Thursday, 16 December 2010
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Evaluation.
In the production of our media product, we wanted to conform to all forms and conventions of a real life documentary. This was extremely important to us to follow the codes and convention therefore we could produce a documentary to the best of our ability and to look professional and show the same aspects a real life one would. From this there was only one convention in which we challenged. We decided, instead of starting our documentary with a voice over introduction, we used our owning scene of Janet tutorial of making a cup of tea. This jumped into the documentary with a light hearted and comical start to the documentary which we felt would work best to catch our audience’s attention straight away and from our audience feedback it was worth taking this risk as bar one person, everyone wanted to see more of her and loved the start of our product.
One of the media conventions we followed was using the voice over. Our voice over was chosen specifically to fit in with our target audience and was used as a narrative throughout our documentary so the audience knew what was happening.
In graphics, we used tittles for when our interviewees were first introduced. This gave their name and relation to tea for why we chose them for the documentary for example our interview from Lancashire tearoom’s’. We also kept to tradition having the titles shown at the bottom of the screen so as not to take away any attention from the person being interviewed. This follows the conventions and from my research for example the image below from Gok wan’s clips shows the clear representation of graphics kept simple and at the bottom of the screen with his name and position but not detracting from what’s happening in the scene.
We used a variety of voxpops as well as interviews. This gave the documentary more depth as there was a lot more opinion and it was useful to use when producing montages for our opening titles with the voxpops of ‘favourite brands’ and ‘where does tea come from’.
We developed the convention of using actual footage seen in other documentaries, with hand held camera scenes with the public to see their opinions to appeal to the audience for example of Gok Wan’s ‘fashion fix’. We felt that it would look good in our documentary to have a variety of people telling us their opinions about tea, and off guard footage would look natural and realte to the audience as ‘one of the public’. We also used archive footage to show fact to back up our theories of how tea is drunk as we used a clip from Emmerdale and Coronation Street.
This image from gok wan’s : how to look good naked series one episode 8 , shows Dorothy walking in the streets and of Gok wan with the public. From these ‘snippits’ from the episode it makes the audience relate to the person and even wonder if they were there that day etc.
This reflects to our documentary with voxpops from the public we have people the audience can relate to as well as real opinions.
For our interviews we followed the convention of eyes line and spacing by making sure our they were always eye line ¾ up the screen and that they are to one side of the camera by a third and eye line is kept 3 quarters up the screen. Also we made sure the lighting was positioned behind the camera to keep the balance on screen of the interviewee. And in addition we used different background like the collage of tea, a blue screen interview to use additional pictures behind as well as normal background like Christian in his kitchen as we felt it would show him more at ease in his natural environment to look more natural. We combined our interviews together for the old and young person. We chose to do this to show the difference in representation of the different views on teas but still to created a strong coherent narrative that was easy to follow with the assistance of cut-aways which were used throughout interviews to express tea. We cut between Christian and Annette with cut aways of how they make tea.
This image shows how the eyeline is correctly 3/4 way down the screen lighting is keptbehind the camera and I think in this case the background to the interveiw has been blurred out because of its irrelevance to the documentary which is on dispatches, Britains secret slaves.
This image above shows our interveiw with an older person. We have kept eye line correctly 3/4 of the screen as well positioned on the right hand side not in the center. Also we developed a mise-en-scene with the theme of the tea cups we made a background to use for this interveiw as a wall art effect behind her which relates back to the topic of tea.
Evaluation question 2.
Here is the link for my evaluation question 2.
http://www.slideshare.net/megdavies
Question 3.
Here is a link incase to my footage uploaded to youtube.com of my audience feedback.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0n6_Q5D4h0
I was able to obtain filmed footage of people veiwing my film to give me audience feedback with Beth Stuch and Jenny Mannion looking over my work and giving my insightful and experienced feedback on my documentary with what was good and also be imporved on my work.
Beth found my documentary most interesting and thought my use of positioning and creativity made the documentary really different and effective to make me people want to veiw past five minutes. For exampl she talks about my interview with a constructed mise-en-scene with a montage of tea visualisations behind as she is being interveiwed. As well as this she looked at the framing of my work and noticed that it fit in with the codes and conventions to keep them on eye line and to the side complete with alternate graphics. She enjoyed my work with Janet and thought it made a good opening theme relating to tea but upbeat with the contracting classical music to make it more light hearted.
Jenny looked over my documentary and then talked about my radio advert and pringt advert and showed the link of codes and conventions of my print advert as it was simple,to the point and gave simple text to explain the time and date which would be clear for information for the audience.
I also devised a questionnaire for people to fill in after watching our documentary to give me objective feedback of my final piece. This directly gave us clear feedback to show us where we and strived as well as failed in our documentary. The feedback also gives us critism and guidelines as to where we can improve next time.
One question we asked was does the radio and print advert make you want to watch the documentary? Twelve out of fifteen answered that they did. From this, I know that my other ancillary pieces carried out the conventions successfully and served their purposes to attract and give the important information to my audience. It also shows the effectiveness of our topic to change tea into a fun subject for our audience to want to find out about tea and the people who said that they were not attracted to our print out and radio advert said it was down to the topic that they weren’t interested and not our work. Another question we asked was whether our audience were able to follow the documentary. We were given a lot of positive feedback from this with only one person disagreeing. I feel this has a lot to do with the risk we took to challenge the codes and conventions by using Janet’s tutorial about tea rather than a narrative structure. We chose to do this to start with alight hearted and comical opening for our documentary rather than keeping it serious which, I think people would be expecting. In hindsight, I think people might expect this with such a traditional documentary it would make them want to see what else we had in store when they saw Janet as she made it fun.
