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. ​
Final Major Project
Initial Idea Mind Map
Diary
27/3/18
This morning we were given the FMP brief. At first, I was slightly daunted with all of the information being given to us but after reading through the brief and starting with the proposal I feel a lot more comfortable now. During the brief presentation, I wrote down a lot of notes which was helpful for writing my proposal. I have been thinking about FMP for a while now and my work partner and I decided we wanted to make a documentary about charities, the funding they have and what they can do to get more funding. Previous to today, I have emailed charities and have four who are happy to be onboard with this project and allow us to do interviews with them. This morning, I started to write the proposal for this project, I spent a while thinking about this project and this helped me because it meant I had answers to a lot of the questions I was answering. After receiving feedback from my tutor I know that tomorrow I need to edit a couple of things, generally, they are me needed to add lots more detail and saying why I've made decisions, I will do this tomorrow along with the production schedule.
Draft Proposal
Screenshots
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Emails to charities
Emails to Greenhouse Mentoring
Emails to Tokko
Emails to Keech
Emails to Level Trust
Final Proposal
The research plan...
I want to start my research looking at information about the charities we have onboard, looking specifically about how they are funded, how much money they have, how they use the money, the sources of the money and what each charity does. I want to research more about how the Government gives through Gift Aid, why people don't use Gift Aid and how people can use Gift Aid. I also want to research more about documentaries and techniques. All of this will expand my knowledge and give me the information I need for the content of this documentary. All of this information is paramount to be gathered and critical that all information is correct. I think this will mean what we produce is off a very good standard.
Diary
28/3/18
Today, I finished off my FMP proposal. I was working based on feedback from my teacher which included adding lots of detail and also adding lots more information about decisions I have already made about my documentary. I then created my schedule for the next 10 weeks which shows each week what tasks I will be undertaking. Doing this took quite a while because I hadn't taken much thought to it before, but after working out how long we have and the list of things we have to do I finished it off in the end. After this, I went through and made screenshots of all of the emails I sent to the charities, and uploaded them to this website. I emailed about 10 charities and heard back from most of them, however, only four of them are onboard, but I think this is enough for what we need. Over the Easter break I will make my survey and send it out to people within my target audience. I will also start with my research plan by researching about the charities we are working with.
Diary
3/4/18
Today, we went and had a meeting with 'Tokko', one of the charities who has agreed to work with us on this project. This meeting was good because it gave us a chance to tell them our idea and hear from them about what they do and their thoughts on our project. They are really keen to help in any way they can. We have agreed to do interviews with their CEO, Marketing Manager and a user of the service, this will give us information about the different aspects of the charity. They have said they will also try to organize one of their activities for this week, so we can go with them and film what they are doing (this would be them helping in the community). In the meeting they spoke a lot about how they work as a charity and how the funding is used, I think what was said would be good to capture for the documentaries.
Charity Accounts
I wanted to find out the sources of money for charities and how charities spend their money. Recently, the government has made all charities post their accounts online which made finding them very easy. I looked at accounts for Keech and Macmillan for 2016/2017.
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As you can see from above Keech has an income of just over £10 million and expenses of £9.94 million, which means they have a surplus of £107K profit, which wouldn't go very far if there were any big issues within the business, for example, expensive building repairs.
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Keech has been voted the number 1 Not-For-Profit organization by The Sunday Times, this shows that they aren't here for the money and from their website you can see the money is put to good use. 189,289 voluntary hours.
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The money was used for the following: 33% Adult services and in-patient unit, 9% Children's community team, 28% Children's in-patient unit and day support, 6% Educating and communicating, 10% Supportive care for adults and children, 14% Keech Palliative care center.
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262 Employees and 1500 volunteers
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Charity shops provided over £1 million pounds net.
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Macmillan Cancer Support is a national charity, this is shown when looking at their accounts.
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The most recent accounts show their income was just under £250 million and their expenses were around £245 million.
