In addition to your research you should be looking to plan the following for your documentary;
1. The 'question' or issue you wish to focus on- is it answerable? Do you even need an answer or are you opening up a debate?
2. You will need'
an expert
footage of the issue
opinion
facts
you must ensure you have a combination of all of these.
Monday, 18 July 2016
Thursday, 14 July 2016
What form of documentary?
Now you have looked at a variety of documentary forms- TV programme V film you need to consider which brief you are going to undertake.
Will it be:
2. A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer, together with two of the following three options:
• a website homepage for the film;
• a film magazine front cover, featuring the film;
• a poster for the film.
or
7. An extract from an original documentary TV programme, lasting approximately five minutes, together with two of the following three options:
• a radio trailer for the documentary;
• a double-page spread from a listings magazine focused on the documentary;
• a newspaper advertisement for the documentary.
If you choose the trailer option you may well have to film more footage, however, as trailers are so formulaic in their structure it will be easier to edit and to create a product with a strong sense of verisimilitude.
Once you have decided on which format film or TV programme you are going to focus on, prepare a detailed textual analysis on an example that you really like/admire/think you want to emulate.
You need to:
1. Embed a link of the documentary in your blog
2. Screen shot at least 6 key frames that you really like
comment on them identifying the following;
camera shot & movement
mise-en-scene
action
Representation
voiceover
INTERVIEWS With subject/expert
STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES Stock, historical, or archival footage
Re-enactment
Narrator / voice-over
Who is telling the story?
Scripted dialogue
INFORMATION SOURCES Were there attempts to persuade?
Were factual claims made?
Will it be:
2. A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer, together with two of the following three options:
• a website homepage for the film;
• a film magazine front cover, featuring the film;
• a poster for the film.
or
7. An extract from an original documentary TV programme, lasting approximately five minutes, together with two of the following three options:
• a radio trailer for the documentary;
• a double-page spread from a listings magazine focused on the documentary;
• a newspaper advertisement for the documentary.
If you choose the trailer option you may well have to film more footage, however, as trailers are so formulaic in their structure it will be easier to edit and to create a product with a strong sense of verisimilitude.
Once you have decided on which format film or TV programme you are going to focus on, prepare a detailed textual analysis on an example that you really like/admire/think you want to emulate.
You need to:
1. Embed a link of the documentary in your blog
2. Screen shot at least 6 key frames that you really like
comment on them identifying the following;
camera shot & movement
mise-en-scene
action
Representation
voiceover
INTERVIEWS With subject/expert
STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES Stock, historical, or archival footage
Re-enactment
Narrator / voice-over
Who is telling the story?
Scripted dialogue
INFORMATION SOURCES Were there attempts to persuade?
Were factual claims made?
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
5 modes of documentary
Theorist Bill Nichols identifies five types of modes of documentary:
Expository,
Observational,
Participatory,
performative and reflexive.
Research these six types and find a link to an extract for each one.
Try looking here at the BFI for suggestions
Expository,
Observational,
Participatory,
performative and reflexive.
Research these six types and find a link to an extract for each one.
Try looking here at the BFI for suggestions
Tasks to complete and some influential documentary trailers.
7. An extract from an original documentary TV programme, lasting approximately five minutes, together with two of the following three options:
• a radio trailer for the documentary;
• a double-page spread from a listings magazine focused on the documentary;
• a newspaper advertisement for the documentary.
All research and planning should be documented on your blog.
Ensure you make use of the interactive elements of a blog and include lots of embedded links in a variety of formats. Be mindful of the evaluation questions.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Remember you must research both your main task and your ancillary tasks.
Research Tasks Completed and uploaded to blog
Brief History of the format and genre
Documentary Film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to document reality.
Knowledge comes in different ways through our five senses. Hearing, watching, touching, smelling and tasting are the only doorways to the outer world. The wise men say that if something is not truly experienced with all our five senses, the experience will be partial, not total. Therefore in a way almost all our gained knowledge through life is partial. And maybe they are right.
If we follow that analogy, gaining knowledge through several senses simultaneously is better than through just one. So, educating through watching educational videos, in this case documentaries, is really a total different experience than educating only on books.
When watching any documentary use the following points to consider the Representation or Re-presentation of the content
Checklist
1. INTERVIEWS With subject(s) of film Yes No
Who? With experts Yes No Who (or what profession)?
2. STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES Stock, historical, or archival footage Yes No Of what?
Re-enactment Yes No Of what?
Narrator / voice-over Yes No
Who is telling the story?
