Friday, January 6, 2012
Evaluation
Question 1
When I noted John Corner's codes and conventions of documentaries earlier on in this blog, I talked about the themes
Observation
"This is when the camera becomes the eyewitness to some of the events taking place". People inside of the shots are meant to be oblivious to the fact that there is a camera there. We applied this convention when we filmed a panning long shot of someone walking past the Thai Paragon.
This is similar to the documentary which I chose to analyse, 'Heavy Metal In Baghdad', where US Soldiers were oblivious to the fact that they were being filmed.
Interviews
"Documentaries rely heavily on interviews. Sometimes pictures and archive footage are dubbed over the interview to make sense of what is going on". We filmed plenty of cutaway shots and dubbed them over our interviews. Often these shots were shots either of food, menus or archive footage.
This is the very first cutaway shot the audience sees in our documentary. This shot also makes an observation because of the three oblivious people on the left.
In 'Detroit Lives', this is the first cutaway shot which the audience see. This is archive footage of Detroit Chrysler workers manufacturing cars. This cutaway shot gets dubbed over the voice of Toby Barlow.
Dramatisation
John Corner talked about the idea of Dramatisation and how the audience is sometimes eyewitness to the events unfolding on screen, perhaps in the form of an industry expert who is somehow related to the exposition. This is one of the main reasons why we chose to include Restaurant owner Anhar Miah in our documentary.
In 'The Devil Made Me Do It', they also used industry professionals like we have to explain their opinion which has a relation to the exposition. Like the screenshot above, it also uses subtitles to tell the audience their name and profession. Note the similarity in the framing of these two interviews.
Mise En Scene
"Mise En Scene is used in a way to advance the argument". This is why it was very important for us to film Janet Orr inside a kitchen because of her being a mother and that she has her own experiences of cooking meals for teenagers. In documentaries, the most important things film makers need to think about with regards to mise en scene is the location and the lighting. Clothing can sometimes be an issue because what they are wearing might not actually be related to the exposition. However, it is rare for there to be an issue in documentaries with clothing in documentaries as many people just wear what they would have on normally. Therefore, documentary makers do not have to worry much about how clothing can advance an argument.
When I watched 'Detroit Lives', the audience were presented with Entrepreneur Phil Cooley who was stood inside a warehouse. The documentary was trying to show the audience how Detroit is improving from all of the poverty, crime and drug use. I think that in our documentary, we thought about the lighting much more when we filmed Janet Orr. A lot of the time, 'Detroit Lives' relies on natural light for the interviews whereas we do not. This is a flaw where I feel we did better than the other documentary.
Question 2
Question 3
I wanted to get some audience feedback from my target audience and I decided that the best place to obtain feeback from them would be on facebook, since the vast majority of my friends fit inside the target audience. The image below is proof that I have done this. You can also read what I asked them to do.
This is some of the feedback which I obtained from my peers:
I recieved a 'like' from Katherine Moreira on my documentary. The very first comment which I recieved on Facebook was from Danielle Nunnerley, who was impressed by what she watched. The problem with recieving a like and the comment which Danielle Nunnerley gave me is that this audience feedback is quite vague. She does not describe which parts of my documentary she thought were "Very insightful, and really engaging". Therefore, I believed that so far I had done everything correct until I recieved more audience feedback.
Paul Pope has talked about a good use of cutaways. This pleases me because in my editing Diary, I mentioned that we did not have enough cutaways and that I had to get some footage from YouTube. I interpret this as evidence to show that we did have cutaways in all of the correct places.
Tim Mainwaring gave me my first comment of feedback that had a criticism as well as some positive feedback. I wanted negative feedback so I know where I need to improve next time. He spoke of the information being good but the voice asking the questions is too quiet. We cut out the voice asking the interview questions as hearing it in a documentary is unprofessional. Tim is talking about our narrator's voice being too quiet. It is likely he had to turn the volume up on his speakers in order to give me the feedback he gave me. If the voice asking the questions is too quiet, this means that the "Good info" I had was being disrupted slightly. If he had to turn his volume up, then this may have made the sound from our archive footage and interviews too loud. Thanks to this feedback, I now realise that during the editing process, I needed to turn the volume up when the narrator is speaking. I should have noticed this before otherwise the feedback could have been completely positive. I wore headphones in all of my lessons where I edited and I remember trying to establish a sufficient volume throughout. I thought I had done this correctly, but apparently I had not.
Richard Alan Clarke said that my documentary "looks just like something you would see on bbc4". Although he may have meant this as positive feedback, our documentary was created to be shown on Channel 4 because it attracts younger audiences and BBC4 often attracts the opposite. This is definitely something which I did not want to hear in my feedback. His comment could have been influenced by the Narrator, who did not speak as powerful as I thought he may have when we were recording. I should have realised this and found a different narrator, although this would have caused a delay to our editing process if we re-recorded.
