DOCUMENTARY- DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
12th September 2017- PLANNING
As of today, we have been tasked with creating a documentary focusing on a topic of our own choice. Today I spent the time to come up with some documentary ideas that I would like to film and are definitely in the possibility and my skill set to film in the amount of time before the deadline. Over the holidays, I looked into documentaries and wrote down some ideas that I wrote up in this new set of ideas, implying the ideas that I had developed and certain names that I would use for each type of documentary. I will start to research into different types of documentaries and which ways I can change the documentary to set the tone of the overall project.
These are some of my ideas for documentaries that I would be interested in filming:
Homelessness
How Others Perceive You (The Inner Mind)
Social Media and Technology
Show stereotypical pictures to people and ask what they think of them.
Body language.
Strangers meeting for the first time and their thoughts on them.
13th September 2017- CONTEXT, CHARACTERISTICS AND MODES
Today I researched into the characteristics and modes of documentaries. The first mode is expository which focuses on illustrating an argument using images through a rhetorical system, rather than an aesthetic, which is aimed directly at the viewer. These kinds of documentaries are known to persuade an audience into believing the information given to them throughout the documentary, although the view could be bias. This mode of documentary is used to "evoke and gratify a desire to know" as Word press words it in their own essay.
Another mode of documentaries is observational documentaries, made to record reality without becoming involved with the human actions and interactions around them. These forms of documentaries use freehand cameras, making the documentary more informal than most other documentaries. They also rarely use interviews or voice over in these documentaries as they want the audience to feel involved in the events and interactions around them, allowing them to observe those around them and to feel the emotion created around them.
Participatory documentaries focus on the relationship between the film maker and the film subject, the film maker either interviewing the subject about their life, being the complete opposite to observational documentaries as participatory documentaries are a lot more intrusive into people's lives and their problems. The film maker directly asks questions to take the narrative of the documentary a certain way and to prevent rambling from the interviewee, influencing the major actions of the narrative.
Another mode of documentaries are reflexive documentaries. Reflexive documentaries raise the awareness in the means of representation, the camera crew and the film maker on camera during the documentary. The film maker and the camera crew provide narrative to the documentary, putting in their opinions and observations of the situation around them. This makes it very difficult to lie in these documentaries as everything is documented by the crew them selves, making this documentary more reliable in what actually happens around them.
Poetic documentaries are made to create a specific mood or to provoke an emotion in the audience. Poetic documentaries show the audience an "abstract, subjective, representation of reality achieved through techniques such as emphasised visuals and a narrative organised to fit the mood of the documentarian/documentary rather than the linear, logical organisation films followed prior to this" as expressed by Word press.
Finally, Performative documentaries are made to express through poetry and rhetorical tones to the audience, directing the audience in an emotional and direct way and is often narrated into an investigation or search. These documentaries don't just speak about the historic issues of the World but also the issues of representing it, setting out to re-set the assumptions and the expectations of their audience.
14th September 2017- MINDMAPPING
Today I started planning out my work through mind maps, cutting down my ideas down to my two favourites; social media and technology and perception. I have decided on doing a documentary about perception, discussing how people see things differently to others from the factors throughout their life and what they have been taught. I want to discuss body language, stereotypes, preferences/opinions, experiences and knowledge. I will have to go into detailed research to get accurate facts and scientific proof for my points, including different opinions and knowledge. This research will help me understand the points that I wish to make in my documentary and to make it see on both sides of the spectrum, not being biased to my own opinions.
18th September 2017- SYNOPSIS
Today I furthered my idea for my documentary with the working title of Perception- The Inner Mind, by researching what perception is and how it affects people. Perception changes how people behave and interact, from body language to different upbringings. I explain how different factors of life can change perception of one person compared to many others, not all seeing the World in the same way because of these factors. My target audience is between 16 and 20 years old as I will be able to express the emotions and information that I want to include to them with better understanding of the age group and how this group interacts with each other. The purpose of my documentary is to inform and educate the audience on perception to help widen their knowledge and mind but to also provoke an emotion in them that inspires them to see the World and others with a different perspective.
Perception- The way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted.
