Skip to main content

Documentary unit: Research - watching a documentary

The most hated family in America - A documentary by Louis Theroux

To research how to shoot our documentary, I watched one made by one of the most well-known documentary makers ever, Louis Theroux, as I thought if my​ group could imitate some of his styles, like shooting, interviews and voiceover, then it could greatly improve the quality of our own documentary.


I chose this documentary due to me hearing things about the Westbro Baptist church before, but I didn't know a lot about them. I had heard that they went to very extreme measures and had opinions on certain subjects that are considered by everyone else as extremely offensive. This documentary really opened my eyes to how far people are willing to go in order to try and make their point. 

 While watching this documentary, I took notice of how Louis conducted his interviews. They were quite informal, as he and the person he was interviewing were not always just sat down talking to each other. Most of the time, they were talking in-between actions, such as at a protest. I felt that this was a good technique to use, but then thought that being more formal in our interviews would be a better fit to the tone of our documentary, so we decided to have the interviewer and interviewee sitting in front of each other, like most other interviews. 

 The questions Louis asked were also quite good, as he expanded his point during the question, allowing for a more detailed answer from the person he was interviewing. We tried to incorporate this technique into some of the questions that we asked during our two interviews, but due to time restraints, we could not use all of the answer in the final piece, as the questions were sometimes drawn out to much. 

 The camera was more fluent in this documentary that it is in ours, due to the nature of the subject that is being filmed. In Theroux's documentary, the camera is all handheld, as there is action going on all around him at almost all times. In our documentary, we are fixed on one action, so the camera is more fixated, especially in the interviews. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TV News: Top line and Why Independent arts

The independent Arts are becoming less important in todays society of technology, so we felt like it was time to have a story about the arts in the news in order to raise awareness about the different areas of arts, and hopefully create an interest in them. The Hazlitt Youth Theatre and the Electric Palace in Maidstone are the subjects of our news report. The youth theatre is celebrating it's 20th anniversary, which means that it has helped young people find a creative outlet, and an appreciation for the performing arts in Maidstone for 20 years. The Electric Palace in Hastings, is an independent cinema that screens not only the big releases that you would find at any Odeon, but also independent films, and B-Movies too. The cinema has a dedicated B-Movie Fan Club which is curated by 18 year old Robin Knowles. The fan club helps him with his autism and enables him to share his love for B-Movies on a monthly basis. This cinema has won awards for it's film programming in the pas...
Post a Comment
Read more

Editing Workflow

There are several steps that an editor needs to take when working on a project, and they need to be taken well so that the work is carried out at the best quality and best ability of the editor. It is always good for an editor to have a good workflow, as this will save so much time and effort in the long run, when carrying out this workflow becomes the standard way that you carry out an edit. Doing this will also cause you less stress inn your production, which can also help your editing, as when you are stressed about it, there may be some things that you miss during the edit. All of this being carried out is what will create a better post-production experience. Through some research into editing workflows, I found that there are 7 steps to the process, which when carried out, check all the boxes of what an editor needs to do.  1. Media Ingestion and Management - Copying your video media from your camera to your computer.  You need to have  an easy to understand, r...
Post a Comment
Read more

Storytelling – Preparing and shooting news packages

News packages •These are self-contained news items. • Unlike VOs/SOTs, the news anchor need do no more than introduce the item and then wrap it up at      the end. • The reporter themselves also wraps up the story with their ‘TAG’ at the end (name, location) • The package contains the reporter usually both on camera and also their voice as “track” ( aka              VO/Comm). • Use the script as a template for structuring and guiding your edit. • Ensure you fully research what you are trying to shoot so that you are as prepared as possible. Structure and Content A good package will contain a mix of the following elements :  – Interviews, vox pops & set ups  – Sequences and actuality  – GVs/archive  – PTCs and walky talkies  – GFX It is useful to structure your piece as you might a good written piece of work:  – INTRO  – BODY OF ARGUMENT – expert opinion, stats, backgrou...
Post a Comment
Read more