Research

Conventions of documentaries

There are many conventions of documentaries. Here are the main ones:

• Archival footage: film or video that can be used in other film productions, this is quite often images or video of famous places such as cities and landmarks. It could also be of events of historical importance or natural landscape and wildlife. Archive footage or stock footage can also be news footage too.
• Voice over narration: non-digetic voice over that helps explain information, particularly in a news feature or documentary.
• Voice over exposition: non-digetic voice which introduces key information to the audience. This usually happens at the beginning of the documentary and is often factual information
• Archetypal characters: This is a normal everyday (typical) character that is used to represent a wider range of people, such as their opinions and views. This is sometimes known as a 'stock character'.
• Contrasting characters: These are characters that are used by producers to show differing points of view for an audience and also create tension. These are characters that are different to one another in terms of their views and opinions.
• Interviews: There are two types of interviews, which are direct and indirect. A direct interview involves asking questions in a way that the responder understands the purpose of the question and also the intended response. Indirect interviews involves asking questions when the responder is unaware of the purpose, or the intended response.
• Montage: This is the process of editing the selected pieces of film to form a continuous whole.
• Cross-cuts: These are used to help establish action occurring at the same time. Cross-cutting involves the camera cutting away from one action to another to give the impression of the action occurring simultaneously.
• Jump-cuts: These are cuts that give the impression of the subject "jumping" forwards in time. This is done by showing almost the exact same shot in successive frames, with only a slight variation in the subject.
• Re-enactments: Sometimes in documentaries there are re-enactments of key events of which the documentary is about, for example historical events. These are sometimes made blurry in post production to show the audiences that they are watching a re-enactment, not the real event.

Comparing documentaries:

With Justin we watched two different documentaries. The first one was a documentary was: "Biggie and Tupac" by Nick BroomField. This was all about the lives and deaths of the two famous rap hip-hop stars and their suspiciously linked deaths. The second one we watched was: "A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman". This was all about the history of Aardman animated studios, the acclaimed British stop-motion animation studio who were famous for making 'Wallace and Gromit'.

Both documentaries used lots of archival footage, as they were both documentaries looking at the history of events and people. For example in the 'Biggie and Tupac' documentary, there was archival footage of an interview with Biggie just after Tupac's death. Furthermore both documentaries used voice over narration to explain key information and give the audience a sense of what the documentaries were going to explore.

When watching the documentary, it was clear that Nick BroomField  had a unique approach to documentaries. From research I found out that his style was described as "working by zooming in on the inessentials as the means of getting to the heart of the matter. He leaves in what conventional documentary-makers would edit out and keeps rolling in front of stories on which most people would consider it extravagant madness to waste valuable reels.” This gives Nick BroomField a unique style of documentary, which has played such a big part in his success. His self reflexive style has been regarded as influential to many later filmmakers. such as Louis Theroux. I also noticed when watching the documentary that he carries the microphone himself on a boom pole and even holds the recorder - I later found out that he has a very small crew, which makes the documentary feel more personal. He almost acted as if he was a detective on a mission to discover who killed the famous rappers, and he was very direct with the people he was interviewing.

Both documentaries also featured many interviews, the Aardman documentary featured many interviews with Aardman himself and famous actors that had worked alongside him in his famous animations.

One of the big differences between the documentaries was they were different styles. The 'Biggie and Tupac' documentary was a reflexive documentary, Nick BroomField (the filmmaker) was included in the documentary and he was in control of the documentary, asking all the questions and directing how the documentary was presented to the audience. The Aardman documentary was very much a expository documentary. Its main aim was to inform the audience on the history of the history of Aardman studios, and featured the omnipresent "voice of god narration", furthermore it differed because this documentary didn't feature the filmmaker like the other documentary. Furthermore this documentary explored the history of 'Aardman studios' whereas the Tupac documentary was more intrusive and tried to discover who really killed Biggie and Tupac and whether their deaths were connected.