19th September 2017- RESEARCH INTO PERCEPTION
Today I researched into perception and the different types that I could talk about in my documentary. Perception is the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. An easy example of perception is to look around the room you are in and focus on an object you may of not noticed beforehand. The longer you focus on the object it’ll get brighter and more “real” than it was when it was just an unnoticed part of your reality. You can perceive everything in your reality and those around you because of many factors, such as body language and stereotypes. The fact that we have been fed information from our forms of education factors into our perspective and understanding, altering the way that you see the World and the views you have on certain topics. An example of this is if you have been fed bias information by peers and have no understanding of other views, you perception is altered from the lack of new information to change the perception you have.
Person perception refers to a general tendency to form impressions of other people. Some forms of person perception occur without realization and gain the information about a person based on observations of behaviors, appearance or second hand information. Just like objects, the longer you observe another human, the more in depth thinking occurs without your own input. By watching their actions , body language and how they are dressed indirectly gives you ideas of who they could be through personality and lifestyle. Although your perception may be incorrect to the reality of this other person, your brain automatically makes an impression of the person you are studying, just like looking at an object. Your race and gender can also alter your impression through your perception and your knowledge. If you have a wider knowledge and a more open mind, you will less likely think through race and gender as you understand that they could be different to the stereotypes you were taught.
Perception isn't always about how you perceive others but how you think others perceive you as a person. Depending on your emotional state and confidence the outcomes can become very different as more confident people normally don't think about this as much as those with less confidence or a worse emotional state. Upbringings and your experience throughout life can also alter this information. The way you perceive yourself may be negative but the real perception of others will see you as someone positive compared to your own impression. If you change your own perception and see through others eye's, you'll see the difference and will be able to understand that your perception isn't always reality.
20th September 2017- SCRIPT WRITING
Today I focused on script writing for my documentary, trying to write in metaphors and a poetic form to fit to the poetic mode of the documentary. By writing the script, it will be easier for me to create a script as I want to make connections between the words and the visuals. Once I have completed the script, I will be able to draw the storyboard to better standard and with more detail as I can compare the visuals that I want to represent to the script to make sure the metaphors stand out to the audience and are clear in explanation.
I finished off my script today and started creating the boards for my storyboard. My script should be worded to be 5 minutes long depending on how fast the voice actors speak. I plan to get multiple voice actors as I want the voices to vary because of the topic being about perception, the changes in voice playing into the whole topic of my video and what ideas I want to present to the audience.
26th September 2017- CONTACTS AND STORYBOARDING
Today I sent out a message searching for people to do the voice over on Facebook. One person, Alice Deverill replied and was currently in at the same college, allowing me to meet her between classes and film a section of the script with her. She is an old friend of mine who I know very well, allowing me to work with her well and to direct her voice better. She has a clear voice, making it easy for the audience to understand her. I also covered two paragraphs myself, the beginning and end, as I want the voice for both parts to be familiar to the audience after watching the documentary.
I also started my storyboard with the completed script, the script being a guideline to the shots that I want and to be able to connect the visuals with the words to make it clear to the audience without going off topic. The storyboard and script will now help me write a detailed shot list to take when out filming to use to my own advantage and to understand which footage I have already filmed and which parts I need to get footage for without getting confused in between filming days or breaks. The storyboard will also make it a lot easier for the actors to understand the meaning of my documentary and being able to act to better development with better understanding of the topic and what I want to present to the audience.
27th September 2017- STORYBOARDING AND CONTACTS
Today I completed the storyboard for a rough guideline for when I film. I also managed to get two more voice actors, Harry Moorcroft and Goncalo Santos Ganga, to do some voice over, myself recording their voices and putting it into premiere pro cc. All of my recorded audio have been edited and put into the editing software, allowing me to see the length of the video and what sections I need to fill in along with filming the shots for them. Doing it this way allows me to manage the time of the video and footage to the smallest detail and to have the exact shots planned for filming day. I now need to find actors to be in the video as my documentary is poetic, meaning the people don't have to be connected to the story line or meaning of the video. Today I also completed the location recce of the locations that I want to film at along with the information from my risk assessment, allowing me to put good detail into the location recce.