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Sources of money: Legacy income £76.8 million, Donation income £156.4 million (local fundraising committees, fundraising events, corporate income, general donations, direct marketing, donated services, and facilities), Income from trading activities £11.4 million, Grant Income £0.3 million.
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The money was used for the following: £58.9 million Healthcare, £40.4 million Financial Support, £25.1 million Information and support, £25.1 million Campaigning and raising awareness, £14.6 million Practical and emotional support, £6.3 million Learning and development, £2.8 million Inclusion.
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1642 Employees, 20,000 volunteers
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The surplus money from this year will be put straight back into the charity the following year.
I found looking at the accounts really helpful as it has given me an insight into the different ways a charity earn money. I think comparing a small charity to a large one showed me that there are quite a few similarities between them, for example, they both used the same sources for income, they both had a similar percentage of money remaining, which wouldn't be enough if either of the charities found themselves with problems that would require big expenses. I was surprised when looking at income sources that the fundraising events create more money than donations from the public. I was also surprised that a big amount of money from both charities came from legacy income (money left to the charity in a persons will). I definitely think we should use some of this information within the documentary as it will be helpful when supporting our point of view. As I haven't seen on any of the accounts money from the Government I next want to research Gift aid and what else the Government do for charities.
Diary
4/4/18
Today I spent a long time looking at charity accounts. I did this because I wanted to find out lots of information about how charities of different sizes use their money. I found lots of similarities and differences which was interesting. I enjoyed doing this because I was genuinely interested in how charities do spend their money. It was an eye-opener because I hadn't imagined there would be so many different sources of income for a charity. I love how transparent the charities are with telling people who they give there money too, I think this just shows that they care greatly about making sure peoples donations are put to good use. This research has been very valuable and the information I have found will definitely be used within the documentary.
The Government & Gift Aid
Firstly, I looked up what the Government says Gift Aid is: "Donating through Gift Aid means charities and community amateur sports clubs (CASCs) can claim an extra 25p for every £1 you give. It won’t cost you any extra." So this means charities in the UK can claim money back from the government for donations made by UK taxpayers. If someone eligible for gift aid donated £10 to charity it would mean the government would give the charity £2.50. Say they did this for a year the person would give £120 and the government would give £30.
I then wanted to see if the Government give anything else to charities, I was met with this statement on the Government's website:
"The commission does not fund charities. However, some charities are funded by central or local government. This funding can be given directly or through a funding body such as the Arts Council. Charities may also bid for contracts to provide public services (services that public authorities normally provide or commission themselves)."
Looking at other sites too it confirms that the Government does not usually give funs to charities, it can do but is not something I can find a lot of information about which suggests grants are infrequent. Some people argue Gift Aid is enough but some say the Government could do a lot more. The government gives a lot of money to the "Charity Commision" which is a Government initiative which ensures charities throughout the UK are run equally.
Online, I found a detailed breakdown of how the Government spends their money. I was looking at a breakdown for 2017 to follow with all the other financial research I have conducted. In 2017 they spent £780.3 billion, and within the detailed breakdown which included each section within each sector above the word charity was not mentioned once. However, a BBC report released earlier this year said that last year Oxfam received £176 million from the Government and other public authorities, I'm unsure whether this is all gift aid of if that was separate, but this just shows how hidden the Government is about its charity grants.
Diary
8/4/18
Today I spent a long time looking into Gift Aid and how the Government supports charities. I started my research on the Governments website which gave some information but because the information given wasn't too detailed I had to look into other sources. So, I compared information across multiple sites, to make sure it was correct, and still struggled a bit to find out how much the Government is giving to charities. They do give quite a bit but I wanted to see if there was anything else. I came to the conclusion through news articles and other websites that they do give some grants but they are very quiet about it. This was helpful because it has taught me valuable information about how the Gift Aid system works, and I think this is very important to include in our documentary.
