Tests - Supporting Material

To gain the ultimate professional look we have been looking at a website called http://www.dafont.com/ which has a number of different fonts that can help to give the article a more polished and eye catching.

We tested some fonts with our heading "Television: The Truth Revealed" to see what would be the most effective to show what kind of interview this was to be.

Secondary Article - Supporting Notes

This is our second draft to how the interview will be presented.

We have changed the way in which we have formed the interview such as adding columns and an introductory paragraph to give the background to the context of the interview.
Also we have added extra pictures such as a Television and will be adding a picture of a child watching TV.

The interview itself is more in depth and analytical to give a more professional and polished view of the documentary from both our views and the views that have been picked up from the audience feedback that we have obtained.

We wanted to make as many plans as necessary for our supporting piece because then we can look at the ways in which we can add/remove certain parts of the interview that will be beneficial to the piece, such as adding more questions to give more detail to the aspects we have left out or remove questions that are irrelevant.

Preliminary Article - Supporting Material

This is our first draft of how the interview will look.

We have initially put in positive questions that will help to make the documentary look good but we decided that, after looking at other interviews of a similar nature, we wanted to be critical of the documentary and give an honest view of what was good and what could be improved. The main aspect of the interview was what the audience was to expect.

Originally we were only going to be one sided to the topic but after deliberation we moved to making a balanced view on the documentary.

We wanted this to be a main factor that was explored so that the audience would not look at the documentary and believe that it is only focusing on the positives or negatives, with our project we explore both so that the audience can make up their own minds. That was our most important point.

Preparation for Supporting Material

For our supporting material of our documentary I have decided to create a magazine interview with both Kate and myself in the interview as the director and camera women and describing the process of planning, filming, editing and finalising our project.
We have also included our aims and expectations for the project as well as ways in which we can improve our project so that we give critical feedback to our own work.
I intend to add the interview to a well known magazine, The Guardian Weekend, so that the piece looks more professional and realistic.

Editing Documentary Clips

Seeing as our original interview material totalled to 20 minutes we have had to cut down dramatic amounts of footage to be able to keep the necessary material that will be helpful, such as positive and negative opinions about TV, so that we can still keep the remaining footage for back up resources as all the footage is relevant and useful.

We will be adding the clips from YouTube to the documentary but will only be making the clips a maximum of five seconds long and will only include three clips as a maximum both of good and bad viewing.

The general outline of the documentary is in place and we have the overall template for the documentary so that we can add the extra information in easily and think what more we could add to make the documentary as informative as possible.

Extra Research & Planning More

Currently the documentary is taking shape and looking optimistic for new material to be added such as extra interviews and information that we have recently found online.

At this moment in time we are arranging to conduct another interview with a children's TV director to gain his perspective of our topic ranging from TV shows that he has directed to today's shows that have been modernised.
We would like to hear his views on the BBC, Channel 4 and other channels and how they conduct programmes to children and what effects they might have.

Also we are in the process of writing a script for the voice over that will be in the documentary. We have looked at case studies from America, Australia and Canada and have looked at the UK's effect with TV.

By conducting more research we have more material to work with and can expand our questioning to a more professional level so that the audience can have a detailed arguement as to whether or not TV for children.

Contiuation of Film

We are in discussion to add two more interviews to the documentary. One being from a parent/parents and the other being from a children's TV director who will discuss his views on the current output of the children's entertainment industry.

Our expert source has worked with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and has worked on shows such as Jungle Run and Get Your Own Back. We will also get an extra interview with another TV expert who works on shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and Big Brother. With these interviews we can gain the perspective of children's television and television that is rapidly becoming popular with the younger generation.

Unfortunately due to busy schedules from both parties, we were unable to conduct an interview with an expert.

Preparation for Editing

We have begun to import our filmed material of interviews onto the MAC and decide what sections of each interview we will need.
We are still looking at possible clips of South Park, Family Guy & The Simpsons that we feel should be included in our project.
We want to add both good and bad clips from the programmes combined with the different opinions from the interviews that we feel should be included because they are essential to help our project expose all thoughts about TV.