We were given some constructive critism when we asked does the pring advert stand out to you ? would it attract your attention. We received just over half responding yes. This made us realise that our print advert was probably our weakest link to our final piece. We wanted to keep to the codes and conventions keeping our font simple to make it clear and understanding as well as to stop it from detracting from the main image. In accordance with this we even mimicked the colours to give the font the same colour and the stripes out of the tea cosy to make it blend in more with the image. To improve this image I would suggest that we could have used a more alluring image, possibly a more dynamic approach of tea being poured or with a contrasting background and the white of the tea pot and background may have clashed slightly. However, as you can see from the image below, my first attempt to make our print out used shadowing techniques on the back ground and big fancy lettering as well as a blacked out background which although I think may have looked better, it did not fit with the codes and conventions of a print out and from comments from my peers that it was over complicated I felt keeping it simple and clear was more important for my target audience and the white background made the image a lot clearer.
From my filmed feedback, Jenny relates back to the print advert to the documentary and conforms how the print add does support all the codes and conventions for the print advert giving simple clear text with a simple image to stand out and the logo to sponser the documentary. I feel more time should have been spent on this for the print out.
Our audience felt that our graphics helped them understand the documentary showing that we were correct for using them in our documentary and although they were kept simple and not used often they were adequate not to distract from the documentary but keep viewers following for example when presented with an interviewee.
Another question we asked was whether they noticed the music in our documentary. Fourteen people said they did. This was conformation that our style of music worked well with our documentary and especially the risk we took when we wanted to involve music with tea as it was very western style and old fashioned we thought we might detract from the main image. This could be linked to the person who felt our music didn’t work which could have been avoided by keeping a constant music bed to our documentary with a comment about our music that it was distracting. Although we did try to use more instrumental music like in Janet’s piece, we could have tried to use more music like this for our music bed and kept it more constant rather than trying to use a wide variety of songs it may have made it more confusing. With my feedback From Beth, she also gave constructive critism for me that the non-digetic music was too loud over the documentary in parts. This would make it harder to follow Milk and two sugars and could hinder their understanding and focus on what’s going on. Next time I would use a more constant music bed and have a better balance with the music bed and the digetic noise from the actual documentary.
Number 6 of our questionnaire was how our documentary could be improved. This equipped us with many varied comments to help us improve our work and with much positive and negative feedback both useful to evaluate our documentary. There was a lot of positive feedback about the voice over we used hence showing it was the right choice for our target audience saying that she had a nice and lovely voice it would create the sense of ease and trust we hoped for to relate to our audience. Some critism we received was to hear more information about the origins of tea which we brought in slightly within the montages of the public. If more time was available we would have took the documentary to its birthplace as well as other cultures views on tea but we felt the questions we did show in the 5 minutes were most relevant and brought in the subject of origin which may have been confusing if we had started with heavier information. However, we could have used more facts in the voice over.A common request was to see more of Janet and we were unfortunate to be able to involve her anymore than she was. She was intended to run throughout our documentary showing the ‘perfect cup of tea’ and with her comical comments and alarming behaviour to bring a twist to the production. We couldn’t cut the parts we did use to fit more in as all her points were relevant and although we did add extra time slightly to fit more of her in we had to cut down a lot of her contributions to the product. WE did plan to use more footage of Janet as she was very good in the shots.
Question 4.
Here is a link to my question four.
http://prezi.com/yavwqqewb06g/q1/
question 4. on Prezi
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Documentary codes and conventions
"what distinguishes documentary is the potrayal of the recoreded sound and images of actuality." -John Corner 1945.
Constructions are used aslo within documentaries. A documetnary can be highly despcriptive and leaving an open ending to its audience to therefor form their own opinoin. However todays made dociemtnaries tent to draw people to one side of the argument without an analysis at the end.
The creative treatment of actuality.
Scheduling programs especially with slotting of other programs for example between popular soaps like corrination St. Paranorma is a well known and one most popular shows that command prime time slots on television
Griersons idea through documentaries were to give pepople insite into to other peoples lives. Housing problems, 1935 and coal face, 1935 were staged and made for audiences to watch in cinemas as a new and up coming thing and used as a way to boost morals during the wars.
Biritsh journalists were know for the negative image they created over politicians etc and things like picking inteveiwees were incredible important as they were used the the interviews advantage staged to give the desired outcome with emtotional or sensational effects on the audiences.
" creative treament of actuality"
Authenticity is vital- It is impossible to capture all events so scenes are staged but they should stay factual and through secondary rsources.
"Truth is what you actually come away with at the end of seeing the film. I mean its your truth yours seeing. Everybody who makes a film by putting their own truth on the screen." - Dianne Tammes, film maker.
The sub genres of documentay is so varied now through creative involvement and is a controversially to agree what makes a documentary as they all include aspects of the truth.
" Current affairs programs."
Current affairs programs sensenationalise issues and create socially critical arguments. They are half way between news and documentaries according to their time slottings usually as they are classed more as a documentary with a longer viewing time than around 30 minutes as curent affairs tend to be shorter.
John Corner established 5 central elemtns to feature in a documetnary;
Observation. Most use pretned cameras which are ignored or unseen. The camera acts as an eyewitness to the situations ans gives a realistic look on documentaries.
Mise-en-scene.Backgound and colour both used to create meaning and used carefully and specifically to provoke reaction wiht audience and used to advance the argument of exposition.
Interview. Imagery is used dubbed over the interview to link back to meaning and used in most invertiew except when using authoritive figures such as the queen or primminister it is unlikely they will be tacken off the screen. intervies are used in two different types of ways; full flowing with no imagery used inbetween and then placing the interview in segments in between.
exposition.this is the line of arguemtn as it puts across what is trying to be said. They are descriptive and commentry combined with vioces overs to add meaning to the documentary.Documentaries rerlying on observation tend to have weak exposition.
Current affairs programs will have a shorter deadline as they are based on more recent events as are listed or shown within the events happening having more meaning and have more inpact on the public.It is info-tainments and made in the interest of public rights. Many current affairs programs have led to riots and changes in laws and legisltions for example "Cathy Come Home- 1996, BBC" which increased living coniditions for the homeless at the time.
"types of documentaries".
'fully narrated'. This used a direct use of addressing the audience and using voice over gives it authority like a god figure sounding very factual.
'Fly on the wall.' This uses no narratives but used as observation without interfeirance however knkowing the camera is their can demand characteristics.
