We have no started planning a new project we are currently working on, which is the production of a documentary. My group and I were asked to do a documentary entitled "Harlow, Shoppers Paradise"
We will be mainly focusing on the Town Centre and various places around the Town Centre.
I will be posting the plan, link to the video and evaluation when everything is completed.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Documentaries Theories and Conventions, Scot John Grierson, Michael Renov and Techinques
We are now beginning work on our second filming task which will be a documentary. We began with a bit of theory work then watched a documentary by Kevin Macdonald called 'One Day in September' which is about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.
The Scot John Grierson (1898-1972) is regarded as the founder of the documentary movement in Britain and Canada. Grierson defined documentaries as "the creative treatment of actuality"
Q:What is meant by actuality?
Q: Think of the phrase 'creative treatment'. List ways in which documentary makers can treat real events in a creative manner
Q:Is it possible to capture the real world on film?
Q:Do you think it is ethical to stage real events in a documentary?
Four Distinct (sometimes overlapping) Purposes of Documentary film (As suggested by Michael Renov)1-to record, reveal or preserve
2-to persuade or promote
3-to analyze or interrogate
4-to express
Can you think of documentary films or television that fit into these categories? How might these different motives intersect? Are there any other purposes that documentary film might seek to fulfill?
One way of categorising documentaries is by the degree of creative treatment of recorded material. Three sub-genres are:
1-Realist documentary: imposing minimal treatment on recorded material e.g. "Fly on the wall"
2-Formalist documentary: imposing on a particular narrative structure on recorded material e.g. "Fly in the soup"
3-Subjective documentary: which express the filmmakers vision.
Any one documentary can mix these techniques.
Common Conventions of Documentary
1-Interview techniques
2-Film techniques
3-Title sequence
4-Titles/effects (subtitles, names, information)
5-Images
6-Sound
7-Transition
Interview Techniques
-Show the interviewer on a screen to give authority to him/her
-Enable the interviewee to stare straight at the audience to engage the audience with them
-Film the interviewee from behind or above to underscore the validity or otherwise of their statements.
Film Techniques
- Use of 'cutaways' to disguise times in the interviews where interviews had to be re-shot. In conventional interviews there is often a cut away to the interviewee that disguises such manipulation of the recorded material
-Establish recognisable settings for each of the people we see interviewed
-Filming subjects in clear-cut environments is one way of making them memorable however fleeting their appearances.
Title Sequences
- A good introductory sequence will set the pattern for the whole piece
- It should be immediately apparent to the viewer what the documentary is about
- Clarity of purpose is all important
Titles/Effects
- Use of captions and highlighted words
- This can be an effective way of producing information that is not immediately apparent (names and positions of interviewees, place names facts and figures)
- These often fulfill a role at the end of a production and allow the audience to recap what they have seen.
Thinking about Images
- Still images often play a very important role in the unravelling of a narrative or theme. Images in newspapers and magazines often features in the documentary alongside other archive material
- When planning you need to establish the connotations that the images might contain
Sound
- The choice of music track needs to be very carefully considered
- A voice used in voiceover must have the correct 'weight' for the subject maker
- Interviews need to be recorded in the best available conditions for clarity of sound.
Transitions
- You can add audience interest by using transition cuts from scene to scene.
Documentary Modes
- The Poetic Mode ' reassembling fragments of the world' a transformation of historical information/material into a more abstract lyrical form usually associated with 1920's and modernist ideas
- The Expository Mode 'direct address' social issue assembled into an argumentative frame, mediated by a voice-of-God narration associated with 1920's - 1930's, and some of the rhetoric and polemic surrounding WWII
- The Reflective Mode demonstrates consciousness of the process of reading documentary, and engages actively with the issues of realism and representation, acknowledging the presence of the viewer and the modality judgements they arrive at. Corresponds to critical theory of the 1980's
- The Performative Mode acknowledges the emotional and subjective aspects of documentary and presents ideas as part of a context having different meaning for different people, often autobiographical in nature.
The Scot John Grierson (1898-1972) is regarded as the founder of the documentary movement in Britain and Canada. Grierson defined documentaries as "the creative treatment of actuality"
Q:What is meant by actuality?
Q: Think of the phrase 'creative treatment'. List ways in which documentary makers can treat real events in a creative manner
Q:Is it possible to capture the real world on film?
