Critically Evaluating Video Production
Our media product is a documentary named Barnsley’s New Party based on the premise of there being an influx of votes for the BNP in the most recent election, our programme was designed to represent the views both for and against the party, as well as those of the public, in particular the view of the younger generation. In order to do this we followed a conventional structure of a documentary by using the formulaic layout of other real media products.
We observed the conventions of continuity in documentaries by watching similair programmes and by researching websites and textbooks such as; http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Continuity_editing, within our film we used smooth transitions between the opening establishing shots of Barnsley town centre enabling the viewer to feel as though it is a continuous action that develops chronologically rather than a series of separated shots bunched together.
Whilst researching the genre we found there are numerous styles of documentary which can be used such as fly on the wall where the protagonist of the film is followed as though the film crew aren’t there or participatory documentaries where the presenter becomes involved in the situation they are filming in order to gain a better insight (eg Ross Kemp on gangs). As we followed the generic layout of a documentary which uses Vox pops rather than an on screen presenter we did not use continuity editing techniques such as eye line matches (eg man looking off screen to the left and then the next shot cuts to what he was looking at) or the match on action technique. What we did do included sound overlaps, where the sound from one shot carries through onto the next this worked particularly well as we used another technique of a fade transition between the different subjects whom we interviewed, as it makes it seem a smoother fade a
way from one shot into the next if the sound doesn’t vanish suddenly.
We did briefly include an intertextual moment within our film where we referred to another programme when speaking to the leader of Unite Against Fascism, George Arthur, he spoke of Nick Griffin’s appearance on the political programme Question Time so we inserted a still shot of this appearance in order to illustrate to the viewers the mannerism’s which George Arthur is describing.
The film was created with the purpose of entertainment, education and socialisation in that it provides a social talking point for viewers due to the fact politics are a thought provoking, opinionated topic. Following Richard Dyers theory of entertainment our film would provide audience gratification as it includes transparency within the characters who were interviewed as they are open and confessional to the viewer, with the BNP supporter Joe Casket in particular, with the way he was honest about his beliefs despite the taboo around the subject matter. There are also highs and lows of emotions in the documentary which as part of the theory supposedly provide entertainment as the passion on both ends of the spectrum both for and against the party are shown by both students and the main protagonists of the documentary (George Arthur UAF leader and Joe Casket BNP supporter). The final gratifying feature described in the theory which we used in our film was the sense of community as viewers from the area of Barnsley or surrounding localities will be most entertained by our video as its subject matter applies directly to them.
I am quite confident that we managed to be both informative by including numerous facts, as well as being entertaining by using interesting cut aways and a fast paced interview style by breaking up individuals interviews with students opinions rather than one long interview making it less laborious to watch.
Before making the documentary I watched and evaluated a similar style programme, this documentary is part of the channel 4 dispatches series which highlights social and political problems throughout the world. This is a follow up documentary, which returns to Africa where children are being tortured, outcasted and even killed with the belief that they are possessed by witches. http://http//www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-43/episode-1The documentary starts by briefly recapping what happened during the first documentary and how their footage shocked the world and caused a change in African law, in order to do this newspaper clippings and headlines are shown using insert shots. It revisits the people interviewed in the first series, the people who helped pass the child protection laws and also discovers that child witch condemning is still occurring in Africa.
The programme primarily follows two main characters whom are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the topic the documentary is focused on. Firstly there is the charity worker Gary Foxcroft who has devoted his life to save the children from being condemned as witches and established the first shelter for them and conversely there is Africa’s leading evangelist who makes a living through establishing which children are so called witches and conducting exorcisms in order to ‘save’ them. There are also interviews from the children themselves and other people involved in both the condemnation and the saving of the children. This is similair to our documentary as there are main characters within our documentary but we also include short interviews in order to show views and opinions of the larger majority of people who are affected by the subject of politics.
The interviews and narration used throughout the programme are conducted by an unseen voice this technique is known as vox pops, which we also used. In this situation this method is quite effective as it means the viewers attention is not focused on a presenter or persona who is illustrating the situation but it is focused on the issues and situations at hand. Statistics are used by the narrator in order to portray the vast amount of torture that is occurring in this dispatches film, we also included statistics about the number of people voting BNP in order to push the message across.