Introduction to Documentary, Bill Nichols
Whenever anyone talks about Documentary the topic that quite often comes up is "how real is that?" In this day and age with technology taking over, people are often questioning how real what they are watching really is. When I was reading an ebook by Bill Nichols called "Introduction to Documentary" a quote which stood out said "What we see is not a reproduction of the world but a specific form of representation with a specific perspective" and I completely agree with his comment. Any shot that makes it into our documentary will have been selected and my conscious will obviously make me make shots that back our side of the story make the cut. Our documentary will be trying to get people to donate to charity, I don't think if we didn't want people to donate to a charity we would be making a documentary about it. Most people when watching something take what they watch with a pinch of salt, we need to make them think about what they have watched which will make them think about how they are supporting their local charities. I don't think anyone will think what we show in our documentary will have been manipulated in any way because the topic we are talking about most people would be for it and with elements such as interviews, it will seem realistic.
Bill Nichols goes on to talk about how he thinks all films are documentaries because of the natural world and culture that surrounds the original idea and how the characters are portrayed throughout. On this basis, it means that although I am creating a documentary it doesn't necessarily have to have no opinion because films show stories which have been adapted and changed to suit an audience. I think when creating a documentary there is a very fine line between how biased it can be and how much the documentary can be made in a way which makes the audience interact with it.
Lastly, I wanted to touch on a comment he says regarding the presence of a camera. He says when the camera is around everyone acts differently because they know what they do at that moment will be watchable forever. I think this would be more important with documentaries where what is being filmed might be revealing horrible things about someone or something. I don't think having a camera around for our documentary will make a difference because everyone being filmed wants people to find out about their part in either fundraising for a charity or working in conjunction with charities.
Definitions
Documentary: Using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject.
Disposable Income: Income remaining after deduction of taxes and social security charges, available to be spent or saved as one wishes.
Surplus: An excess of income or assets over expenditure or liabilities in a given period, typically a financial year.
Grant: Give (a right, power, property, etc.) formally or legally to.
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Donation: Something that is given to a charity, especially a sum of money.
Charity: An organization set up to provide help and raise money for those in need.
Diary
10/4/18
After recently reading an Ebook all about documentaries, today, I wrote up some of my thoughts on it along with quotes as I thought what I learned was valuable for my work. This research came from a thought I had previously had, from when people I know we're talking about how real documentaries really were. I thought it was very interesting that the ebook was written 17 years ago but everyone he said still applies today, I think this research was very valuable because it has shown me that documentaries can have different amounts of the documenters opinion included. As I then wanted to find out more about documentaries and wanted to ensure my current understanding was correct I went through and found definitions for different words which are based on our subject, this was helpful for me because having the direct definitions ensured me that my knowledge of the words was correct, helpful for anyone who looks at this work and helps for the content side of our documentary.
Survey Results
About two weeks ago I created a survey for part of my primary research. I wanted my survey to be helpful so I spent a long time thinking about questions and the best format to use. I got about 37 results which is much better than surveys I have conducted recently. I distributed my survey on family members, who are in my target audience, Facebook's account. This meant all my results are from people within my target audience.
The first question on my survey was asking for their age. This was done because it shows that the people who answered are within my target audience. this means I know my answers will be more valid. As you can see 21 people (56.8%) are aged 41-64, this is the exact target audience our documentary will be aimed at. Categories 25-40 and 65+ are the next most popular results, these don't have that many people in. I believe that with a project like ours the target audience may differ slightly because our topic will reference peoples opinions.
The reason for this question was just to see out of the target audience how many people actually donate to charity on a regular basis. 32 people (86.5%) said they do and 5 (13.5%) said they didn't. To improve this question I should have asked why as it would have let me understand why each person put their answer.
I was really surprised with the results for this question. Here is a list of all the different charities people donate to. As you can see some people donate to one charity and some people donate to many. I can't assume the people that have lots of money donate to many charities because someone who donates to one charity could donate a large sum of money. The majority of answers here are local charities which shows me that people like to support the charities which surround them more than bigger charities, this may be because the charities which are local to people may have helped those people in the past. I think this list is really valuable because it shows me that people may not always talk about charity to one another but most people are still involved with many charities.
