Floor plan

A quick floor plan of the interview shot we plan to shoot at UCL university of Dr Laura Lewis. It clearly shows her on a chair in a science lab with artificial lighting to help set the mood. There is microscope purposely left in the shot to inform the audience of the science that is about to be explained by her.

Time lapse

After viewing countless websites and watching countless documentaries, I have noticed how a time lapse was used in some way to help tell the narrative of the documentary. Me personally, i believe that it shows a fantastic transition from scenes, so we decided to use a time lapse in or documentary , something similar to the video below.

Bokeh?

This bokeh concept has us scratching our head for hours. This bokeh concept sparked a chain reaction of ideas. At the ending of this clip we see how they use bokeh to make things thats were never considered like names. They explain clearly that the possibilities are endless and demonstrate it with such ease. They made bokeh in the shape of pacman which i personally thought would be amazing to use in our documentary. They explain its simple but require trial and error, that might prove to be a problem as time is not on our side, but we'll see.

Social Network Assistance

As part of our research for out documentary, we had to find out what our target audience are into as this will help our decisions on how we advertise and edit or documentary.

To do this Dakota went on Facebook and asked a series of questions to some of my friends. Such as:

"1. What kind of magazines do you read and why do you like them? (layout, themes)
2. Do you listen to the radio? If so what station and how regularly? 
3. Do you watch documentaries? What types have you seen? Did you like them? Why?"

However, she received no responses. As most of her friends fit our mainstream criteria for our audience this meant that a response from these people was unable to be attained. This is some ways creates a difficult situation as to what this niche would want to see. We plan to do a focus group so hopefully we can gain more information from this.

As she did not receive any responses on her own account, her Mother kindly allowed her to post the same set of questions to her friends. She received a range of responses and ideas. What she found is that she only got responses from mostly women. They all range from different ages, ethnicity, class and jobs so this in some ways does help us to see how we can advertise and edit or film. As she did not get any responses from men, like or mainstream audience it will be hard to market to them, but hopefully we can resolve this in our focus group.

From her findings she have found:

• 1. Many of the women who commented listen to the radio on the way to work - This means that when marketing our documentary, is a morning slot the best time to advertise it?
• 2. These women mostly read gossip magazines, fashion or anything educational - Can our documentary be advertised in these magazines?
• 3. These women also watch documentaries regularly and clearly go for a specific niche (mostly real life) - These different documentaries can help us to see how we can edit our own film to match our target audiences interests.

Our research has given us a strong idea of what we can do to attract our audience and apply this to our film.

Target Audience

Our target audience data

exam board vs research

The exam board are asking us to advertise in newspapers and radio ads and Tv listings where as 'documentary films' suggest we get our film on film festivals as it only costs 25 dollars per listing. They make the assumption that we have a wealthy budget and can advertise our documentary in newspapers and on TV and we will take that assumption and try to do it. 'Documentary films' also advise that we we advertise our film on banner ads to raise awareness. 'Desktop documentaries' advice to to raise awareness by using youtube and Vimio and tell us that we can make money by using google word web.

Documentary Conventions with theory

With us looking a many documentaries we can understand how a documentary documents the truth. We understand we only have a couple of minutes to capture or audience thus making the beginning the most important part. With the help of Todorov's narrative theory, the opening 5 minutes of the documentary should reveal disequilibria at some point; whether its at the very start or a couples minutes in after equilibrium. I have watched so many documentary's and they all impose disequilibria at one point:


The BBC horizon are undoubtedly my favourite documentaries to watch. Majority of them pose some form of disequilibria that has the views enticed. The documentary above presents disequlibra in the first couple mins indirectly. The voice-over of suggest the documentary has the formula that can help us increase our creativity skills suggesting us ourselves are endanger of falling into disequlirbia if we don't continue to watch. Our documentary must contain an enticing beginning as these

Tips for Video Production Editing

We found a great website that had tips on production of a documentary that we thought would help us, They are:   

Create a compelling beginning. 
Great documentaries capture the audience’s attention right away! It can be style or content, but it must be something that feels unusual to the viewer. If you don’t create intrigue and or rouse curiosity, you will lose your audience. One idea is to start with something already deep in the story, then you can back up and slowly begin to reveal answers.

[Helpful hint: Sometimes the beginning of the film is not obvious until you’ve edited the bulk of your film. So just put SOMETHING down at the beginning to get you started, then you can go back.]

Build a “Roller Coaster”
Once you have the basic story structure in place, this is where you start creating the filmmaking experience. Change up the rhythm of your story. If the story has the same rhythm, no matter if it’s all fast or all slow, it will “feel” slow and boring. There needs to be fast sections and slow sections. Take your audience on a RIDE. Mix up the pacing with high points and low points. Take viewers on a “wild ride” and then let them breath. Create chaos and then let the event “sink in”. Remember, silence can be just as powerful as a fast paced sequence.