When Richard says "looks like it was made in the 90's though", this is definitely some negative criticism that as a creator, I relish hearing. I now know that some of the techniques I used in my documentary could have been out of date and that their were better ways to edit my documentary than I have included. For example, he may not have liked how I have used the fonts in my documentary and feels that the transitions were very basic. If this is the case, then along with my group, I should have found a transition that would flow better with the takeaway theme of the documentary. This is what I would do to improve if I had another chance.
I decided to record another member of my target audience reviewing my radio advertisement, Print advertisement and my final documentary. This was an attempt to try and obtain a much more visual answer in comparison to Facebook. The answers I received were of a much better standard detail and there was a lot more detail.
Radio Advertisement
The way we edited our radio advertisement is definitely a problem after I received this feedback. "The sound bytes don't really tell you what the program is about". If she thinks that this is the case, then my sound bytes were definitely not relevant enough. When the Narrator asks "What impact does this have on teenagers?" I think that I should have chosen a better sound byte to use than when you hear the restaurant owner speak. I believe that this is also what lead her to to opinion of the narrator needing to tell the audience more about it. Since I am the person who wrote the script for the radio advertisement, it was therefore my duty to fit more information into my radio advertisement, despite it only being 30 seconds long.
Print Advertisement
I am pleased that she said the print advertisement does "catch your eye" and entice the audience into wondering what to advertisement is about. She says the words "for the average person" which means that she was including anyone in or outside of my target audience. This may not sound like a bad thing, but I am judging it in this way because the print advertisement is supposed to attract mostly young people. In hindsight, I would say that our print advertisement does need some more colour because the only colours which we did use were shades of oranges, reds or browns on the strap line, scheduling information, name of the program and on the sauce of the meal.
Documentary Review
This is not the first time I have heard about my documentary having sound problems despite the information it gave. Like Tim Mainwaring, she does mention that the voice about the voice asking the questions is too quiet. This was in comparison to the restaurant owner's sound being too loud. I should have tried to balanced the levels of sound to a volume between these levels as I would rather not give other audience members a "shock" like she said. I am pleased that she did tell me this because it shows that video feedback can be much more informative than taking answers from Facebook. In some ways, it has helped me gain a broader understanding of what Tim Mainwaring was talking about.
For more information, please view the 'Audience Feedback' section of my blog.
Question 4
When I noted John Corner's codes and conventions of documentaries earlier on in this blog, I talked about the themes
Observation
"This is when the camera becomes the eyewitness to some of the events taking place". People inside of the shots are meant to be oblivious to the fact that there is a camera there. We applied this convention when we filmed a panning long shot of someone walking past the Thai Paragon.
This is similar to the documentary which I chose to analyse, 'Heavy Metal In Baghdad', where US Soldiers were oblivious to the fact that they were being filmed.
Interviews
"Documentaries rely heavily on interviews. Sometimes pictures and archive footage are dubbed over the interview to make sense of what is going on". We filmed plenty of cutaway shots and dubbed them over our interviews. Often these shots were shots either of food, menus or archive footage.
This is the very first cutaway shot the audience sees in our documentary. This shot also makes an observation because of the three oblivious people on the left.
In 'Detroit Lives', this is the first cutaway shot which the audience see. This is archive footage of Detroit Chrysler workers manufacturing cars. This cutaway shot gets dubbed over the voice of Toby Barlow.
Dramatisation
John Corner talked about the idea of Dramatisation and how the audience is sometimes eyewitness to the events unfolding on screen, perhaps in the form of an industry expert who is somehow related to the exposition. This is one of the main reasons why we chose to include Restaurant owner Anhar Miah in our documentary.
In 'The Devil Made Me Do It', they also used industry professionals like we have to explain their opinion which has a relation to the exposition. Like the screenshot above, it also uses subtitles to tell the audience their name and profession. Note the similarity in the framing of these two interviews.
Mise En Scene
"Mise En Scene is used in a way to advance the argument". This is why it was very important for us to film Janet Orr inside a kitchen because of her being a mother and that she has her own experiences of cooking meals for teenagers. In documentaries, the most important things film makers need to think about with regards to mise en scene is the location and the lighting. Clothing can sometimes be an issue because what they are wearing might not actually be related to the exposition. However, it is rare for there to be an issue in documentaries with clothing in documentaries as many people just wear what they would have on normally. Therefore, documentary makers do not have to worry much about how clothing can advance an argument.