Most people when talking about charity donation just think about money, I found out that it is really valuable for charities to have different methods of donation. For example, Keech Hospice gains a lot of its money from selling products in Charity Shops. So for this, I wanted to see how many people donate through these other different methods. Majority of people I found do donate by sending money. But other popular options included food banks, charity shops, and fundraising events. This has shown me that its important for all of these methods to be used effectively which means charities can gain the most amount of funding.
In the UK the Government offers Gift Aid, (I have researched in depth on this above) so I wanted to see how many people actually give Gift Aid. About 70% of people answering the survey said they always tick the Gift Aid box. The other 20% said they know what Gift Aid is but they can't use it because they don't pay tax. This is good because it shows me that when people can use Gift Aid they seem to be doing so.
I then decided I wanted to ask quite a controversial question. I asked did they think the Government did enough to support charities. I was not surprised at all with the results. 85% of people said they didn't think the Government did enough giving reasons like: "No, I think they are consistently trying to get out of supporting charities" "Everyone is feeling the pinch but charities must be really struggling" "no they should be given more" "Government could do more but there are just too many charities to support them all". These comments all state the Government isn't doing enough. The last comment which says there are too many charities sums up the government's problem completely as for them to fund every charity would spend money which the Government doesn't have. Everyone who says the Government does enough says that Gift Aid is a very generous scheme. This question has been valuable because the answers given are very thought provoking which will help within the documentary.
Following this, I asked what key elements should the documentary include. I did this because people would think of the things which would persuade them when watching a documentary. With all the people answering in my target audience, it means that I can include these elemtns and it should persuade the people watching to donate to charity. I don't think we can make compromises on this project we need to make sure we include most items on the list to the left. Each of these things will allow us to make a compelling documentary which will be engaging and thought-provoking.
In the proposal, I said that I wanted the documentary to last around 10-15 mins. So, I was surprised to see the majority of people said it should last up to 5 minutes. I think it should still be longer than 5 minutes because 5 minutes won't be long enough to include all the interviews and shots of the different charities. Maybe we should make it around 7 minutes which is a compromise, I think as long as it is engaging it doesn't matter how long it is.
Diary
16/4/18
Today, I spent a while re-creating the charts Google forms had produced again in Excel to make them a lot clearer to read. I am much happier with the survey results for this project as I have a lot more responses than my surveys for my previous projects. I am also happy that I have thought about the questions because it meant the answers I have received have been a lot more beneficial. I also have emailed the charities this morning as we want to go and film practice interviews with them as this will give us ideas of the content we will have for the actual production. This is more so important with a documentary as if we didn't do this it would be very difficult to piece together the documentary. After this, I analyzed my survey results and wrote up my thoughts on each question and how it helped me with my research. I am happy with the replies I got and I agree with most of the answers given. I think this was the best survey I have conducted through this course so far as the answers were very helpful and I recived a good amount of responses.
Target Audience
We thought very carefully about our target audience and we did this because having a clear understanding of this from the beginning would enable our research to be targetted at our target audience which will, in the end, make our documentary more engaging and effective. Our target audience is middle-class (Social Grade 2) people aged 45-65, as these people are more likely to have disposable income to give to charities. If these people have had children they will most likely be older or have moved away from home, which means they will have more time to spend watching a documentary. Whereas a mother with young children would rather watching something much shorter. People in this target audience are happy to splash out money on extra things and find more joy in generally supporting others in any way they can. Our target audience will live in or around the Luton area, as the charities we are working with are based in Luton. A viewer from elsewhere could feel that they wanted to support one of their local charities, but show off Luton charities will likely persuade our audience who live in Luton to donate to them. To advertise for our target audience we would need to advertise on a site like Facebook which is primarily the main social network our audience use, other than this we could advertise on a Radio station like Heart which has a similar target audience.