2nd October 2017- RESEARCH SUMMARY
Today I wrote up the research summary for my documentary to go into detail about what I will be researching, what I have already researched and how it will impact my documentary in many different aspects.
My research has or will impact my project in many ways. The first way is that I understand documentaries and their types to a better understanding, knowing the modes, context and techniques. I planned to help widen the audiences knowledge and mind but to also provoke an emotion in them that inspires them to see the World and others with a different perspective, the research helping me to understand how to do this by researching perception. Being able to understand perception to a better knowledge than I already had helped me to understand what I could include in my documentary to make it stay related to the topic. Another way it will impact my project is that I will be gaining new ideas and information throughout the whole process, myself being able to apply new information later into the filming process and to help make my documentary a lot more impactful to the audience.
3rd October 2017- DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH
I recently have watched a documentary named 'My Brother The Terrorist' by Robb Leech who's step-brother became a terrorist. This documentary is a reflection of his first documentary named 'My Brother The Islamist' where he follows his brother's transfer to Islam, this documentary showing clips from the original to fill the audience in on the information if they hadn't watched the first. Robb Leech, the film maker, is learning about why his brother did a terrorist attack and is researching into what had influenced him to follow his actions, interviewing Anjem Choudary to see what may of influenced him; Choudary being the most controversial muslim preacher and the man who converted him.
This documentary is in the mode of expository and participatory as he uses news report clips to show to the audience with a voice over and he is also travelling and researching the information he wants to learn about his brother. Leech uses lots of establishing shots to show the audience where he is and the music fits perfectly to the image such as when he visits the mosque and you can hear the prayers from inside. He also manages to use security footage for similar use as news reports to show the audience that this was all real and not made up. Robb also manages to use first person cameras to make the audience feel that they are involved in the situations happening around them, one of these situations being at the protests and preaching of Muslims. When there are imagery shots there is usually a voice over to keep the audience entertained and interested in the topic.
This documentary is very well planned out and can be seen that it took years to film and put together, allowing you to appreciate the effort that he put into the documentary. I enjoy many aspects of the documentary such as the first person camera and investigating into the situations but will not work in my own documentary as it is in a different mode and these elements wouldn't work in a poetic documentary. Although I cannot use it for my own, these elements work well in this type of documentary as it makes the audience feel involved in the documentary and gives them the view of being there at the time although released years later. Some other aspects I enjoy are the voice overs, which I will be using in my own, to make the audience understand what is going on and the use of the music. The music works well with the shots shown, something I want to achieve in my own documentary to provoke emotions in the audience.
4th October 2017- QUESTIONNAIRE
Today I gained back the results for a documentary that I put out discussing my documentary topic, to gain feedback on what the audience watch and which target audience I would be aiming at. By doing this, I now understand the audience and their preferences which allow me to play these into my documentary. I also know now that my topic idea gained a very positive response meaning my idea will be successful to the correct target audience, myself knowing that I can now focus on making the documentary and not having to worry on the target audience.
9th October 2017- COLUMN SCRIPT
Today I focused on writing the column script for my documentary as I plan to start filming this week. By focusing on the column script, I would know which shots I would need to get with each sentence and what audio I also need to capture. A column script works better for a poetic documentary over a storyboard or shot list as you have both the script and the shots that you could use and if you want to change the shots, you can easily see what it needs to be revolved around. This will make it easier for me to know which shots I can film in the same day without getting confused in the order and which shots still need to be filmed in a more organised manner.
10th October 2017- EXPERIMENTING AND FILMING
For the Monday I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon gaining footage for the documentary, visiting the park to get multiple shots as well as in the center of town. All of the shots I filmed that day are to be establishing shots or wider shots where the audience can figure out where they are and what is happening around them. On the Tuesday I spent the afternoon recording the voice acting provided by Frank and Helen, both easily reading the script and being clear in their pronunciation. I also bought a Halloween skull and put my own glasses onto it for one of the shots, myself focusing a light onto the skull to get a better and more aesthetically pleasing shot for the audience. I also managed to organise a day to film with an actor for my poetic documentary for Sunday to get some more close up and cinematic shots rather than the longer shots I got beforehand.
