Research on documentaries

I started with some of the people on my contacts list on Facebook, which is a younger generation target, which is also our primary audience. I didn't get many at first, but once I got on to Facebook at the right time of the week and time of the day (evening), I got some replies.

 

 

 

 

 



To further extend our research we each did a Facebook status allowing us to get responses from different people or different ages, genders, ethnicities etc. Below is the research from Dakota, she is using her mothers account, so that she was able to get a older audience, to wider the range. They seemed to really like what she wanted, evidently resulting in lots of comments.

Research into focus groups

Voice over

Firstly our group has thought of the pace of each voice over, that will be included... Although talking about the voice over has then created more questions for us:

Who will it be?
Male or female?
Location?
Will we be able to see the person talking? At all?
Does this voice over tell us everything about the documentary?
Is it biased to what we are saying?

Each question needed to be answered...

Which is why we have decided to do lots of research on voice overs and who we think can inspire our outcome of our voice over.

David Attenborough



Jewish mum of the year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XUH6CnF-PE


Me and my group and talking about someone who can do different accents and has a strong voice, therefore we are leaning towards a male. We are hoping to get out media teacher to step in, as he has many voices and is a strong speaker. We won't see him, just hear his voice over, the images and recordings, to illistrate them. We were also talking about an alternative; a younger voice, perhaps someone who is part of our target audience. We thought about it being a young black boy, which is something that has never been done before on TV, which means we are going against some of the conventions. This would perhaps appeal to our audience more, becuase they are getting involved.

Title research

Last minute scheduling

Location: Library

Time: 9:50-11:10

Crew member: Dakota

Date: Wednesday 12th December 2012

Whats to be done: Observational shots; People typing, checking their phones, watching the amount of tabs they have open etc.

Location: Art room

Time: 3:10-

Crew member(s): Victoria and Ali

Date: Thursday 13th December 2012

Whats to be done: The paper cut outs for the camera

Location: 004

Time: 9:50-

Crew member(s): Ali and Victoria

Date: Tuesday 18th December 2012

Whats to be done: Focus Group (Planning and recording)

Questions for our focus groups:

These questions will be asked once the focus group has seen what we have so far, in terms of our documentary and edit.

16-21 (Primary audience):

1. Would you watch this documentary? If so, why?
2. Do you think you are effected by this subject?
3. Were you interested within the first minute?
4. Have you learnt anything from this?
5. Do you understand what is going on?
6. Do you have anything that may help us to improve?

22-27:

1. How did you find the editing of the documentary?
2. Has your opinion changed, in terms of addiction?
3. Do you think it relates to you, in any way?
4. Can you see a possible change in yourself?
5. Are you still interested in technology?
6. Do you think we could improve our editing?

28-35 (Secondary audience):

1. Can you see this affecting your children? If you have any
2. After watching this, do you think it does indeed affect all of us?
3. Can you notice a possible change in yourself or perhaps in your children?
4. Do you use different types of technology?
5. How well do you cope with new technology?
6. Do you think we could improve anything?

Our focus group profiles

Although we now know who our audience is going to be for our focus group, it may not be that easy to find and record them. It is likely that we will manage to get more viewers that are of the ages of 16-18 because we are in a school/college enviroment, however this will be then intense on our target audience for our documentary. This will then help my group and I when editing the rest of the documentary.

What the voice over will say (first draft)

This is Kyreece

 

He is your average healthy, bubbly 5 yearold.

 

Kyreece spends 5 hours after school vigorously playing, watching andconsuming different types of mediaeveryday.

 

 With a growing concern of childrenspending vast amounts of time on theonline and playing video games, should we be concerned about our children’s health?

 

In this documentary we explore the themeof addiction and how this idea of addictionaffects Kyreece. Is he addicted to differenttypes of media? Can it be controlled?

 

OR 

 

In this documentary we explore how exposure to different types of technology affects people, including Kyreece. Can hisaddiction to technology be resolved? Can it be controlled?

Questions for our voice over...

