CRITICAL DOCUMENTARY EVALUATION

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.

Before filming any of the documentary I wrote a poem that was scripted to be five minutes long. I worked out that the average word per minute for speaking is 160 words per minute, myself working out it would be around the average of 650 words overall for five minutes. Filming the documentary and planning went very smoothly, myself having a clear idea on the outcome of my video and what topic I wanted to focus on. Filming the documentary went very smoothly as the actors I had understood the topic that I was focusing and could follow my directions well. I also knew all of the actors very well, knowing their backstories from many years of friendship and knowing where they would fit into the video. The actors I used were suitable for the scenes I gave them and all acted out very well, the children even working to understand what I was recording and performing at their best. The locations were also perfect for the tone that I wanted to put across to the audience, helping them understand the topic as the location provokes one emotion and the character in the location can provoke another.

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. I experimented with the times by reading the script, reaching 4 minutes when read by myself 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.

Another 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. Along with this, recording the voices of those that voice acted for me went smoothly, the actor up for doing multiple takes of the script to get it correct at different volumes and different speeds. This made it 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.

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. Another issue was getting to the locations that I needed to reach as some weren't in walking distance, myself having to make sure that my parents were available to drive me to the location to film. Another issue I had personally was recording in public by myself, myself feeling awkward and not wanting to go up to people and asking them if they wanted to be filmed. This is an issue I need to work on as it made it difficult to get any close up shots of people naturally rather than the actors I used. I also have naturally shaky hands, many of the shots being shaky but myself being able to stabilise 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.

Researching and watching other documentaries in all modes helped me understand what people search for in a documentary and what kinds of shots I needed to gather to make my documentary professional. I also wanted my documentary to stand out, myself writing a script and having a voice over unlike many other poetic documentaries, myself making the task more difficult but more important rather than over just aesthetic shots. Understanding the different modes also helped me to select a mode of documentary that isn't the normal documentary you see on TV and helped me understand that a poetic documentary would help get the topic of my documentary across to the audience in the best way through provoking emotions. Experimenting with shots that I wanted to film and the lighting I could use, as well as doing a one shot film, helped me discover which techniques I could use that would work well and would apply to the style of video that I wanted to create, the experimentation allow me to make the shots look more professional.

I set out to achieve a poetic documentary and believe I achieved this because poetic documentaries are metaphoric and evoke an emotion, my documentary doing both to a strong point that the audience would notice and understand. I also stuck to the characteristic of the purpose of many documentaries which was to educate and inform, myself discussing important topics that would be relevant to my target audience and could be understood easily through a metaphoric poem. Many documentaries also have images on screen that relate to what is being discussed, myself following this characteristic to make the tone of the video feel like a documentary to the audience that watch my documentary. I replicated these characteristics and modes by watching other documentaries to see how they applied them into their own videos, myself being able to follow and replicate it in my own style and tone. I selected these characteristics and the poetic mode as they fitted more to my proposal and treatment and the purpose I wanted behind the documentary, the poetic mode helping with this as well as the characteristics that I followed.

The main context of my documentary was the words that I wrote to try and make the audience understand the topic of perception and to help them see the World through two different perspectives without giving them my own opinion. I conveyed this by using voice over my footage as it adds more emotion to the shots being shown as the words are connected to the images shown on screen, making the metaphors be stronger emotionally to the audience when used over the visuals. I also did this by using calm and slow music which helped to set the tone of the overall video, music being powerful in creating emotions in a person and to help them connect the visuals and words to how they should be feeling. I believe that I got my message successfully across to the audience as the words are powerful when you listen to them and can allow two people to understand the video and come out with different views and opinions from each other but still being able to connect afterwards and discuss their views of the video, discussing perception on how they visioned the video, not being forced to see a bias view but left to discover their own opinion of the video and topic.

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.

I also learnt that sound was an important element of my documentary to get the tone across to the audience, myself learning how to use words and music in a more impacting way against the visuals. I also learnt that backing up your files is important and should be backed up on multiple different sources, such as Google Drive and your own hard-drive, as I had many issues with corrupted files and losing work as mentioned before in the issues I faced. By backing up your work multiple times, you don't lose the progress that you got to whilst making your video and can help you not lose files that were important, avoiding leaving you with a gap in the audio or footage you used in the final video. By doing this it also saves you time as you won't need to upload the footage again from a camera or microphone as you can access it quicker and have all of the footage accessible to you when you need it.

I also experimented with some of my shots before filming them as I needed to work out the lighting for certain shots. The first image I experimented with as I was going to use it as a shot but also wanted to see what angle of the light I would need for another shot I will be filming similar to it, helping me understand how to film the shot and how to get the correct look that I wanted to apply into my documentary. By doing this, I learnt a bit more about lighting and how to use it to make a shot look more aesthetic as this is an important element in a poetic documentary, this experimentation helping me understand visuals to a better knowledge than I had beforehand. The experimentation I carried out helped me develop my skills in visionary and aesthetics, myself using my knowledge of colour theory and using that along with the skills that I learnt to come out with the best possible outcome that I could develop for my documentary.

I didn't stick to my storyboard as after doing this I thought of better shots or would stumble across shots that would look better, linking back to what I learnt, and discovered some of the shots weren't as powerful as I wanted them to be or naturally didn't fit into the flow of the video. I mostly followed my column script whilst filming as I could change the shots when out filming if I came across something better and could see where it would fit into the script with less of an issue compared to a storyboard or shot list. I also used my column script as a tick list to know which shots I had completed, which I had changed, when I had filmed them and what was left to film, making the editing process much more easier as it was more planned and stuck to a schedule unlike some of my other projects. It also helped me direct my actors much better as I would've had to of relied on the script to direct the voice acting but having it on a column script helped me understand the tone they had to speak in along with the shots that I wanted to be showing as a visual link to the words they were saying.

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

'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.

Next time I will try to make sure that all of my shots are stabilized or are shaky in a use of an affect. I was aware of this issue and will keep this in mind when filming my next project. I can improve this by practicing my camera techniques more frequently or by finding a piece of equipment to help balance out the camera to avoid the shakiness. This was the largest issue that many people pointed out, showing that this is something I need to work on to get correct in the next video and is a skill I need to practice.

Overall 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.