Evaluation Q4 part 1/2

1. EVALUATION
QUESTION 4
LAURA
STANFORD
HOW DID YOU USE
MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES
IN THE RESEARCH,
PLANNING,
CONSTRUCTION AND
EVALUATION STAGES?

2.  The first piece of research I conducted after deciding what our documentary was
going to be about, was news reports of the current refugee crisis. I wanted to
further understand what was going on and to read about particular stories because
it would allow me to decide what sort of route I could go down when making my own
documentary, and what important facts and figures I should include.
 I found one particular news article on BBC News which summed up some of the key
questions that I had myself. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911
RESEARCH – MAIN TASK

3.  I then decided to create a mood board of
images that I found on Google search.
Firstly, I typed in ‘refugee crisis’, ‘Syria’,
‘asylum seekers’ and ‘children refugees’.
The pictures that came up were quite
distressing and they really shocked me.
RESEARCH – MAIN TASK

4.  Similarly, the news report of the young Syrian boy named Aylan really grabbed my
attention. He was found washed up on a beach in Turkey after the boat he was on
capsized whilst trying to escape from his war -torn country.
 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/little-syrian-boy-washed-up-6371871
 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking -image-of-drowned-
syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees
RESEARCH – MAIN
TASK

5.  During one my media lessons, I remembered hearing about the theory of
compassion fatigue. This was a particularly important concept to be aware of,
especially because of the subject of our documentary.
 Compassion fatigue is when an audience is unable to react in a sympathetic way
towards a crisis due to similar crises being overexposed. Because the current
refugee crisis is shown in the news and the media so often, we had to make sure
that our documentary was structured in an interesting way and featured different
things in order to draw the reader in.
 However, when researching compassion fatigue on Google, I came across an article
by David Campbell:
https://www.david-campbell.org/2012/02/29/the-myth-of-compassion-fatigue/
 He argued that compassion fatigue is a myth and there is no absence of
compassion, although all issues are responded to differently.
RESEARCH – MAIN TASK

6.  Documentaries aren’t all of the same type, they can each be very different so I
decided to Google search different types to help me understand what type I want
my documentary to be.
 I came across a theorist called Bill Nichols who identified 6 different types of
documentary modes: poetic, expository, participatory, observational, reflexive and
performative. Our documentary is performative because we aim to educate the
audience on the issues involved and we want to create an emotional impact on
them.
RESEARCH – MAIN TASK

7.  Similarly to the previous slide, documentaries also follow different narrative
structures. I was hoping to find various different arcs which would help me to
understand the typical structures. I came across Freytag’s Pyramid after searching
‘documentary narrative structures’ on Google.
RESEARCH – MAIN TASK
 Freytag’s pyramid
shows how a film
or documentary’s
narrative is
sectioned into 5
different parts:
 Exposition
 Rising action
 Climax
 Falling action
 Denouement
 I decided to use
this as a kind of
template when
textually
analysing
documentaries
myself.

8.  During the researching section of my main task, I textually analysed three different
short documentaries using the following websites:
 I watched Hotel 22 on https://www.shortoftheweek.com/search/?q=HOTEL+ 22
 I then found Wait for Me on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL9L2s0rGuE
 And finally, Saving Face on http://www.filmsshort.com/short-film-pages/saving-
face-daniel-junge-sharmeen-obaid-chinoy.html#.VvQpoxKLSCR
RESEARCH – MAIN TASK

9.  The very first piece of planning I completed for my main task was creating a mind
map time lapse of possible ideas for our documentary.
PLANNING – MAIN TASK
 I used my Canon 1200D camera on a tripod
facing down over the paper in order to record
myself writing out my ideas.
 I imported the recording onto
Final cut pro and used the
settings shown in order to speed
it up to create the time lapse.
 Finally, I downloaded
some royalty free music
to play over the top of the
video.

10.  Nishil and I filmed our first set of test shots around school to prepare for filming
our documentary and to test out possible establishing shots to use as well as
practising shots for interviews.
 We used a Canon 6D camera and a tripod to film the shots.
 After filming we imported all our videos into Final cut pro and added simple fading
out transitions between them, such as Fade to white and Gaussian.
PLANNING – MAIN TASK

11.  Before filming our next tests shots for audio and lighting, I used a website
I found on Google which enables you to create your own diagrams to
represent where your lighting will be, as well as the position of your
camera, audio set ups etc.
PLANNING – MAIN TASK
http://www.lightingdiagrams.com/Creator

12.  Nishil and I then filmed our
lighting and audio test
shots. We set up our
camera, two lights with
umbrella diffusers and a
boompole microphone.
Simply using our iPhone
camera, we took pictures of
our equipment set up.
PLANNING – MAIN TASK
 We then went back to the
GDWG to complete some
further test shots, and edited
them in the same way on final
cut pro then uploaded to
YouTube.
 Similarly, when we went back
again to film some cutaway
shots, we used Final cut again
to put the short videos
together.
 To put all our shots together, we imported
them into Final cut pro. We then recorded a
voiceover on our iPhones of ourselves
explaining each individual shot. We weren’t
sure if recording on an iPhone would be clear
and loud enough but I think that it turned out
really well, although we did adjust the audio
enhancement settings slightly.