Who is Kyreece
Once we had the first draft of out documentary to show our teacher, he decided that it was time we started creating more of a journey, so that there are many questions to be asked and then answered throughout. These questios are supposed to be for our voice over to say over certain recordings and images, to illastrate what it is trying to say.

Gaining more audience

My group thought that advertising our documentary on a radio station may help more with viewings and interests. To do this I looked at the most popular radio stations in the UK:

1. BBC Radio 2 (13.9m listeners every week)
2. BBC Radio 1 (11.2m)
3. BBC Radio 4* (10.8m)
4. Heart (7.3m)
5. Capital (6.8m)
6. BBC Radio 5 live* (6.3m)
7. Classic FM (5.4m)
8. Kiss (4.4m)
9. Magic (3.7m)
10. Smooth Radio* (3.7m)

Using these statistics will help us when chosing the right radio station to broadcast on. Radio 2 seems to be the one most listened to during the week; more than 13 million people listen to it every week, compared to Smoot Radio where just over 3 million people listen per week. We need to get as many people interested as possible, so get our message across. We are addicted to making our notion known!

What gets our audience interested?

We though magazine front covers, to draw them in on the first page. Our advertisement would need to attract mainly the younger generation. So would it be something as cramped as the Top of the Pops front cover?:

Or as simple as this Indie magazine cover?:

Either one would work well, I think. Due to the fact that there are so many ways you could make something stand out that was on a simple page, just having an eye catching  colour, or outrageous title, could draw lots of attention. However, something as crazy as the Top of the Pops one would appeal to what we are trying to get across. The fact that everyone is addicted to everything; the notion that having many things happening at once, makes for a crazy and cramped mind. For example; having your phone next to you whilst on the laptop, whilst listening to music and watching the TV. That may be a little over the top, but its what some people do. Creating a lively front cover or poster would help to outline everything in one place, with the colour, images, font, title, description etc.

Video games addiction research

Possible titles

My Kid is Addicted

The Curious Case of the Addicted Child

The Kid and the Drugs

My Kid Loves Drugs/All Our Kids Are On Drugs

Our Kids Love Drugs

These titles are just to make me and the group think about possible titles for our documentary. Something that reflects the documentary and something that can attracted the audience with a shocking title, like; My Kid Loves Drugs! 

Font styles

I think that this font would go well with our documentary theme because its quite intriguing to the audience. Although it is kind of "movie like", which wasn't what we wanted because we are making a documentary; rather than a movie that could be something quite scary...looking at the name and style of the font. 

This is the type of style me and my group like the best out of the three we've chosen; this is because its simple but its not like your everyday font; which is what our documentary wants to get across; as our documentary isn't something that has been talked about on TV before. However, addiction has, but the unseen font will allow the audience to see that this will be something original. 

This is another font that I really like, just because its not seen in many documentaries on TV, its quite unusual. Even the fact that its not filled in with black, could reflect the fact that the audience are going to look into our documentary rather than just watch it and not understand or look deeper. It will be something that is clear to everyone, which is emphasised by this font. 

Whats next?

What's next? on Prezi

Examples of traffic shots

To be able to get the affect of traffic transitions I would need to take a series of pictures on the camera with the 'shutter speed' element to take photos. This element of the camera doesn't work when recording, because we are un able to get the light blurring in cars and buildings.

We would like to use this technique in our documentary to use during transitions as it shows our audience the journey of discovery of Dopamine and the journey that we have taken to get that conclusion.

Ali's shooting day Friday-Sunday

Friday- "Was all about setting up the different locations of where he was going to shoot... For example in his house, putting the camera in the right places, getting his nephew in the right places at the right time. In order to observe him properly. I watched Kyreece play games and watch TV, and did running shots, to discover what I needed to find out."

Saturday- "Next I got Kyreece (aged 5) ready to go to the park to watch him play around with a football or on the swings, showed him acting his age. Until I had problems with the camera again, which is when I decided to go home and get some more shots of him playing with the laptop, phone and watching TV. I started researching everything about the camera, trying to find out what was going on with it, so that next time I will be able to overcome this problem. I found so much whilst doing this..."



