Documentary

Poster

This is the final production of our newspaper advertisement, for our documentary The Gig Experience.

Radio Trailer

Evaluation

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

At the beginning of the process, when the group were trying to decide what topic our documentary was going to be on, we decided to watch professional documentaries to see some of the subjects discussed and how they structured their documentary. We did this with the use of websites such as watchdocumentary.com. We were able to see what creative aspects each employed which distinguished it from another. (E.g. visual editing effects and animation.) As well as watchdocumentry.com, we also looked at some documentaries on modern topics that were on channels such as Channel 4. We did this because we thought it would be better to watch the documentaries that more people were likely to watch because they were on television as oppose to online.

Once we had come up with our topic of live music, we decided that we needed to do more research and find out what specifically our target audience would like to see in a music documentary. By the use of Microsoft Word, we created a questionnaire to distribute to our target audience to get their opinions. After we got our results, we used Microsoft Excel to analyse our results in graph form, so we could distinctively see what our target audience wanted and what they didn’t. From our results we were able to see that the most popular genre of music was rock, along with some others. Therefore, we decided that to make our documentary appropriate for a larger audience we would include multiple genres from multiple music artists and musicians in our documentary.

We wanted to get professional music artists in our documentary so that it looked more professional. Therefore, we used Windows Hotmail and Outlook to email managers of music artists. We used Google and Facebook to get the managers contact information of musicians such as Alex Clare, Tyler Hilton, and Imagine Dragons who all successfully replied to our emails. Whilst we were doing this and waiting for replies, we used YouTube to look at archive footage we could possible use in our documentary. We looked at bands like Paramore and Foster the People, whose music we thought was most appropriate for our target audience. We also used YouTube to pick our appropriate music to put in a sound-bed in our documentary. We decided to use the songs Artbreaker – Kids in Glass Houses and Too Close – Alex Clare so we could represent more than one genre.

After deciding our running order, we created a storyboard so that we had a visual look at how we were constructing our documentary. We planned how we were going to construct our interviews and then created the interview questions that we intended to ask every music artist we were going to interview for our documentary. It was then time for us to go and film the concerts for Alex Clare and Tyler Hilton, so we hired Sony HXR-MC2000E solid state AVCHD camcorders from college to get the best quality footage possible. We also hired tripods so that we had steady footage that would be easy to edit later on. We filmed the concerts, and in return got interviews with the musicians. This is where we applied the conventions of documentaries that we had learnt whilst in the research process, looking at professional documentaries and their structure.

When we were filming these events, we had to use a boom microphone to pick up all of the sound and headphones to ensure that sound was actually being recorded. When we were filming our interviews, we used a clip microphone so that the sound was clear, and we could add music later if we wished. We also used a clip microphone when we recorded the voice-over for the documentary and the radio trailer. Once we had all our footage, interviews and voice-overs recorded we imported them onto Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 to edit our documentary. We used multiple tools on the software such as the selection tool to move footage and images into place, the razor tool to cut footage up so the duration wasn’t too long and the zoom tool which allowed us to adjust the volume of our audio manually, until we were satisfied that all the sound was balanced. We also used Premiere when creating our poster because we needed an image for our poster so we exported a still from our documentary footage. Premiere was also used in the creation of the radio trailer because we needed to use the tools to cut up the audio we wanted and to include sound-bites from our documentary.

We also used internet service platforms at this point such as YouTube MP4 plug-ins to get music and archive footage off YouTube to import onto Adobe Premiere Pro. We used this software on a Dell XPS PC by using the plug-ins option on Firefox and searching for a YouTube downloader that worked for both audio (sound-bed) and video for our archive footage. When we found video footage or audio that we wanted to include in our documentary, we used USB devices to transfer the footage/audio onto the computer we were editing on.  When creating titles for our documentary, we wanted them to be unique to the standard fronts offered on Adobe Premiere Pro, so we used the Dafont.com to get a font more appropriate for our documentary. As the most popular genre from our questionnaire results turned out to be rock, we decided to go with a rock theme font style. This led us to searching for ‘distorted’ fonts that seemed best appropriate. It was on Dafont, that we found the font ‘dirty ego’ and decided that it was perfect for our documentary and therefore for our poster too because we wanted continuity.

In addition, once we had our font, we edited it on Adobe Photoshop CS5 first so that we were sure it looked how we wanted before we imported the image onto Adobe Premiere Pro. On Photoshop, we used the tools, crop and move tools to adjust our image and then the zoom tool to ensure that it was a good quality image to be placed as the opening title of our documentary. We additions used the fill tool to make our background black and then the marquee tool to select the font from the background to then readjust to make sure that it was the correct size. Finally, we displayed the process of how we created our documentary on blogger.com so that we were able to be organised and keep track of what we had done and what needed to be done.