11th October 2017- STARTING THE EDITING PROCESS
Today I spent the time to put in all of the audio files and some of the footage I have to see whether the video would make it to 5 minutes, the video making it to exactly five minutes with all the audio files lined up with title screens. After knowing the length of the video was correct, I started adding some of the shots that I have gained over the past three days and started to implement them into the video whilst looking at my column script so I had a good idea on what part of the script I still need to film and which I already had filmed.
I found some music that matched the tone of the video and put it in, editing some of the voices to the beat of the video but is more there to cover any issues when there are some silence in the audio files or there is a noise in the background which the music can cover up smoothly and make it hardly noticeable to the audience. For the next few days I will be filming to gain more footage to edit into the video on Monday.
12th October 2017- FILMING DAY
Today I did many shots, travelling out to a lake to get some shots and then coming home to do some more. I got shots of the lake, drawing a universe and getting a shot of a tea bag dropping into water. This has covered more of the shots that I needed to get and my parents took some photos of myself recording as a form of evidence. A lady also helped up find the best places to film in the area as her daughter studies photography and she also studied it herself at college and gave me some tips for the area.
Once I got home, I also did a couple more shots such as drawing the universe as mentioned before and a shot which looks like someone is holding the sun with their hands for the part about religion. My favourite shot I gathered today was the hands by the light as it is the most metaphoric shot that I have gained overall but gives the audience a clear representation, the audience understanding the meaning behind the shot.
15th October 2017- VOICE RECORDING AND FILMING
Today I got up early and went to meet an old friend of mine who said she would perform in the video for me. Alice also did voice over for a part of my video and we worked well together, Alice understanding what shots I needed and what my documentary is about. She was happy to act and met me on time, both of us being able to get some of the shots done quickly. Most of the time we were out, the walks were the longest part to find locations that worked for the shots that I wanted, the overall image being professional and well shot.
Although we weren't using audio, walking around was an issue as we were close to train tracks and lots of people walk their dogs around the area, sometimes having to stop filming as dogs would come up to Alice and make her laugh. Apart from these small issues, the filming process went smoothly and I managed to gain all of the important shots that would provoke an emotion in the audience and fits to the style of my documentary. I enjoy the shots that we gathered as they are very aesthetically pleasing and make Alice stand out from the rest of the background. I like the shots as the colours are bright and vibrant but Alice's tone and body language is quiet and shy, her hoodie's colour also referring to this.
18th October 2017- PLANNING A CRITICAL EVALUATION
Today I planned out my critical evaluation and started to write it up through the experiences that I have gained throughout the project already, such as corrupted files, shaky cameras and the filming processes I have already completed. I planned the evaluation out beforehand to know what I needed to talk about and how much detail I should go into. I also looked at the assignment, knowing what they recommended and applied this while writing up my evaluation by bullet pointing my answers and developing them into full-fledged answers that flowed well in an essay style. I wrote up as much as I could but after completing the project I will be able to go back and update the essay to it's final edit and have all of what happened explained to a better understanding.
19th October 2017- VOICE RECORDING
Filming voice actors was the most simplest part of recording my documentary as all I had for equipment was a tascam that I used to capture the voice. I managed to find willing voice actors, Alice Deverill, Goncalo Santos Ganga, Sarah Cooke, Harry MoorCroft, Frank and Helen Sloper, who were happy to read my script and allow me to use their voices in the video. I was lucky enough to film in person with five of the voice actors, being able to direct them in their voice acting, telling them if they needed to speak slower or possibly louder to be as clear as possible so the audience could easily understand them. Sarah was reliable and sent me her own audio which she recorded at home as she also studies TV and Film but at a different college, the audio being crisp and easy to hear. I also did some voice acting myself as I wanted myself to start and end the video for the audience to hear a familiar voice. The decision of multiple voices was an important decision and one I made because my topic is about perception so when the audience hears different voices, they will be perceiving what who the voice may belong to and what they look like, the audience not realising what they are doing until further into the video. All of the actors that I got the pleasure to film with in person followed my directions well and executed their parts perfectly for how I wanted them to read it. I wanted the voices to portray different personalities of different people and how they speak about a situation, all of the voice actors with very different voices portraying this in a simplistic way to the audience.