The internet

while doing this course I started to apperciate the value of the internet. Anything/everything i need to kno i use the internet for. Learnig about html codes, Photoshop, Camtasmia, etc everyting i need i just have to google it., this is why i experiment the most complex things to push the internet to its limit or my reasearch skills to the limit. So far, everything that i wanted to know, i was able to find it on google or youtube. It is only when something really complex is broken down into simple instructions by the web you fell that sense of excitment and apperciation for it.

Planning a documentary

 I have come across an article by Tony Levelle that has i think will help us when filming our documentarty. She disscuses how to plan a unscripted documentary. At first i thought it would have no relevence as she talks about things like improvised planning. It sounded like nonsense but as i read on she spoke about having a concreat plan before hand but having some chsanges on set. This rang some bells as last year we had a strong plan but we made so many changes on set when shooting. She goes on to talk about having a feel for what your going to shoot & lacking inspiration  when getting on set even when you have a plan. I remember from last year in the main task, we had a storyboard and discussed how everything was going to look but when i got to my basement, i couldnt get the lighting to adjust to my mood. We were in my basement, cold and lacking inspiration. so i brought a manual heater down to the basement to keeop the crew warm. ironically the heater gave off a really nice orange glow that was perfect for my vision. Tony talks about once on set "open yourself to the direction suggested by what you see and hear. This is how you allow your footage to tell you where to go, instead of following a predetermined script." I told my crew and myself to have some sort of feel when the get on set instead of always sticking to a plan. I know that having a feel for what is right on set will produce a better outcome instead of sticking to a plan 100%

More research Canon EOS 550D

After getting to grips with the expose of the camera from watching hours of footage explaining it in photography, i came across dead end when trying to adjust the exposure of while recording. When changing the shutter speed, the camera becomes darker and adjusting the IOS wouldn't cut it to make it a nicely exposed shot. I did more research and found that to achieve great exposure as well as a narrow depth of field, i would need a new and more expensive lens which was not in my budget. Although i couldn't get my hands on a lens that would achieve a really good depth of field, found a way to work round it and use the default lens that came with the 550d.

Both of these videos proved very useful in helping me achieve a narrow depth of field i wanted in some expiremental shots.

A Trip to Jessops

Jessops Company Logo

After our first couple days of filming and we came across the "recording stopped automatically" problem and trying to find a solution on the internet, i decided to take a trip to Jessops Photography shop to talk to experts. They told me that When shooting movies, use a large-capacity SD card with SD Speed Class 6 "Class 6" or higher rating. If you use a slow-writing card when shooting movies, the movie might not be recorded properly. And if you playback a movie on a card having a slow reading speed, the movie might not playback properly. I checked the SD card of our memory card and it had a class 2. So I checked online the price for a class 6 or higer memory card but the prices were astonishing. Over 50 pounds for an 8GB class 6 memory card. I knew that was way out of my budget and would have to deal with the problem as much as possible.

Permission to use video clip

So in our documentary, we need a clip from youtube that will help us achieve the professional look we are aspiring to get. As we have seen in many scientific documentaries, they have some form of animation and thats what this clip is. Below is a print screen of me asking for permission to use the video.

The terms and condition we do not want to break:

7.7 You agree that Content you submit to the Service will not contain any third party copyright material, or material that is subject to other third party proprietary rights (including rights of privacy or rights of publicity), unless you have a formal licence or permission from the rightful owner, or are otherwise legally entitled, to post the material in question and to grant YouTube the licence referred to in paragraph 8.1 below.

Depth of field

During my intense educational weekend, i finally found the name of the concept where things in the foreground are either blurred or in focus and vise-versa for the background. This is called depth of and the footage is raw footage of me trying to play with concept.

From looking a clips from other users of the EOS 550D, i came across this simple clip that pioneeried my inspiration to use depth of field to make my documentary more professional and less amateur.

The footage above is simply someone testing the depth of field concept at a skate park. Even tough some shots look look amateur by not conforming to common shooting techniques, there are some shots that i can visualise in a professional looking documentary.

Cannon EOS 550D Research

While taking home the camera to film my nephew and after watching footage after footage from documentaries to get inspiration, i came across the concept of field of depth that really intrigued me. To get that narrow field of depth in a footage you need to understand the exposure triangle. The exposure triangle consist of the elements. IOS, shutter speed and aperture. I watched a whole documentary on the camera i was using to film my nephew.

Ironically, the video used to help me understand the camera gave me inspiration in the establishing shots at 16:15 where simple shots help tell the narrative of the documentary. 