Is Luton one of the worst places to live? - by a student studying the same level as me
Existing Documentaries
Recently one of my friends who is studying media at another college made a documentary about Luton, so, I thought it would be a good idea to look over it and see what he has done and what I could use. Then it was suggested to me to compare it to a documentary made by a student studying at university level.
Updating Luton - University Student
From the first documentary I like how they have done the following:
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(00:23) I like how the text appears over a few different clips then the transition away at the end, this works very well with the voiceover.
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(01:00) the text in the lower third fits in well with the clips that are displayed.
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(01:22) the use of the time-lapse starting as a normal clip then speeding up works well and compliments the video nicely.
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(02:48) the transition between the voiceover to the interview works well, I think with ours we should include some of the questions to be asked in person with the interviewer in the frame with the interviewee.
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(04:44) I like how this ends with the presenters walking towards the screen, maybe with ours they could then walk out of the frame at the end.
From the second documentary I like how they have done the following:
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(00:05) I love the opening drone shots with the text. I think it complements the video very well. I don't think I would be able to get a drone for the filming of this but what I think if we carefully pick the shots we can create good content.
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(02:54) Fade from black into a wide shot of Luton, with the music and voiceover it makes a really nice opening into the following shot.
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(04:04) shots of what the interviewee is talking about, this is really important as it makes the video more interesting.
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(05:40) ending shots of the town with a closing voiceover which concludes the video, this works and flows very well. Something like this ensures the audience walk away with a clear knowledge of what the video included.
Both of these documentaries there are several similarities and a few differences. The similarities are most likely the conventions of documentaries which I will look in depth to after this. The documentary made by the student studying at the same level as us is produced really well from a technical point, within this documentary, the presenters aren't that strong which makes me feel like their point isn't produced as strongly as it could be. The documentary created by people at University level combats this problem with the narrator and interviewees being very direct and this means the point is made very clear. The use of drone shots in the second video makes it feel a lot more professional. The use of editing techniques is very strong throughout both videos, it is clear the second editor did have a lot more experience. I think it is key for me to try to include as many of the above points within my documentary and it has given me lots of inspiration and ideas which I can use and develop within my project.
Diary
17/4/18
I started off this morning by writing up my previous thoughts on target audience and how it affects our project, this was very valuable to have thought about right from the start as it has meant I could do my research with the target market in mind, for example, a documentary targetted at teenagers wouldn't include as many numbers as younger people would struggle to understand this, but our target audience love numbers and statistics which meant I needed to spend a lot of my research time looking at this. Finally, I compared a documentary made by a student at the same level as us and one from a student studying at University level (higher level than us), this was very valuable because it gave me an insight to what experience is needed to create an amazing looking product. It also was helpful because it gave me different ideas for what our documentary can include.
Conventions of Documentary
Handheld Camera: When I was looking around online looking at the different conventions I was surprised to see that handheld camera was mentioned quite a lot. The idea is that it is meant to create a realism and truthful feel, I don't think we will be doing any handheld in our video because it will reduce the production value as it won't be as nice to watch.
Voiceover: Mentioned a lot was the term "voice of God," this is where there is a narrator who voices over what is happening. We will be doing this for a lot of the documentary. For some parts, the narrator will become the presenter and be in the shot as this will create a nice feel for the audience and keep them engaged.
Interviews: A lot of our documentary will be built up of interviews with volunteers and staff at the charities. We have made this decision because hearing first hand from the people who work with the charities daily means they will be able to tell the audience why their charity is important.
Selective Editing: This is crucial as we need to carefully pick the shots we use as it will allow us to build a compelling story. If we used everything we filmed it may mean the wrong point of view may be shown. We want to be as transparent as possible and we will do this by using "the art of storytelling." We won't always be telling the audience, we will be showing the audience.
Establishing/Close up Shots: Having each scene begin with a wide establishing shot means the audience are instantly aware of where the camera has been placed, which is essential when shooting for a documentry which will involve lots of different random locations. Following these establashing shots will be close up shots of the people being interviewed, at this point the audience know where they are so the close up shots will focus their attention.
