Task - Documentary
The Task: Film a short documentary style sequence, lasting no longer than 1.30 mins, entitled Litter. You should include the following elements in your sequence:
- An Establishing Shot
- A Voice-over element
- Cutaway Shot(s)
- Talking Heads Interviews
- Actuality Footage (or reconstruction)
- Split Edits
- Natural lighting
- Use of text to anchor images
- A non-diegetic soundtrack
The Production Group
Here is the group that I will be working with for this task:
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| (Left to Right) Tilly Whitehouse, Tina Vidmar, Daniel Vidmar (me), Robbie Gale |
Documentary Preparation
Firstly when planning a documentary style type of film we need to do research into it as the conventions for filming documentaries are different to films and since I have never filmed a documentary it is best to get at least the basic guidelines on how to film them.
Here is a video that gives a basic tutorial on how to shoot a documentary:
Here is a video that gives a basic tutorial on how to shoot a documentary:
We also thought it was good to find tutorials on how to use the Cannon 600D as the controls are different with this camera in compare to the cameras we used before.
Here are a few videos that was suggested we should at before using the camera:
Pre-Production - Litter
In order to make sure we create a good documentary, we have to plan carefully in the pre-production stage to ensure nothing goes wrong. From previous experience in AS, we already have an idea of how to approach research and planning in the pre-production stage however as we are using a new camera, issues during production might occur so it is vital to get the pre-production stage right before filming the documentary.
Idea
The idea was to have a documentary basically on the problem of Litter at school, and have a Narrator talk over head as well as going into the school and finding out for himself what its like. We want to interview teachers, the head teacher preferably and get loads of footage of the kids. The message we want to have is that it is down to the people littering to fix the problem and end with a positive light.
Structure
30 sec - B-Roll of the school, shots of students, and the narration over head. Also a Talking Head shot of Mr leach commenting on the litter problem
5 sec - Short school segment would be rounded off with a title of 'Litter' and 'Great Wyrley High School' underneath to give it context
10 sec - Introduction to the narrator himself and then this would lead in to the interview
20 sec - Narration which leads to a quick Interview with Mr Frost
15 sec - We see the Narrator walking around talking to the camera or over head Narration and we see B-roll shots of kids at school and litter
10 sec - Round it off with a 'Next Time segment' where we see a very funny scene of the narrator running to find a person who has just littered
Cast
The Narrator - David Thomas Twohey
Mr Leach - Himself
Mr Frost - Himself
Crew - Themselves
Script
We gave Mr Frost and Mr Leach a copy of the questions that we will be asking them so they are able to prepare themselves when filming. We decided to shoot 4 minutes worth of questions so we'll be able edit down the best response and put them in the documentary,
We will also need overhead narration from David and with that, we created a script:
Now that planning is complete, it't time to shoot the documentary.
Production
Now that we used the camera for about a week, we found many pros and cons that come with using the Cannon 600D:
Benefits - This camera has a far better picture quality in compare to the previous camera that we used so each shot that we made looked good. The camera also gave us more control over the quality such as exposure, ISO and the focus which was really simple to manipulate. The camera is also much more smaller than the one last year and this is very good as it makes it easier to work with and isn't too fiddly. We had a great time exploring the cameras functions and use too.
Drawback - The camera settings can be very tedious at times as it can take a long time to do but if you want a shot done properly then I guess that's what I have to do. Another thing is when focusing on something it can appear to be focused on the camera however, what we found, was that it was not focused so we need to be extremely careful with this but I'm glad we made the mistake now and not during the real short film we have to make. It can also be very hard to get used to the settings as I constantly had to refer to my notes but the more I use it the easier it will get.
Now that we finished filming the documentary, we now have the footage to edit the film by using the new software Final Cut Pro X
