Proposal

Creating a 3MW for me will be around a topic I really wish to explore. Looking at a friend's life, I will delve into her past uncovering some delicate issues as I wish to explore how she is coping with everything now and how it's all affected and still affecting her. I would like it to be touching documentary but have a positive (hopefully) outcome which when researching and talking to my friend I will uncover interesting and touching factors about her life which will be really good for my three minute wonder.

Putting the documentary into a genre will be quite simple as it will be a straight up documentary, being simple, honest and open, not only that but I intend to do it in an expository style, there are multiple reasons behind this, the main reason is the friend I know is only fourteen and for privacy reasons and because she is young, so I am keeping her identity hidden and doing an expository style, I will have a voice over and a load of shots of things in her life which are memories or important to her when I find out information. I also think using an expository style will be a real nice way to go about it anyway.

The audience that I will be targeting will be people around her age and the majority of the younger generation, who have had or are having issues in there life and also need something that they can connect with, and they will be my primary audience. There are a lot more of the younger generation who have issues in there life now more than the younger generation have ever had and having this documentary means that they can have something to refer to and connect with and maybe even help or be inspirational to them, as I find her inspirational to me and I find that the younger generation is the perfect target audience. Not only that but parents would be my secondary audience as it will rise awareness of what they child/children maybe be suffering from or have issues they may be hiding and it can be an eye-opener to try and make sure everything is all okay.

Creating some kind of relief and making people connect will be the main aim behind the documentary, I don't have a main goal, I just find her so interesting and her life is so tough and there is so much going on but she still keeps going and can be so good and just make it seem like there is nothing wrong sometimes, I just find her so inspirational, I'd like to share my feelings in a video with how she can be but with how much real goes on in her life and how she copes. I also think that maybe making this documentary could be really good for her as she has the chance to open up and just say what ever she wants, I really think that this could be a good three minute wonder.

For filming, I will have a few locations, at least I am hoping, as I will film wherever she wants to film, I think I'll film in her bedroom with hand movements and where she spends most her time being comfortable. I also would like to give her the camera and for her to film whatever she wants to film with things she does and what keeps her occupied such as if she goes for a walk on a certain route and where she goes and shots of the route. I don't know all of the locations but I'm hoping that the main place will be her bedroom.

For the production I will need myself to do some filming and ask questions about her life but I would also like her to be part of the production team as she uses the camera to film things in whatever way she likes of things she wants to be in the documentary. I will not need any other production team as I am capable of putting a camera on a tripod and doing some filming. I will need my talent to be in the film and depending on what's said I might also have her mother or brothers giving an opinion about it (but that might not be needed). Other than that I don't need any other people, mainly her and myself.

Sample Interview Questions-

Mentioning earlier about the camera and tripod I think that they may be the only two pieces of equipment that I will need on location as I will just be filming everything that happens when talking. I might later re-record the voice for the voice over but I'll see how that goes later down the line, I also might use a camera to take some photographs if any photos of things that interest her she may want to take. Other than that I will not need any other equipment. With costumes and props, I will not set anything, it will just be whatever is being worn on the days I film, I don't want there to be set costume as I want it to be as real as possible and if I film on different days and the clothes have changed then that's that, the clothes have changed, I don't mind, there are no set props or costumes.

For this filming, I have no budget, purely because I will be borrowing a camera and tripod from college so I won't need money for that and traveling expenses aren't much because I see her quite regularly and I will have to see her in my own time as she will be at school if I wanted to film during college lessons so it won't be much of an expense. I don't have a budget and I don't think that I will need one.


Update after discussion with my teacher:

Sean:-

It's acceptable to return to sample questions after I have conducted my secondary research, as I will have more of an idea of what kind of questions that I would like to ask. I also have to think more about the mood, as at the moment the 'mood' is unclear ergo I need to have some way of making it positive and uplifting but will have to wait and see based on the footage I get, hopefully it will work out.