During Ali's research he found many different techniques to use in out documentary to show the addiction to gaming and TV. For example the 'Packman' one, which makes the lights in the shot to become that shape, which will emphasise the fact that we all see what we addicted to all the time. The fact that it makes it looks like it's in the sub-conscience, so always thinking about it, even in your sleep.

The music tone in the background is particularly interesting to us; the piano is a soft under tone to the quite eye catching colours. We would like to use this kind of music in our documentary, so that it doesn't take away meaning from the actual shots but allows something to keep the audience interested whilst they are watching- to allow something to fill the space when we are taking transition or establishing shots.

This might be something that the audience can watch whilst the narrator is talking, so that the audience can view watch the narrator is trying to illustrate- explaining what they are looking at, or explaining the next transition.

Shooting Day 4 Friday- Sunday

On this shooting day, Ali-director, will be filming his nephew and oberseving him as he watches his favourite programm and plays his favourite game. The rest of the crew is thinking that this will go really well; because Kyreece will be at his house most of the time, which gives him great oppotunities to get some good footage. Me as the camera woman, I'm kind of missing out, as I am too busy for these dates. Ali will show us the footage on Tuesday for out next meeting, hopefully it looks good and has the kind of effects I'm hoping it to have.

When you just see something amazing...

Just thought it was something nice to look at...

Evaluation of Shooting Day 3

Evaluation of Shooting Day 2

Evaluation of shooting day 1

Today was the day where we went to Liverpool street to shoot establishing shots and get some interviews from random people. This was a difficult process to start off with because my team were a little shy to start talking to people. It was also cold and getting dark very quickly so isn't wasn't going too well, in order for us to get some good interviews we needed to just work with the public.

This might not have been the best time for us to starrt recording as it was rush hour and no one could really talk to us because they needed to catch a train. Despite the fact that we had numorous problems with the camera, resulting in us having to ask people with cameras what was going on, we also tried the internet at the point; where we got this from Youtube:



However, despite the fact that we had a few shooting and confidence trouble at the beginning; we decided that it was time for us to start talking to people, so that we could just go home, becuase it was so freezing. We started to have fun after that, more and more people started to come and talk to us and give us the answers we wanted.

After understanding the camera a bit more, we had decided to try and shoot some establishing shots; although this was quite tricky beacuse we want to go in the middle of the road and shoot on coming traffic, coming from both ways. We found this quite difficult because we couldn't get the tripod to stand properly, nor would the camera stay on it, so the frame was shaky and we couldnt get a clear shot. Eventually; it was a matter of getting as many people to interview as we could. Which we did and got some really interesting answers.

Shooting Schedule Table
Shooting Schedule 13th

Moving Forward

We've had to more a lot of the timing forward for the shooting schedule because we had a few problems with the cameras and finding the right people at the right time. Although this isn't too much of a problem, we are still behind on shooting, which means we will need to get through the next few days very quickly...

Shooting Schedule

Our times, dates and locations for each shooting; unfortunately I wasn't present on this date, so I was unable to find out whether they have done the first interview. However, I will be in touch with the rest of my group to find out whether they have and if they need anymore help.

Shot List

 We wanted to establish exactly what we were shooting, where, how long each of the shots would be so we coudl get an idea of what our documentary is going to look like.

Unfortunately we are still unsure of how we are going to end our documentary, we are hoping to talk to our teacher, who was also a little worried, about a possible ending.

2nd Draft of Storyboard

More detailed and with pictures to help visualise what we want it to look like...

9/11 Archive Footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8Mz0_x7313I

We would like some archive footage in the documentary and I thought something like this? The idea of it being on a mobile phone or amature recording, would create the 'real' affect for the audience. However, our doumentary is about today and archive footage about this might be a little 'out of date', we will need contempory opinions and stats, to help with discovering Dopamine...Although, it does have the best effect on audiences, making them believe more.

