Conclusion

Conclusion 

Now my group and I have finished our documentary, this post will evaluate and conclude our final project that we created. The documentary I have created explores themes that I have never looked at before and although I have created short films before, I have never created a non-fiction documentary. This meant that researching into themes was important as I had no previous experience or ideas. Choosing to base our documentary on international students at university turned out to be successful as it looks at an issue that not many British students would normally think about. Also, the fact that our target audience was also students was useful as it meant we could relate to how we were making it. 

One of my favourite moments of the documentary is the opening as we portray the location and settings with establishing shots of the University of Sussex. These panning shots work well with the non-diegetic background music and voice over. 

The fact that the three interviewees then introduce themselves portrays to the audience who the main speakers will be. It also makes it seem more catchy, as in our rough cut there is a lot of diegetic dialogue from the interviewees, which means it is harder for the audience to follow what they are saying.

Another part I find interesting is the screenshots of newspaper headlines that relate to Brexit. I really like this bit as originally we planning to film headlines from hard copies of newspapers and these would be black and white. Furthermore, the bright and bold headlines work really well as they draw the audiences attention to what they say. The final headline we display is this:

I believe this is really effective as the papers are moving apart from each other and this is the last one that appears in the middle. The fact that the papers are splitting apart links to the headline 'A Tragic Split', along with the tear in the centre. 

One thing I don't like is the non-diegetic background music as the acoustic piece is quite simple. It does go with the tone of the documentary, as it is neither to happy or sad - however, it is not how I imagined. If I were to improve on my documentary, I would change this as we ran out of time and were unable to compose our own piece. Doing this would have been ideal as we would have been able to get it exactly how we imagined. 

To conclude, I am happy with the overall mise en scene, editing, camera work and sound in our project; believe that we linked our documentary to the brief given successfully. However, if we had more time then there would still be some improvements to make. 

Editing #4

Editing #4

As we are nearing the deadline of our documentary, we spent today finishing off the edit and cleaning up any small bits that weren't right. Our edit has really come together now and we made sure there were no obvious jump cuts in the interviews that distract the audience. We hid these with cut aways on the university and interviewees in their everyday lives. 

We also added non-diegetic background music to the edit and we used a piece of royalty free music from YouTube. This acoustic guitar music goes with the tone of the documentary, as well as the pace of the panning shots. 

In terms of the credits, we used a plain black background with a white font as the simplicity matches our documentary. 

We included the film title, our names, and the interviewees who were involved in making of the documentary. This concludes the process of editing in the post production of our documentary 'Why England?'. 

Release Forms

 Release Forms 

Here are signed copies of release forms from the interviewees:

Editing #3

Editing #3

Since screening our rough cut and watching other groups documentaries, we decided to make some changes to our own. We noticed that other groups used a lot more interviewees in theirs than we did so we experimented with the different interviews we had and added in a new one. 

These are the three interviewees we have chosen to include in the final documentary. We have also changed the structure as now all the interviewees introduce themselves at the beginning and then go on to answer the questions after multiple cutaways. 

Screening Feedback

Screening Feedback 

Today we screened the rough cut of our documentary to a small group of 18-21 year olds in order to gain some feedback and ideas of how to develop the product. 

Here is the rough cut: 

As our product is unfinished we explained the music we were going to insert and that we were going to add a voice over to introduce the topics. We received some positive feedback on the interviews and the transitions weren't noticed due to the cut aways we used. People also liked the panning shots that the documentary starts off with. 

As we are unsure on what music to insert, it was suggested that we use some ukulele instrumental as non-diegetic background music as this will be more upbeat and neutral that piano music, which comes across more sad and dramatic. 

Fonts

Fonts 

In terms of fonts for our documentary, we want to use one that is simple for our main title as this introduces the film to the audience. I have been looking at sites that allow you to use fonts for free, including DaFont.com. I have found this font that I like and think looks effective with our film title, as well as in the credit of the documentary. 

Voice Over

Voice Over 

We have decided our voice over will be spoken by an international student in our group so that they can speak in first person about their experience at Sussex. They will go onto introduce the interviewees as students at Sussex and this will start the question of why they choose to study in England. 

Sound Research

Sound Research 

We have decided that in terms of sound in our documentary we are going to have non-diegetic instrumental music. This is because if the background music has lyrics, the audience will be distracted from what the interviewees are saying. I have been researching into royalty free sounds in order to find the perfect track for the documentary. One is called 'Energy' and the guitar music gets with our documentary, however it is quite fast paste so I will have to see how it works with the edit. 

Another piece I find interesting is called 'Memories' as this has a slower pace and matches the tone of the documentary. 

Moodboard

Moodboard 

As I want to get a better idea of how the final documentary will look I decided to create a moodpboard. This has allowed me to look at how the final shots will look and if we need to film any more to add. 

We have used establishing shots similar to these displayed above to portray the settings of the documentary to the audience. The interview screen grabs from Google above are similar to ours as we positioned the camera to the interviewee in a similar way to this. We also have them looking off to the side as this creates continuity and the shots will all flow in this direction.