Insert shots of photographs of children who have been tortures and murdered under the belief that they are witches, these insert shots are impactive due to their horrific nature, there was also insert shorts in our film of important newspaper clippings and posters in order to break up a long interview and show the mass media coverage showing the politics of the area to be something which also has affect nationally. Numerous other shots are used throughout the dispatches film, most notably is the establishing shot in order to show a change of scenery and the kind of place this is happening in, we followed this technique in illustrating the kind of area Barnsley is by including establishing shots in the opening sequence.
The film is filmed using all natural lighting and only a small amount of sound is used in the form of haunting music during the point where the children’s injuries are being shown, this music is upsetting and adds to the emotion of the viewers whilst seeing these images. This differs to ours in that we tended to use artificial lighting and only included music in our titles.
How affective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
I wanted our documentary to come across as an entertaining yet informative film documenting the rise of the BNP and showing the opinions of people in the area in order to gain an insight into the kinds of people who invoked this rise in popularity. Our two ancillary products being a poster intended for billboard or magazines/ newspapers and radio advertisements are created in order to give people an insight into what the programme is about and entice them to watch.
Our media product is a documentary named Barnsley’s New Party based on the premise of there being an influx of votes for the BNP in the most recent election, our programme was designed to represent the views both for and against the party, as well as those of the public, in particular the view of the younger generation. In order to do this we followed a conventional structure of a documentary by using the formulaic layout of other real media products.
We observed the conventions of continuity in documentaries by watching similair programmes and by researching websites and textbooks such as; http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Continuity_editing, within our film we used smooth transitions between the opening establishing shots of Barnsley town centre enabling the viewer to feel as though it is a continuous action that develops chronologically rather than a series of separated shots bunched together.
Whilst researching the genre we found there are numerous styles of documentary which can be used such as fly on the wall where the protagonist of the film is followed as though the film crew aren’t there or participatory documentaries where the presenter becomes involved in the situation they are filming in order to gain a better insight (eg Ross Kemp on gangs). As we followed the generic layout of a documentary which uses Vox pops rather than an on screen presenter we did not use continuity editing techniques such as eye line matches (eg man looking off screen to the left and then the next shot cuts to what he was looking at) or the match on action technique. What we did do included sound overlaps, where the sound from one shot carries through onto the next this worked particularly well as we used another technique of a fade transition between the different subjects whom we interviewed, as it makes it seem a smoother fade a
way from one shot into the next if the sound doesn’t vanish suddenly.We did briefly include an intertextual moment within our film where we referred to another programme when speaking to the leader of Unite Against Fascism, George Arthur, he spoke of Nick Griffin’s appearance on the political programme Question Time so we inserted a still shot of this appearance in order to illustrate to the viewers the mannerism’s which George Arthur is describing.
The film was created with the purpose of entertainment, education and socialisation in that it provides a social talking point for viewers due to the fact politics are a thought provoking, opinionated topic. Following Richard Dyers theory of entertainment our film would provide audience gratification as it includes transparency within the characters who were interviewed as they are open and confessional to the viewer, with the BNP supporter Joe Casket in particular, with the way he was honest about his beliefs despite the taboo around the subject matter. There are also highs and lows of emotions in the documentary which as part of the theory supposedly provide entertainment as the passion on both ends of the spectrum both for and against the party are shown by both students and the main protagonists of the documentary (George Arthur UAF leader and Joe Casket BNP supporter). The final gratifying feature described in the theory which we used in our film was the sense of community as viewers from the area of Barnsley or surrounding localities will be most entertained by our video as its subject matter applies directly to them.
I am quite confident that we managed to be both informative by including numerous facts, as well as being entertaining by using interesting cut aways and a fast paced interview style by breaking up individuals interviews with students opinions rather than one long interview making it less laborious to watch.
Before making the documentary I watched and evaluated a similar style programme, this documentary is part of the channel 4 dispatches series which highlights social and political problems throughout the world. This is a follow up documentary, which returns to Africa where children are being tortured, outcasted and even killed with the belief that they are possessed by witches. http://http//www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-43/episode-1The documentary starts by briefly recapping what happened during the first documentary and how their footage shocked the world and caused a change in African law, in order to do this newspaper clippings and headlines are shown using insert shots. It revisits the people interviewed in the first series, the people who helped pass the child protection laws and also discovers that child witch condemning is still occurring in Africa.