Inspiration for scientific explaination

http://www.youtube.com/embed/90cj4NX87Yk 

My group and I, particularly liked the part that shows Dopamine effecting the brain cells, this will hopefully give the audience a visual effect of how the drug travels. Also, it will illistrate how and where is sreads, with a voice over telling the audience what is happening.

Quick Change

This isn't really a problem, but it will impact our final documentary. Kyreece, the child that will be the subject in the documentary has changed his addiction, he is now focusing a lot of his time on Temple Run, which he plays constantly when he comes home from school. However, this is something we can get around because we are going to film him watching his favourite TV program and then show the audience that his addiction has changed because Dopamine is making him move on to something different.

This of course, could have been as a result of the excitment of new technology, but we will come to the conclusion that it is because of Dopamine.

Permission

A forwarded e-mail was sent to us from a 'teacher expert' that we needed to interview:

Drafted questions for a target audience

1	Do you watch documentaries?
2	What kind of documentary do you watch?
3	How many times a week would you say you watch them?
4	Do you think that we could all learn from some documentaries?
5	Would you watch a fun and factual documentary on the brain and neuroscience?

These question are pretty vague, but I will come up with some more that will answer the question properly. Also I think that I should do more yes/ no questions just to make the statistics easier to read.

Characters!

Narrator: Ali Cornwall
Child addicted: Kyreece Cornwall
Teacher experts: Miss Lewis and Mr Mccally
Random people at Stratford Centre

Ali as the narrator will help the audience of our documentary to understand what it is all about, which will broarden our documentaries, getting more people interested and educated. Kyreece is the nephew of Ali, which will allow more connection between them making filming a lot easier. We will observe 5 year old  Kyreece and find out what we are looking for...an answer!

Each teacher expert will be asked a series of question to help understand the importance of Dopamine and what is its scientific justification for its presents.

The random people in Stratford Centre will be just What is Dopamine? And they will hopefully come out with an answer that we can use to prove that we don't actually know what it is.

Storyboard- First Draft

We simply took our ideas and worked them into order of what event goes where. There will be a more visual storyboard in another post, to help clarify.

Combined Treatment

In a time where technology rules all, can we say that is not our obsession with technology but something psychological? Have you ever sometimes considered yourself to be an “addict” of some kind?

This film will be a full length documentary about the role of TV on young children. TV is something which is part of our everyday lives and as research suggests too much of it is bad for our children. However, our behaviour towards TV and internet is actually because of the largest drug that is released from our brain. We follow 5 year old Kyreece; and his behaviour towards his favourite TV show “Jake and the Netherland Pirates” From observing Kyreece this show is clearly the only thing he cares about in the whole entire world. This is 5 years of his life sat; glued to the TV screen. The documentary clearly stresses that his addiction to this show is a domestic problem and that any attempt to conceal him from it proves fatal.

The film then takes viewers on a journey, to see why Kyreece acts in this particular way. Some will say ‘Kids will be kids’ but maybe there is possibly a particular reason as to why he acts this way? To be addicted means to be addicted to a particular substance or a specified thing or activity. Can we suggest that Kyreece is perhaps “addicted” to this TV show?

 ­­­­______­­­­__ will show the viewer’s our search to find out why Kyreece is so addicted to TV. We are told information from experts such a psychologist and biologists who tell us that there is actually a psychological reason behind Kyreece’s unacceptable behaviour. We see them in their natural environment of a lab and a classroom to show that they are professionals. This is where Dopamine comes in, an internal drug released in the brain by our body helping fuel our desires. An animation breaks down what the expert has says and helps the viewer to understand the effects of the drug. We see a clear effect the drug has on humans discovering that there is a strong possibility that dopamine plays a part not only in his addiction to TV but ourselves.

So clearly not only is Kyreece addicted to TV but we are too! We then discover how not just Kyreece, but teenagers and adults are also affected by it. At this point we see what creates our desire to view more and more of something with observations of people on the internet and doing various other things. We are then left to question: “Are we really addicted?”

It’s crucial to inform the world of their unknown addiction to drugs. What’s your level of addiction?

