Evaluation Question 4

RESEARCH

I felt within myself I conducted a lot of research before creating my documentary. As previously mentioned I was always initially drawn to the style of talking head as realistically I believe that was the most realistic type of documentary to produced which if was successful would look authentic and proficient. After watching a number of documentaries from this genre I created a PowerPoint Pitch to present to my peers and teacher the initial ideas I had. The feedback I received made me confident in my idea and I continued to pursue it. Basing the idea of my documentary around an up and coming performer I knew I had to look at existing documentaries from this genre in depth to look at what conventions were common. I began looking at existing media products online on websites such as YouTube and Netflix as well as looking on Sky Store on the television. Following this research I found a number of documentaries, which focused on performers and their rise to fame. On Netflix I found ‘Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’ which I felt was a fantastic style model for my documentary.  I spent a lot of time analysing this particular documentary in depth, noting down some conventions, which I believed looked successful and worked well. Once I had conducted this research on this documentary I uploaded my findings online to Blogger http://abbietoyntonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/in-depth-documentary-analysis-justin.html After the research stage I was confident with the initial idea I had thought of.

PLANNING

Before planning anything in depth for my documentary. I created my Practical Production Schedule on Microsoft Excel, which would help me with time management and provide with me a list of everything I had to complete by the final deadline. The Schedule made me think I needed to consider costume types, locations, titles etc. before creating them.  I had already decided I wanted my friend Emma Custis to star in the documentary as she is loves to perform and has existing knowledge of this field. I had already contacted her via iMessage and she was happy to play this role, as it would help her for experience etc.  She was happy to travel with me to any location (within reason) and wear what I told her, so I had full control over the appearance of my documentary.  I had made the decision on locations to be local and accessible to us both. I took pictures of the locations via iPhone as it provided a clear enough picture.  I also asked Emma to take pictures of her living room, where I planned to film with her iPhone and send to me over iMessage so I could see if it was suitable for what I had in mind. I posted these images on Blogger http://abbietoyntonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/a-total-talent-locations.html.  Once I had sorted the locations I had to carefully pick the costumes, which Emma and other characters featuring in my documentary would wear.  I believed the costumes which the characters was important as it would reflect their character types. I knew Emma being a successful young artist needed to dress tidy and luxuriously with clothes from high end clothes such as Zara and Topshop.  I used the Internet to go on these clothing websites www.topshop.com and www.zara.com to find which clothes were currently in fashion and match them to Emma’s existing wardrobe to create a fresh new image. Once these stages were completed I created a shot list and rough script outline, which I created on Microsoft Word and copied onto Blogger. 

PRODUCTION AND POST PRODUCTION

During the filming stages of my production 2 cameras were used, the first being a Nikon D3100 that was a really reliant aspect to the filming stages. The second camera which I used for certain shots was a Canon EOS 1100D which I found wasn't suitable for documentary filming as particular shots inside appeared as blurry, and I had to re film particular scenes with the Nikon D3100. Throughout the majority of filming I used a tripod to steady the movement of the camera during the recording of talking head interviews.

In the post production stages there were a variety of media technologies, which contributed to the final appearance of my production. Adobe Premiere was the programme, which I used the most throughout the process. I was familiar with the programme after using it regularly for approximately 3 years. Here I edited all my footage, this including editing sound, cutting clips, adding additional sound e.g. voiceovers/soundtracks. To transfer my footage from the camera the most efficient method was using a USB converter, which allowed transferring the media off the SD card straight my laptop. Last year I faced a number of issues working on the shared school computers as rendering files was time consuming and at times my work failed to save. This year I wasn’t prepared for issues like this to arise so made the decision to work on my own laptop, which is an Apple Mac Pro, this also gave me an opportunity to edit whenever I wanted as it was always accessible to me and didn’t have to wait until the school computers were available to use. I backed all my work up on a Toshiba hard drive so I wasn’t at risk of losing any work. I used program Format Factory to convert my files into MP4 so they were compatible to use with Adobe Premiere. When it came to record my Voice of God voiceovers I used my iPhone, as the quality appeared to be good. I then emailed myself via Office 365 so I could access the files via my laptop. Particular aspects, which featured on blog, were created using other websites. All sound clips where posted via SoundCloud which is a popular music sharing website, the presentation of the clip made it easy for the viewer to start and stop the audio. All sound effects and soundtracks I searched for and downloaded from YouTube using www.youtube-mp3.org. Some images were created into a GIF online which displayed numerous images flashing, which I believed at times was a neater presentation opposed to a large number of images. 

EVALUATION
Throughout writing my evaluation I have continued to use numerous media technologies. I wrote my evaluation on Microsoft Word and copied and pasted it onto Blogger.  The images, which I have included, have been edited together using Adobe Photoshop, making them more visually appealing as apposed to being straight saved from the Internet. As well as images I have included snippets of my final production through GIFs.  I have continued to use aspects, which I have used through all my post production stages including GIFs and SoundCloud clips.  The titles I created on Microsoft Word by downloading font 'A Little Sunshine’ from the Internet.