Radio Trailer Conventions

Radio Trailer.

A typical radio trailer is approximately 30 seconds long and has a continuous sound bed. this sound bed usually indicated what channel the programme will be on, what the title of the programme is and what the programme is about. There is usually a narrator who gives this information and there is usually a series of 'snippets' from the programme. The sound bed of a radio trailer is very important in informing the audience. 

This narration is in the form of a voice over. The voice over for this trailer is male and his tone increases when he talks about the title of the documentary.  

This Radio Trailer, 30 years of Punk Rock the narrator starts by announcing what channel the documentary is about. We will incorporate this into our own and tell the audience that we will have our documentary featured on MTV Live. The narrator in our docuemtary will also emphasise the tagline 'Turn it up LOUD' by altering the tone of their voice so its much louder

Audience Feedback

This is the questionnaire that we gave to our audience when receiving feedback on our documentary.

How informative would you rate The Gig Experience Documentary?
(1 = Very informative, 5 = Not very informative)

1-----2-----3-----4-----5

How entertaining would you rate The Gig Experience Documentary?
(1 = Very entertaining, 5 = Not very entertaining)

1-----2-----3-----4-----5

How would you rate the technical quality of production? Eg. Sound, editing, continuity
(1 = Excellent, 5 = Poor)

1-----2-----3-----4-----5

How eye catching would you say The Gig Experience Documentary is?
(1 = Very eye catching, 5 =Not very eye catching)

1-----2-----3-----4-----5

How well do you think we did at obeying conventions, compared to professional documentaries?
(1 = Excellent, 5 = Poor)

1-----2-----3-----4-----5

From our questionnaire results we were able to see how well our documentary suited our target audience and how well they think the documentary was constructed.

 

This graph demonstrates how successful/unsuccessful our documentary is, in being eye catching to our target audience. Results show that all found the documentary eye catching, with half more than the others. This is indicated by the 3 "1s" and 3 "2s" which are the highest marks they could have possibly given.

This graph shows how informative the audience found our documentary. This indicates majority believed our documentary was incredibly informative, due to more than half picking the highest mark. This was also elaborated on, and was quoted saying "It gives us information in fun ways such as voiceovers, and the appropriate visuals."

This graph shows how entertaining the audience found our documentary. This indicates majority believed our documentary was incredibly entertaining, due to the majority choosing the highest mark. Overall for entertainment feedback, our documentary received 5 "1s"  and 1 "2".






This graph demonstrates how successful our documentary is at obeying conventions, compared to professional documentaries. Results show that all those who watched the documentary thought we did very well at obeying the conventions set by professional documentaries. This indicates that we have done well in avoiding making the documentary look amateur.

This graph demonstrates how successful our technical quality of production is of our documentary. Results show that all those who watched the documentary thought we did very well at making sure the technical aspects of documentaries such as sound and editing were professional. This indicates that we have done well in avoiding making the documentary look like an amateur production.

Video Responses:

Newspaper Advertisement Production

The first thing we did when creating our poster was export an image from our documentary which we thought would best highlight the concept of our documentary. We decided to have our main image as Alex Clare, because he is the most famous person we interviewed in our documentary, and therefore would be more recognisable to our target audience. We exported the main image as bitmap because it is the highest quality format on Premiere that would look professional.

After having our first image, we decided to export a second image that we could overlay with the main image. Then we would be able to create an effect that is distinctively unqiue to our documentary because both images are stills of footage that we recorded ourselves.

This is the effect that was created after we exported our two images as bitmap and used the overlay effect on Photoshop. We thought that it was unique and represented the documentary well because the picture was from live footage so it represents our live music themed documentary and because it is colourful, it is eye catching and will specifically relate to our target audience of young adults.

When choosing our font, we decided that we were going to use the same font that we used in the documentary so that they would be a similar style. The font that we used was called 'dirty ego'. We thought this font best represented our documentary because it looks raw, and we included some raw unknown artists in our documentary.

When we were selecting the font size, we decided that the bigger the font was, the better. We wanted to take up all the negative space, but still have a very simplistic poster because we wanted to put emphasis on the overlay effect that we created.

We selected the colour as yellow because it was the most contrasting, stand out colour that worked well with the blue and red based background. We knew that by using a bright yellow colour it would be eye catching, but to make sure that we didn't use it too much - so it would look tacky - we decided to put the tagline in a white colour, to break up the bright text. By using a different colour for the tagline, it also put emphasis and shown the importance of it.

When we added our logo, we didn't want it to look boring because the rest of our poster is very bright and eye catching. As MTV is known as a colourful, creative company, we decided to add yellow to the logo that would work well with the yellow text. However, we wanted to avoid there being too much yellow, like we did when we were adding the text, so we decided on a white and yellow logo.