'Everything is Incredible'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqZ56-RMbNc&feature=player_detailpage

This establishing shot, tells the story from the begining which is an inspiration to me, as it allows me to be drawn into the story. With the voice over coming in just as the person talking comes to the camera, showing the emotions and the man telling the audience the story we so want to hear, because of the beautiful set up. The dark clouds, moutains, falling rain; tells us this documentary won't be too happy, but about someting 'Icredible'.

My establishing shot example

I did this whilst on my journey back to London, everything is quite fast pace because i'm on the motor way. However, this was something me and my group decided upon, because we wanted to try and get passing traffic to make it look like time was passing, although it never got darker or lighter, things still moved quite quickly.

Example of a establishing shot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E595Y4FDZ-c

The establishing shot allows the audience to see where the actors will be placed and an overview of their surroundings. It helps the directors to set the scene, for any type of documentary of TV drama. This establishing shot tells the audience that the film could be set around mountains and nature or it could just be where some of the characters live, reflecting the way they like to live.

'The Human Mannequin'

The human mannequin analysis from Victoria_Johnson

However...

There was still TV!!!

I managed to watch a documentary that could relate to the documentary that I will work on...
'The Human Mannequin'- mainly about the facts of her illness and her life. This relates to my documentary because we will be discussing a drug that everyone has, we will be mainly talking about the drug itself- looking for facts and figures, but also looking at someone in particular, who uses it the most.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-human-mannequin/4od

Problems- Holiday!

The struggle to keep up with bogging!
On holiday, where there is NO internet and there had to just observe and take pictures and record some stuff, to make me feel better, after not being able to blog.

It wasnt all bad, the holiday wasn't bad, here are some snaps:

 Just as we were leaving, the sun decided to come out, so I quickly got a shot on the beach!








We were staying in these little cabin things, that were absolutely freezing, but still great fun.

Robert Flaherty perhaps?- Man of Aran

A wonderful place to shoot, but not really within our budget (we don't have one!!)
Beautifully shot Rob!

More Dorothy Fadiman- Moment by Moment

The beautiful music- subtle/ but moving (emotional)
Something I could take notes on- for my documentary perhaps?

Interesting how it begins with a black screen and how it fades out with music running the whole way through. This is something we would like to look at in our documentary because it can give the audience something soft to engage them in from the start. This would help the edit flow more and give it more of a beginning than we have at the moment. I would like to see this happen, even if it doesn't work.

Dorothy Fadiman- Why Do Kids Love School?

What is Dopamine?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that occurs in a wide variety of animals, including both vertebrates and invertebrates. In the brain, this phenethylamine functions as a neurotransmitter, activating the five types of dopamine receptors—D₁, D₂, D₃, D₄, and D₅—and their variants. Dopamine is produced in several areas of the brain, including the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area. Dopamine is also a neurohormone released by the hypothalamus. Its main function as a hormone is to inhibit the release of prolactin from the anterior lobe of the pituitary.

http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Dopamine.aspx

Our Idea

To create this documentary I have a team of three working with me: Dakota, Ali and myself. Our documentary will ask the question of; Why is Kyreece so addicted to "Jake and the Netherland Pirates"? We will answer it through an explository mode, and we will discover one of the biggest drugs in the world, that everyone is addicted to.

That drug is Dopamine!!!

Getting the "Truth"

Documentaries...

1. Represent someones visions of the truth
2. Shape the truth
3. Is raw archive footage mpre truthful the staged scenes
4. Are more truthful than fiction
5. Capture the truth

There is some kind of order to these, but the order can be changed to the different opinions of audiences and documentary makers.

The truth is, a documentary is not necessarily what documentary makers strive for or obsess about, but more of an idea of the truth, in the distance. Documentary makers aim for 'verismimitude'- something like the truth, a version of the truth. Could be a very strong opinion on something or something that is completely biased and one sided.

