Diary
15/11/2018
Today I opened up all of the survey results in a spreadsheet and went through and analyzed the results. It took me quite a while as I had over 170 responses and therefore needed to make sure the results that I talked about were representative of all of the results. I used the premade Google Forms graphs for the quantitative answers and listed the main points from the qualitative questions. Now I need to analyze three clips from Edgar Wright movies to talk about in my video essay.
Inform our own idea...
The people who watch all of these shows I have looked at are all different age groups. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is one of the shows with the broadest range of people watching, the reason this show is like this because of Ant & Dec and also the show has a big range of content.
The findings suggest that if we go with the Saturday evening, ITV, 7 pm as this is one of the most popular times for viewing TV as a family. At this time people will put the TV on and just watch whatever show is on. For the group, this shows us that we need to make sure that our show doesn't collide with a popular show as everyone would just watch the show. If we did have to show our show at the same time as a popular show we would have to make sure we were appealing to a different target audience.
Based on our idea we now need to research our target audience to find out what they would want from a show, we need to think of ways we can make our show different from others. We need to research what the shows we want to borrow ideas from do and how they are really successful. ​
Contextual Studies
For this project, we will be using Layar, an app which lets you create augmented reality experiences, to create an interactive poster. I will decide on my idea, research my idea, the app and what would be wanted by the posters target audience. Throughout the whole process, I will produce a research journal which will follow the whole process of creating the interactive advert. Then I will create the final product which will include audio, video, and pieces of interactive information.
Diary - 04/01/18
I have decided to use the posters as a source of information for tourist's, my idea is that there could be a picture which you scan below the London eye which then pops up on your phone which shows you photos, videos, and text about the London eye in a creative way. The London could use this as a way to get people to buy tickets as well.
History of The London Eye:
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Opened in 2000
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135 Metres Tall (taller than Big Ben and St Pauls Cathedral
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15,000 visitors a day
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32 Capsules (25 people in each) (each represents a different borough of London) (air conditioned)
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25 miles (40 kilometres) view from the top (far as Windsor Castle)
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Won more than 85 awards for tourism and architecture
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Designed by Julia Barfield and David Marks
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Originally owned by Tussauds Group, British Airways and the Marks Barfield family. Then the Tussauds Group bought out the other owners to fully own the London eye in 2006. In 2015 the London Eye's new main sponsor became Coca-Cola
Most Recent Bibliography
Samsara
11/1/18
Samsara is poetic mode documentary, directed by Ron Fricke. It is built up of clips from the Himalayas, the American Southwest, European cathedrals and other beautiful sites. The documentary combines the natural world of nature with humanity. The documentary cuts frequently between clips of city landscapes and sand dunes to clips of humanity. The same type of music plays throughout which suggests the ties between nature and humanity, this tie is very clear in this documentary but the combination is done very well. The documentary is great to watch if you are a love for cinematic shots and a well-made film, the music has been selected so well that it complements the video really well. The documentary did seem very long but I think if it was lot quicker the line between nature and humanity would be a lot different, the film is bridging the gap and showing that humanity and nature have a lot in common. The documentary creates an impression that humans are messing with nature, they showed a factory where animals were being gutted and there was a couple scenes where robots were included, the idea of this was to show that humans should leave nature and not remove it. The film was promoting things like vegetarianism and saying that we should leave things like that because that's nature and we should leave it alone, the idea of the robots shows that they are the possible future and gets us to question whether or not they should be the future. the way the film was put together give us the impression there is a very fine line between nature and humanity.
Titicut Follies
18/1/18
Titicut Follies, a documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman which opens our eyes to conditions at a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane. The film opens and closes with the same scene which is a talent show which is put on by the inmates, Tticut Follies is the name of the talent show which inspired the name of the film. In my opinion, the talent show looks as although it is done to allow people to laugh at them which is possibly why it has been included. The documentary is filmed with the perspective of a fly on the wall which means the if the camera was on it recorded whatever was happening, which means the documentary feels a lot more real than others sometimes do. Of course, the whole video has been edited which means some clips will have been removed, but this was released in 1967 and back then editing software was nowhere as good as it is today which means not that much editing was done. To prove this was clearly showing a lot the Massachusetts government tried to stop this film from being released because they weren't happy with what it included but whatever they did didn't work because the film was still released. The film shows the terror the inmates were put through when they had to strip naked publically, be force fed and be bullied constantly by the staff. Frederick Wiseman writes "Plot? There IS no plot. Scenes are beyond graphic." this shows his clear determination of why he wanted to expose this place, I don't think anyone would watch that and be laughing at it, it was shocking to see and that's what makes this film stand out. Talking about going to see the talent show he says "I only wish I could forget about the details I do remember. I'll never shake the indelible anguish I was left with." again this shows the pure shock he was left with after seeing this and shows the audience how long this was with him. And all this is written within the film's synopsis, he doesn't promote the film in any positive way he tells the audience to expect the worst and that is what happens.