Ellie:-

• Capitals and italics for titles
• Look again at primary and secondary audience and weigh up content with 3MW audience and placement on channel.
• Discuss accuracy / truthfulness of getting her to film segments.

Three Minute Wonders

Looking into documentaries, I looked at a program called '3 Minute Wonder'. This is a television series that has been going since 2001 and shows the three minute life of various sequences, these shorts give the directors a chance to target a large audience and get them an attempt to be noticed to get into the bigger film and television industry. We were given the task to watch some of the episodes and then explain our own opinions and also link them back to the Bill Nichol's five documentary styles,

After having searched a while through YouTube and watching a handful of 3 minute wonders there were a few that stood out to me and that I found most interesting. Taking a look at the first video that I found, it was called 'Home' and was a really touching documentary as it explores our collective sense of home through a visual poem, spoken by Joe McGarry, he speaks about the journey of finding his home within himself. If I was to categorise this, it would definitely be expository, I say this because it is done in such way as it presents a topic which is demonstrated visually with various images and a voice over (also a typical characteristic of this style) which addresses the situation about home, not only that but it is neatly linked in with the dialogue being a poem, this is simple and easy to understand, well at least I found it easy to understand and I really like how each photograph represents the different homes, yet it's irrelevant to the message he is trying to get across. This is a simple way of creating a documentary and yet it is a very powerful one, which is why it is one of my favourites from the selection I watched.





Secondly I found one which was very different, especially the documentary style, but it was still addressing a topic, but this was done in an interactive and observational style. The documentary was called 'This Is Our Youth: Carrot Crew' and was trying to promote healthy eating but nobody would listen to their argument and the 'Crisp Crew' were the ones who never got in trouble. This documentary had the interactive style as we have one sided interviews with the 'Carrot Crew' as they give their opinions about what they are trying to do and also the opinions on how others have reacted to them. Though there are usually two sided interviews in interactive documentaries, this still sets up an argument and I guess the 'Crisp Crew' are the other side, though we never do see an interviewer. There is also the observational side which is when we see shots of the 'Carrot Crew' at lunch time switching the food and also when they are about to enter their lesson, this just shows the real life events without the film maker making any interruptions to what is going on and therefore is an observation. This was one of my favourites as I liked they mix of both documentary styles and I also thought what they were doing was really inventive and it was quite amusing which is why I enjoyed it.





Finally, I found another video which was really quite strange, in fact, I'm not sure how to explain it at all, it was completely different and the camera angles and the way it had been shot was something that really stood out making it just a really strange documentary. This was called 'King Of Laughter' and was about a man who travelled to England as he wanted to cheer up England with laughter. There are various scenes cut together showing the responses of people laughing, the people that he cheered up, and this is done to show how he has improved and is making people laugh, in some way I find this documentary a little manipulative because I am sure not everybody laughed (me being grumpy and all) therefore these clips were assembled in a little montage of laughter sequence to show his improvements and this to me doesn't seem to be real, but all of the clips are observational as he goes out in daily life to see these people and observe there life though he does partake in the action alongside a voice over which could be slightly interactive but the voice over itself can be expository. I am not sure how to explain the video as it is very strange but I feel that the guy is trying to hard to make it seem like he has cheered everyone up because that's just not possible, maybe I just don't have the belief that it could happen like the man does and therefore it's a strange but interesting documentary.





Overall, I find a lot of the three minute documentaries quite different and inspiring to others all in there own independent way, each one seems to be unique which makes it valuable for the time slot that it is played in which really does give a chance to get the directors known because they have something different. I think that these documentaries all show different areas of interest using a mix of Bill Nichol's styles and it was interesting to research the 3 minute wonders.