Now a days we seem more about style and the way something is shot an edited, rather than finding the moral/truth of the documentary. The digital technology that we now have compared to the 1960's is incredible, for example:

• the cameras and microphones should be as close to events as possible, with the film or tape running continuously- we could say that now, a microphone can be quite a distance away from the event/ action and it will still be possible to hear what was going on. Digital cameras now have zoom lenses which allow the users to be a sufficent distance away and be able to see quite clearly, what is being presented.
• everything that happens was recorded, nothing was rehearsed or scripted- we seem to now want everything to be planned and rehearsed, to perhaps contradict the notion that we dont necessarily want the truth. Everything has be shot serval times and shown to the producers and directors before it is even gone to the editing room...

In the 1960's digital cameras looked like this <<<<

Meaning it was very difficult to get around, resulting in less shooting- however, the longer they left the camera in the room, the more footage they would get, then created the some of the best documentaries.

2012 cameras look like this ^^^ smaller and mobile, easy to get around and shoot things in tight spaces, resulting in some great shots and more meaning to some of the messages that are being portrayed in a documentary.

 





 

 

Selected Treatments

'One day in September'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUax6vEEdac

What technical and symbolic codes are used and for what reason?

Icons: set the scenes and the different notions that surround the Olympic games; the Olympic rings, the clips of part of many races and events. Israel held its first Olympic games in 1972, this was a very important time for everyone in the world and the uniform, strict rules within the accomodations reflected its importance. To show the world that Israel ran this Olympic games, everything was the colours of their flag: blue and white. All the workers and volunteers were dressed in a uniform that emphasised the idea that the Olympics was something that everyone needed to take seriously.

Setting: used to inform the audience about the time and what an important event it was and how its brought the whole world together. The setting was obviously in Israel, which allowed the audience to know where this important moment was coming from. The setting is also used to tell the audience about the disaster that occured at this time, the horrific images that appared, proved how bad the terrorist attack was. The darkness of the documentary portrayed to the audience that it was a dark and terrible time for everyone there, and positioned the audience to feel sympathy for what happened. However, it wasn't always dark and terrible, the begining lead the audience to believe that it was to be about the Olympics only and not what awful things that surrounded it.

The interviews of some of the victims and some of the victims families were shot mainly in darkness of just as a voice over, showing the gruesome pictures as they spoke, proviking the audience to feel angry towards the terrorist and sympathy for who died.

Sound: used for the audience to hear the noises that the victims would of heard at the time, to again emphasise the pain they went through. The voices that were used as voice overs for many of the interviews, were so that they were unrecognisable to the rest of world, making the attack feel even more terrorising becuase even now they are still hiding themselves.

What documentary techniques does the director use and for what reason?

Expository- this is done through lots of archive footage to illistrate the message the director was trying to send. The footage was mainly of the Olympic games itself, the athletes coming into the statium, the flags, the different events taking place etc. first of all. Then the archive footage of the terrorist attack, the kiddnaping of the athletes and the gruesome images after they had killed them. The narration was over the top of these images and archive footage, so that the 'God-like' voice over can tell the story. The voice came from a news reporter at the time. The 'talking head' of the victims and the victims families helped explain the story, which gave the audience a better understanding of the trauma they went through.
The different images, were put together in a sequence to help put the story together; the images if news paper headlines were used to help illistrate how bad these events were.

Going towards observational showed many hand held cameras, told us another story. The story became a little more real as the audience saw the camera move because a terrorist was looking their way, or the feeling of the camera man being frustrated at the situation; wanting to know whats going on.

Who was the target audience and what were the audience appeals?

The audience of this documentary was to the majority of the population; as this was an horrific time and it must have been shown on the news around the time and because the Olympic games means a lot to most people, everywhere. This was told in a lot of detail, meaning that the audience must have been wide because it explained it for the people that wasnt around at the time or wasnt totally aware of the situation. The constant horrific images and archive footage, alllowed the audience to immediately be interested and wanting to know what was going to happen.

Dicuss the notions of realism and objectivity and subjectivity:

Realism- This documentary has many realistic moments within it, the footage and flashing images show the events that would normally happen at the Olympics and then the events that occurd during the attack. The interviews deffinitley showed the most realistic parts of the documentary, because the story is coming from people that were actually there and people that had family members that were involved. Although, the voices wern't their voices, showed realism slipping away.

