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‘Til Death Do Us Part.’Somer Wilson
OCR A2 Media Studies Advanced Portfolio
Evaluation
I was required to make a five minute section of a television documentary about a topic of my choice.Before starting the filming, I learnt about many of the codes and conventions of a documentary. I found out that most often have talking-head interviews with someone who has knowledge of the topic (a expert or authority in the field in which they are talking about or someone directly involved in the events being examined). I decided to watch documentaries that had a similar message to the idea that I wanted to do mine on. One that I watched was Stories We Tell which is a documentary film written and directed by Sarah Polley about the relationship between Polley's parents, Michael and Diane Polley, including the revelation that the filmmaker was the product of an extramarital affair between her mother and Montreal producer Harry Gulkin. I also watched other documentaries like The Imposter which uses reconstructions, Grizzly Man that knits together uses original and ‘found’ footage and Supersize Me which exposes a ‘truth’ the filmmaker (Morgan Spurlock) wants the audience to learn and contains elements of cinema verite. I also watched wildlife documentary series Life Story in order to see the conventions of straight-forward observational documentary filmmaking. This research allowed me to gain understanding of various documentary styles such as observational, expository, and cinema verite. I chose to do an observational documentary as I wanted to observe real life situations that were truthful. It has small elements of expository because I intended to expose some reasons why marriage does and doesn’t work.
What I was required to do and what I learnt about documentaries before.
Stories We Tell - Sarah Polley.
I chose to watch Stories We Tell as it was so similar to the type of documentary I wanted to make. The story behind it is about the relationship between Polley's parents, Michael and Diane Polley, including the revelation that the filmmaker was the product of an extramarital affair between her mother and Montreal producer Harry Gulkin. I decided to do a documentary about my grandparents relationship and how they lasted for 48 years, I then decided to add in about divorce as I wanted a counter balance between happily married and divorced.
Once I started to watch Stories We Tell, I realised I could use the aspects of archive footage and family interviews to create my own story effectively. Features Used:
• Talking head interviews• Archive footage• Narration
To come up with an idea for a documentary, I was advised to make a grid on topics and themes that I would find comfortable and easy to make, then once I narrowed it down to three I was given another chart that had all the elements of a documentary on it, for example, narration, talking head interviews, archive footage and others, to go through and write how I would use these elements if I was to put them in my documentary. Once I saw which topic had more ideas I then went through and planned how I would go about making the documentary and where I would add in the elements. The documentary I decided to make was based around my grandparents relationship and how they lasted 48 years in marriage. However, I realised that it wouldn’t be able to last for 5 minutes so I then based the topic around relationships as a whole, so I then focused a little on divorce. I chose to do this because it was true to me and I knew I would find it easy to make. Doing this documentary affected me in a good way, as I found it easy to interview the people, like my grandma, as I was in a comfortable environment that I knew.
What I set out to do and what I decided to make my documentary about.
I decided to make an Observational documentary which is when a documentary maker follows a particular person or people to show/observe what happens in their lives. Often there are no interviews or voice overs as the audience gets a sense of what the documentary is about mostly through imagery. The equipment used in this style of documentary is often light-weight and mobile, for example a hand-held camera, in order to allow the filmmaker to capture things ‘on-the-fly’. Fly-on-the-wall techniques are also often employed so that fleeting moments and spontaneous events can be documented. I decided to eschew these techniques as I wanted the narrative of my observational documentary to be driven by the interviews I conducted rather than any spontaneous footage. I was conscious not to be sensationalist or dramatic and just let the story tell itself. I felt that the interviews with my grandmother and others would be far more powerful than any gimmicks I might try and employ.
What type of documentary I decided to make and what features I set out to use.
Expository Documentary
What is it?They’re documentaries that expose a person or a topic, and are well known for having a narrator talking over the pictures or videos and explaining the story.
What are the main conventions?• A narrator • Rhetorical questions • Facts • Opinions • Persuasive techniques
How do they appeal to an audience?the narrator talks specifically to the audience, and are often either biographical, historical or talk about certain events. Some or most may include archive footage, interviews or pictures exclusive to the documentary.