When I watched 'Detroit Lives', the audience were presented with Entrepreneur Phil Cooley who was stood inside a warehouse. The documentary was trying to show the audience how Detroit is improving from all of the poverty, crime and drug use. I think that in our documentary, we thought about the lighting much more when we filmed Janet Orr. A lot of the time, 'Detroit Lives' relies on natural light for the interviews whereas we do not. This is a flaw where I feel we did better than the other documentary.
Question 2
Question 3
I wanted to get some audience feedback from my target audience and I decided that the best place to obtain feeback from them would be on facebook, since the vast majority of my friends fit inside the target audience. The image below is proof that I have done this. You can also read what I asked them to do.
This is some of the feedback which I obtained from my peers:
I recieved a 'like' from Katherine Moreira on my documentary. The very first comment which I recieved on Facebook was from Danielle Nunnerley, who was impressed by what she watched. The problem with recieving a like and the comment which Danielle Nunnerley gave me is that this audience feedback is quite vague. She does not describe which parts of my documentary she thought were "Very insightful, and really engaging". Therefore, I believed that so far I had done everything correct until I recieved more audience feedback.
Paul Pope has talked about a good use of cutaways. This pleases me because in my editing Diary, I mentioned that we did not have enough cutaways and that I had to get some footage from YouTube. I interpret this as evidence to show that we did have cutaways in all of the correct places.
Tim Mainwaring gave me my first comment of feedback that had a criticism as well as some positive feedback. I wanted negative feedback so I know where I need to improve next time. He spoke of the information being good but the voice asking the questions is too quiet. We cut out the voice asking the interview questions as hearing it in a documentary is unprofessional. Tim is talking about our narrator's voice being too quiet. It is likely he had to turn the volume up on his speakers in order to give me the feedback he gave me. If the voice asking the questions is too quiet, this means that the "Good info" I had was being disrupted slightly. If he had to turn his volume up, then this may have made the sound from our archive footage and interviews too loud. Thanks to this feedback, I now realise that during the editing process, I needed to turn the volume up when the narrator is speaking. I should have noticed this before otherwise the feedback could have been completely positive. I wore headphones in all of my lessons where I edited and I remember trying to establish a sufficient volume throughout. I thought I had done this correctly, but apparently I had not.
Richard Alan Clarke said that my documentary "looks just like something you would see on bbc4". Although he may have meant this as positive feedback, our documentary was created to be shown on Channel 4 because it attracts younger audiences and BBC4 often attracts the opposite. This is definitely something which I did not want to hear in my feedback. His comment could have been influenced by the Narrator, who did not speak as powerful as I thought he may have when we were recording. I should have realised this and found a different narrator, although this would have caused a delay to our editing process if we re-recorded.
When Richard says "looks like it was made in the 90's though", this is definitely some negative criticism that as a creator, I relish hearing. I now know that some of the techniques I used in my documentary could have been out of date and that their were better ways to edit my documentary than I have included. For example, he may not have liked how I have used the fonts in my documentary and feels that the transitions were very basic. If this is the case, then along with my group, I should have found a transition that would flow better with the takeaway theme of the documentary. This is what I would do to improve if I had another chance.
I decided to record another member of my target audience reviewing my radio advertisement, Print advertisement and my final documentary. This was an attempt to try and obtain a much more visual answer in comparison to Facebook. The answers I received were of a much better standard detail and there was a lot more detail.
Radio Advertisement
The way we edited our radio advertisement is definitely a problem after I received this feedback. "The sound bytes don't really tell you what the program is about". If she thinks that this is the case, then my sound bytes were definitely not relevant enough. When the Narrator asks "What impact does this have on teenagers?" I think that I should have chosen a better sound byte to use than when you hear the restaurant owner speak. I believe that this is also what lead her to to opinion of the narrator needing to tell the audience more about it. Since I am the person who wrote the script for the radio advertisement, it was therefore my duty to fit more information into my radio advertisement, despite it only being 30 seconds long.
Print Advertisement
I am pleased that she said the print advertisement does "catch your eye" and entice the audience into wondering what to advertisement is about. She says the words "for the average person" which means that she was including anyone in or outside of my target audience. This may not sound like a bad thing, but I am judging it in this way because the print advertisement is supposed to attract mostly young people. In hindsight, I would say that our print advertisement does need some more colour because the only colours which we did use were shades of oranges, reds or browns on the strap line, scheduling information, name of the program and on the sauce of the meal.
Documentary Review
This is not the first time I have heard about my documentary having sound problems despite the information it gave. Like Tim Mainwaring, she does mention that the voice about the voice asking the questions is too quiet. This was in comparison to the restaurant owner's sound being too loud. I should have tried to balanced the levels of sound to a volume between these levels as I would rather not give other audience members a "shock" like she said. I am pleased that she did tell me this because it shows that video feedback can be much more informative than taking answers from Facebook. In some ways, it has helped me gain a broader understanding of what Tim Mainwaring was talking about.