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Low key Lighting: We will be using minimal lighting as we want to make the audience feel that the scenes are all real and no set or actors have been used. Having low lighting will also allow us to create a more serious tone.
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Closed Investigative Narrative: A closed invetigative narrative structure means that the documentary would follow a structure which wouldn't be made obvious from the start, but as discoveries are made through the use of interviews the final point of the doucmentary would become clearer.
This morning I researched the conventions of documentaries. This was very helpful as it has given me lots of ideas for elements we can include in our documentary. It has shown me there is lots of different conventions and most documenaries don't use al of them. After this, we went and visited a local Charity called Greenhouse Mentoring, they have agreed to help with our project, we spent a while discussing their charity, different ideas for the documentary and we had really good discussion about their funding. We filmed a practice interview with them, which was a test to see what worked well and what could be improved. We then visited another charity who we met with a while ago called Tokko, as we had already spoken to them about our project we just went to film a test interview with their CEO. Tomorrow I will review both interview clips to see what questions worked well, what questions didn't work well, any pieces of information we definitley want them to say on the final project and to check how well the video was filmed.
Diary
18/4/18
Practice Interviews - Tokko & Greenhouse Mentoring
The second interview we did was at Tokko, a charity focused on supporting teenagers. We had already met with this charity before so we went back to do a test interview. With the interview, we didn't go through the questions before filming which I don't think it made that obvious because Andy gives very confident answers. Elise gave follow up questions again which continued to give the camera more detail. I think an improvement that could be made with the video quality would be the camera angle. It would much better if the camera moved to be in front of Andy more. We were given a tour of the building when we first went to visit and I really liked the wall in this room so I asked if we could film in here. I like the wallpaper, it creates a nice atmosphere which I think is conveyed really well throughout the video.
The first interview we did was with Greenhouse Mentoring who is one of the smaller charities we are working with. We went through the questions first before the interview as we thought if they had heard the questions first and thought about them the answers given would be more detailed. The way Elise engaged with the interviewees by asking them further questions was really helpful as it meant we could find out more detailed information. I think having both two people in the interview was good because they were able to step in if the other person didn't mention something, towards the end the transition of them talking was more balanced. We need to have this in the final product. I think a weakness of this interview was the background, we just filmed within their office, which wasn't very clean. This creates realism but from a production point, it doesn't feel as professional. We also asked a few questions about Government and peoples opinions on what the Government does, I don't think this is needed in the actual documentary as I could see they were uncomfortable with these questions. I think when we film the final documentary we will use multiple camera angles which will make the documentary more engaging.
When filming for the actual documentary will we ask questions at the interviews which we think will be most effective for that charity. We will also be using multiple cameras to make the video more interesting. We will film openings and exists, so it will look like the presenter walks in for the interview then leaves with appropriate voice over. When making the final product we will focus on making sure that sound is a priority, we will make sure we have a suitable audio solution which is tried and tested, this will probably be a shotgun mic on the top of the camera.
This morning I watched back the videos from the interviews we did yesterday. I wrote up what I liked and disliked from each one. I'm really glad we did this because it has shown us what we could change and what worked well. In the documentary, we will target different questions at different charities, these will be targetted based on answers given in previous conversations and within the interviews above. After this, I went and met with Level Trust, a charity that provides a uniform for those who can't afford it, this was really interesting. I was there for a really long time because the stories and information I was being told were really interesting. They are keen to do some interviews and get their volunteers involved. They also have a fundraising event going on the week of our production so we will be going to film that. I recorded a short audio practice interview which I will review next.
Diary
19/4/18
Practice Interview - Level Trust
I recorded a practice interview which was good but I don't think I did a very good job at asking the questions. I think my talents lie more with production, and as my work partner who is focusing on the content for this wasn't there it meant I had to ask the questions. I think to improve this I could have asked more follow up questions. What could have been a lot more valuable would have been recording the whole conversation rather than just an interview at the end. However, a lot of the chat at the beginning was discussing this documentary and why we were doing it. The most important thing I took from this is when we mention Level Trust in the documentary we should talk about how they want old school uniform which is something every person with children has which means its basically free to donate to them.
