Behind The Ink Finished (Documentary) & Evaluation

In this post i will be talking about the small five minuet documentary about tattooing and the socialism behind it. The tattoo documentary known as "Behind the ink".

The documentary production started in early April of 2014 the idea for this documentary was a simple but the subject was different to what you would expect. with the documentary being tattoos the audience would of expected to be an informative piece rather then it being a documentary based around the thoughts and opinions of people about the choices of getting a tattoo. The director of this project already had a tattoo himself but thought it would be best to get many different views on the subject so that the documentary did not seem biased. The documentary is a two sided discussion between those who want a tattoo,have a tattoo or don't like tattoos.

The filming started in mid April at a tattoo studio near the directors local area. He filmed himself getting a tattoo of a character from a video game and proceeded to speed up the footage.Later on he went back and filmed the shops exterior and interior for dramatic effect. Further more the style of the studio itself gave the audience and idea of stepping into another world as the studio had many different styles of art in the store all hand drawn by the artists who worked there.

However the director set up and interview with the tattoo artist but due to business reasons he was unable to attend leaveing the documentary without a good source of information.This completely changed the focus of the documentary from a behind this scenes look into a social experiment. With.With the idea of using tattoos as a social stand point the director was able to turn the tables on the documentary still sticking true to his original idea.

Interview were set up from a group of up to ten people the best interviews were selected and cut down into a small sequence.However rather then it being a back and fourth interview the director decided to ask one question the question he found most important  to the documentary "what is your opinions on tattoos?".

Using clever editing he cut the other questions from the sequence creating a small montage of a variety of answers to the audience. Furthermore he kept the answers in check with his one important questions making sure the responses made sense.

He finally finished the documentary off with a speech about what his views on tattooing were and how tattoos make him feel as-well as cutting back and forth from the interviewees allowing them to say there names at the end of the documentary as a way of verbal credits.


The documentary is well thought out and has an interesting topic. As you can see through out the documentary the narrator is trying to inform you of the history of tattooing briefly so the audience do not loose interest as-well as showing shots of various pieces of art and historical images to keep the audience interested in the documentary. The shots used in this documentary are beautiful due to the fact that they are of a variety of different things and have a lot of colours and different art styles making the documentary eye catching. Through out the documentary the narrator talks about the process of tattooing and he him self decided to continue a tattoo he had wanted for over two years the tattoo was later finished in October of 2014 it is a full video game sleeve.

Another feature i liked about this documentary is the variety of people he used in the documentary to get a mixed view on the idea of getting a tattoo using people of different age ranges,backgrounds and education you were able to get a different stand point from each individual he interviewed he selected the people well as to make the documentary and unbiased  documentary.

If any improvements were to be added i would say that the narrator would need to speak more clearly as he seemed  under whelmed when he read the lines to the audience he would need a more professional up beat tone to his voice to keep the animation vibrant and colourful as the documentary itself is.

Furthermore i would like to of seen a completed tattoo in this documentary you do see time lapse footage of an outline but that is it this documentary would of grabbed me more if there was a time-lapse over a complete tattoo also taking a few months for it to fade to see its condition would of been brilliant as it would help determine if the people watching this would continue to get a tattoo.

In conclsuion i think the documentary was brilliant there were a few technical problems with some interviews and the narrators motivation but other then that it was a good documentary. The choice of music,the people he chose to interview and the structure of the documentary all worked well together to bring out a good piece of factual entertainment.

I would like to thank you for reading this evaluation and please watch "Behind the ink" and praise the director.