22nd October 2017- VIDEO EVAULATION
For this assignment, we were challenged with making a documentary that is 5 minutes long at the minimum. In my poetic documentary, I answered the question on how people perceive the World and those around them. The purpose of my video is to educate and inform the audience on issue related topics such as gender inequality and racism but to also provoke an emotion in the audience that they may have not expected. I aimed my documentary to be targeted for 16 to 20 year olds.
7th November 2017- EDITING PROCESS
For the past few weeks I have been editing my documentary to the best quality possible whilst going out filming the documentary in my free time with those that were happy to be filmed or out by myself. I used a column script along with the script I had originally wrote to know which order the clips and audio were supposed to go in to make the video flow as naturally as possible.
Editing the documentary was a new experience as I had to make it 5 minutes without making the documentary feel like it was dragging on and had to keep the audience entertained throughout the video. One thing that went well was the video was exactly five minutes, my calculations from before being accurate although some voice actors spoke faster than the average, myself editing by leaving gaps to make their speeches longer and to the average speed. This was easier in editing as I could line up all of the audio and see how long the video was before going out and filming the clips to go along with the video to see whether the script had to be longer to make it to the five minute mark.
With having the video planned out well beforehand and having the script with me made it much easier to find the flow for the video and how I wanted to represent the video to the audience. Many of the shots I took seemed to flow well together but throughout the editing I could see which shots worked and which didn't, allowing me to go back out and re-recording the clips or coming up with something that works better than the original idea. I didn't follow the storyboard after a while of re-evaluating my idea and starting the edit because I realised some ideas didn't work or I came up with some ideas that worked better in the edit, the storyboard becoming a very loose guideline to my work and changed the edit from the original vision. I also edited in the credits to the video, splitting it into sections to credit the people in the video to the best quality possible. I have a credit screen about the voice actors and then one about the actors in the video, some names in both areas as they provided me with footage with each area.
Some issues I had was that my video and audio files kept corrupting, myself losing my editing work multiple times but I had backed up all of the files onto my google drive to make sure I didn't lose them again. I managed to resolve the problem and managed to re-record the audio files lost, luckily not losing any video footage as I kept all of the footage on my camera in case they corrupted once again. I also have naturally shaky hands, many of the shots being shaky but myself being able to stabilize them in editing, even though I used a tripod for some of the shots it was on a slope and would shake when zooming outwards.
Throughout this editing process I have learnt how to create text that is see through for the title screen, making my documentary overall more aesthetically pleasing to the audience. It was interesting to learn about this edit as I haven't worked with title screens in this way before, being able to edit the video differently to my other videos and to add some more detail to the overall video. What I would change about the edit is some of the shots I finished with, myself not liking the shaking from many of the shots and having to use warp stabilizer on the clips to make them look better, myself wishing I could've had the chance to re-record these clips but would take some planning to re-shoot those clips.
7th November 2017- SCRIPT WRITING PROCESS
When coming up with an idea for the documentary, I wanted my documentary to use a poem throughout that would keep the audience interested in the video. I first researched the average words spoken by a person to accumulate to five minutes, the approximate person speaking from 110- 150 words per minute. This meant that I needed 650 words minimum to create a documentary that was long enough for the assignment brief. I started by coming up with the overall topic that I wanted to speak about, coming up with an idea to talk about perception knowing that I could go into sub topics underneath the overall topic. Some of the topics that I wrote down was stereotypes, racism and gender along with a few more topics, myself breaking them down and writing down what I wanted to speak about under each topic.
With knowing the topics that I wanted to discuss and what points I wanted to bring up I started writing the first few sentences, trying to perfect it to be understandable and impactful to the audience. Alongside writing the script I was also researching about perception and trying to understand the topic to the best quality possible. As shown on the picture I did many re-writes of the script by hand, trying to figure out how it should sound and be presented to the audience, wanting the poem to be easy to understand but also metaphoric so the audience could perceive the video in a different way to someone else, learning something about the topic that they didn't know before and taking away something different to everyone else about the overall topic, making it a challenge to write a detailed script that would get an overall point to anyone that watched my documentary meaning it had to be well planned out.