Influences and Inspriations

http://mystreetfilms.com/#/films/watch/528

'Our Nations Sons'

What question was the director trying to answer with the film?

With this film the director was perhaps trying to answer the question of: What do teenagers really look like, now a days?

How did they tell the stroy visually?

Visually they told their story by making sure that we, as the audience, saw the process of what they were trying to create. For example the panning shot of when they were putting up the image of the boy on the wall, reflected on how much they felt about this issue on such a large scale. the different close up shots of each boy, made the audience feel connected to the issue and almost respected them for this documentary straight away. The lighting of the film allowed the audience to see every thing very clearly, which could reflect on what they were trying to say, that the older generation should see teenagers in a different and more clear light.

How did sound and music contribute to their narrative?

I thought that the music wasnt to over the top, it was at a good level constantly and didnt take away any meaning from what they were trying to put across. The background noise was diegetic, which gave a more 'real' feel to the documentary. In each of the boys interviews the sound was very good, in that the audience was able to hear everything that they were saying, which made the message easier to understand.

What does this documentary inspire you to do, and not do, with your documentary?

This documentary has inspired me to use the diegetic sound to an advantage, to illistrate our main issue. Also to make sure that if we do have any interviews that the different locations are chosen specifically, so that the mise en scene can relfect the issues that we will raise. This documentary has also helped identify what I should not do with my documentary which is to have more locations, to perhaps help my audience understand out issue further.

What makes a good treatment?!

To get started?!

First we got inspiration from 'Tony Levelle'- Planning an Unscripted Documentary (writesstore.com) Where he mentioned:

• Having a script?
• Keep shooting "I shot more, and more, and more..."
• Location
• Looking at different film makers- 'Dorothy Fadiman'- Why Do These Kids Love School?/ Moment by Moment
• Making use of what we have
• Interviews/ research
• Letting the camera roll- getting unexpected footage
• Writing a treatment- so people get hooked on your film, just by reading about it
• Make shot list and shooting schedule
• Using free association
• Perhaps a blurb
• Advertisment
• More film makers- 'Robert Flaherty'- Man of Aran (1934)

Media Regulations

Who regulates the media?

Most media regulations in the media include a number of different bodies, each are mainly independent and often have conferences with the public. Most are seen as journalists or have been recognized by the media.

Why does the media needs regulating?

Regulation is the means for free expression for information the modern society. The media needs regulating because of the protection of public order and the protection of individual rights. In other words keeping ‘normal’.

Should media texts be subject to censorship?

Media text shouldn’t be subject to censorship, because we have a right in modern society to free speech and keeping private conversations private. However I do think that in some aspects it should be at least monitored, much like e-mailing, whenever anything sounds sinister, it should be ‘flagged’ and explored.

What are the key issues relating to media influence (Uses and Gratification Theory, Desensitisation, Cultural Regulation), and how might they have affected you?

Globalisation has made a massive impact on society; the world’s technology has become something of great importance to the world we live in. It has made people much closer; it has made people become reliant on technology, to interact.

Younger children have become desensitised by what the watch on TV especially. Most of them watch things online, that aren’t something they should be watching, or they are able to watch a movie that isn’t certificated to there age. Although they aren’t allowed in the cinema they are still able to watch it once it has been released on DVD.

Not only TV effects children’s minds, the gaming world has become so much more accessible for young people. Many games require you to kill many people, although these types of games have been around for along time, you don’t necessarily see the person die, this day a age, most of what you see on screen looks very realistic and can hinder a child’s actions towards people in real life.

Is the public protected or hindered by media regulation?

The media are in some ways protected by regulation and hindered. They are hindered by media regulations because some audiences are made to feel like they are not able to watch a certain movie because its too terrible to watch, for example: 'The Human Centipede', which got banned because of it's gruesome acts of violence. However the public are then protected by media regulations because it choses not to show such horror to its audience; especially for the younger people. Although you can still find it on the internet. 