Different types of documentaries

Examples of documentaries

Bob Dylan (poetic documentary) - this documentary provided a very intimate glimpse of his life, and had quite a loose narrative but instead focused more on creating a feeling about his life, which are key poetic documentary themes
Civil War Ken Burns documentary (expository documentary) - this documentary focuses on informing the viewers on the American civil war, and features god-like narration by Ken Burns, again which are key themes of expository documentaries
Shoah (observational documentary) - this documentary observes the horrific time during the holocaust and also explores all sides of the dark subject such as the filmmaker Claude Lanzman (who features in the documentary) interviews an SS officer and hears his chilling accounts - this a key characteristic of a observational documentary, exploring all sides of the subject.
The life of Michael Jackson (participatory documentary) - this documentary really digs deep into the music stars life and the filmmaker directs the narrative(key participatory documentary characteristic) like other documentaries.
Man with a movie camera (reflexive documentaries) - this documentary focuses solely on a city in the Soviet Union in the 1920's and doesn't explore outside this subject (key reflexive documentary technique)
Roger and Me (preformative documentary) - this documentary focuses on the economic impact of a motor company closing factories in a town in America and uses a combination of experimental styles to stress the impact and emotional impact of the closures of the factories (key characteristic of preformative documentaries).

I am most interested by the preformative documentary style as it is very intriguing due to its subjectivity.

I find the most honest documentary, the expository documentary as its the most common form of documentary that informs and gives the audience knowledge on the documentaries subject.

I find the most realistic documentary the participatory documentary as the presenter is always there so it makes me feel more involved with the documentary and therefore it feels more realistic.

Researching the different types of documentaries has made me aware that I really want my documentary to be a mix of reflexive and participatory documentary as I know that I as the filmmaker I want to be part of the film such as doing pieces to camera and narrating it - these are important elements of both participatory and reflexive documentaries.

When thinking of an idea for a documentary, one thing kept popping into my mind and that was the power of technology, and in particular the power and information online organisations such as Facebook and Google hold about us. I found this very interesting article on the Guardian*1 which is a well respected source so is therefore reliable data on the amount of information these online organisations hold about us. For example Google knows where you've been and everything you've ever searched. I think facts like this would make a really interesting and surprising documentary, which would have the audience captivated. Some of the key information I learnt form this article: is that on average Google stores around 5.5GB of information just on you, which could fill roughly 3 million word documents? Not only that but Facebook stores every message, file you’ve ever sent or been sent and all the contacts on your phone.

But some of the most shocking dark sides of social media that I found (article) out is the psychological effects it can have on the mind. Some psychologists claim that social media activities such as liking posts, new followers and commenting could trigger the release of dopamine like opiods such as Heroin, as they have a similar effect on the brain receptors. Another dark side I found out was the effect it can have on mental health such as increasing depression and anxiety. The University of Pennsylvania carried out a study to look at the mental health impact of social media and here was the conclusion of their findings: 

"Here's the bottom line," said study author Melissa G. Hunt in a statement. "Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness. These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study."

In terms of my target audience, I am going to target people in the younger age group as, my documentary is based on online organisations such as Google and Facebook which are primarily used by the younger generation. Below you can see a  chart filled with information about online organisations such as social media platforms and their demographics. This was research carried out by the Pew Research Centre, which is non-profit American fact tank based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world, therefore this is a reliable source of data.*2

To get more of a understanding of this topic, I watched a BBC panorama documentary which was about the dark side of social media and mobile phones. I learnt a lot from this documentary such as how they used stock footage at the beginning of the documentary and how they had a voice over around the beginning of the documentary, furthermore I found out about how Facebook's main purpose is to get you "hooked from the start". I am infidelity going to use these facts and micro-elements I have researched in my documentary to make it look professional. Furthermore I realised the importance of interviews in this documentary as it meant the audience could learn a lot of information.