Cinema Verite
What is it?It combines improvising with the use of the camera to unveil the truth or to highlight subjects hidden behind basic reality.
What are the main convention?• pure direct cinema • mainly without a narrator's voice-over. • Similar to observational, yet there are subtle, yet
important differences.
How do they appeal to an audience?It involves stylized set-ups and communication between the filmmaker and the subject, the camera is acknowledged, as it performs a raw act of filming real objects, people, and events in a challenging way.
Your first steps to making the documentary
I decided that my first priority was to interview my Grandma so I had a foundation to start with. I then wanted to make my documentary have plenty of emotion, so I gathered some archive footage that my Grandparents filmed when they were together and chose particular sections of the video that I thought would really make the audience feel compassion and kind-heatedness.Then once I had a foundation, I wanted to be able to tell my audience more about my topic around relationships, marriage and divorce so I did some research about divorce rates in the UK and reasons people may get divorced so then with the information I found I could do a voice-over to add over a few pictures relating to separation.Once I was nearer to being finished, I realised that I was yet to interview someone who has gone through a divorce, so when I realised I has time left, I remembered that I had a family friend who went through a divorce, so I asked him if it was okay for me to ask him questions about his separation.
When I started filming, one of the main factors was the composing of the shots, in Year 12 we learned about mise-en-scene, which is what you decide to put in the shot that is thought to go with the topic. I was aware of the rule of three, so as you can see I framed the shot so my Grandma was near the corner and the audiences’ eyes were drawn up the line of the fireplace to see old photos of my Grandparents.
Pictures
Grandma in bottom right hand corner
Some audience members may be drawn to the chair in the background which is my grandfathers chair. This empty highlights that she is alone
Also when it came to filming the interview with Mike, I know he works at a school, so I put him in a frame where he was sat in a classroom with books, folders and other objects behind him.
Once I was finished with the filming, I recognised that my documentary was missing something, then I realised that it was music. So I re-watched my documentary and decided that I’d research music that I thought fit with the mood of each section of the documentary.
‘There is a puzzle about how music can arouse emotions. Emotions seem to involve appraisals of the world as good or as offensive or whatever. But most music listeners claim that listening to great music is a profoundly emotionally moving experience.’
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23934-the-musical-representation-meaning-ontology-and-emotion/
The song I decided to layer over the first section of my documentary was Elvis Presley ‘Falling in Love With You’. I thought it would be a good idea to have a contrast at the beginning with the melancholy mood of facts about divorce, with a song about love. The lyrics are also important as they talk about ‘fools rushing in’.
As it was feedback I had from most people saying that I wasn’t grabbing people’s emotions enough, I thought it would be really affective if I found out from my Grandma the song that they first danced to when they first met, which was ‘Unforgettable’ by Nat King Cole, to really capture the audiences emotions I added the song over the section with the old photos of my grandparents and their family. These older songs also set the time and place better and emphasise that my grandparents are from an older generation.
Again to capture people’s emotions, I asked for advise about how I can, and one idea that came up was to put an instrumental bagpipe version of the Scottish national anthem as my grandfather came from Scotland. To really hit people’s emotions I added the anthem over the section about his death as I believe it would really make them sympathise and empathise with my grandmother. This piece of music also sound funereal in tone, adding to the tone and emotion of the message and information on screen: that my Grandfather sadly passed away several years ago.
How I created the documentary.
I used iMovie to create my documentary. When it came to the editing process I found it relatively easy as I was up for learning how to use it, so when I got my head around it I just got on with it. The only problem I had was trying to make my documentary as smooth as possible with no continuity errors and no jumps from edit to edit.
