Representing the Real - Proposal and Research Report
‘Spilt Ink’ is a short, 5-minute documentary which tells us the life of a World War 2 soldier after the war. David Duff was a flight engineer who was sent home due to tuberculosis. He wrote poetry to reflect on the war. We intend to tell David’s story through excerpts of his poems, this allows audiences to gain an insight into the mind of a recovering soldier after conflict. David is sadly not alive anymore, however his younger brother William (our director’s Grandfather), is. We will be interviewing him about David’s life as well as recording him reading out the excerpts of poetry. William has many of David’s old war belongings; these will be key visuals for our documentary as they can help tell the audience more about David. We intend to take a more experimental style of documentary; mainly using the voice-over of the poems as our narration, relying on visuals as well as small interviews with William to help convey to the audience the context of the poetry. We feel that by being more experimental we can create a more emotionally impactful film, whilst still being true to David’s story.
Originally we intended to make the documentary about David being a flight engineer for Lancaster Bombers, the planes used for the Dambuster bombings. However, after a couple of sit-down’s with William, we discovered that David’s recovery was a far more interesting story. We have done extensive research into David’s life after the war. We have also read every poem by David that we could find to help our understanding of him as a person, as well as to create the narrative voice-over.
Our visuals will consist of a mixture of archive footage, and our ow footage. To begin with William Duff, the only surviving sibling of David Duff, will be seen walking in and sitting down with a photo album. Transitioning into archive footage of WW2, as well as shots of the first hand items we have access to: medals, cap, flight logs, RAF magazines, a model Lancaster plane, etc. As the story progresses to the next aspect of David’s life, we will see a page turning to signify this new chapter. The visuals matching what is being said in the voice over, with important places being plotted on a map, a simplified and somewhat stylised representation of David’s lung being removed as part of his TB treatment (using medical diagrams), and archive images of Tor-Na-Dee hospital. Once again, a page turn will signify movement onto the next chapter, now focusing on David adjusting back to civilian life, with the main visuals being made up of archive images from family photo albums. To bring our documentary to a close we will see William Duff close the photo-book, before seeing footage of him going about his daily life, showing that life still goes on and David’s memory is kept alive.
The audio within our documentary will consist of voice over, as well as sound design that works in tandem with our visuals. The voice over is made up of excerpts of poetry that David Duff wrote post-war. This allows us to tell his story in his own words. Though the poetry is being read by his brother, William Duff. The sound design of the documentary will match up to the visuals and what is being discussed in the voice over. When the topic is WW2 for example, we intend for the soundscape to be reminiscent of what a soldier may have heard whilst at war. When the topic moves on to Tor-Na-Dee hospital, the soundscape shall also be reminiscent of this, with the sounds of beeping medical machinery. We feel that the combination of voice-over and sound design will help convey David’s life as well as make the film more impactful and immersive.
‘Spilt Ink’ aims to give insight into the life of a soldier in World War 2 through a soldier’s poetry. We feel that this film is important as most people who lived during the War are almost gone; we want to document their experiences before they can no longer tell them. Our director is the grandchild of William Duff, meaning they have an emotional connection with this story and will be able to stay true to David’s story. We believe that by using David’s own words from his poems, we will convey how important his poetry was to him and is recovery. In turn conveying how this creative outlet helped him articulate his experiences in a therapeutic method. We hope for our documentary to be suitable for all ages, though we feel that it will appeal more to those with an interest in the history of WW2, and of the military. We would like to distribute out documentary to Edinburgh film festivals with a focus on documentary, especially due to the focus of our film being someone born and raised in Edinburgh. We also intend to make it available on platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo.
My initial research into the topic of our documentary began with looking into The Dambusters as a whole. Looking into who was involved and what they did. During this process I looked at the development of the bombs used by the Dambusters, and the locations that they were sent to during WW2. This lead to possible ideas in terms of imagery that could have been used within our documentary.
The second step in our research was to look at what items we had access to that belonged to David, giving us an idea of primary source items that we could use within our film. Jemma took photos of the main items and sent them to our group chat. This included photos of David’s war medals, his military ID card, parts of his uniform, and his flight logs. I then spent some time trying to cross reference these flight logs with the information I had found about the locations of Dambuster missions.
This lead to the discovery that David might not have been in the Dambusters as we originally believed, though he was certainly a flight engineer during the Second World War. Our focus thus changed from being the Dambusters, though is still focused on WW2 and the RAF.
We then went to visit William Duff, David’s only surviving sibling. This allowed us all to look at the items we had previously only seen photographs of. Allowing for a more detailed look at the items, especially the flight logs. It was during this visit that we were also able to see the vast amounts of poetry that David wrote after the war. This not only gave us the idea to focus more on the poetry, but also to try and tell the narrative through excerpts of the poems.
During our visit, we also conducted a preliminary interview. This was very informal and was mainly to try and get an overview of David’s life. This allowed us to find out more about him, and to discover what part of his story we wanted to focus on. As well as giving us an understanding of how William is to interview. Very willing to talk, and comfortable with being recorded, yet prone to tangents.
During meetings as a group, we decided that we wanted to construct our voiceover through David’s poetry. Allowing us to tell his story through his own words. Due to this, as our final aspect of our research, we spent a day reading through his poems, and selecting verses that we felt would work together to construct an understandable narrative. Putting them into an order so that they told the story of David’s life post-war as he saw it.