A couple days ago I went and visited Level Trust. The reason we wanted to work with this charity is that they are a little different to our other charities. Our other charities generally need money from supporters whereas Level Trust needs children's old school uniform because their main project is the "Level Trust Uniform Exchange" which provides school uniform for those who can't afford it. In the chat I had before the recorded interview Maddy said that they wanted the Uniform exchange shop to be a happy place where people coming to get uniform don't feel ashamed to visit. It was really interesting to see that Level Trust really found a big gap in the market as there are no charities that do the same thing within Luton, in fact, there are only a few charities that do this throughout the UK. Majority of their income comes from Grants, they said there success rate for Grants is 1 in 10. They have 4 staff members and 13 volunteers.
Common Issues that surround Documentary
After thinking about the book I looked at above where Bill Nichols discusses the different types of a documentary I thought it would be good to continue that research by looking into common issues that surround documentary:
Accuracy: This plays a huge part in the documentary as providing an audience with false information is a bad idea, doing this could be an easy option to get people to pick a side, but in the long run may be a bad idea. This could happen if false information was given by the narrator and then an interview was shown with conflicting information. Lots of complaints to Ofcom of a TV documentary providing false information could lead to big fines. To ensure all information is accurate we will be using official documents provided by the Charity Commission, resources and accounts directly from the charities websites, and all other information provided will be checked with at least two other sources to ensure everything the audience are told/shown is 100% correct.
Balance/Impartiality: This is showing that we will accept other sides of the argument and we will treat both sides of the argument fairly. I think there are very few people who would be against donating and helping charities but where this will most apparent would be if we said something about the Governments scheme Gift Aid. We would need to say both points of view, the first being its a generous scheme and if the Government gave more money to charity someone else would miss out and the other view is that Gift Aid isn't enough the Government should spend their money differently. Doing this will make everyone watching appreciate that the whole situation has been looked at.
Objectivity/Subjectivity: This says we need to make sure that the documentary has a clear objective from the start and that this is obvious to the audience so they have a clear idea of what is happening and what the point of the documentary is. We also need to make sure that we are not directly influenced by opinions from interviews, we can act upon points suggested through interviews but we can't suddenly take that point of view.
Bias/Opinion: As I've said above bias and opinion are different because a documentary can be slightly biased, however, it does need to show the other points of view do exist. I think with this topic pretty much everyone will be on the side of supporting charities. We will show facts and figures which will support the view that charities should be supported. We will talk about other points of view but we will be slightly biased as this is what we want to show and its what we people should see.
Access/Privacy: A big part of this documentary will be ensuring we give a positive media impression, we do not want to suggest that charities are unhappy in any way. As far as the audience is concerned the charities are doing fine but having a little more funding would help them a lot. Having meetings with the charities has allowed us to chat through our project and explain it to them and from this, we have been able to discuss ways in which we can positively convey to the audience that they need support. We have made sure that the way in which we approach the charities is done so that they feel that they can tell us the in's and out's of the finances knowing that we won't go and twist all the information. ​
Today I wrote up the information from my meeting with Level Trust and reviewed the interview I recorded with them. I think Level Trust is good to be working with as they are a little different to our other charities which will give them a slight advantage when being shown through the documentary. After this, I looked at the common issues which surround documentary, this was really good as it made me reflect, as I was going through each one, on what we are doing and why we are doing it. I think although, the documentary is going to be slightly biased we are considering other points of view which will ensure that the audience doesn't just feel it is a promotion for charities, that is what the charities get from this but its not why we are doing it.
Diary
21/4/18
Copyright
Copyright shouldn't be an issue for us if we make sure all content we use is our own or is licensed under Creative Commons. Creative Commons means that the creator has made the content with the intention that others may use it as long as credit is given. For any content, we use that others own the rights for we will credit them within the credits of the documentary. We will be filming all the footage for the documentary as this allows us to be creative and make sure we have exactly what we want. Music will be sourced from royalty free music databases. Following these guidelines will ensure that we won't have any copyright issues.