Q:Do you think it is ethical to stage real events in a documentary?
Four Distinct (sometimes overlapping) Purposes of Documentary film (As suggested by Michael Renov)1-to record, reveal or preserve
2-to persuade or promote
3-to analyze or interrogate
4-to express
Can you think of documentary films or television that fit into these categories? How might these different motives intersect? Are there any other purposes that documentary film might seek to fulfill?
One way of categorising documentaries is by the degree of creative treatment of recorded material. Three sub-genres are:
1-Realist documentary: imposing minimal treatment on recorded material e.g. "Fly on the wall"
2-Formalist documentary: imposing on a particular narrative structure on recorded material e.g. "Fly in the soup"
3-Subjective documentary: which express the filmmakers vision.
Any one documentary can mix these techniques.
Common Conventions of Documentary
1-Interview techniques
2-Film techniques
3-Title sequence
4-Titles/effects (subtitles, names, information)
5-Images
6-Sound
7-Transition
Interview Techniques
-Show the interviewer on a screen to give authority to him/her
-Enable the interviewee to stare straight at the audience to engage the audience with them
-Film the interviewee from behind or above to underscore the validity or otherwise of their statements.
Film Techniques
- Use of 'cutaways' to disguise times in the interviews where interviews had to be re-shot. In conventional interviews there is often a cut away to the interviewee that disguises such manipulation of the recorded material
-Establish recognisable settings for each of the people we see interviewed
-Filming subjects in clear-cut environments is one way of making them memorable however fleeting their appearances.
Title Sequences
- A good introductory sequence will set the pattern for the whole piece
- It should be immediately apparent to the viewer what the documentary is about
- Clarity of purpose is all important
Titles/Effects
- Use of captions and highlighted words
- This can be an effective way of producing information that is not immediately apparent (names and positions of interviewees, place names facts and figures)
- These often fulfill a role at the end of a production and allow the audience to recap what they have seen.
Thinking about Images
- Still images often play a very important role in the unravelling of a narrative or theme. Images in newspapers and magazines often features in the documentary alongside other archive material
- When planning you need to establish the connotations that the images might contain
Sound
- The choice of music track needs to be very carefully considered
- A voice used in voiceover must have the correct 'weight' for the subject maker
- Interviews need to be recorded in the best available conditions for clarity of sound.
Transitions
- You can add audience interest by using transition cuts from scene to scene.
Documentary Modes
- The Poetic Mode ' reassembling fragments of the world' a transformation of historical information/material into a more abstract lyrical form usually associated with 1920's and modernist ideas
- The Expository Mode 'direct address' social issue assembled into an argumentative frame, mediated by a voice-of-God narration associated with 1920's - 1930's, and some of the rhetoric and polemic surrounding WWII
- The Reflective Mode demonstrates consciousness of the process of reading documentary, and engages actively with the issues of realism and representation, acknowledging the presence of the viewer and the modality judgements they arrive at. Corresponds to critical theory of the 1980's
- The Performative Mode acknowledges the emotional and subjective aspects of documentary and presents ideas as part of a context having different meaning for different people, often autobiographical in nature.
Priliminary Task Evaluation, Reflection and Lessons Learnt for the Future.
Media Video Evaluation
After filming and editing our video I had a chance to see all the components and elements come together and I had a chance to refer it back to Andrew Goodwin’s theory from his book “Dancing in the Distraction Factory”.
Firstly, the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is simply contradictory, for example when the lyrics would say “The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me” and the visuals were of the protagonist walking downhill into a dark underpass. This represents his descent into darkness after his girlfriend breaks up with him. There were a few close-ups of the protagonists face but that was not done with the intention of selling the image of the vocalist or the band. There were no real references to voyeurism mainly because the song doesn’t warrant for any type of voyeurism.
As for the actual music video the video starts with the protagonist (me) being dumped by his girlfriend played by Tisha. I then start walking aimlessly, this is to represent that he is lost in the world without her, and he is looking for a sense of direction but can't find any, as he walks down into the underpass this is supposed to represent his descent into darkness and him just sitting on a bench is to show that he is just going through the motions and the amount I look back it is to represent me looking back for a way for things to go back to how they were in the past, but as I soon find that my friend is now with my ex-girlfriend, I then go on top of a large building and look over the edge as if I wanted to jump, the final scene is of me walking off into the darkness, this was left ambiguous on purpose to let the viewer decide whether the protagonist was in a darker place or if he actualy ended his life.