We used the auto-select tool to resize the logo. We didn't want the logo to be too big because then it would be overpowering and would take away the focus from the rest of the poster. However, we wanted to make sure that the logo was big enough for the documentary to be visiable as a programme that was due to be on MTV Live, because then people would know that it was a music documentary, and it would give an insight into the style of documentary and footage that might feature.

We changed the opacity of the image overlay, to get the desired effect. We wanted to make sure that it wasn't too high so that we wouldn't be able to see the lights that we added in the background as an overlay. We also wanted to make the effect different from the first style that is given when selecting the overlay effect.

Drafting Newspaper Advertisement

This is the draft that we will base our newspaper advertisement on. We have included Alex Clare as the focus image, the MTV logo in the corner with the time for the documentary and titling of the documentary with the tagline to the left of the advertisement.

This is the first design of advertisement that we created on photoshop, which gave us the idea to overlay two images to get  the brighter background to shine through the foreground. The overall effect looks like this. We then decided that because our documentary is aimed at an MTV audience, the advertisement should be brighter and more colourful.

Newspaper ad conventions

Here is a newspaper advert that was made to promote the MTV programme, the Death Valley Show. This advert shows the conventions that professional companies employ when they are promoting and advertising their programme. We will therefore try to employ all of these conventions to make our newspapers advert as professional as possible. For example, we will employ a tagline in a bold font which gives an insight to what the content of our documentary may contain.

Recording and Editing Radio Trailer

We had to edit our radio trailer to make sure that we could include sound snippets from our documentary.

After we had scripted our voice-over, we used one of the broadcast quality camera's in college with a clip microphone to record the voice-over. We made sure that the microphone was clear by changing the battery and using headphones to hear the recorded sound. Once we were happy with the quality of sound we recorded, we imported audio onto Adobe Premiere Pro to then edit into a 30 second radio trailer.

By using the selection tool, we were able to adjust the duration of the audio by dragging the length of either side of the clip in the direction of whether we wanted the sound to come in sooner or make the ending longer. This was useful to do because we were able to experiment with the length of clips and as a final result make sure that the trailer lasted for exactly 30 seconds - the length of a professional radio trailer.

To remove the audio that we didn't need in our radio trailer, we used the razor tool to cut out the parts that were unnecessary. We only used the razor tool when we knew the parts we were removing were not going to be needed because then we could move around the other pieces of audio, knowing that they have a purpose in the radio trailer. In addition, if the audio duration was too long, we also used the razor tool to make smaller segments to move around, to ensure it wasn't one dull long take.

Finally, we had to make sure that the volume was balanced because we wanted our radio trailer to appear as professional as possible. To adjust the volume, we used the selection tool to move the volume control lines up or down on the audio tracks until they were all completely balanced. This was the final thing we had to do in the process of recording and editing our radio trailer, because then we had completed the 30 seconds we aimed to fill.

Scripting Radio Trailer

"MTV live brings you an exciting new music documentary featuring the Chart Topping newcomer Alex Clare and One Tree Hill star Tyler Hilton."

Voice snippets from documentary.

"Tune in to MTV Live at 9pm for The Gig Experience."

Additional voice snippets

"Turn it up. Loud."

We used this as our Radio Trailer script as we included our main stars within the documentary to entise the audience into watching it, as well as appealing to as many of the general public as possible.
We also included facts of the documentary which they would need in order to watch it - including the time and channel which it would be on.

Within this, we also used sound bites from our documentary to make it seem more exciting and to add context to the show. Our sound bites included an aspect from every interview of Danny Gruff, Dion Roy, Katie Lu, Tyler Hilton & Alex Clare.

Filming

These images were took at different points whilst filming. The first picture is of Emma filming some B-roll of someone playing the guitar. She is employing a low angle shot to focus on the guitar. This will add diversity to the documentary. The second image to the right of Emma is Natalie, who was filming the drummer at a band practice in college. She is also filming from a low angle, which makes the drummer look superior and that they are really good at the drums. Finally, the last image is myself

recording a student singing in a talent show. We shot these as we wanted to ensure we knew how to use the cameras correctly, however did not put it into our documentary as the location of the footage was not necessarily gig related.

Voiceover Recording

To record our documentary voice overs, we used a Sony HXR-MC2000E with a clip mic.

We then recorded the snippets of the voice over and, once added into Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, we unlinked the video and deleted them accordingly.

We used the voice overs whilst still playing our sound bed, to ensure continuity and make the transaction of sound, smooth.