I think in terms of improving my interviews I could have included more L and J cuts to make the transitions between the interviews more seamless and smooth. This is something I am definitely going to do going forward with my actual interviews for my documentary. Furthermore I think I could have improved the lighting - in fact I didn't set up any lighting so I will definitely do this with my real documentary  ( I think I will set up three point lighting), to make ht e overall picture quality better and more professional. In terms of the camera angle and positioning I think this was really successful for the interviews that we conducted, so I will remember this (especially playing two fingers above your head to get the perfect composition) for my real interviews. Overall I thought the questions were successful however I think there could have been more leading questions to make the interview flow more smoothly.

Interviews for documentaries are very important as they allow the documentarian and the audience watching, to gather information, facts, figure and be more informed on the topic of the documentary they are watching. Interviews also allow people to put across their different perspectives.

When conducting an interview there are many different question types you can use, here are some of the main ones and their purposes:

• Open questions are more than a yes or no answer. So the interviewee has lots of room for expanding (they can talk freely) on their answers allowing the interviewer to gather lots of information.
• Closed questions are a limited response question. For example they are Yes or No questions, which allows the interviewer to gather facts.
•  A leading question can prompt or encourage the answer wanted, which really helps get the required information out on interview. It is also the first question that directs the interviewee into a topic and can can help the interviewee into another topic.
• Direct questions are used when you want to get straight to the point of a situation. They are often hard-hitting questions and should be used only when appropriate as these can put of the interviewee from giving out vital information.
• Single questions, are questions that are directly on the topic, these questions can get a variety of different answers depending on who you interview.
• Multiple questions, these questions require more than a single answer - they require two answers in one.

Planning an interview

The planning process is vital before conducting an interview as it helps you make the interview have more direction and makes it look more seamless.

• First of all you need to find a topic, that you want to do an interview on. Make sure its something you are passionate about, so you can put this passion into your interview. Once you have found a topic that interests you, produce a mind map to work out the different aspects of the topic that you want to cover in your interview. For example here is my mind-map on my topic of, the dark side of social media:

• Generate a list of questions and ask yourself what information do you want to learn from the person you have chosen to interview
• Now you need to plan a variety of different question types (e.g. open, closed, multiple, leading questions etc..) to cover the different aspects of the topic you want to cover.
• Now you need to frame your shot correctly. The most common frame for an interview is a medium close-up. Make sure there is about two finger widths of room above the interviewees head. Also make sure you choose a background, that reinforces the content of your interview, and ensure this is well lit and that the interview is not in front of a window.
• Make sure you make the interviewee look directly at the interviewer and not at the camera. Here is an image that shows you how to frame your interview. If you interviewee is on the left make sure the interviewer is on the right and frame the interviewee slightly off-centre.

My interview questions

1. Could you please tell me your name and how long you have been using social media?
2. You said you've spent about...... (insert the number of years they have been using social media), what make it so appealing to use?
3. Do you ever think the time spent on social media has gotten out of hand, turning almost into an addiction?
4. Do you think that social media is having a physiological effect on you such as depression, anxiety or sleep loss?
5. Do you think you are aware of the amount of information social media sites and websites like Facebook and Google know about you? - If i was to tell you that that Google stores around 5GB of data just on you which could fill roughly 3 million word documents, would that shock you. Or social media sites like Facebook stores every message, file you’ve ever sent or been sent and all the contacts on your phone. Would this shock you?
6. Have you ever suffered online abuse?

• For the best audio, make sure you use an external microphone such as a Lavalier microphone that clips onto your clothing. Make sure the Lavalier microphone is pointed down, away from the interviewee's mouth to avoid the microphone from popping and distorting. Ask your interviewee to say something so you can monitor the audio before the interview to ensure the sound is good.
• Now you're ready to conduct your interview!
• When editing your interview ensure you use a variety of L and J cuts to make the interview transitions between multiple people for example more seamless and professional. Also only include relevant and engaging content from the interviews to ensure they are interesting to watch.

My Research Essay: How can creative choices affect our perception?

Data sources

*1: 

Author	Dylan Curran
Article title:	Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you | Dylan Curran
Website title:	the Guardian
URL:	https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy

2*:

Article title:	Use of different online platforms by demographic groups
Website title:	Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech
URL:	http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/pi_2018-03-01_social-media_a-01/