Research continued

To further my knowledge of conducting interviews and their techniques I have been conducting research into well known journalists such as Micheal Moore, Nick Broomfield & Louis Theroux.For each of these, i have researched their filmed works to get a better understanding of how to direct our documentary and what shots would be useful.I have studied Nick Broomfield's "Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer" which emphasised the strong tone and excellence of the documentary from the camera angles to the set up of a shot.Also i have looked at Louis Theroux's "The Most hate family In America" and "When Louis Me the Nazi's" both of these documentaries kept the continuous narrative of a concerned tone including the camera shot of Theroux's face to the answers of a question.Finally i have looked at Micheal Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine" which proved to be very helpful with my research of other documentaries because of the difference in camera angles and movements from steady cameras to shaky, disorienting shots which helped to differentiate the documentary from the other two.

Experimenting continued

In today's lesson we experimented with shots for our final documentary, these shots are aimed to be used when the interviewer is narrating facts, figures and opinions to the audience.
These shots also have to relate to the topic of the documentary as well, for instance for our draft Charlie has shot scenes of playgrounds, school corridors and school classes. Whilst these are running the narrator will be talking about a topic which will relate to the shot and documentary otherwise the audience will become confused and loose interest.
For our draft we have also experimented with music, again this is used to make the documentary more appealing to the audience. We have had to find a music clip that coincides with the tone of the documentary, for instance you can't have eerie music for a documentary about the origins of a music label. Instead you have to have music that relates to the topic just like the shots from the previous paragraph.
So for the documentary about the origins of a music label you would probably have music from bands owned by that label, for our documentary we have chosen music thats starts with screaming and laughing children and keeps an upbeat tune throughout the draft documentary, this music may change for the final documentary as the tone of the documentary may have changed, but the music will always relate to the topic.

Experimenting Interviewing Techniques

The video above is me and Charlie experimenting with different interviewing techniques to create different atmospheres for the audience. The first technique of the art teacher was used to create a positive atmosphere for the audience, we can tell this from the lighting used and the position of the interviewee in the shot, you can see that the shot is slightly shaky, this was my best attempt to keep the camera as still as possible without using a tripod.

The second shot of the sixth form student walking down the corridor whilst talking was created as a tense atmosphere and and to convey to the audience that this person is very busy and maybe a professional, we had hoped to have other people to come into shot and get the student to pretend that she was signing a form or otherwise, further emphasising the interviewees professional status. This shot is often used in documentaries to mostly create tension.

The third and final technique of the interviewee sitting down is to create an opposing view of the interview. We can tell this from the content of the interviewee and the position and lighting used in the shot. The lighting above the interviewee creates shadows across his face further emphasising the point that the person doesn't agree with the interviewer. The position of the character shows the audience that the person is very confident about his views and therefore reclines in his seat.

All of these interviewing techniques were practiced to help us get a better understanding of them and help decide what of shots we would use and what atmosphere would be created in the process. Overall i think that this exercise was very helpful and that we will definitely be using some of these techniques in our final documentary.

Planning

I have now spent at least two weeks of lessons researching with my classmate for our documentary "Are cartoons a bad influence on young children?" in books, online and from other sources. This research has helped us to get a rough idea of what content we will be using in our documantary.
In this lesson today we started to plan for our documentary, today we planned a draft storyboard using still images taken of people from around the school describing the camera shot and captions to explain why. These still images will help us get rough idea of the people we need to interview and what kind of shots we will need to use.
This storyboard will help us when the time comes to start shooting for our documentary, it will act as our guideline and also help us to change old ideas for better ones.
The storyboard we created today is just a draft because the stills are not images of the final shots as we haven't even started shooting yet. When we have finished our final shooting and the documentary has been edited and finished the final storyboard will have images from the final edition of the documentary.

Research

Over the past few lessons me and my classmate have been researching the background of our topic "Are cartoons a bad influence on children?"
In my first lesson i researched on the Internet for reports by well known professors of psychology and behaviour. I found that using doing this research have proved to be helpful and gain a better understanding of the subject.

In the next couple of lessons me and my classmate Charlie researched in books from some of the people I found on the Internet during my own personal research. Some of the books that we have read are: 'Television is Good for your Kids' by Dr. Marie Messenger Davies, 'Children and Television' by Bob Hodge & David Tripp and 'Understanding television' by Andrew Goodwin & Garry Whannel. These books have proven to be very useful in our research as they include statistics and quotes from interesting and reliable sources.
From these books we both gained useful facts such as:
"Children spend up to 18,000 hours watching cartoons up to the age of 18, that's as many hours spent behind a school desk."
Such facts as these will be helpful for the narration of our final documentary in the hope to shock and inform the audience.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/tv_affects_child.html