Bea's Documentary Blog: April 2012

Monday, 23 April 2012

Overall my ancillary tasks and main task link really well. The theme is clearly represented through the newspaper advert, double page magazine spread and main task. I kept the colour scheme of red, yellow and white through out as it represents typical fast food restaurant colours. Even for our documentary we used white text. For both ancillary tasks I used the same font to show that they are linked and show they are advertising the same documentary. The images of the fast food in both ancillary tasks are the same objects that we used in our documentary. In the documentary we incorporated different fast food, mainly from McDonalds. We then photographed them and used them in our ancillary tasks. I also incorporated dialogue from our documentary in to the ancillary tasks, which were mainly facts on fast food. This gives the viewers an insight in to what is in the documentary. Also in the double page magazine spread we incorporated a section of the interview with Debra Brown from our documentary, which again gives viewers an insight in to the documentary.

Audience Feedback

We asked a variety of people to watch our documentary and give their feedback and opinions on it. The audience feedback is really important as it allows us to see the most successful parts of our documentary and parts we could have improved on.

Improvements which the audience suggested:

'Compare more kids meals from different restaurants' - We could have looked at the children's meals from other popular fast food chains like KFC, Pizza Hut, etc.
'Could have had shots of children eating fast food in restaurants' - This is something we tried to capture, however due to legal reasons we were unable to film inside a fast food restaurant.
'One of the scenes had background noise from a van, so you could'nt hear the voices as well' - Unfortunately we were filming in a busy town as this is where the fast food chains were located, so we had background noise from vehicles and pedestrian's.
'More variety with the archive footage' - We could have included other archive footage instead of it all being quite similar.

Successful parts of our documentary suggested by the audience:

'All the music related to what you were talking about'
'Some humorous music, makes it more light-hearted'
'Engaging, and you could enjoy what you were watching'
'Interesting'
'Very informative and interesting'
'You (documentary makers) were in quite a few scenes which made it more engaging'
'Music was really good as it was to do with the topic'
'Statistics were used which made it suitable for adults and parents'
'Aimed for older audience and parents'

Overall we were really happy with the feedback given to us by the audience. The successful feedback is all the factors we were trying to cover through our documentary, including making it engaging and informative. The improvements suggested have helped us realise mistakes we could have improved on.

Word cloud for audience feedback

Final Documentary

This is our final documentary which we also published on to YouTube.

Editing

For the editing process we used imovie on an Apple Macbook as it is simple to use and it has a variety of different ways to edit a movie, using transitions, text, images and music. Although we worked well on imovie, it did not allow us to create a split screen which is something we were originally planning on doing.

Music:

For our documentary we tried to to find music which related well to our theme. We used Youtube to find the music for our documentary. We chose the 'Fast Food Song' to go at the beginning of our documentary so it was clear to the audience the theme of the documentary, we then used another part of this song half way through our documentary. It is quite humorous so gives a slight light-hearted effect to the documentary. We used a song from the film 'Oliver Twist', called 'Food, Glorious Food', at the end of our documentary before the advert break would start. We thought these two choices of songs work well with our documentary as they both include lyrics about food. We used two other instrumental songs including 'Shelter' and 'Skinny Love' by Birdy, which we used while filming people walking in and out of the fast food restaurant and when we looked inside the childrens Mcdonald's Happy Meal.

Transitions:

We used a variety of transitions throughout our documentary including fades, wipes and dissolves. The transitions allowed our documentary to run smoothly. This is a screen shot of our documentary during the editing process, showing all the transitions we included.

Voiceovers:

This voiceover was over the top of the scenes where the people are walking in
and out of the restaurant. It invloves one of the documentary makers talking
about fast food and obesity facts.

In our documentary we used two main voiceovers, both 'voice of God'.

This voiceover is placed over the top of the images of fast food chains. The
documentary maker spoke about how there is lots of fast food chains
available and the impact its having. The voices relate to the visuals.

Text:

We used text at the beginning of our documentary which includes the title. We made it so it would scroll upwards with the screen as we thought this created an exciting effect. We also used text at the bottom of the screen when we were doing interviews, to show the interviewee's name and occupation. While the people were walking in and out of the fast food restaurant we put facts on the screen so the visuals match the voiceover. Again we used the scrolling effect on a question which we put around half way in to our documentary, we also used text which came on from the sides, to almost answer the question. We then used white text for the title again at the end of our documentary. All the text we used throughout our documentary was white as we wanted to keep the colour scheme consistent throughout, also it stands out well.

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Scripting

Thes are the facts we read out during the voiceover which played over the top of the people walking in
and out of the fast food restaurant. We collected these facts from health websites and news websites.

These are the questions we asked Debra Brown during the interview.

This is the script for the voiceover which we played over the top of the shots of the fast food restaurants.

Mise en Scene - Costumes

Scene with the children in school uniform,
in the background.

As the documentary makers (ouselves) were very much involved in our documentary the costumes are mainly typical clothing. This is because our documentary subject is fast food and child obseity, so the people we filmed did not have any particular clothing or outfit. However in one short scene where we are doing a short interview with a food tech teacher, there is two school children behind her who are wearing school uniform and an apron, which links well to the theme of the documentary as they are working with food. Also the news reporters in the archive footage are dressed in smart suits, which is typical of news reporters.

