thing that's really exciting me about this opportunity is the back-stage inner-workings, something which I had an idea about at the beginning of this process.

"People like to laugh at sex, people like to laugh at dirty things and people like to be shocked I think. So that’s my job to get out there and shock them." - Divine

Reference Material

I've been scouring the internet for documentaries that strike a chord with what I'm trying to achieve here, and thankfully I've managed to find two that I think would be phenomenal inspiration to me. I haven't seen either of these documentaries (although my colleague has seen one and highly recommends it) so I am basing this off first impressions from the trailers.

"I AM DIVINE" - 2013
Director:
Jeffrey Schwarz

I'm a big fan of Divine's work, and this documentary looks like it showcases the highs and lows of being such an eccentric and much-loved character. My dad claims to have seen her in a show in London's West End many years ago, something which I'm incredibly jealous of. This documentary uses a good deal of archive footage and photos to build up the audience's image of the subject, while jumping back and forth to interviews with those associated with the actor and queen. 

"BEFORE YOU KNOW IT" -2013

Dir. PJ Raval

Before You Know it caught by eye by the interesting thumbnail you can see in the video above. I was looking for documentaries about drag queens and not focusing entirely on the aforementioned issues such as gender identity and homophobia. This documentary follows the lives of three gay men entering their twilight years, and deals with how they live their lives in a culture dominated by the young and beautiful. We see how the elderly members of this community can often be forgotten and become 'invisible' as one of the subjects mentions. It's beautifully shot, opting for an observational style of filming than the flashback archive style of 'I AM DIVINE'.

The Queens of inspiration

There are thousands of Drag Queens that are staples in pop culture, but some of them have been instrumental in my thought process and ideas for visuals. Here are a few of them.

RuPaul Charles

Ru is not only the host of possibly by favourite show on TV, 'RuPaul's Drag Race' (essentially America's Next Top Model but featuring Drag Queens) he is also the world's first super model. Ru is known for hosting his own talk-show in-drag and was famously friends with Diana Ross. Aside from hosting and modelling, Ru has his own line of cosmetics and a successful music career.



Divine 

Perhaps one of the most famous, and most controversial Queens of all time, Divine sent shock-waves through pop culture with her revolting actions and avant-garde aesthetic. However, she remains an icon and a testament to every fierce and independent spirit out there. Divine has been cited as the figure who revolutionized the world of Drag, something which has been backed up in the upcoming documentary 'I AM DIVINE'.

So why are we doing this?

This is a question myself and my colleagues have been asked quite a lot after we pitched our idea. I came up with the idea myself, and it's been a thrill to see how my friends in my group have shaped and molded it into something more exciting than I'd imagined.

So, why are we making this documentary? Well, on a personal note, I'm absolutely obsessed with Drag Queens, everything about these wonderful performers is incredible, the dedication they put into their work is truly inspiring, which is the main reason I'm so passionate about making a documentary about them. Over the course of pre-production my fellow documentary-makers and I have been thinking of themes and issues we'd like to tackle with this film, and the overall message we're trying to get out there.
In this day and age, being gay/lesbian/bisexual/anything under the scope of sexuality is considered the overall norm of things, but to a lot of people outside of this community it is completely alien and many have misconceptions both bad and silly. I think for me this film is an opportunity to educate people on a part of Belfast that although explodes onto the streets during Pride Fest, is still unknown territory for a large amount of people. By using the medium of Drag Performance, we're giving a unique insight into the LGBT community with eye-popping colours and larger than life characters.
Aside from letting people venture into the unknown, we'll tackle the issues of gender identity, gender roles in society and of course the undying issue of homophobia.

First post!

With this blog I'll document (no pun intended...) my thought-process and ideas for my upcoming documentary that provides a look into the wonderful world of Drag Performance, and of course the production process itself.

Stay tuned!