Documentary Marketing Research

Looking at TV listings, we (Steve and I) went through the Sky TV Listings and looked at a couple of channels to see how many Documentaries were on in a week. With this we looked at the amount of programs shown and how many hours it calculated up to, counting from today 12am to Wednesday 12pm. Firstly we looked at Channel 4 and counted all of the documentaries during that week, there were only twenty documentaries that were being viewed, the total hours of TV in a week is 168hrs and only 15hrs and 50minutes were documentary, this is a mere 9.52% of TV in a week that is documentary. Furthermore we went on to search how many documentaries were on during peak time. Having searched when peak time was, we found that it was during the hours of 6pm and 10:30pm, then working out how many of those documentaries were during that time was only eight, this means that only 40% of the documentaries shown in a week are shown during peak time.

After doing this channel we then looked at another set of TV listings and compared Channel 4 with BBC1, firstly we thought that there would be a much smaller amount of documentaries that were shown on this channel and that's why we picked it, though we were shocked to find that there are sixteen episodes that are shown. Though two of those programs every morning (excluding Saturday) have an 1hr and 15minutes of documentary that are a daily episode. Altogether that was 12hrs that were shown on TV, compared to the 9.52% that are on Channel 4 there is a 7.14% on BBC1. There may not be a huge difference but having found a higher outcome than we thought, we then looked into the peak time and there were only two programs that were shown during peak time compared to the eight that are on Channel 4, in percentage thats 16.67% for BBC1 and 40% for Channel 4, this is a huge comparison, and shows that documentaries are shown a lot more on Channel 4. This was interesting to find out and I am surprised there are still a really small amount of documentaries shown on TV.


BARB is where we went to look for more information about documentaries and how many views that some programs got. When here I looked at Channel 4's TV views and found that for the documentaries there were a fair amount of views, making them quite popular, for instance out of the top ten of the most viewed there are six documentaries, one being Benefits Street: The Last Word, which has 3.13 million views, which is even more than Hollyoaks, a well known popular drama which has 1.24 million views, this shows that the documentary is a lot more popular and that specific documentary has been a huge success, showing that documentaries can be really good and popular, shown within the Channel 4's viewing results we can see this.

Documentary

What is Documentary?

"The creative treatment of actuality" I think that would best describe what documentary is, but that's quite difficult to understand too. When you think of a documentary you think whether or not it is fiction or non-fiction and then there are a few ways in which a documentary can be done. These various approaches are what make a documentary so distinctive, as documentaries have a sense of authenticity to them.  Documentaries consist of real time events that are going on or have currently happened and these are meant to be un-staged and have a sense of realism about them. These variations all have certain features which make them the certain types, Bill Nichols was the man known for identifying the types of documentary, they were:

Expository

This was the most common occurrence of documentary, known with a voice-over ongoing over the top of the image that is being played, this is known to usually be informative information as the voice-over describes a certain circumstance or situation, although the voice-over is not currently at the scene where these images are, its later added in. The intention of an expository documentary is to provide some kind of an argument or even to inform/educate the viewers. A good example of this is We Are The Lambeth Boys (1958) where the voice over informs you about the lives of these teenagers, also linking in with the argument point, the issue with this is that we only have the voice-over to listen to and the opinions may be one-sided and therefore tamper with the realism and authenticity of the film.

Observational

Secondly, a documentary that is unstructured and entirely led by the event, as we observe what is going on. There is no voice-over like an expository documentary, we are just left with the event to keep the audience entertained and be observational, this is also given a term 'fly-on-the-wall' as you are just observing, this gives the viewer a chance to obtain there own opinion about what they are watching and come to their own conclusions about it all. A prime example of this is Etre Et Avoir (2002) where a class and the teacher are being observed and we get long takes of the classroom and what the students are doing. This leads the viewer to make an emotional attachment as we see them over the year and we make our own opinions on who we feel is good and bad or even just to learn about them without drawing major conclusions like some documentaries, this is laid back and truly beautiful. The sad thing about this is that this true beauty of a documentary was made, once the film had been released the teacher (George Lopez) tried to sue the director (Nicolas Philibert) for the release of the film as Lopez was told that this was intended for educational purposes only and not to be such a mainstream distributed film.