Upon inspection (and peer reviews) of the final scene it isn't as ambiguous as we intended, it wasn't really clear that he could of ended his life, in retrospect I could have made the protagonist fade away in the final scene to represent that he actually ended his life rather than have him walk off in to the darkness. This would have given it a feel that he isn't really there anymore instead he is just a distant memory now slowly fading away. The intro scene was the break up scene, I think this scene was pretty well done and came out better than I had thought it would, however at some points the camrea could have been a little bit steadier but that is just something to look out for in the future. There was a problem I noticed about continuity, at one point it was night time when the protagonist was walkign away and the next scene it was late afternoon then turned to dusk and then went back to being night time. However this was because we didnt film the video in order we filmed the locations at convenience. The rest of the music video was fine and I have to give credit to Tim for his camrea work which was well done eventhough this was his first time doing it.
What I learnt from this preliminary task is that it is better to have to have too much footage than too little, such is the case when we first filmed and we didn't have enough footage so we had to redo the video and add more footage than we needed. I aslo learnt that it is hard to film a moving shot with it being stable but I am going to ask my teacher if there is a way for me to overcome this obsticle. I also learnt that we need to make the meaning behind our videos more obvious rather than leaving it up to the viewer to decide what the meaning. Finally it is better far better to have a very detailed plan than have a brief outline because with a well detailed on it is easier to see what will work and what won't.
Here is a link to our music video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TAgsZPvDck&list=LLMK6lGxNT3iDUbd6PqXl5tw&feature=mh_lolz
After filming and editing our video I had a chance to see all the components and elements come together and I had a chance to refer it back to Andrew Goodwin’s theory from his book “Dancing in the Distraction Factory”.
Firstly, the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is simply contradictory, for example when the lyrics would say “The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me” and the visuals were of the protagonist walking downhill into a dark underpass. This represents his descent into darkness after his girlfriend breaks up with him. There were a few close-ups of the protagonists face but that was not done with the intention of selling the image of the vocalist or the band. There were no real references to voyeurism mainly because the song doesn’t warrant for any type of voyeurism.
As for the actual music video the video starts with the protagonist (me) being dumped by his girlfriend played by Tisha. I then start walking aimlessly, this is to represent that he is lost in the world without her, and he is looking for a sense of direction but can't find any, as he walks down into the underpass this is supposed to represent his descent into darkness and him just sitting on a bench is to show that he is just going through the motions and the amount I look back it is to represent me looking back for a way for things to go back to how they were in the past, but as I soon find that my friend is now with my ex-girlfriend, I then go on top of a large building and look over the edge as if I wanted to jump, the final scene is of me walking off into the darkness, this was left ambiguous on purpose to let the viewer decide whether the protagonist was in a darker place or if he actualy ended his life.
Upon inspection (and peer reviews) of the final scene it isn't as ambiguous as we intended, it wasn't really clear that he could of ended his life, in retrospect I could have made the protagonist fade away in the final scene to represent that he actually ended his life rather than have him walk off in to the darkness. This would have given it a feel that he isn't really there anymore instead he is just a distant memory now slowly fading away. The intro scene was the break up scene, I think this scene was pretty well done and came out better than I had thought it would, however at some points the camrea could have been a little bit steadier but that is just something to look out for in the future. There was a problem I noticed about continuity, at one point it was night time when the protagonist was walkign away and the next scene it was late afternoon then turned to dusk and then went back to being night time. However this was because we didnt film the video in order we filmed the locations at convenience. The rest of the music video was fine and I have to give credit to Tim for his camrea work which was well done eventhough this was his first time doing it.
What I learnt from this preliminary task is that it is better to have to have too much footage than too little, such is the case when we first filmed and we didn't have enough footage so we had to redo the video and add more footage than we needed. I aslo learnt that it is hard to film a moving shot with it being stable but I am going to ask my teacher if there is a way for me to overcome this obsticle. I also learnt that we need to make the meaning behind our videos more obvious rather than leaving it up to the viewer to decide what the meaning. Finally it is better far better to have a very detailed plan than have a brief outline because with a well detailed on it is easier to see what will work and what won't.
Here is a link to our music video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TAgsZPvDck&list=LLMK6lGxNT3iDUbd6PqXl5tw&feature=mh_lolz
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