'mixed.' This takes on a more modern vioce over like a broadcaster and uses a mixture of narrative and observation.
'self reflective.' This is were they are aware of the camera and often soeaks directly to the maker and maybe asked questions with the camera behind them.
'docudrama.' Arguments and exposition are combined with staged event purposefully to draw the audience to a one sided, bias arguemtns for example the hillborough disaster documentary which blamed the police force.
'docusoaps.' A cheaper way to produce documentaries which follow people in their lives in society and work like airports and cruise liners.
It would be argued if these genres would be classed as documentaries because as they may be real it involves a lot of staging for entertainment; the people know they are being filmed after signing consent papers saying so.
'Disney fication.' - using rating friendly topics to get ratings Steven Bennett describes and dumming down the real issues of doumentaries.
'Planning a documentary.'
On planning a documentary, the topic should be chosen carefully, it should show elements of experience and influences from our own lives. It should also relate to our audience with everyday experiences.
It is important that we have an understanding of and the topic is managable.
Visual.
Visually, there needs to archive footage for support aswel as reconstruction for dramatisation and to keep our audience interested and consider how everything should be shown.
Initial idea and production schedule.
For ideas of a title we narrowed it down to 'Fancy a cuppa' and 'Milk and 2 sugars' which we agreed on in the end as being the most catchy and easily remembered title for our documentary. We felt it would work best as day time TV as that would be most attractive timing for the target audience of the housewife and for the retired typically for after soemthing like 'This morning' and other breakfast time shows.
Production Schedule
Name Of Programme: Milk and 2 sugars
Directors: Sam Atkinson, Meg Davies, Andy Touhey
Producers:Sam Atkinson, Meg Davies, Andy Touhey
Client: OCR
Date production Started: 27th September
Formal Proposal Started: 5th October Completed: 12th October
Storyboard Started: 6th October Completed:
Shooting Started: 5th October Completed: 4th November
Post Production Started: Completed:
Rough Cut Submitted: 10th November
Final show tape completed: 18th November
Sent To Client: 15th December
Location Equipment Required:
Camera, Tripod, Microphone, Headphones.
Transport Required:
Car .
Documentary Analysis
Narrative structure.
This is a mixed narrative structure; it uses voice overs in give detail to the events.Reconstruction is used in certain parts to tell parts that werent filmed and also to keep confidentiallity,for example the girls confessions to killing the nun. Observation is also used and archive footage for instance the marrilyn manson concerts.
Themes.
The documentary took place in a small, local and quite town in italy. It was based on a murder for the first time in years. The documentary was based mainly on religion. From the murder on the nun and a religius fugire, it was a main focus as it shocked the town after recent events of act of satan and removal of crosses. It also look at figures of the anti-christ, like Marryln Manson a modern figure with influence to millions through his music it is questioned how much this influenced the work of the gilrs who secretly worshiped the devil.
Narrative strucutre.
begginging- it showed a mysterious event of the murdered nun and starts to unfold to grip the audience.
Middle- We find out who the killers were and shocked as it seems so unprovoked. A lot of re-construction was used to tell the girls side of the story and also to reveal the biggest story line. Marrlyn Manson is also introduced as a controversial figue with his music label and people start to blame his influence of satin.
End- We see the town removed of the memory of what happened and they act like the 'mis-hap' never occured. We see the girls sentencing and how one girl is remorsful for what she did and a priest goes to visit her and is it stil questioned why these girls could ever do somethin like this in the first place. Marrlyn Manson is shown visiting the area and the blame is still pushed towards his media influence eg. we see how obbsessed people were off his- dressing and immitating his. Almost being brainwashed.
Mise-en-scene.
We see Marrlyn Manson ripping up bibles. This has been used to give a negative outlook from the documentary of his anti christ religion. We also see from footage at the concert his face cloning his image, this would be used to show how influencial his work actually is and reflects it on what the girls did. Also we see higher figures, like the lawyer wearing colours like red to suggest power and importance. Sceneries are also used for effect for example interviews in the town in italy in the church portray a sense of innocence and also in peoples homes its more homely.
Graphics.
The graphics used were very simple with tittles bottom left adjacent to the the interviewee.
Sound.
Non-digetic music was used through the film. Marrlyn manson music was also used in areas in archive footage and once when talking about the girls. In interviews there was digetic music mostly to make the interveiws more real and seem more natural. Non-digetic music like phones ringing, screaming, beating heart and stabbing was used through the reconsturuction of the murder of the nun. As the scene was made it was more appropriate to use this kind of music too dramatise the scene and tighten the atmosphere for example the heart beat began to increase and pace faster with the music and in line with what was going on in the footage as they killed her.
Camera work.
Close-ups are used in some areas int he documentary, for example FFBI badges aswel as of crosses and other religious symbols. It symbolises importance. Low angle host are mainly used when we see marryln Manson footage, making him appear higher and godlike in concert with all his clone fans looking up to him. Though interveiws meduim shots are used with the interviewee places on the right hand side never directly in the center. High angles are used of the town at the beggining, used to show how minute the town is to make it more disturbing as its dark and iscolate.
Editing.
Quite a lot of editing has been used throughout the documentary. Cut-aways have been used in interviews to relate back to the murder or to events that were happening to keep us focused on the story. Eye line veiws are used for example in reconstruction to put the audience in the nuns line from the floor and linked with the music to add tension.
Archive material.
archive footage was used like news channels reporting on the murder and also alot from Marryln manson music videos and concerts to daramtise the topic and also to give us insight of what his music was like and make him more contreversial in the documentary.
Movies – a BBC Educational Documentary.
Type of documentary.
This is a mixed documentary with and mixture of voice over and with a narration to keep the audience following. Also a lot of archive footage is used with footage from the premier of Mousehunt and also from trailers and clips from the movie.
Themes.
The main theme throughout this documentary was focused on how to successfully market films supporting the target audience criteria and its importance to make them want to watch the final film and be attracted to the advertising and merchandise they will hopefully buy.
Narrative structure.
Beginning- The beginning is used to draw the audience with catchy music and archive footage from the film and the narrative begins to explain the how marketing is used and vitally important to new films being made.