Archive footage with news reporter

Mise en Scene - Lighting

In our documentary the scenes outside incorporate only natural lighting from the sunlight. Whereas the scenes we filmed inside use artificial lighting from ceiling lights. However we didn't add any other lighting as we wanted it to be quite natural as it is a documentary.

Thursday, 5 April 2012

Mise en Scene - Acting

As our documentary fits in to conventions of an expository and participatory documentary, as the documentary makers we decided to be very much involved and on screen for a large amount of time, to make it an interactive and engaging documentary. Having a lot of screen time, as the documentary makers, makes our documentary very much conventional of a participatory documentary. We directly address the audience with this technique, making it more engaging and interactive.

These are the three interviewee's we used in our documentary. We decided to interview a food technician teacher for our main interview as she was familiar with children's eating habits and also new a lot of useful and important facts about fast food and child obesity. We also interviewed a student and another teacher.

Mise en Scene - Make-up

The make up in our documentary is natural. Natural make up is usually conventional of a documentary as they consist of real life interviews and show real events or situations happening, nothing is usually made up like a film would be.

Mise en Scene - Props

In our documentary we bought this childrens fast food takeaway meal which we used to find out what was inside it. As you can see it's very colourful and busy which attracts the attention of children, there is also games and toys inside and on the packaging. We also incorporated it in to our double page magazine spread. We also used another type of fast food bag at the beginning of the documentary.

This is a drink from Mcdonalds which we used at the beginning of our documentary. We placed it in the background of the titles scene.

We used these Mcdonalds chips during our documentary, as we were showing the audience how greasy and salty they really are.

This is a toy from a childs fast food takeaway meal. We used it in the scene after the archive footage at the beginning of our documentary. Where the documentary maker (myself) catches it while walking towards the camera.

Mise en Scene - Setting

This is the kitchen where we filmed the beginning scene of our documentary. In this scene we placed a fast food bag on the counter then had the titles scroll up the screen. We chose the kitchen as the location for this scene as it is relevant to the subject of food, which we are exploring.

This is the kitchen which we filmed the scene where we dissected and looked at a children's fast food meal. Once again we chose the location to be in a kitchen as it represents food, linking to our fast food theme.

This is the high street where we filmed two scenes outside McDonald's. We chose this location as it was outside a fast food restaurant which links to the theme of our documentary. Also we filmed one of us walking in to McDonald's as we were unable to film inside the restaurant.

This is the high street where we filmed one of us (the documentary maker's) walking towards the camera while talking out fast food and obesity. Having someone walk towards the camera while talking is quite conventional of documentaries and TV presenters.

Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Target Audience

For our documentary we have decided that the target audience is going to be mainly parents as we are explaining the increase in child obesity due to their intake of fast food. We thought that our documentary would be more suitable for parents as they have a big impact on the way their children eat and can help prevent obesity. Our documentary fits in to the particapatory and expository modes, so we made it engaging and interactive by having the documentary makers (ourselves) very much involved and on screen. We are making some of our documentary quite serious to shock the parents, by incorporating archive footage of news reports and hard, true facts. However some sections are light-hearted, like the fast food music, so that they can still enjoy watching it but have a large amount of information and facts regarding child obesity and fast food.

Final Storyboard For Our Documentary

This is a storyboard for our final documentary. We have made many changes and improvements from our original storyboard throughout this process.

Scenes we kept the same:

Shots of fast food restaurants flashing up one after the other. Voiceover - voice of God.
Buying fast food from Mcdonalds restaurant.
Interview with documentary maker and interviewee on screen.

Scenes we changed:

We were going to do a split screen, however we were unable to do this with the software we were using.
We were going to film inside a fast food restaurant but unfortunately we were unable to film in any fast food restaurant due to legal reasons.

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

Analysis of magazine spread

View more presentations from ruff123.

Ancillary Task - Final Double Page Magazine Spread

This is our final double page magazine spread for our documentary.

We included:

Columns - to make it clear for the readers, it is also very conventional of magazine spreads.
We embedded text in to an image of chips to break up the text a bit and to make it more visually interesting and unique.
Once again we kept the yellow and red colour scheme to represent the fast food theme.
We incorporated facts along the side of the magazine spread to shock people with the true facts on fast food and obesity, making people want to find out more.
We incorporated images of fast food falling out of a childrens fast food take-away box, which we photographed ourselves.

Ancillary Task - Idea for double page magazine spread

This was our first idea for our double page magazine spread. We liked the idea of embedding the text in to the image of the burger as this would make it more interesting and unique. However for our final double page spread, we decided not to use this idea as we couldnt fit all the text we needed in this small space.

Once again we decided to keep to the colour scheme of red and yellow, to represent fast food restaurants.

A problem with this first idea was that there is only one relevant image incorporated and we thought we needed more images to improve it. Also it almost looks like a poster not a magazine spread so we decided to change it for our final one.

Analysis of newspaper advert