It will be played on numerous music radio stations both local and national. These will include Radio City 96.7, Galaxy, Wire FM, BBC Radio 1 and Magic to ensure we appeal to as many people as possible.

 These are the sound bites of our voiceovers. We recorded 3 voice overs to narrate and explain where the documentary is going. They were all quite varied, yet gave us information to show we researched the subject.

Scripting Voiceover

"There are at least 7 billion people on Earth and despite our differences we are all linked through our passion for music." (35.14s - 41.06 seconds)

"As of 2011, mainstream music such as pop and rap was classed as the most popular genre throughout the world." (Did not use)

"Ticketmaster is one of the leading ticket sales companies worldwide. It has partnered with over 50 venues and since then has become the most popular website for purchasing tickets." (2m 18.04s - 2m 27.20 seconds )

"Some music artists start out by busking to put their name, and music, out to the public. The most famous buskers include Bon Jovi, Elvis and Paul McCartney."
(47.17s - 56.14 seconds )

Editing

We print screened our computer at numerous times, whilst creating the documentary.  The first one being some of the videos we imported. We did this by selecting file>import. We then chose the videos which we wanted to use, and edited it to our liking.

 

 

When filming our interviews, we ensured to obtain the 'rule of thirds'. We did this by aligning the camera, and object up, to the relevant camera spot. By doing this, it created the impression that we, and our project, is professional.

 

As well as the visuals, we also had to focus on the sound levels within our documentary. Throughout it all, we had a sound bed which was changed when voice overs or interviews took place. This added continuity to the documentary, yet still allowed the viewer to hear the other sounds being utilised.

 

After we had imported some of our videos, we had to use the 'Razor' tool to cut down the length of the footage. We did this by selecting the tool, then clicking where was appropriate. From then, we'd delete the relevant footage, and keep the parts which we wanted.

 

On top of our interviews, and at the beginning of the documentary, we used titles to explain to the audience who or what it was. We did this by selecting title>new title>default still. We then typed the title which we wanted, changed the font/size/colour then imported it into our documentary.

 

We used transitions throughout, to make the switch between clips, smooth. We did this by using different types to still make it exciting  - however used 'dip to black'  most, to ensure professionalism and continuity.

Logging and Edit Decision List

This image shows some of the footage we got for our documentary and which footage we decided to use and which we didn't. All the green video's are what we decided to use in our final edit of the documentary, and the red video's we decided against.

These are a print screens of some of the footage we used within our documentary. The footage was a combination of useful and irrelevant footage, therefore we added crosses and ticks to show which footage we used, and which we couldn't. Some of the footage which we didn't use included shaky camera work, too low key lighting and retakes. Therefore, we refilmed relevant shots or chose another clip to use. The final print screens shown all the footage which we used, in numerous folders. They were under different folders as they were there for different purposes.

Planning

Storyboard

Interview Framing

For the interview with Dion Roy, we will film him in front of the stage he will later be performing on, later on at his concert. We will draw attention to the aspect of live music by having a guitar in the background and also will have the stage lights on to add to the atmosphere of a live concert. We will apply the rule of thirds with him on the left side, leaving space on the right to show the guitar and other staging equipment.

The concept for Tyler Hilton's interview is to interview him in his dressing room. This gives an insight to behind the scenes of live concerts. It is important in our documentary because we will discuss everything surrounding live music, from ticket sales to busking and recorded music. We will apply the rule of thirds with him on the right side

 

      As Alex Clare is an upcoming star, we though that we will film his interview where you wouldn't expect to see him. Therefore, we decided we will film him in a room backstage to show the contrast between Alex Clare the star and Alex Clare the standard musician. We will apply the rule of thirds with him on the right side.
 











      For Danny Gruff's interview, we will film him outside of a venue where people attend concerts. We will apply the rule of thirds with him on the right side and have the board of gig listings on the left. This will highlight the main theme of our documentary - live music.

Interview Questions

When writing our interview questions, we decided to ask questions about the musicians backgrounds to give a brief introduction to who they are, and what they appreciate about live music. We asked questions based on the best and worst things about gigs, so we can explore both the negative and positive aspects of going to a gig. We also asked questions about fans and venues because it enabled us to retrieve information that only a professional artist would be able to give a detailed description of. These are the interview questions that we employed to construct our interviews:

1)      What inspired you to become a musician?

2)      How do you feel when performing to a crowd?

3)      How do you feel before you go on stage?

4)      What’s the best thing about performing live?

5)      What’s the worst thing about performing live?

6)      How would you describe your fans?

7)      What was the first concert you saw and how old were you?

8)      How old were you when you first performed live?

9)      Where has been your favourite venue to perform?

10)   How many gigs do you go attend, personally?

11)   Do you prefer live music to recorded music, why?