Looking for Material

We wanted to have a variety of clips from well known TV shows such as: Family Guy, The Simpsons & South Park because these programmes show the violent behaviour influencing young children today. These would be the cons to our balanced arguement and would also help to support our arguements as evidence.

However to make our arguement balanced and not biased, we wanted to add the pros to the arguement showing viewers the morals and lessons that can be taught through television programmes that can relate to children.

Most of the topics and discussions in programmes such as The Simpsons talk about the views of religion and ethics. Characters are given circumstances, that could be percieved in real life, and an entire episode will be dedicated to the characters choices to show the audience the difference between right and wrong.

Episodes that explore different topics are: 'Homer vs. Lisa & the 8th Commandment'
'The Day the Violence Died'
'She of Little Faith'
'Itchy & Scratchy & Marge'

These episodes can supply the younger viewer with life knowledge and teaches them how to act in a situation. It also explores different religions to show that there are different subjects other than Christianity that can be discussed.

Further Research & Evidence

We have been looking at different documentaries to see how they are shot and how the shots are significant to the subject of the documentary.
The journalists that i have looked at are:

Louis Theroux - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2ZFR4DbC5o
Nick Broomfield - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YIWZjjEDz0
Micheal Moore - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxbRm2dS1F8

All these journalist bring to light the importance of their subject through their documentaries.

Nick Broomfield
Broomfield's early style was very 'Cinema Verite': the juxtaposition of observed scenes. He would not provide much explaination by way of voice over or text, rather letting the film talk for itself.
Broomfield's films often consist of a minimal crew, maybe one or two cameras, so the films often are of handheld quality which are good techniques for the film's reality.
With Broomfield's "Aileen", Broomfield shows the audience that although Aileen knows of her crimes she still has the timid behaviour, of whispering or crying, to sometimes suggest her innocence. This comes across to the audience as harsh yet honest reality of the situation and reminds the audience that the people featured are not actors but real people.

Louis Theroux
Theroux's films often subject around topics that are heard in society but are not discussed. The most popular are his 'Weird Weekends' and 'When Louis Met..' which observe him staying and learning about the lifes of significant people.
For example of one of these films, "When Louis Met.. The Most Hated Family in America" shows Theroux's thoughts and behaviour towards the family almost at once and would suggest that will only show his biased opinion against the family however he does bring their thoughts and beliefs to the audience so that they can decide for themselves. These techniques help the audience to gain a more balanced opinion about the people that he meets.

Micheal Moore
Moore's topics of critisising include globalization, large corporate companies, George Bush & the American Health Care system. Because of his contraversial topics and film content, he has sparked the film making industry to show that no subject is unmentionable.
Micheal Moore's "Bowling For Columbine" shows some comic sides to the situation in America and gun posession however he dabbles into the serious side of the subject to bring the harsh relity of America's freedom with guns to show the audience why the situation is a problem.

First Draft of Documentary

This is our experimental draft of our documentary that will give us the basis for development towards our final product. We have experimented with voice overs, adding text over shots and adding shots inbetween interviews.

We want to keep the film on a balanced view so that the film does not come across as bias or one sided. As seen, we have included only the disadvantages to TV but by conducting new research we have the needed research to complete the advantages to TV. We want to include experts, parents and children to gain their views, whilst having a balanced arguement.

We feel that this draft can help to mould our ideas into developing from this film, such as adding music, more text and including a variety of interviewees.