Louis Theroux -
The most hated family in America
25/1/18
The most hated family in America, presented by Louis Theroux as part of hit Netflix series, features a documentary all about the Phelps family in America who are the core family at the Westboro Baptist Church. There extreme views lead to picketing funerals of those who have gone to fight in war and protesting against homosexuality. This documentary is different to the above ones because in this documentary the documenter is in the film, which I think makes it a lot more engaging. The documentary does a really good job of capturing the opinions of this family with extreme views. The way that Louis Theroux combats everything they say with points which deflect what they say makes it difficult to answer the questions, however the family somehow mange to answer these questions. the looks on the families face when what they say is proven wrong on completely jokes about is funny cause they don't know what to say.
Louis Theroux -
The most hated family in America, part 2
25/1/18
Today, we watched part two of this documentary which was filmed four years later. The layout o how this was shot was pretty similar to the previous. This time there was a more clear opinion from Louis on the situation, and at each interview, the person was never alone, I think this is because they wanted to be so careful about what they showed with the audience. When he asked them some questions about people leaving the group the gave answers which almost seemed like they were rehearsed. I think if you had a different opinion to Louis you may find this difficult to watch however if you have the same opinion it makes the documentary more likeable because it completely rips what everyone says apart. This documentary started as a participatory documentary but I feel part two moves to more of a reflexive mode documentary because he is putting his personality across.
Forensic
Files
8/2/18
The Confession Tapes
8/2/18
Today, we watched a documentary called Three's a Crowd which is part of the Forensic Files series on Netflix which shows an expository documentary in which they were telling the story of a murder, they interviewed the families and at the ed interviewed the murderer, this was narrated which gave meant the documentary had a clear pattern throughout. We also watched The Labour Day Murders which is part of The Confession Tapes series on Netflix, this was a performative documentary and no narrator which meant there wasn't much guidance which meant it became a little confusing but did have more information from interviews throughout. This also wasn't re-enacted which meant it was more difficult to envisage what happened.
American
Vandal
1/3/18
Today, we watched the first episode of American Vandal, which is a mockumentary series on Netlifx in which a school are trying to find a person who vandalised all the staff cars. The "documenter" is presented in a way which makes it feel like its a Louis Theroux wannabee. This episode is presented in a way which makes it feel like a normal documentary, and because the main character tries to be so serious it makes it quite funny to watch. On Netflix, it is in the category of US Humour because it trying to be serious makes it funny to watch. It gets to a point in the first episode where the "documenter" starts to try and find evidence to help the person in question.
Layar Test
I went on to the Layar website and created an account. I uploaded a random picture which I had on my computer and then added some buttons which go to random social media sites. This gave me a look at Layar and will help me when I go to create my final poster.
Most Recent Bibliography
Research Essay
Photoshop​
8/3/18
Today, I started by making the poster in Photoshop. I knew I wanted to create a title with the union jack flag in the background because it is patriotic and I thought it would fit well. I didn't realize this could be done automatically in Photoshop, so I started cutting the union jack out of the text. When my teacher saw that I was doing this he showed me that I could use a Photoshop feature which would merge the union jack around the text and saved me a lot of time.
The Plan​
15/3/18
Today, I have thought about how I want to present my poster. I want to continue adding assets to the poster (above) I think I want to create a collage, maybe, with pictures of the London Eye and place them below the text. The idea is that the person viewing the poster will be able to scan the image then different facts and information about the London Eye will appear. It could start with pictures of the London Eye being built all the way through until pictures from now.
The Poster​
22/3/18
Today, I collated different images together and created a collage of them all in Photoshop. I have selected different images which will relate to different facts. For example, the wedding photo at the bottom left will have a fact on it about the weddings on the London Eye. I have arranged the images in a way which I think attracts the viewer's eyes to different parts of the image, this will hopefully mean that the viewer will see all the images. Some of the images do stand out more than others, however, the images I have selected are really well taken and do have a purpose. I have thought about including video but I'm not sure about how I will do this, I have wondered about linking one of the photos to a video which has been made by the owners of the London Eye. I think if I had a lot more time I could collate footage or use my own to create a promo type video about the London Eye. I decided to add a London skyline photo behind the London Eye text because I think it compliments the rest of the image really well and I didn't particularly like the white background that was originally behind the text.
Exporting to Layar
15/3/18
The first issue I have had when I started to put my poster on Layar was that I wasn't able to add my picture to Layar because the file size was too large so after I went back to the Photoshop file and decreased the quality to allow the file size to drop. I've learned since this that if I picked a Canvas size which was smaller like A3 it would work better than using a Canvas of 10000 x 10000 pixels.
I then uploaded the image to the website and added videos, a link to their website and links to social media. With the social media buttons, I looked up the social networks specific colours so the buttons look more official. I tried to have the buttons so that they would not cover up the images but if I was making this again I would play where the images and videos would go so they wouldn't overlap. If I had more time I could have made my own video about the London Eye with either my own footage or stock footage and a voiceover, as I haven't had time do this I have embedded other peoples videos into my poster.
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Comparing my poster to professional work I think the poster itself does look very good however, I think improvement lies in the content that is given when the poster is scanned.
I have enjoyed working on this project because previous to this I had absolutely no knowledge of documentaries, of course, I've watched some in the past but never had thought to look up information about the different types. I had also never really thought about how real documentaries really are. This has been a real eye-opener to this side of the industry. Making the poster was enjoyable too, I hadn't realised how easy "Augmented Reality" was to make and produce.