Middle – The middle section looks at the budget, and keeping everything within the budget to make a substantial enough profit from the film. It also looks at other aspects like that it is important to boost the circulation of the product as much as possible like public appearances, signings and premier events eg opening of the film where actors come to cinema for the opening screening.
Ending- The ending is used to give the final tips of promoting and budgeting the movie release as well as persuasion for the audience to watch it leaving us with two alternative trailers and movie poster leaving us to make up our own mind which we think works best and be most successful and also possibly to make us want to see the film ourselves?
Mise-en-scene.
The scenes are set mostly in London being the capital of the country and to publicise the British film with archive footage of the film premier in London. Mousehunt characteristics always dominate the mise-en-scene because its the documentary main focus. For example blue screens or posters are used of scenes/imagery of the film behind interviewees to not lose focus through out them.
Archive material.
¬There was a lot of archive footage used from the film itself to public appearances like the film premiere and also of filmings of merchandise, logos and prep equipment that was used to make the film a success. Examples of this could include trailers used for the film as well as other Disney trailers like the Lion King to show direct links to the target audience of the film as it was aimed at younger people and family viewing. We were shown alternative archive trailers at the end of the documentary for us to decide which we thought was most appealing. Footage from the premiere in London was used with Lee Evans being shown on arrival and fans. Also from the montage at the beginning showed some archive footage to introduce the topic of the documentary.
Camera work.
High angles are used over London to make it dominating and to set the scene for the remainder of the documentary, also because it is a British film and of the huge success it is. A lot of close-ups are used and also zoom-in shots are used for example on archive footage and celeberty faces which are important. From a modern perspective they seem like bad shots as zoom in make the shot look distasteful and can make it seem childish, taking the effect from the scene. However at the time it was made this was seen as catchy and attracting attention, but I would not use it when planning my own documentary. In the shots, the camera is always static and deep and shallow focus to look into the backgrounds and into merchandise to see logo and slogans etc as they become of importance in the documentary it makes the audience focus and look at it in particular.
¬¬Editing.
Fast edited editing was used at the beginning of the documentary. This was mainly used to attract the attention of their audience first with a montage and something to introduce itself. Cut-aways were used during interviews to relate to the topic they were speaking about like favourite parts of the films or to show the interviewees character in the film. Cut aways were used used to link to the marketing side as well with cutaways to archive footage of equipment and merchandise to show budgeting schemes. Super imposition is also used to give effect to the documentary. Fade outs are also used within the documentary. It makes it look un professional as they have been used to fade out a mistake and join the documentary back.
Sound.
Digetic and non-digetic are used almost equally. A music bed is used with soundtracks from the film and also computerised music like sound effects were used which also from a modern perspective I think were effective for the documentary. Digetic music was also used with interviews and also from archive or filmed events like the noise of the crowds at the premier.
Graphics.
Graphics were used simply but purposely with interviews and they were also used for subtitle s on sections of the documentary which I thought was a bit inappropriate as it was very childlike and a lot was self explanatory and un needed as it was set for its target audience a little too much perhaps.
Panarama: ‘Britain in the dock’
Type of documentary.
This a mixed documentary. It uses observation to show evidence of the troops negligence as well as voice overs used to narrate these event and to give a view over imagery. Reconstruction was also used to dramatise situations and secondary source information like army official confessions and to keep soldiers confidentiality. Interviews were also used for factual information and chosen well to sensationalize the highlight of the program.
Themes.
The documentary looked at corruption within the British Army and whether it can be trusted to police itself after standing accused of two separate incidents of committing war crimes. It looks into detail of the incidents from 2004 of ‘ the battle of Danny Boy’ were allegations suggests innocent Iraqee’s were taken captive for questioning but also killed in British custody. A more recent event revealing the use of hooding which had been forbidden used as an interrogation technique which left one man dead with 93 separate injuries after a hotel was raided with suspicions people inside had planted a bomb which recently had killed a British soldier. It looks into the account of war crimes and footage unseen before to try and unravel what is really going on.
Narrative structure.
The documentary didn’t follow an order or such. Although it follows the case of ‘ Ba’hamosa’ to conclude evidence, it frequently links to the ‘battle of Danny boy’ and other interviews.
Begginging- It looks at the incident in hand showing observational footage. It starts to uncover and gives the face value of what happened
Middle- looks at other incidents within the Army, with observation and archive clips to look back at events from the war in Ireland and more recent conspiracies from 2004. Lots of interviews are used to get different sides of the story as well as attempt interviews with members of the army and the legislation.
Ending- is left quite open to the public without uncovering whether it was true or not. We are left to out own opinion of whether we think it happened or not. However, it does conclude to a bias ending questioning the Mod and mission intelligence to accuse them of multiple breaches of the geneever convention and as we see the interviewer more often we may trust his opinion.
Mise-en-scene.
The more important people like ‘Lord Goldsmith the attorney general 2001-7’ are dressed highly with noticeably bold red ties showing a sign of power and his importance. It is seem commonly also on downing St to suggest power dressing and will make the audience more likely to accept what they say. However, we see a change in scenery; Lord Goldsmith is shown in a board room looking very modern and business looking. This scenery has been carefully chosen to promote distance as opposed to an inspector that came forward after leaving the services. He is interviewed in his home to make us feel more comfortable and more likely to trust him. Also footage is used for the audience to make their own minds up and reconstruction demonstrates a bias view of what happened.
Camera angles.
Panning shots were used on the main presenter as he introduces the topic and later as the program ends.
Handheld shots are used mostly during reconstruction to give a realistic effect to the footage.
Close ups and medium shots were used in interviews to keep focus on them and keep it symmetrical to other interviews.
Handheld shots were used for reconstruction and observation to give it the same effect, to feel real and as if we were there.
Archive footage.
There was voice overs of actual recordings used to prove actual fact as well as footage of the hooding incident and from 2004 where suspected bombers had been arrested.
Sounds.