Experimenting With Interviewing Techniques

The video above is me and my classmate experimenting with different interviewing techniques to create different atmospheres for the audience. The first technique of the art teacher was used to create a positive atmosphere for the audience, we can tell this from the lighting used and the position of the interviewee in the shot, you can see that the shot is slightly shaky, this was Kate's best attempt to keep the camera as still as possible without using a tripod.
The second shot of the sixth form student walking down the corridor whilst talking was created as a tense atmosphere and and to convey to the audience that this person is very busy and maybe a professional, we had hoped to have other people to come into shot and get the student to pretend that she was signing a form or otherwise, further emphasising the interviewees professional status. This shot is often used in documentaries to mostly create tension.
The third and final technique of the interviewee sitting down is to create an opposing view of the interview. We can tell this from the content of the interviewee and the position and lighting used in the shot. The lighting above the interviewee creates shadows across his face further emphasising the point that the person doesn't agree with the interviewer. The position of the character shows the audience that the person is very confident about his views and therefore reclines in his seat.
All of these interviewing techniques were practiced to help us get a better understanding of them and help decide what of shots we would use and what atmosphere would be created in the process. Overall i think that this exercise was very helpful and that we will definitely be using some of these techniques in our final documentary.

Storyboard

We have made two storyboards for our documentary, one as a draft to look at and annotate so that we can add more ideas to the documenatry. After a brain storming session with our draft storyboard, we made our final storyboard with still images of what we would like to use for the final shot and included the technical information of how the shot should be set up and how we could move on from one shot to another using tansitions.
Overall our storyboard is still a plan because we may find that we want to add even more ideas to the documentary.

Research for Project

To get a better understanding of the effects of TV, we conducted our own research from books and the internet to gain more information that will prove useful.
Some of the books that we have read are: 'Television is Good for your Kids' by Dr. Marie Messenger Davies, 'Children and Television' by Bob Hodge & David Tripp and 'Understanding television' by Andrew Goodwin & Garry Whannel. These books have proven to be very useful in our research as they include statistics and quotes from interesting and reliable sources.
W have also looked at internet sites from news sites such as the BBC site to religious sites, expressing their open opinions, such as SSPXAsia.com.

We have collected some information from The American Academy of Paediatrics which has given us extremely useful statistics and results from tests that have been carried out relating children's behaviour or educational abilities to the effects of over watching TV or the contense of what programmes that the children viewed.

Some useful links that we found to be interesting to collect further information were:

http://www.boloji.com/parenting/00208.htm - A blog by Kamna Raj expressing her personal views of todays TV viewing and how children should not idolise the characters seen in cartoons but everyday heroes such as policemen and fire fighters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/14/tv-children-harmful-effects - A section by the Guardian questioning the true danger of TV, whether we should restrict the amount of TV a young child watches or whether we should just ignore the warnings and make our own minds up.

http://www.femail.com.au/effectoftvonchildren.htm - An article about how Disney films teach young children early life skills that, when taught early, can help children to continue using the skills they have learned and develop them as they grow up.

Planning

For our new project of "Documentaries" we have decided to do ours on the theme of 'Is TV a bad influence on young children?' which we feel will be an interesting topic to investigate. We hve started planning what, where and how we will shoot our documentary and what sort of equipment we will need such as a proffesional camera with a radio mic for dialogue.
We have also considered who we will want to interview such as parents, teachers (particularly year managers), young children and experts who will give their own opinions about TV either as a positive or a negative.

Above is our original mind map for Planning a Documentary which included our intended form for the documentary.

It set out our preliminary task of what we were to start and what we wanted to use in the documentary such as archive footage, interviews with different parties and what information would be crucial to help give the documentary more depth, such as statistics.

Research

Due to our new topic of Documentaries, i have been conducting research into well known journalists such as Micheal Moore, Nick Broomfield & Louis Theroux.
For each of these, i have researched their filmed works to get a better understanding of how to direct our documentary and what shots would be useful.
I have studied Nick Broomfield's "Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer" which emphasised the strong tone and excellence of the documentary from the camera angles to the set up ofa shot.
Also i have looked at Louis Theroux's "The Most hate family In Ameria" and "When Louis Me the Nazi's" both of these documentaries kept the continuous narrative of a concerned tone including the camera shot of Theroux's face to the answers of a question.
Finally i have looked at Micheal Moore's "Farenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine" which proved to be very helpful with my research of other documentaries because of the difference in camera angles and movements from steady cameras to shaky, disorientaing shots which helped to differentiate the documentary from the other two.