Interactive

These are documentaries where the film maker makes themselves apparent in the documentary, they are usually there to ask questions or keep the flow going but mainly they try and explain and prove the point that their whole documentary is setting out to say/do. These are different from the other types as they don't try and observer or talk over an observed event, they are more involved into getting answers to the questions and making the decisions in leading the audience through the documentary and making sure that things are done. Michael Moore is known for his documentaries and he is very interactive with them as in Bowling For Columbine (2002) he was a key feature into whether or not guns were a cause of violence into the Columbine Shooting, but he had a lot of on screen time and was also very leading in the documentary, although most interactive documentaries tend to share both sides of the argument. He continued to voice his own opinion on others whilst the documentary was juxtaposed together in the way that he wanted it to be seen. Interactive documentaries cause problems with access and privacy and this tends to affect a production, the reason for this is there tends to be a lot of interviews and this means there has to be a lot of paper production work that goes into it before being allowed to film the interview, this is the same with filming people under the age of eighteen as until they have signed the form they can't be filmed. Linking it back with access, location release forms are very important so that the production has the rights to film on that location, all of these are issues that arise in interactive documentaries more commonly than others, though paper work still has to be completed for any kind of production.

Reflexive

A type which doesn't hide the fact that it is a documentary, in the way it entails itself and reveals the conventions of documentary to the audience. A completely different approach to the other types of documentary as it tries to break the existing conventions to make it apparent that these things are going on, not only that but reflexive documentaries make the whole process the main focus point, most of the time the film maker is involved (like interactive) but they will still provide a narrative. Man With A Movie Camera (1929) is a great film that is entirely based on a man with his camera and he films himself doing all of these things involving great camera work, making it apparent and well focused on the film making process. I find that this is also a well edited movie in the narrative structure for the time it was made to be such goodness.

Performative

Finally this type of documentary is based on being most presented rather than observing situations as there are a lot more re-enactments and stories that are created to construct what is being said. The problem with this is that the reconstructions of certain events can be done to far, so that the truth is then twisted and this makes the documentary not completely true, though saying this, these kinds of documentaries are usually one sided as the production tends to aim towards one view fights to make it that way. Dominic Littlewood has appeared in many TV documentaries that tend to be aggressive towards finding out the truth in certain situations as he implies a lot of things. A program called Fake Britain is another where he sets out to catch people out, this is emphasised by re-enactments of situations to see the problems they may have caused. Another program he is in is Cowboy Builders where he purposely sets up the event (instead of a re-enactment) where he then catches the trouble makers in the act, this is another interesting way to approach this type of documentary.


Overall, I don't think you'll ever be able to achieve a documentary that is 'the creative treatment of actuality' because not only are there so many different approaches to going about a documentary but it'll never be completely true, because there are so many things that are done and said and editing out with this careful selectiveness and then you're already taking away the true realism of it.

Technical Aspects of Video Editing

 1. What do the numbers 16:9 refer to?

The numbers refer to the Aspect Ratio, the 16 referring to the width and the 9 is the height.


2. What is the frame size of 1080p video file?

The  frame size is the height (1080p/pixels) and the width is 1920.


3. If you ave a video file which is 720:50p; What is the frame rate and what do the 'P' stand for?

The frame rate is 50p and the 'P' stands for Progressive.


4.  What is the difference between 'P' and 'I'?

P: Progressive- It shows every pixel per frame
I: Interlaced - It shows half a pixel per frame, only shows the pixels that are needed (if pixels don't change).


5. What frame rate is real film shot at?

It is shot at 23.976.


6. What might be the advantage of shooting at a higher frame rate?

Don't get a blur in the shot and it keeps the image smooth. Slow motion also will run smoother.


7. What defines a lossy file?

A file where the date is discarded which is deemed not necessary for human perception, in order to keep the file size smaller.


8. Name three file types commonly used in video editing

.MOV .WAV .MTS


9. What is the difference between a video file type and a codec?

If the file type is the container, then the Codec is how the video & audio is compressed to get inside, then decompressed to read it again. Codec actually means coding/decoding.


10. What is a bitrate?

Bitrate is the rate at which a file processes information.