Post-Production Skills
Previous to this project I have never edited a documentary, so, I thought it would be a good idea to research editing techniques. I found this video here very helpful. The process it suggests I follow is:
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Import
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Organise
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Edit each scene
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Combine scenes
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Colour
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Add music and graphics
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Perfect
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Export
It suggests creating a new sequence for each day that you edit as you may want to go back to something, I will do this as I think its a really good idea.
I have some knowledge on different cuts but hadn't considered how many there were, so, when I stumbled across this video I was really surprised. When I begin editing I will come back to this video here and have a look at the cuts again so I can include some of them in my documentary. I will especially include the J and L cuts as the video said these work really well with interviews.
Whenever I usually export a video I just apply a simple auto colour balance. So I decided now would be a good time to learn how to colour grade correctly. On the left, you can see a tutorial I used and on the right, you can see a before and after example of one I tried. I definitely want to continue doing this as the video looks so much better.
Today, I looked spent some time thinking about how copyright would affect us with this project, being involved with making videos for YouTube I'm always thinking about copyright so this wasn't too difficult. It is essential we get it right because we don't want any issues in the future. After that, I spent a long time researching new editing techniques which will allow me to improve the quality of video I create in the future. I'm so glad I looked up how to colour grade because it is so easy to do and will make anything I create look so much better. I will have another look online to see if there are any other key editing techniques I can learn which will help me documentary look better.
Diary
22/4/18
Documentary Modes
A while ago when we studied documentary in class. I had spent some time writing an essay on the different modes which is to the left. After looking back at this our documentary will mainly be participatory as the presenter will be in the shot. It does enter some of the other modes as we will have voiceovers and be slightly biased but mainly it will be participatory.
As the internet wasn’t working this morning we started working on our pitch. I started working on my slides for the pitch on Wednesday. We divided up the slides equally. I then went through and started working on my slides. I only added the text as there was no internet to find the pictures. Now I have internet, I have gone through and added pictures to all the slides. I have also combined different aspects of some documentaries we like to make a mood board which will be shown on the pitch, I spent a while doing this as I wanted all the timings to be perfect as this will allow for a smooth pitch presentation.
Diary
23/4/18
To conclude...
By a long way, this is the most valuable research portfolio I have produced on this project, I am pleased with my performance and the quality of the research found. I have used a range of websites, blogs and a book to enable me to achieve my aims set at the beginning of this research task. My initial aims were to research the charities we have on board, the majority of the knowledge I gained about the charities was from the interviews we did in person as speaking to someone was a lot more valuable than reading a website. I also wanted to look at how they spend their money and this was really interesting to see the many different ways (most I hadn't thought of) that they use their money. I then wanted to research Gift Aid as I was intrigued by how this worked and how valuable it is for charities. I then left room for each piece of research to lead on to the next, this is actually very natural as when researching I am often left with more questions, as the research flows you can see from the diaries my thought processes.
I think the most valuable pieces of research would be the survey and the interviews. The survey was much more valuable than previous tasks as I had thought about the questions making sure I had a range of open and close qualitative questions and a similar amount of quantitative questions. Doing this meant the results I got back were valuable and aided my research. Going and visiting the charities to talk about what they do and what this project is about, was valuable for both us and the charities. We were really lucky as all the charities we went and meant with were excited to be part of our project and were willing to help in any way in which they could.
I really struggle to think of part of this research which was the least valuable as every piece of research has led to the next and has been helpful to me. I think this is because I thought carefully about what I was going to do and set out clear aims from the start.
To improve this research portfolio I could have set out more aims from the start which would have allowed me to be able to have more ideas from research. I could have also sent out a second survey to people who answered specific questions on my survey with the same answer, as this would have allowed me to find out more information about their opinions on a said topic.