Violent Documentary- George Gerbner

 http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/mean-world-syndrome/

This documentary demonstrates George Gerbner's views on the regulation of violence, through the media. Being in Film, Music, Cartoons, Daily News etc. After Gerbner came back from the 2nd world war he started to look at violence within the media, the way its influence can effect people. He seems to think that children will see 8,000 murders before they are 16 and 200,000 acts of violence before they are 18;

We see violence many times of the day. Violence seem to have a powerful effect on children epsecially...

1938- 'War of the Worlds'; about alien invasion, scared everyone that was listening, people actually believed it because it sounded like a news report, it had such a 'profound effect upon the radio listeners'. Audiences were under major control with media violence, our society has now become a custome to the act of violence because it is shown so much; leading to the idea of Cultivation, where images shape our society, idividuals, life etc. "Cultivation studies shows that heavy viewers are more likely than lighter viewers to percieve the world as a fightening and dangerous place."

'The mean world syndrome'- People absorb what they see on film and believe that that is what is happening in real life. Audiences constantly now look over their shoulders because they believe they are under some kind of threat.

We see all these countless times on the television & the news:
Threats of war
End of time
Disease
Animal attacks
Murder
Rape
Disasters

'No body is safe'- audiences are shown so much media violence that it influences people to do these acts themselves. Or to consistanly look out, and be afraid of everything. People think that crime is so much worse than it actually is, which meant that crime rate decreased in America because people were so treffied of crime. However the Americans didnt actually believe this, becuase they were still shown so much violence within the media. People protect themselves with guns, knives etc. in certain areas of America due to the viewers fear. They feel 'comfortable and protected'.

He believed that there was a connection between violence and illegal immigrants- they don't believe that people who are not supposed to be in America should committ crime, espcially becuase they don't belong there. Illegal immigrants are seen as to be people that want to attack America, espically muslims, they are seen as terrorists; apparently there is a huge link-'Muslim extremeist terrorism'.

Black Males- are seen as violent, becuase there was some kind of increase with the African American crime rate in America. They were seen in ghettos and poverty and some issues of inequallity- the white society then started to believe that African Americans were now the result in most crimes in the inner city of America.

Terry Pratchett

This documentary really hit me and made me very emotional, but also got me thinking about different issues that could have caused problems with the public becuase the audience saw everything; the camera was in the room while a man was dying.

The whole message that I think Pratchett was trying to get across was to get people more involved with asistant killing. That in a way it is very benefical for everyone, that its not all bad. He wanted people to understand that there is so much more to it than just taking a pill.

This participartory documentary made the audience see Terry Pratchett talking to the people involved and getting in to the situations, also because this is something that he can relate to, because he also have a terminal illness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NUa0SyyyMg

The 5 modes of a Documentary!

The 5 modes

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Intorduction to documentaries

The following video was created by Louis Theroux, who went to Topeka, Kansas in America, where he followed the people who follow Christ, in the Westbro Baptist church.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9thKpXUrBvo&feature=relmfu

It was interesting to see how many young people that were following this somewhat offensive belief that all homosexuals should be punished by God. They truly believed that the word 'Fag' was the right term, which many people outside this "group" protested against.

The children seemed to be kind of brain washed into thinking that this was the right thing to do, they were made to hide their feelings; whenever they felt 'tempted', perhaps they were too afraid of being thrown out of theit 'colt'. As one child said, approximately 5 minutes in "there will always be a fight between spirit and the flesh", this shows that this child has been brought up with strong beliefs.

Families have lost many children, yet they don't seem to care, they have lost daughters, sons, parents; but none of them seem to want to get in contact because they feel that they have taken "a step away from God, into sin". There is a massive social and enviromental influence on all of the young children, for example making smaller signs for the smaller children to hold, so that they are not left out, which means that they start at a very early age, making it difficult for them to make any of their own decisions.

Documentaries!!!!

Watching documentaries that are growing rapidly on our screens, as people have become more fascinated with the idea of looking at someone elses life and watching their every move...