Non-digetic music was used frequently. Religious music was played as a music bed through several parts to make us reflect on what our country has been doing as it has all been unknown to the public. Also sound effects were used to add emphasis to what was going on like mimicking heart beat noises to add tension and fear.
Graphics.
Graphics was kept simple with small serif white writing used across the bottom left adjacent to the interviewee. In speech it was shown to scroll on a shaded box to the right hand side usually as the person spoke.
Editing.
Editing was used less as the real footage was left to play except cut aways and time sequences were taken out. Cut aways were also used in interviews when relating back to the topic on hand through archive footage or to images.
Documentary AS task
In media we watched two documentarys (shown below) to help us in looking at the codes and conventions of an interview.
simpsons 20th anniversary special 3d on ice part 1.
codes and conventions of camera angles
interviews-interveiws use a mid shot camera angle. This is because it shows outfits and gives room to show body language, movement and gestures etc. The person being interveiwed is on either the left/right hand side of the screen never directly in the middle. It is also rare that they should look directly into the camera, to look more natural they should be looking at the interviewer who is in the opposite side of the shot. The lighting is always behind the person being interviewed as the shot would be ruined infront of the person. also the lighting should be natural to balance the room they are in. The eyeline must be a third of the way down on the screen.
Camera should be mid-shot view of interviewe.
Lighting comes from infront of person being interveiwed.
capture should be taken directly to the left or right of the screen- the person being interviewed shouldn't be looking at the camera.
Eye line should be approx a third of the way down the frame.
cutaways (buffers) used to hide jumpshots.
Jumpcuts should be avoided when the questions are edited out and questions are usually edited out.
Background should always be relevent to what the interiew is about.
Graphics should alwayts be included like titles and subheadings ( names and purpose of hte interview)
To making this interview documentary .
We chose to film our interveiw on a blue screen so we could change the background in editing. We had problems with this as the shirt the interviewer wore was also blue so the chrome key didn't work how we hoped in our editing but this is something we can correct for the next time we use it.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Brainstorm.
under aged
fishing smoking
transport intsrtuments
youtube
violoence
rugby
tea
pets
homeless
poverts
drinking
rugs
DVLA
school
envionment
hari stlyes
beauty
public transport
sense; hear, sight , smell ,tough, feel
Smoking, fighting, gardening, transport, public transport, instruments,
Under aged, drinking, cars, tea, pets, homelessness,
Drugs, DVLA, coffee, religion, poverty,
tennis
role models
christmas
seasons
money
shopping fitness
fame
celebrities
Friday, 12 November 2010
Brainstorm of content
Vox pop’s, get them to say their favourite tea brand, what biscuits they dunk with and what they say when offering a cup of tea (fancy a cuppa?) Then we could use this for an opening.
We will interview an old person, young person and middle aged person about tea, with
the same questions, and put them together, with their answers contrasting each other.
We could get the voiceover to say facts about tea. For example how it is associated with Britain and being British. We could say where it is grown and when it came to England. We could also give facts about which country drinks the most tea and find some statistics on that. We could even schedule an interview with a foreign person. If we had an interview with a foreign person we could also get an interview with a typically British person, to contrast the things that are said in the other interview.
How it revolutionised jobs, builders, window cleaners, gardeners and get interviews with them
How it is associated with old people/ religion. Coffee mornings
Which biscuit is best to dunk, we could get some vox pop’s with people saying their favourite biscuit. This is also an opportunity to use archive footage of Peter Kay doing his stand up routine.
More archive footage we could use is of old tea adverts like the PG tips one with the monkeys and the new ones with Jonny Vegas.
For cut away shots we could buy loads of tea boxes from the supermarket, also we could get the interviewee’s to make a cup of tea in their own homes and film that. Also with the biscuit question we could get shots of the biscuits which they say is their favourite.
We will conduct the vox pops in the street and the formal interviews in their own kitchens, with footage of them making tea themselves, this will make them feel comfortable and this means that they are more likely to give correct answers. We could include some low angle shots of tea making it look important in British society.
We will use an upbeat music bed in the beginning to make it exciting, and then we will also find some tea related songs to use later in the documentary.
The voiceover will correspond with our target audience, this is a code of documentaries, so we will have a voiceover of a woman and she will be used to say tea related facts, which we have found. We could also use her to inform the audience with some information we found from our questionnaires
Thursday, 11 November 2010
intial idea and production schedule.
For ideas of a title we narrowed it down to 'Fancy a cuppa' and 'Milk and 2 sugars' which we agreed on in the end as being the most catchy and easily remembered title for our documentary. We felt it would work best as day time TV as that would be most attractive timing for the target audience of the housewife and for the retired typically for after soemthing like 'This morning' and other breakfast time shows.
Production Schedule
Name Of Programme: Milk and 2 sugars
Directors: Sam Atkinson, Meg Davies, Andy Touhey
Producers:Sam Atkinson, Meg Davies, Andy Touhey
Client: OCR
Date production Started: 27th September
Formal Proposal Started: 5th October Completed: 12th October
Storyboard Started: 6th October Completed:
Shooting Started: 5th October Completed: 4th November
Post Production Started: Completed:
Rough Cut Submitted: 10th November
Final show tape completed: 18th November
Sent To Client: 15th December
Location Equipment Required:
Camera, Tripod, Microphone, Headphones.
Transport Required:
Car .
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Formal proposal
The topic which we have chosen to film our documentary on is tea. We have chosen to create a documentary on this topic because it is simple as we can get a variety of interviews with ordinary people on their opinions of tea. In this country tea is very popular and the majority of people drink it, which will provide us with easily accessible interviews, where we could ask the interviewees what tea means to them.
After analysing a number of documentaries we decided that we should create a documentary in a mixed style because this seems the easiest to create and I think that this style will suit our topic. We will create a mixed documentary by having a voiceover which corresponds to our target audience, so we will use a housewife to be our voiceover. The voiceover will provide facts for the audience; we will also use the voiceover to anchor meaning to what is being shown on the screen and to introduce some of the interviews.