The difference between A2 (documentary) and AS (thriller)At AS we were required to make a 3 minute thriller opening, while at A2 we were required to make a 5 minute section of a documentary. At AS, the editing of my thriller production was very simple, being that the shots were so long that it required little editing. However, because of this and my confidence, I allowed my group to do the editing there was. Also, because of my little knowledge of editing and how to do it, my thriller is basically a few shots with some non-diegetic music in it. However, in A2, my confidence, knowledge and understanding grew as I was by myself. So, in my documentary it is far more complex as there are a lot more shots, I have images and other videos over the top of a couple of my shots, and also there is voice overs that I added in once I knew my shots and documentary was near finished, so it made it easier to add. Documentaries are far more complex as they are often non-linear, this was the case for mine. While in thrillers, including mine, they’re linear, you have a start, middle and end. So when using iMovie the hardest part was when I had to find a transition from the shot of my character walking, to another shot of me entering the house. As it was a thriller, I found it difficult to find a transition that fit with how the thriller looked, e.g. I didn’t want to make it look too amateur. This use of transition was as complex as the editing got. On the other hand, in my documentary, when using iMovie I had to learn about layering, due to having 3 layers, for example when I showed my Grandfather and how he passed away, I had to have pictures fading from one to another, while adding subtitles, then having non-diegetic music playing over the shot. I had to learn about making sure the timing of the music came in at the right time, allowing the subtitles to stay up long enough for people to read, and ensuring that nothing from the previous shot ran over into the next. This complexity of editing allowed me to craft a more coherent message through my documentary. I did this by fading the non-diegetic music into the shot and adding in archive footage (old videos) of my Grandpa in his younger years. At AS there wasn’t any message, as thrillers don’t usually tend to have one, however at A2 my message to the audience was how relationships have changed over the past 50 years and give them as much evidence as I could in the short 5 minutes.
We were required to make a newspaper ad for our documentary. To make it we used photoshop, which we had a session on how to use.
First Draft > In my first draft there was a lot of things wrong with my newspaper ad.
The requirements on the channel 4 website says that the logo has to be on the right side and distinctive, I took this too far and made it too big so it took up most of the space.
The background picture is too blurry, I tried to make it fit the whole picture, however each picture was too small, so every time I tried to enlarge it, it went blurry.
I tried to put a lot of information on the ad, however it looked messy as it was too much on a small poster.
This is the final draft of the newspaper ad.
I looked at the style guide on Channel 4 and what I noticed was that on most of the posters the writing is always in the bottom left hand corner with a distinctive box.
One of the feedbacks was the size of the logo, it didn’t have to be so big to be noticeable.
Radio advert
I set out to make a short radio advert that I thought would capture an audiences attention by putting in enough information without making it too long. I started out by taking a short quote from my grandma’s interview about how divorce wasn’t accepted as much as it is nowadays, and then backing that up with a statistic based on divorce.
I used an iMac to then use the software iMovie to make my advert as I thought that that would be the best to use to ensure that I had a clean cut and clear advert.
I believe the making of the advert was quite successful as I had a clear idea in my head of what I wanted to do, so starting the process wasn’t hard. Also I had all the equipment needed already set up. The final product I think also was successful as it turned out exactly how I wanted it to.
'Til Death Do Us Part;' Radio advert.mp4
Film festival.
Final summary.
How happy am I with it?
When I watched my final finished documentary, I was really pleased with what I had achieved. I set out to create a documentary that I knew people would enjoy, want to carry on watching and importantly, relate to. I believe I did what I set out to do as I’m certain that I played with people’s emotions, I did this by adding in elements such as archive footage and old photos. I’m also very pleased with it because during the process I had to overcome a couple obstacles, like, editing, as I was a novice to editing, I struggled to grasp the concept of having to do it myself and having to learn how to work with new software. Another obstacle I overcame was the feedback. When you’ve worked really hard on something and think it’s the best it could be, its not a nice feeling to have all these comments come back suggesting elements to change. Then I realised that if they were the audience then they would be the audience that I’d have to impress, so I made some of the changes and realised that they improved my documentary.
What would you do differently?
If there was anything I would want different, I think it would be how much time we have, we got to do the first five minutes, however I wish we had an extra 5 minutes as there are a few ideas that I would of liked to put into my documentary. One idea being, I wanted to put a section in where I film my Grandma watching her old home videos and film her reactions, almost like a fly-on-the-wall.