Evaluation 1st day of shooting

We filmed the responses people gave when asked questions about dopamine. When we met up in the cold, we were somewhat timid to approach strangers and ask them questions. We were turned down by a number of people and were feeling demotivated. To top things up, there were problem with the cannon 550D. The following message kept on appearing:


With those to hurdles combined we were going to call it a day. We thought to ourselves that we never planned through enough but just as we were leaving we saw a stationary man and decided to try our luck. With the success of him, a snowball effect occurred and we were on a roll. People were allowing to film them with ease and the mood really lightened up. We filmed a good amount of reactions and called it a day.

Final Story board

Shot List

A first draft of our shot list. It contains the scene, shot, shot type, duration, location and a breif description of the mis en scene of the shot as well as any other things that need to be included.

1st Day Call Sheet

A call-sheet for our first day of shooting

Callsheet 1

Storyboard rough draft

Above is a rough storyboard composed from our treatment the first image news reports on addiction and dopamine making it seem like an epidemic of some sort. We believe this is a good way to entice the audience as seen in successful documentaries like the wikileaks scandal documentary.

2). The second image is observation of my nephew; shooing him playing running talking etc.

At this point in time we feel a voice over will run throughout the documentary from this point with a piano

symphony.

3). The third is interviews with me or his carer highlighting the problem.

4). Fourth, transition shots. So, establishing shots to show a progression of a narrative.

5). Fifth, is an interview with experts on his addiction. No specific details have been confirmed.

6). Sixth, random cuts of peoples’ response to the question, what is dopamine?

7). Seventh. A YouTube animation showing synapses’ and hormone stimulation of the brain

with a narrator talking over it.

8). Eighth. Observing people that are addicted to other things.

9). Ninth. Interview of them

10). Tenth. Back to observing my nephew

11). Eleventh. A conclusion. We are currently working on the exposition of it.

12). Twelfth. Credits to end it.

Shot List 1

After completing our first draft for a storyboard, we made a detailed shot list showing everything that we need when we go out to shoot.

Our Shooting Schedule

Today we planned our shooting schedule for our film. We had to figure out when, where, who, we would be shooting for our film.

WHO
* Biology teacher - Ms Louis
Ms Louis will need to filmed as we will need an 'expect' opinion on what dopamine is. As a biology and psychology teacher we will film her talking to us about the effects of dopamine and how it works.

* Psychology teacher - McCalley
Mr McCalley is another expert opinion and will also give us insight in to the effect of dopamine and how it works.

* Ali's nephew - Kyreece
My nephew is the reason we begun the journey to discover more about the effects of dopamine. We will film him being his usual self obsessing over his favorite TV programme. From this we will observe how he goes about trying to watch his favorite show by all means neccessary

* 5 random people
One of our ideas is to show a series of people answering our question "Do you know what dopamine is?" We thought that this would be an interesting touch to our documentary to see different people's reactions as to what they think dopamine is.

* 3 people we plan to observe.
Another idea we had was to observe people who are effected by dopamine on the computer, to show that everyone and anyone can be addicted to it not just Kyreece.

WHERE
* School library
Key place for interviewing teachers

* My house
Here we will be observing Kyreece

* Westfield/West end
Where we will be getting the reactions of passers by

More planning ideas

Me and my group spent a session after the Umut Gunduz session visualising what our documentary would look like and consist of. The session with umut proved extremely useful in getting our documentary and question in the space of 2 hours. With a treatment done its time to get visual.

The Image above is what we thought of after finally getting our documentary and question together. It is simply a draft and breif outline of what we need to reasearch, whos going to cast in it and where would it be shot. At The bottom of the page is has a quick and short storyboard of what we think it would look like.

Passport Patrol (Documentary Analysis)

Ideas From MyStreetVideo

So we had a talk from a rising director of documentarys and he recommended to view www.mystreetview.com and check out the videos there to get some ideas for our documentary.

I found a video called roof level that is simple a video of the sky sped up. Although this video may seem irreverent to my documentary idea, the sped up effect has some potential in my documentary. I want the audience to know that my documentary happens over a period of time and not just in one day that may seem fairly amateur. This sped up effect can dictate a ongoing story which I think can fit in nicely with mine. 

'ROOF LEVEL' (2011) by Craig Murray for MyStreet Films from MyStreet Films on Vimeo.

 Diaspora In Smoke also has a sped up effect that i think could fit in my documentary with ease.

'Diaspora In Smoke' by Michael Buckman for MyStreet Films from MyStreet Films on Vimeo.

Different methods to create documentaries

Errol Morris

...was born in 1948 in New York. He is a well known documentary making who mostly uses natural lighting when creating his documentaries. This is interesting as it shows his desire to create a natural piece of film, preventing anything artificial. Again, this links to what we are exploring "Do we capture or shape the truth?" He is also known to ask a broad question to his subject and leave the camera rolling. From this he has seen how someone can pour their heart out on camera not even taking into account that it is there (natural vs performance)

Ali G method

Ali G is a well known character that everybody knows for his documentaries which seem to be taking the mick out of who he is interviewing. Before interviewing, Sacha Baron Cohen would dress up as Ali G and set up where the interview would take place. From first impressions the person being interviewed would assume he is just someone on set not knowing he would actually be taking the interview. Ali G would quickly ask a few warm up questions whilst setting up making them rethink their prejudice of believing someone else (because of how he is dressed) would be taking the interview.