I think that the style for our documentary should be fast and energetic. This is because the topic of our documentary is simple and if we made our documentary slow and informative, this could result in the documentary becoming boring. We will achieve this style by having music which is fast paced and energetic, we will also have many shots of different teas, which we do fast cutting with in the opening titles. In the opening titles we will use clips of our vox pops saying what their favourite brand of tea is and then use cut away shots of the different stages of making a cup of tea and the boxes of the different brands of tea.
We have chosen to schedule our documentary for the evening on ITV. We came to this decision from our questionnaire results, our results showed that the majority of people watch television in the evening so this would be a good time to schedule our documentary. We also found out that the majority of people who answered our questionnaire prefer to watch ITV. Scheduling our programme in the evening would also attract tea drinkers because most people said that they like to drink tea in the evenings to relax.
Our target audience for this documentary would be housewives because we think that our topic would interest them the most, as they drink the most tea. Our questionnaire research has shown us that they watch television mostly in the evening and this would work for our scheduling because they like to drink tea in the evening to relax, we found this information out from our questionnaires. Our questionnaires also revealed that they all have different favourite programmes. Our research showed us that they rarely watch documentaries and that we would have to try and gain an audience by accident by putting it on after one of their favourite programmes. This would work because 93% of our audience answered yes to, do you ever get roped into programmes before and after this.
The primary research which we need for our documentary is to find interviews with a young, middle aged person and an elderly person. These people need to drink tea quite regularly and give their consent to be filmed. We will conduct the interviews in front of a poster of tea, which will show the audience explicitly that we are making a documentary on tea. The graphics will inform the audience who is being interviewed. It is important that we gain their consent because we also need to film the interviewees make a cup of tea so we can ask to film them in their own home. We will also need to get tea for them to drink. We also have found out which the most tea drinking country is because then with our vox pop’s we can ask them which country they think is the biggest tea drinkers. Then we can get footage of their reactions as we tell them the actual answer. We also found out the fact that tea is the second preferred drink after water. We need to research the origins of tea then we can get archive footage of people saying where they think it is from. This could add comedy to our documentary if the vox pops do not know where it comes from. . We want to inform the audience on how to make the perfect cup of tea, so we will film someone making a cup of tea their own way. To examine why tea is a big part of society we will interview a sociologists where he can apply their theories to tea. To see how well tea sells we will interview someone in a shop and ask them about how well tea sells. If they don’t let us do this then we could interview a local tea room and talk about how popular tea is.
The secondary research which we have collected includes mainly old tea adverts like the PG tips advert with the monkeys and the old Tetley’s advert. Towards the end of our programme we will examine the changes of advertising with tea adverts so we also will get stills of old posters for tea and compare them with new posters. We also might use some footage of people making tea, although we are going to film people doing this we do need a lot of footage so we might use some footage which has already been created, to save time if we need to. We want to inform the audience on how to make the perfect cup of tea, so we will film someone making a cup of tea their own way We need to find a clip from coronation street where they mention tea to prove that it is a big part of society and to use as archive footage. Other archive material which we need includes a Twinings advert with Steven Fry where we can show how stereotypically British tea is.
The narrative structure for our documentary will be explicitly linear with a clear beginning, middle and end. We have chosen to make our documentary with this narrative structure because in all of the mixed documentaries which I have watched the narrative structure was linear. The beginning of our documentary will start with a general overview of tea and saying some facts on where tea came from. Also the beginning will have interviews with people who are involved in tea like stereotypical tea drinkers and cafe owners, giving the audience a general picture of tea. The middle of our documentary contains comparisons of adverts and poses the question, has tea changed over time. Conflict is also created in the middle with the question of which biscuit do you dunk and then clips of the vox pops arguing over which one is best. The end will pose some issues of drinking tea like in our interview with a dentist he discusses how tea can have a bad effect on our teeth. To add emphasis there will be cut away shots of bad teeth, and then the voiceover does a conclusion saying that tea should be enjoyed in moderation then the credits come up on a black video.
In the beginning we will have a montage of people making tea, drinking tea, stereotypes of tea and products of tea with non-diegetic music over the top which would act as our opening titles. Then we could start with the voiceover talking about the origins of tea and how it came to Britain. Then we will use vox pops of the public talking about where they think tea comes from. The voice over could then say how important tea is to British people and says some facts which we gained from our questionnaire or found ourselves. Also there are some clips saying how they think we are the biggest tea drinking country to support our research and to point out the obvious. Then to shock our target audience the voice over talks about how Britain isn’t actually the biggest tea drinking country and the camera shows shocked reactions from members of the public. The camera will then cut to someone showing the audience how to make the perfect cup of tea step by step. The issue of tea being a social drink is then brought up by the voiceover and some archive footage is shown from a soap, like Coronation Street of someone offering a cup of tea. Then some clips of the Vox pops saying what they think of tea being a social drink which will show a generation divide between the young and old. To try and explain this, our interview with a sociologist will connect tea to sociological theories. After this interview the camera will cut to an interview with a supermarket worker, where they will discuss how well tea sells and herbal tea will be mentioned. The voiceover will then talk about herbal tea and say some facts on it; this is all voiced over a Twinings tea advert with Steven Fry. The voiceover introduces our interview with an elderly person where they will talk about their tea drinking habits and their memories of tea. To link with the elderly generation we will show archive footage of an old advertisement of PG tips when they used monkeys. Then the voiceover introduces the interview with a young person where similar questions will be asked but different answers will be recorded which will explicitly show a generation gap with tea. Then more archive footage of two tea posters with the voiceover commenting on the difference of the two posters. When we show clips of the vox pops which we filmed with some of the different answers from the different generations will back up this point. The voiceover then introduces the middle aged person who shows a resolution between the two generations and clips of them saying similar things in both arguments. At the end the voiceover concludes that times are changing and tea will mean different things to different generations. The next part of the documentary will show a montage of shots of religious items like churches and bibles, as the voiceover says how it has helped religion. We will then interview a Catholic priest as he talks about how tea has helped his church make money with coffee mornings and shots of one will be shown as he is talking to act as cutaways. Before the advert break a close up shot of a cup of tea with the program title, Milk and Two Sugars, super imposed over this, this will also be shown after the advert break.