The programme primarily follows two main characters whom are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the topic the documentary is focused on. Firstly there is the charity worker Gary Foxcroft who has devoted his life to save the children from being condemned as witches and established the first shelter for them and conversely there is Africa’s leading evangelist who makes a living through establishing which children are so called witches and conducting exorcisms in order to ‘save’ them. There are also interviews from the children themselves and other people involved in both the condemnation and the saving of the children. This is similair to our documentary as there are main characters within our documentary but we also include short interviews in order to show views and opinions of the larger majority of people who are affected by the subject of politics.
The interviews and narration used throughout the programme are conducted by an unseen voice this technique is known as vox pops, which we also used. In this situation this method is quite effective as it means the viewers attention is not focused on a presenter or persona who is illustrating the situation but it is focused on the issues and situations at hand. Statistics are used by the narrator in order to portray the vast amount of torture that is occurring in this dispatches film, we also included statistics about the number of people voting BNP in order to push the message across.
Insert shots of photographs of children who have been tortures and murdered under the belief that they are witches, these insert shots are impactive due to their horrific nature, there was also insert shorts in our film of important newspaper clippings and posters in order to break up a long interview and show the mass media coverage showing the politics of the area to be something which also has affect nationally. Numerous other shots are used throughout the dispatches film, most notably is the establishing shot in order to show a change of scenery and the kind of place this is happening in, we followed this technique in illustrating the kind of area Barnsley is by including establishing shots in the opening sequence.
The film is filmed using all natural lighting and only a small amount of sound is used in the form of haunting music during the point where the children’s injuries are being shown, this music is upsetting and adds to the emotion of the viewers whilst seeing these images. This differs to ours in that we tended to use artificial lighting and only included music in our titles.
How affective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
I wanted our documentary to come across as an entertaining yet informative film documenting the rise of the BNP and showing the opinions of people in the area in order to gain an insight into the kinds of people who invoked this rise in popularity. Our two ancillary products being a poster intended for billboard or magazines/ newspapers and radio advertisements are created in order to give people an insight into what the programme is about and entice them to watch.
In our poster we cross dissolved three different images all representing what our documentary is about, we used the town hall representing Barnsley, a union jack flag which the BNP use as their logo and a pr
otest of people opposing the BNP's views, this made our poster more vibrant and self explanatory without the use of text. We included the vital information of the date and time to be shown as well as the well-recognised channel logo. We wanted to keep the poster simple with a minimum amount of text so that the images were more impactive. The only text we included is the title in the acrostic style. We used the stencil font for our title giving an almost military effect showing the serious of the subject matter and which is also used on many political campaigns.
otest of people opposing the BNP's views, this made our poster more vibrant and self explanatory without the use of text. We included the vital information of the date and time to be shown as well as the well-recognised channel logo. We wanted to keep the poster simple with a minimum amount of text so that the images were more impactive. The only text we included is the title in the acrostic style. We used the stencil font for our title giving an almost military effect showing the serious of the subject matter and which is also used on many political campaigns. 
As a comparison this poster advertises the documentary ‘Supersize me’ about a man who challenges himself to eat nothing but McDonalds for an entire month in order to monitor the affects of the food served their on the nation.The Title of the film is written in red and yellow, two colours which are used by the McDonalds franchise in their logo, the word ‘me’ has also been stretched so it looks abnormal this is indicative of the affect the food will have on a person. The tagline is ‘a film of epic portions’ this also relates to the food aspect of the film as it pokes fun at the large portions at McDonalds. Our title is also bold but we do not have a tagline as the title itself is quite self explanitory.
The various awards and nominations the film has been credited with are also included on the poster in order to increase its appeal to the audience as it shows its recommendations from the industries professionals. A comic affect of the image of the man with lots of French fries in his mouth shows that the documentary has a light-hearted tone, the image is also attention grabbing as it is a white background and the man stands out due to his bright red clothing which has connotations of both danger and the McDonalds logo . We used numerous overlapped attention grabbing images on the same subject matter in order to draw the audience in we did not include awards or recommendations
The films website is also included on the poster so that the audience can find out more about the film if they wish to. The people and companies and companies involved are also featured on the poster, again this can increase credibility if it is associated with a well known company such as Odeon.
Finally quotations from magazines such as rolling stone feature and give high praise to the film making the audience more likely to see it if it has been spoke well of, the font is yellow and matches in with the red and yellow theme used throughout the poster. We maintained a simple black and white font throughout our entire poster.
