Prelim EVALUATION
For our A2 course we are studying into documentary, and the codes and conventions involved creating a successful documentary. To begin with we had to create a prelim video so we could understand the basics of the codes and conventions in documentary and have the ability to create a successful documentary. The task for the prelim was to ‘work in groups to conduct and interview about the subject of mobile phones’ it then gave us 14 questions we had to carry out to ask as an interviewer in order to create a variety of shots and things to discuss. The documentary had to include short cuts, a title, and a storyboard which the other codes and conventions involved in a documentary, for example relevant music.
We were put into groups of 3 and began to discuss and brainstorm ideas of different cutaways, enabling us to draw out the storyboard before we actually began filming. In our group all three of us helped draw out the story board and make sure it was what we wanted. The title we created for our film was ‘connecting people’. We choose this because it is a well-known saying from nokia, and we thought our target audience from young to old, will recognise it as nokia is a big well known company, and from our title you can guess what the prelim will be about, mobile phones.
The filming process..
When we began to shoot the video, we began with shooting all the interviews first and then begin on the cutaways. When we shot the interview we did about two or three takes for each question, so we could pick and choose in the editing stage which questions we thought were the best. I think our main interview overall wasn’t as strong as it could’ve been, I don’t feel like it was very successful. This was mainly because you couldn’t hear him very well and he mumbled most of the time, also it was quite hard to get him to involve the question in the answer (so one some questions you do here the interviewer, which is going against a code and convention of a documentary), and this was probably due to lack of confidence, as it was a struggle finding someone willing to do it, and we choose him because it was quite last minute. To overcome this for next time in our documentary’s, I think we should plan a few people willing to do the interviews and maybe choose the most confident and successful one, a suggestion I made was to ask people from the drama department as they would speak clearly and know what we want. Another reason I don’t think it was as successful was he wasn’t really placed to once side, left or the right, he was just in the centre for the interview, This is a disadvantage because it is not following one of the main codes and conventions of the interviewing process and it doesn’t look as professional and just unorganised. Another problem I think we had was gathering together the relevant background, we planned in the background to have the title ‘connecting people’ its basic and catchy and straight away the audience will know what we are talking about but for some reason this did not go ahead. I think next time when interviewing I will be there helping; I was absent during this interview and I don’t think anyone else in my group cared about filling the codes and conventions therefore the interview we have isn’t successful. I fi was to do it again I would be a big part of the interview and planning it clearly, making sure we get the right people to interview so we don’t have problems and making sure all the codes and conventions are fulfilled.
When creating our cutaways this was quite easy, we just filmed what we have planned however when we began the editing process we realised we had not filmed enough, therefore we just filmed some more of what we have missed however this time doing two or more shots of each one making sure we didn’t miss anything this time.
The editing process..
In this stage we captured all our shots and firstly began to put them into chronological order. Then we just cut and pasted them into the correct places, trying to delete unwanted shots and trying to hide few mistakes like voices of the interviewer by using other cutaways. There was a big problem with our continuity in the interview part which was angle of the camera, however we hid this well by adding in some more cutaways which were very successful and gave variety in our prelim video.
In the group, I gathered all the music together. We discussed what type of music we should use and how it can be relevant to the theme; mobile phones. We wanted the music to be upbeat and different to other groups and not the same old, so I researched different types of mobile phone ring tones, text tones and downloaded them so we could create a remix of them for the introductory of our documentary. When I was putting the different ring tones together for the music, it worked really well against the shots and the shot times, and was in the same beat making it look professional and in sync. Once all the film was in order and the music placed we then decided making subtitles for our documentary, introducing the character. These subtitles were very basic but the same all the way through with a blue background and black text that popped up at the start of the interview for a few seconds.
I do think our documentary ‘connecting people’ was successful in some ways, as we had suitable interesting cutaways that made the documentary more interesting to watch. I also thought the music involved and the introduction was very mobile related and we aimed it well at our target audience from young teens to young adults. However there were a few problems with codes and conventions like I mentioned before, person being interviewed not on a side either left/right, not a related background when interviewing, words are clear, you can hear the interviewer but apart from that I did think we achieved the other needed codes and conventions.
To improve upon this, I think we should all make sure everyone in the group knows what they’re doing, lesson by lesson, maybe making a lesson plan and exact bullet point, therefore if someone is away the person who will have to continue either filming or editing will do it right and they can’t complain that they didn’t know what they were doing. Making our lessons organised it will be a efficient way to get our filming and editing done to a high standard leaving time at the end to work on extra added bits; we did not have enough time to redo the whole main interview again.