Scripted dialogue Yes
No Who wrote the lines, i.e., who was really speaking? Conversational dialogue Yes No Who was speaking?
3. INFORMATION SOURCES Were there attempts to persuade? Yes No If so, what did the filmmaker(s) want viewers to think? Were factual claims made? Yes No
Could you tell what the sources for Yes No the factual claims were?
Nanook of the North
Modern documentaries[edit]
Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11
Super Size Me,
Food, Inc., Earth, March of the Penguins, Religulous, and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples.
Michael Moore
Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.
The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema verité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as the late Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials.
Historical documentaries, such as the landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1986 – Part 1 and 1989 – Part 2) by Henry Hampton, Four Little Girls (1997) by Spike Lee,
and The Civil War by Ken Burns, UNESCO awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later, expressed not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views.
Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger & Me placed far more interpretive control with the director.
The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as "mondo films" or "docu-ganda."
However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form due to problematic ontological foundations.
Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive.
Within the past decade the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.
Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged.
The making-of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced.
Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices.
The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves
read more here Top Ten Documentaries
Research Tasks
Genre theory
Textual Analysis of forms and conventions
Denotation and connotation of Language & Representation (but with brief mention of specific institution and audience)
At least three detailed examples of main task and ancillary.
Institutional structure- who produces/finances/exhibits? Audience patterns- who are the audiences for these products in general and specifically (linked to textual analysis).
How are they consumed?
Summary of your research- bullet points of which forms and conventions you will appropriate/challenge
Planning Tasks
Mood board
Storyboards
Scripts
Flatplans
Focus group
Audience Profile
Call sheets/shot lists
Rushes
Editing process
SFX/VFX
• a radio trailer for the documentary;
• a double-page spread from a listings magazine focused on the documentary;
• a newspaper advertisement for the documentary.
All research and planning should be documented on your blog.
Ensure you make use of the interactive elements of a blog and include lots of embedded links in a variety of formats. Be mindful of the evaluation questions.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Remember you must research both your main task and your ancillary tasks.
Research Tasks Completed and uploaded to blog
Brief History of the format and genre
Documentary Film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to document reality.
Knowledge comes in different ways through our five senses. Hearing, watching, touching, smelling and tasting are the only doorways to the outer world. The wise men say that if something is not truly experienced with all our five senses, the experience will be partial, not total. Therefore in a way almost all our gained knowledge through life is partial. And maybe they are right.
If we follow that analogy, gaining knowledge through several senses simultaneously is better than through just one. So, educating through watching educational videos, in this case documentaries, is really a total different experience than educating only on books.
When watching any documentary use the following points to consider the Representation or Re-presentation of the content
Checklist
1. INTERVIEWS With subject(s) of film Yes No
Who? With experts Yes No Who (or what profession)?
2. STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES Stock, historical, or archival footage Yes No Of what?
Re-enactment Yes No Of what?
Narrator / voice-over Yes No
Who is telling the story?
Scripted dialogue Yes
No Who wrote the lines, i.e., who was really speaking? Conversational dialogue Yes No Who was speaking?
3. INFORMATION SOURCES Were there attempts to persuade? Yes No If so, what did the filmmaker(s) want viewers to think? Were factual claims made? Yes No
Could you tell what the sources for Yes No the factual claims were?
Nanook of the North
Modern documentaries[edit]
Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11
Super Size Me,
Food, Inc., Earth, March of the Penguins, Religulous, and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples.
Michael Moore
Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.
The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema verité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as the late Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials.
Historical documentaries, such as the landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1986 – Part 1 and 1989 – Part 2) by Henry Hampton, Four Little Girls (1997) by Spike Lee,
and The Civil War by Ken Burns, UNESCO awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later, expressed not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views.
Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger & Me placed far more interpretive control with the director.
The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as "mondo films" or "docu-ganda."
However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form due to problematic ontological foundations.
Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive.
Within the past decade the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.
Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged.
The making-of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced.
Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices.
The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves
read more here Top Ten Documentaries
Research Tasks
Genre theory
Textual Analysis of forms and conventions
Denotation and connotation of Language & Representation (but with brief mention of specific institution and audience)
At least three detailed examples of main task and ancillary.
Institutional structure- who produces/finances/exhibits? Audience patterns- who are the audiences for these products in general and specifically (linked to textual analysis).
How are they consumed?
Summary of your research- bullet points of which forms and conventions you will appropriate/challenge
Planning Tasks
Mood board
Storyboards
Scripts
Flatplans
Focus group
Audience Profile
Call sheets/shot lists
Rushes
Editing process
SFX/VFX
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