13.  I created my audience research questionnaire on a word document.
 After looking at the results, I placed them into a table on Microsoft Excel and
created a variety of different charts to show the results clearly.
PLANNING – MAIN TASK

14.  We constructed our main task in Final Cut pro.
 We imported all of the videos that we filmed and began cropping
certain parts that we liked, as well as experimenting with
different transitions to put between them. We decided to use a
simple fade to black transition between all the clips.
CONSTRUCTION – MAIN TASK
 Our initial idea was to play very short clips of each person saying a
quick, significant phrase to then have the title of the documentary
followed by newspaper articles. However, we decided on a different
idea but wanted to save and upload this first cut, but unfortunately
Final Cut pro would not allow us to export it .
 We used the ‘basic title’ for all the text screens because we
wanted quite a simple effect. We chose the font ‘ virtus’ for the
text and used an off-white colour.

15.  Unfortunately, in some of our interviews there are horizontal lines going through the
shot.
 Before starting the interviews, we set up the lighting and found that with the artificial
lights switched on in the room as well as both of our lights with the umbrella diffusers,
the horizontal lines were really bad which we could see on the camera. We switched off
the rooms lights and decided to just use our own. As the lines now didn't ’t appear on
the camera we thought we had solved the problem. However, when watching the videos
back on the computer the lines were there.
CONSTRUCTION – MAIN
TASK
 We looked at many websites online and we were unable to find a software that would
remove the lines, so we tried to reduce it as much as possible.

16.  In the first cut of our documentary, we used the sound that was recorded from the
camera. However, the voices weren’t loud enough and there was a hum that was
picked up which drowned out their voices. We tried to remove this on Final Cut pro
using the audio enhancement settings shown below, but it didn’t turn out that well.
 Within our audience feedback, everyone also mentioned that the audio wasn’t
great.
 We then remembered that we used a small
dictaphone for a back up recording.
 We detached the audio that was already on
the clip and replaced it with the audio from
the dictaphone and found that it was much
louder and there was no hum either.
CONSTRUCTION – MAIN TASK

17.  For the introduction of our documentary, we wanted to include news reports playing
over the top of somebody searching on Google about the crisis.
 We searched ‘refugee news stories’ and found two videos on YouTube of news
reporters talking about the crisis. For example:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1j3EDOcPw from ABC NEWS
CONSTRUCTION – MAIN TASK
 YouTube grants something
called ‘Fair Use’ which
allows you to download and
use copy-righted videos
without getting permission
from owners, providing its
being used for particular
reasons such as non-profit
educational purposes.
 https://www.youtube.com/
yt/copyright/en-GB/fair-
use.html#yt-copyright-four-
factors

18.  We then used a YouTube downloader website called https://savemedia.com/ where
you simply copy and paste the link of the video from YouTube and it downloads it
onto your computer.
CONSTRUCTION – MAIN TASK
 As well as using this to download the
news reports, we also downloaded the
sound of a Mac computer starting up
which we found on the following link:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9qO
JqNjalE
 We also downloaded the background
music from YouTube, which we found by
searching ‘sad instrumental music’ on
YouTube.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUZe
SYsU0Uk&nohtml5=False

19.  When we downloaded the news footage, we imported them into Final Cut pro. The
video was long, so after listening for key parts, we chose to crop the first 10
seconds of the news report.
CONSTRUCTION – MAIN
TASK
 We dragged the cropped section into the timeline, and detached the audio by
right clicking on it. We then deleted the video itself and placed the audio
underneath.

20. CONSTRUCTION – MAIN TASK
 For the intro of our documentary, we used QuickTime Player to make a screen
recording of us researching about refugees and immigration etc on Google.
However, it ended up being quite a long recording, so in Final Cut we cut parts of
the recording and sped it up slightly.
 We were originally going to find newspapers with articles on the refugee crisis, and
create a montage of them on screen. However, we decided to use this software
instead because it is more relatable to ourselves and our target audience, as they
generally are more likely to read online about it rather than in a newspaper.