Whilst writing this documentary and researching perception I came across a Albert Einstein quote that I used as inspiration for my script and documentary as it covered the overall lesson I wanted to get through to the audience from my video, the quote being 'Perception is merely an illusion; albeit a very persistent one.' With this quote as my main inspiration I knew that I wanted to teach this lesson to the audience and to show the quote at the end of the video if anyone in the audience didn't understand the lesson from my poem. I continued writing my documentary script, re-writing many sections before writing it up digitally on a computer, making sure that all the points I wanted to get across were clear enough to the audience. I also did many reads of the script myself, making sure it flowed well and rhymed in places but to also time how long it would take to read. With myself reading the script it reached 4 minutes as I speak faster than the average human, meaning that with different people voicing over the script on the video that it would stretch to five minutes at the minimum.
8th November 2017- BEHIND THE SCENES PHOTOS
13th November 2017- FINAL VIDEO
The outcome of the video was better than I had envisioned, especially with the issues I came across and what made it more difficult to complete. I believe the video fitted to the style, characteristics and mode that I selected and worked well in the favor of my target audience as the topic was relevant to them as I discovered in my questionnaire.
I learnt that documentaries take a lot of planning to get the video well planned and to make the video look professional, having to find locations that suited the style of the video that I wanted and to set the tone correctly to the audience. Finding the correct actors can also play into this as I needed to find actors that suited the situation they were in, linking back to what went well whilst filming. I also learnt that conveying different opinions can be done in different ways such as people's voice or body language. Another thing I learnt was that finding natural situations to fit into the video was difficult to come across but sometimes I also fell into the situation. One I fell into was seeing two police officers on horses wandering around and talking to homeless people on the streets whereas a shot that I had difficulties with was finding someone sat on a bench alone or stumbling across situations with people doing something that breaks the stereotype, such as the two men pushing buggies.
14th November 2017- FEEDBACK
'I really like it very creative, I love that it had all the voices. Cinematography was really good too! Though I'd recommend some type of stabiliser but that's the only thing I'd say needs work. I thought that was really lovely! think you're really good at capturing life, the little boy was really cute!'- Sarah Cooke, voice actor.
'I am so proud of you your literally growing each time Kerrie, that was a wonderful message that's portrays truth, I have no things to say to improve that was very well done.'- Ana Teixeira
All of the feedback that I have gained from this documentary has been extremely positive, all of the people who gave me feedback interested by the video and enjoyed the video overall. This was an incredible amount of feedback and not much criticism was given about the overall video a part that some of the shots were shaky. I got this feedback from Sarah Cooke and from two of my colleagues at college, Chloe Robertson and Goncalo Santos Ganga, but was told that the shaky tone worked on some of the shots but not on others. I knew this was an issue when out filming and editing and tried to stabilize my shots in filming and editing but some shots I couldn't get right to get rid of the shakiness.
In the original questionnaire I ran, I asked the audience if they would find the topic of 'Perception' interesting and all of the responses were positive about the idea. From this feedback after making the video I can see this is evident for the target audience I chose and worked well on keeping the audience entertained throughout, many compliments being on the script/ poem I wrote, myself being happy that this was something people enjoyed and was impactful to the audience. The video reached my target audience well and managed to keep others interested that the video wasn't aimed at, showing that the topic I chose was a topic that could refer to everyone and was something everyone could understand.
'The video is great, it's a good idea and well filmed. Some of the footage is a little bit shaky, I don't know if it was on purpose but is the only thing that I would change. The writing was great and well thought; having different people reading was also a great idea, made everything less boring and more diverse. Well done.'- Ines Martins
'Script works very well with the visuals, you can tell a lot of thought has gone into it. Camera angles are good, really like the fire one. also really like the visuals through the eye,and the logo at the end. Would be even better if some of the shots where less wobbly however with the theme of the documentary it seems to work.'- Chloe Robertson