The middle will look at how big tea is in this country and focus on what it means to different people. The section begins with lots of shots of people drinking tea and patriotic pictures which are ironically linked to Britain. Vox pop’s of people saying how many cups of tea they have a day will back up the aim of the middle of the documentary. The voiceover then poses the question of which biscuit should be had with a cup of tea and there are a montage of shots of biscuits as the voiceover says this. This will add conflict to our documentary and keep the audience interested. The vox pops will give evidence to this as they say which biscuit they have in their tea and shots of them are used as cutaway shots. Then to back up this point we will use archive footage of Peter Kay’s stand up where he talks about dunking biscuits as it has an obvious link to our documentary. There are shots of people drinking tea in various places like in the car, in a shop, and in the street which will show how tea is a big part of people’s lives. Whilst these shots are taking place the voiceover talks about how tea is everywhere in this country and even has taken over the workplace. The voiceover then introduces a builder and gardener who begin to talk about how tea is a big part of their job. The camera will link between both interviews and cut between the two. We will also include a reconstruction of someone offering one of the interviewees a cup of tea whilst they are on a job, which will be used as a cutaway. Then the voiceover introduces an interview with a person from another country in where they say the differences between people’s tea drinking habits in their country and in this country.
In the end our documentary looks at some of the negative effects tea can have on teeth and makes up a conclusion on tea. The end starts with a voiceover talking about negative effects that tea can have on your teeth and shots of people drinking tea are then replaced with shocking images of bad teeth which are the result of tea. An interview with a dentist then reveals the negative effects tea can have on your teeth, with images of bad teeth used as cutaways. To conclude the voiceover talks over shots of people making tea and says about how much people enjoy tea. The voiceover goes on to says the fact that we should be careful because it could be harmful to our teeth. The credits roll up as the voiceover stops.
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Target audience research
Our questionnaire had the following quesions on it, firstly it started by asking their age and gender. Then the rest of the questionnaire involved questions on both tea and when they mostly watch televsion.
1- Do you drink tea? yes/no
2- How often do you drink tea? not everyday/1-2 times a day/2-3 times a day/4-5 times a day/6 or more
3- At what age did you start to drink tea? 10 or below/11-16/17-20/21+
4- How much sugar do you take in your tea? none/less than one/1-2/3+
5- What type and brand of tea do you drink?
6- When do you usually drink tea? in the morning/after work or college/socially throughout the day/night time/when relaxing/when working/other (please state)
7- Who would you associate tea with? children teenagers or students/middle aged people/pensioners/the working class/the middle class/other (please state)
8- Do you see tea as a way to socialise, by offering it to guests? yes/no
9- Do you drink tea to De-stress? yes/no
10- Is tea something you would offer to someone else who has had recieved bad news? yes/no
11- What biscuits, if any do you have with your tea?
12- What time of the day do you watch TV?
13- Which of the following channels do you prefer? BBC1/BBC2/ITV/Channel 4/Channel 5
14- What is your favourite programme on TV?
15- Do you ever get roped into programmes before or after this? yes/no
16- How often do you watch documentaries?
17- What is your favourite type of documentary?
18- What is your favourite colour?
19- Do you notice the music in documentaries? yes/no
20- What type of music would you expect in a documentary?
In total we asked 12 males and 18 females, and 9 of them were of the age 16-21, 3 of them were 22-30, 6 were 31-40, 3 were 41-50 also another 3 were 51-60 and 6 were 61-70.
They all answered yes to do they drink tea, this was because we asked them before so that they would give a good answers to the questions.
As you can see from the bar chart that most of the people we questioned don't drink tea everyday, then six people all said that they drunk tea 1-2 times a day, 2-3 times a day or more than six times a day. So this means that a lot of people vary in how many times they drink tea a day. Although the graph states that people dont drink tea everyday, it does however, show that people do drink it often.
In the third question most of the people started drinking tea when they were younger than 10 which tells us that a lot of people start drinking tea at an early age. Thirty percent of people started drinking tea when they were 11 to 16 and this also supports the idea I mentioned earlier. 10 percent of the people asked begun drinking tea at 17 to 20 and 20 percent started drinking tea when they were older than twenty one which is surprising because I didn't think that it was normal for people to start drinking tea that late. This also shows that we have a large range so in our interviews we should get a variety of answers, which would be interesting for the audience. This graph shows the trend for drinking tea started at an early age which adds to stereotypical ideas that people have about our country being a tea drinking industry.
The fourth question revealed that 21 out of 30 people don't take any sugar in their tea, this could be due to us asking the older generation, who could be more concerned about the effect of sugar. There were three people who had less than one sugar and six people who had one to three sugars in their tea. No-one had more than three sugars in their tea, which is also surprising because it is often criticised that younger people put too many sugars in their tea.This graph shows us that sugar is rarely used although so many drink tea.
In question number five you can see from the bar chart that the majority of people drink PG tips with 19 people selecting that answer. 8 people drink Tetleys tea, only 3 people said that they drink either Tetley or PG tips decaffeinated. This result is respected because they are both big brands.This graph demonstrates how important 'brands' are with PG tips being the overal favourite.
Question six revealed that people like to drink tea at various different times. The two most popular times were when relaxing or at night because both had twenty nine percent. The next most popular was when socialising which shows that it is a popular drink to offer people when they visit. Finally the two which were selected the least was the when working and in the morning both with twelve percent. This shows that most people think that tea is more of an evening drink than one for the morning.Tea is a drink that has been associated with relaxing and drinking it of a night time, maybe relaxing for bed.
Number 7 was quite an important question because it asked who would you accociate tea with. The majority of the people answered that tea is accociated with all people and is seen as a very British trait, this would give some good content for our documentary. 2 people said that tea was accociated with both the working class and middle class and pensioners. This suggests that tea is overall a British drink and classless.