The Office

Is a fictional sitcom series created by Ricky Gervais first broadcasted in 2001. Although it is fictional and scripted the sitcom does take the form of a documentary. It creates a quite amateur style of documentary or a in other words a: 'mockumentary' with zooming in to create the narrative. The characters are also aware of the camera's presence. 

SO!

Who are the key characters in our documentary?

• Kyreece (Ali's nephew)
• 5 civilians
• Ms Louis; a psychology and science teacher 
• Dopamine 'addicts' Khalum, Andrew, Aidan....
• Mr McCalley; a psychology teacher

What strategies would we use to ensure our subjects do no 'perform' for the camera?

The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today (2011)

http://billmoyers.com/content/10-documentaries-on-champions-of-social-justice/

THE LORD IS NOT ON TRIAL HERE TODAY - trailer from Jay Rosenstein on Vimeo.



I found a website that contains clips of documentaries and came across the documentary 'The Lord Is Not Trial Here Today' directed by Jay Rosenstein. I found the use of the archive footage in the form or a document looked exceptional in the way it was shot. I can see this being used in my documentary when explaining dopamine. 

Ethical issues

Below is a mind map of ethical issues that could arise when filming our documentary.

Even though we are amateur documentaries, we are taking into account the ethical issues any documentary maker would.

My group and I came up with ethical suggestions about documentaries:

1) Documentaries shape the truth

2) Documentaries represent someone's version of the truth

3) Raw archive footage is more truthful than staged scenes

4) Documentaries are more truthful than fiction

5) Documentaries capture the truth

Codes and conventions of a documentary

Treatment & narrative

We have an idea but no narrative. So our team decided to go away separably and come up with a well written treatment to pitch to each other on the narrative of the documentary. Below are treatments by myself, Victoria and Dakota respectively. After the treatments where pitched, we would choose one and go with that as our narrative.

After consideration, we decided to combine all treatments. The result is below:

In a time where technology rules all, can we say that is not our obsession with technology but something psychological? Have you ever sometimes considered yourself to be an “addict” of some kind?

This film will be a full length documentary about the role of TV on young children. TV is something which is part of our everyday lives and as research suggests too much of it is bad for our children. However, our behaviour towards TV and internet is actually because of the largest drug that is released from our brain. We follow 5 year old Kyreece; and his behaviour towards his favourite TV show “Jake and the Netherland Pirates” From observing Kyreece this show is clearly the only thing he cares about in the whole entire world. This is 5 years of his life sat; glued to the TV screen. The documentary clearly stresses that his addiction to this show is a domestic problem and that any attempt to conceal him from it proves fatal.

The film then takes viewers on a journey, to see why Kyreece acts in this particular way. Some will say ‘Kids will be kids’ but maybe there is possibly a particular reason as to why he acts this way? To be addicted means to be addicted to a particular substance or a specified thing or activity. Can we suggest that Kyreece is perhaps “addicted” to this TV show?

 ­­­­______­­­­__ will show the viewer’s our search to find out why Kyreece is so addicted to TV. We are told information from experts such a psychologist and biologists who tell us that there is actually a psychological reason behind Kyreece’s unacceptable behaviour. We see them in their natural environment of a lab and a classroom to show that they are professionals. This is where Dopamine comes in, an internal drug released in the brain by our body helping fuel our desires. An animation breaks down what the expert has says and helps the viewer to understand the effects of the drug. We see a clear effect the drug has on humans discovering that there is a strong possibility that dopamine plays a part not only in his addiction to TV but ourselves.

So clearly not only is Kyreece addicted to TV but we are too! We then discover how not just Kyreece, but teenagers and adults are also affected by it. At this point we see what creates our desire to view more and more of something with observations of people on the internet and doing various other things. We are then left to question: “Are we really addicted?”

It’s crucial to inform the world of their unknown addiction to drugs. What’s your level of addiction?

5 Modes of documentary

Passport Patrol (updated)

Symbolic codes?

The expository documentary begins with a snappy animation of the title of the show which is followed by a series of clips from the forthcoming episode. By the time the audience watches that, they can assume that the footage is  reality as it is filmed from a hand-held cam. You will notice that some people have their faces blurred. This editing technique fused with the stereotypical investigating audio is common in is show, heightening the enigma for the audience. Zooming by the camera  is common in passport patrol to represents the dangerousness of the situation so staying back is the best decision. This helps the audience get a feeling of the atmosphere in the airport as.

Coming up with a Documentary idea