For more information, please view the 'Audience Feedback' section of my blog.
Question 4
Scripted Documentary Voice Over
Documentary Narration
1. From intro until first interview clip (approx. 7 seconds)
“Takeaways – Britain loves them! These quick and easy meals are a huge hit with teenagers and adults alike as they provide a simple alternative to a normal meal – but what is it that makes them so appealing? “
2. From first interview to first vox pops clip (approx. 8 seconds)
“Takeaway meals are the first choice for thousands when they need a meal in a hurry, and they suit teenagers for their practicality. There are many different types of takeaway heralding from many cultures including Indian and Thai, but what’s the public’s favourite?”
3. From first vox pops clip to interview with Heather (approx. 19 seconds)
“While a takeaway may be a quicker and less time consuming way of getting a meal, cooking your own meal does have many advantages: home cooked meals are much cheaper – we compared a supermarket ready meal to a similar takeaway and found that it was over £5 cheaper with a lower content of unhealthy additives such as fat, sugar and salt. All of this considered, why are takeaways still so popular, especially with teenagers?”
4. From second clip of Janet to second vox pops (approx. 15 seconds)
“The simplicity and convenience of takeaways would appear to be the most justifiable reason for people ordering them, with takeaways seemingly being a lazy excuse due to factors such as cost and health. This considered, do teens prefer to order takeaways over cooking their own meals?”
5. From vox pops to next clip of Heather (approx. 6 seconds)
“So do the youth of today really not consider the financial and diet issues associated with takeaways when they order one?”
6. From clip of Heather to Just Eat advert (approx. 5 seconds)
“Takeaways are becoming increasingly easier to order in the modern day, with takeaway websites such as JustEat.com allowing people to order a takeaway online in just a few clicks.”
7. From Just Eat advert to first clip of Anhar (approx. 2 seconds)
“It’s not just the simplicity that attracts thousands either – many takeaways offer special deals.”
8. From clip of Anhar to next vox pops (approx. 5 seconds)
“So despite their flaws, takeaway meals also have many advantages that make them so popular to so many people – but how frequently do they have a takeaway?”
9. From next clip of Janet to next clip of Anhar (approx. 9 seconds)
“Takeaways are now a main feature of modern society, providing meals and jobs for millions worldwide. We caught up with Anhar Miah, owner of The Raj restaurant, to get an insight onto working in the industry as well as his opinions on takeaways.”
10. In between Anhar interview (approx. 7 seconds)
“Keeping customer service good is certainly a key part of the takeaway business, to keep customers coming back for more. We also asked Anhar about The Raj’s most popular meals, and how they promote their business.”
11. From Anhar interview to Burger King advert (approx. 4 seconds)
“The promotion of takeaway meals is an important part of the industry, with mainstream restaurants such as McDonald’s and Pizza Hut relying heavily on advertisement – bus does this sort of promotion attract the public?”
12. Over Burger King advert (approx. 4 seconds)
“Takeaway companies want advertisement to play a pivotal role in the decision to buy takeaway, with restaurants advertising new meals and special offers to encourage people to shop there”.
13. From Burger King advert to ending montage (approx. 5 seconds)
“The vast variation of the takeaway industry is what keeps people coming back for more – there are so many different types of meal with a variety of ways to get them.”
Scripted Radio Voice Over
So that the narrator had something read when we were recording our advertisement, we wrote out a script. We told the narrator to pause in between each part we recorded. This was to make it easier whilst we were editing. The advertisement is supposed to be 30 seconds long.
VOX POPS: Chinese, Indian, Errr... Chinese?
Voice Over: "We are all familiar with the idea of a takeaway, but what impact is this having on teenagers?"
Interview with Anhar Miah: Most of our food is freshly cooked by fresh ingrediants.
Voice Over: "And what do adults think about it?"
Janet Orr: I'd say that it is acceptable to have a takeaway maybe once a month.
Voice Over: "To find out more, tune in to watch Tasty Takeaways on Thursday at 8pm. Only on Channel 4.
Music Level bed raised: Eat it, Eat it! If it's getting cold reheat it.
VOX POPS: Chinese, Indian, Errr... Chinese?
Voice Over: "We are all familiar with the idea of a takeaway, but what impact is this having on teenagers?"
Interview with Anhar Miah: Most of our food is freshly cooked by fresh ingrediants.
Voice Over: "And what do adults think about it?"
Janet Orr: I'd say that it is acceptable to have a takeaway maybe once a month.
Voice Over: "To find out more, tune in to watch Tasty Takeaways on Thursday at 8pm. Only on Channel 4.
Music Level bed raised: Eat it, Eat it! If it's getting cold reheat it.
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