Conversley whilst researching radio trailers for documentarys it was virtually impossible to find an example so we created it based on the basic premise used when advertising films on the radio, a 30 second long clip with background music which gives an insight to the programme without giving the entire plotline away whilst informing the listener when and where the programme will be shown. Also from our research when we looked at advertisements for films and gained the knowledge that they usually include a voice over narrative, extracts from the film and background music, all of which we included in ours as well as the channel and date and time it will be shown.
What have you learnt from audience feedback
When we were intially developing the idea for our documentary we created some questionnaires in order to establish the kind of audience who would want to watch a programme like ours we concluded from these results that our target age group was 18-25 year olds and that they would
expect to find a programme like this on channel 4. By gaining this insight it meant we could develop our ideas to work around this age category which now becomes our target audience, one way we did this was by including interviews with students of barnsley college in order to give a youths perspective on the rise of the BNP. This is a unique perspective as most political documentaries are aimed at a higher age range so this new angle breaks the conventions of political documentaries.
During filming and editing we ensured meaning would be apparant to the audience by including an equal amount of time to both for and against the BNP in order to not sway the audiences opinions and allow them to develop their own conclusion, we did this by interviewing Joe Casket using the talking heads method at the beginning of the film and George Arthur the leader of Unite Against Facism at the end whilst interspersing with opinions of students.
The response from the audience when we trialled aspects of the film were mainly positive in that they felt we had created a visually stimulating yet informative programme, we did take on the advice that one of the interviews was too long so we broke this long shot up by adding insert shots of posters and flyers whilst George Arthur was discussing these products. The film is more likely to be interprated differently by people from the Barnsley area as it is an issue which is more pivotal to them and creates more of a sense of community and socialism than it would to viewers outside of the local area.
How did you use new media technologies?
Digital technology did help us to develop creatively within our production and even helped us correct mistakes following filming although sometimes it did prevent us doing some things we wanted to, we filmed all our shots on a HDV1000 camera,
filming in h
igh definition in order to give us a clearer quality image, the only difficult
y we faced with this camera was that the microphone on it was not as affective when outdoors in windy conditions or near traffic we also used a digital voice recorder but the same problems occurred with this equipment. This was a hindrance in regards to our creativity, as we originally wanted to interview the leader of Unite Against Fascism’s George Arthur outside the town hall, in order to provide visually stimulating and relevant backdrop however the fact the town hall is located near a main road meant that when we came back to review our footage the sound was too severely distorted, we then had to re-shoot the interview in a less interesting location- an office.
We edited our film using the software Final cut express this programme helped us achieve the final touches to our documentary we wanted, an example of this is the wire framing tool
enabled us to reframe shots we had taken, this helped us during our interviews there was often too much bare wall space above the interviewee's head, this tool enabled us to reframe and zoom making the shots more asthetically pleasing as you saw more of the person rather than the background. It also enabled us to change the white balance on certain shots which due to weather conditions had a blueish tinge and were rather harsh looking.
In creating our ancillary texts we used other softwares, whilst making the film poster we used photoshop elements which allowed us to be more creative in that we could lap and overlay images making a more visually complex image. Garage band is the programme we created our radio advert on which was useful in that it enabled us to tamper with the sounds we recorded as well as having several sounds playing at once, this meant we could have background music whilst people were talking.
enabled us to reframe shots we had taken, this helped us during our interviews there was often too much bare wall space above the interviewee's head, this tool enabled us to reframe and zoom making the shots more asthetically pleasing as you saw more of the person rather than the background. It also enabled us to change the white balance on certain shots which due to weather conditions had a blueish tinge and were rather harsh looking.
In creating our ancillary texts we used other softwares, whilst making the film poster we used photoshop elements which allowed us to be more creative in that we could lap and overlay images making a more visually complex image. Garage band is the programme we created our radio advert on which was useful in that it enabled us to tamper with the sounds we recorded as well as having several sounds playing at once, this meant we could have background music whilst people were talking.
The use of blogger was a useful thing in helping us develop creatively in that we as a group could document clearly our research and plans such as shot logs and scripts. We also posted our video on youtube in order to get the video to a wider audience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KaosnCVepo, we also wrote about the video on social networking sites such as facebook in order to further promote the programme.
No comments:
Post a Comment