Category: Documentary

Pre-Production for Shoot 1

We had to plan in advance before we had our days to shoot clips for our documentary. We worked with our director to consider the roles of each member and how we can achieve them. We discussed where and when certain clips would be shot and looked into what days had good weather and when we were available.

Because we were traveling off-school sites we had to develop a risk assessment and a timed schedule to show our teacher to ensure we were organised and safe.

Risk Assessment for shoots

Production Group Agreement

Our Production Group Agreement helped highlight each member’s roles and what was required on the day of the shoot. It organised our team better and assigned responsibilities to everyone equally.

Production Meeting Agenda

Our Agenda was key as it provided a schedule for us to follow and manage our time wisely. We separated the locations to make the most out of each hour and looked into how long it would take to use transport as well. The Agenda also showed our teacher where we were going to be during the day so they could check on us.

The Documentary “Problem”

John Grierson was a Scottish documentary pioneer, he believed a “documentary is the creative treatment of actuality.”. His belief goes off the idea that the movie industry is infamous for manipulating an audience to watch their films and gaining money to put into their huge corporations;  documentaries are a way around the sinister goals of the market, they mix film elements and the creativity of filmmaking with a reality, such as climate change. Mixing artistic perceptions with actual societal problems helps spread information in an appealing format to the public.

Grierson argues that documentaries ‘taken from the raw’ are the best way of expressing actuality and the genuine behavior of humans that documentaries seek to visualise. The creative expression of actuality can be utilised to stop problems, such as the threat to democracy during Grierson’s lifetime. The news and press were popular in allowing the public to become involved and express ideas, and Grierson believed that film was a new exciting entrance to enhance this involvement.

The Blue Planet (TV Series 2001) - IMDbThe Blue Planet and other nature documentaries are good examples of Grierson’s perspective. Mixing the beautiful cinematography on nature with the narration and underlying meaning of climate change spreads the problem to many people as they are more likely to watch it.

Collaborative Documentary Pitch

Our Documentary Pitch

In it we explain several ideas and things we need to consider in order to follow our ideas and reach the goals we set out.

Feedback

  • Avoid repetition of same shots, especially for scenery;
    • We have to make sure we use a variety of shots and not just wide angles or long shots as that becomes repetitive. To ensure we avoid this we will use a variety of movements and framing such as close up or dollys to create an entertaining view for the audience.
  • Ensure the sound is clear and choose what sound you want / make it appropriate for the shot
    • I will use a mix of the audio that comes from the camera and then post-production I will film foley sounds that I can add over the top of clips; I might even find someone with an instrument to play some notes that I can put over the scenery to avoid the documentary becoming repetitive and boring.
  • Have to be aware of travelling
    • Work together and communicate, don’t split up and make sure we are all aware of the bus timetables so we can have a good time schedule.
  • Wont be able to get all shots as you want due to circumstances (Eg. weather or travel)
    • We will find days where all of us are available in order to film some extra clips that we did not manage to achieve on the day of filming due to weather or lack of time.

Performative Documentary

My Performative Documentary

Reflection

During our performative documentary, we were each assigned certain roles. I took on the role of screenwriter and editor. While writing our script, I focused generally on the emotive language used that would reflect a performative documenatry well; this included exaggeration and emphasis on the topic at hand. The script was not followed word by word but allowed the actor to follow a base line as to what the presenting should follow.  I believe the script was well-read written and read and worked well with the topic. If I were to redo this task, I would perhaps try and shorten the comments and presentation entirely as it was difficult to read and if it was read fast would look too unprofessional.

The other role, editor, I belivee went well; I cut the clips in at times where necessary and focused on which clips should have audio, and others that should have the interview on screen. By cutting the presentor speaking in and out regularly, I could make the video seem more involved and exciting. The other clips gave an audience a good visual explanation as to what the presenter was speaking about and provided entertainment while keeping the important topic in the spotlight too. I did come across a few issues while editing, this focused mainly on trying to find the correct interviewed videos as they all looked the same. To resolve this issue I might use a clapperboard at the beginning of each video to signal the topic that was being talked about or name the clips as I went. Also, there were a few porblems with splicing the videos as sometimes it cut slightly inbetween speech when I went from a video with an invisible narrator to a video of the presenter speaking on screen. To fix this I might avoid cutting the speech video and keep it either entirely invisible or entirely visible before moving onto a new section.

My Expository Documentary

Expository documentaries are aimed to inform the audience about a topic and provide information in order to teach and explain things. Some examples of these are news sources, ‘Blue Planet’ and most other non-fictional documentaries.

In order to create my expository documentary I had to include the techniques required to make an expostiroy documentary ‘expository’. This included:

  • Narration ‘voice of God’ – I was speaking over the video, rather than being present in it
  • Can use graphics, although I did not, but did require editing for the clips to work together
  • Based on facts: using information to provide steps that are factual
  • Has an objective and a final outcome

If I was to do this project again, I would focus on the lighting better, and make sure the lighting isn’t too dark to film. I think my script matches the actions well and is clearly spoken and progresses the plot to emphasise the information being visually shown.

 

Here is my Expository Documentary titled ‘How to sneak out’

 

Present and Distant Effect

The Present and Distant effect

These two effects are used in narration; we are either placed away from the scene, observing actions of individuals as a spectator who isn’t present, giving us a god-like view; this is the distant effect. Other times we are placed within the scene, giving us a immediate personal view, one where we are part of the action; this is the present effect.

The distant effect uses techniques such as positioning the camera in a bird’s eye view, and using footage from archives such as news clips, images etc. The narrator during a distant effect is not present and is talking over the video to assemble a narrative using the clips or images shown on screen. On the other side, the present effect uses a handheld camera.

My analysis of Man on Wire (2008) Marsh’s use of the present and distant effect.

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