Number eleven was also an important question because we were going to film some vox pop's of people saying their favourite buiscuit, if the question worked out. The answers to this question however were disapointing because the majority with 53 percent said that they did not have any buiscuits with their tea. So it would not be a good idea to film footage of vox pops saying their favourite buiscuits. We found this strange as we assumed that as a stereotype, people would have traditionally had a buscuit with their tea.
Question twelve was the beginning of the sheduling related questions As you can see from the pie chart, most of the people we asked watch television in the evening time. We were going to shedule our documentary in the daytime and as you can see a reasonable percentage of people do watch daytime television, which would be our target audience.
When asked if you ever get roped into programmes before or after their favourite programme our target audience responded with 28 people out of thirty saying yes they do. This contrasts with my idea from the previous question because according to this statistic we should shedule the programme for after one aimed at our target audience on ITV daytime, like loose women.
Question 18 was used to help us figure out what colour we should use for our opening titles and graphics. The results showed that blue was the most popular with fifteen people selecting it. As you can see from the graph, other popular colours were red, yellow, purple and green.
We made story boards for our opening introduction for our documentary.
Brainstorm of content.
We will use a voice over to help narrate our documentary. We will chose someone who would fit in with our target audience and someone that they cal relate to. We will use a femanine approach as it will be softer, easier to relate to and we felt it was more stereotypically a womans subject. We would also use the voice over to talk about the facts of tea eg how it is a Brittish tradition, when it first came to England and were it originates from and statistics and facts of where drinks the most tea.
We will use voxpops for the public to say their favourite tea brand, the biscuits they have with them, how often they drink tea and how they offer it to others etc. This could be used in a montage for our opening. We will chose an area like the town center to have people in thier natural environment and be more at ease to tell us the truth which should relate back to the audience. By making a questionaire and basic questions we can ask people the same things to create montages of opinions.
We will use cutaways to relate back to our documentary. When doing our montage of people, we could use archive footage of someone making the perfect cup of tea and to realte to their favourtie brand of tea we could use images of different brands of tea like PG tips and Asda's own. We could also use cut aways in interviews to keep focus on our topic like for an interview with a super market, we could use cut aways of the logos and their job or of people in the supermarket buying the tea.
We will use a music bed suitable to the target audience and image of tea. I think an upbeat catch theme of music will be best for the beggining of the documentary to keep the audience focused and atrracted to the documentary. For the middle I would use classical music to go with the ideology of Brittish culture etc. and also try and find some music relate to tea with the words in the lyrics most likely old fashioned kind of music.
We will also use interveiws to get a more focused and indepth point of veiw about tea where we will talk about value and individual meanings of tea, association with religion, culture, and relation to tea. We will use an old and young person to contrast the opinions of how they view tea and the growing trade of coffee.
Monday, 11 October 2010
interview
Interview with the public, Voxpops.
1. How often do you drink tea?
2. At what age did you start drinking tea?
3. How much sugar do you take in tea?
4. What type of tea do you drink (brand)?
5. When do you drink tea most?
6. Who would you associate tea with? What kind of person or age would you think would be most likely to drink tea e.g. Old people?
7. Do you see tea as a way socialise e.g. Offering tea to guests, manors, tradition?
8. Do you ever drink tea to calm out e.g. Receiving bad news, having a bad day at work etc.? Tell me how it feels.
9. Have you ever offered tea to someone in this way ( receiving bad news, having a bad day etc.) e.g. a way to comfort them.
10. Do you take any biscuits with your tea? If yes, what kind?
11. What does tea mean to you?
12. What country would you have thought tea originated from
13. Which country do you think drinks the most tea?
Interview with elderly person and young person
Some of questions from voxpops.
• How often do you drink tea?
• When do you prefer to drink tea?
• What does tea mean to you?
• How old were you when you started drinking tea
• Can you remember your first cup of tea?
• Can you tell the difference between brands of tea, or do they all taste the same?
• What is it about tea you like so much? Why not something else?
• Who else in your family drinks tea?
• Do you think tea is traditionally English?
• Do you think the tradition of tea is fading ( being a typically British tradition)
• Do you think tea could still be as common in peoples homes in 50 years?
• What brand of tea do you drink, have you always drank and is there any specific reason for that?
Questions for Lancashire Tea Room, Warrington.
Interviewing either over the counter or sitting at one of the tables.
• What made you want to open a tea shop and want to bring this traditional tea house to Warrington, is it something you passionate about? Did you have much support from the public?
• How much tea do you sell on an average day?
• Can you make the perfect cup of tea?
• How popular is the branch compared to other competition like ‘star bucks’ and ‘Costa coffee’
• How much do you charge for you tea? Do you think it’s a lot?
• Do you use a variety of brands in your shop or stick to one particular type?
• When is the busiest time of the day for people to order tea?
• Is it your most popular drink or do you find people coming in asking for other things?
• What kind of age range to you find in here most often?
• Do you think tea will still be as popular in 50 years time?
• The image of your shop seems quite modern for a traditional tea room? Is that to appeal to other ages?
• How much do you prefer your own tea, would you drink it yourself what would you recommend to the public?
Interview with supermarket
1. How popular is tea compared to other drinks?
2. In particular, how have the sales of tea compared to coffee?
3. Do you notice a difference between the sales of tea and coffee?
4. How have sales of tea been compared to when you first started working here?
5. Does herbal tea sell well here? How have sales of herbal tea compared to when you first started working here?
6. What kind of people do you see buying tea?
7. How many brands of tea do you sell?
8. Which brand is the most popular?
9. What time of a year would you say is the best time for tea
Questions for sociologists
1. What kind of people do you associate with tea?
2. Do you think that tea plays a big part of society in Britain? Why is this?
3. Why do you think that people offer tea to others when they have guests? Can you try to explain this?
4. How do you think that tea helps people to relax?
5. Do you think that tea links to any sociological theories? How?
we have also drawn a single shot for each of our interviews, which will help us with the framing when we come to actually film.
this is a plan for our interview with a young person.
This is a plan for our interveiw with an older person
This is our interview with the owner of 'Lancashire Tea Rooms'
This is our interview with a sociologist.
We made story boards for our opening introduction for our documentary.