At a technical level, the continuity of the documentary is good. We worked hard to ensure that Amy's costumes remained the same on different days of filming, down to the smallest details such as earrings. In addition, the editing in the first scene ensured successful matches on action. On the left, Amy has just lifted the microphone from the stand and on the cut where it zooms out to the television screen she walks off with the microphone in the same hand.
http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/htmfiles/editing.htm
This site has a subheading halfway down that was helpful in explaining a match on action, plus other features in editing.
This opening sequence also contains rhythmic editing. (example The Strokes- Between Love and Hate) We attempted to cut between shots when the music changed to the next lyric or next part of the song- such as the transition between the bridge and chorus was where we zoomed out ‘through’ the television. Having done the opening sequence in iMovie so that it could be burned immediately to DVD prior to filming the interview (as Lola watches herself on a real TV the DVD had to be made early on), there is one cut that if time was not a constraint, we would like to have changed; the cut to the high angle shot doesn’t cut at an effective time, mid-way between a line of the song instead of the end.
Typical documentaries follow certain conventions (http://www.slideshare.net/crosswaysfederation/codes-and-conventions-of-documentary). In terms of content, our documentary mixes a conventional interview style with a subverted element spliced between the interview: whereas typical documentaries done in this style show the interviewee saying one thing and then footage to reflect/back up what they have said, ours shows Lola answering questions with a deluded sincerity and then the footage shows her doing the opposite. This was to achieve a satirical, channel 4 style.
Some scenes involve physically following Lola with the camera handheld. The ITV documentary series Fearne and... uses a similar idea and style to ours. Fearne and Paris involves handheld camera work, following Paris Hilton around as she goes about her week. Although our documentary does not have a presenter with the celebrity, the style of this series is what we aimed to achieve; a friendly, open relationship between the interviewer and the star.
One scene involves a statement from someone who wishes to remain anonymous. Having all watched documentaries and other television programmes that use this technique, the group decided on a backlit silhouette of the 'victim', rather than a pixelated face/black bar over the eyes. This anonymous interview extract is a style we aimed for- just a silhouette.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u08Ppcj2lOA
Subtitling is a common feature used in documentaries when the subject's speech is unclear. We used this is our documentary.
Swearing is censored by a bleep and a black square around the mouth (similar to this shot of Paris Hilton, below), and the different portions of the documentary are divided by a very short beep and a flash of white- typical devices used in documentaries. In addition, the scenes of Lola performing in a studio followed conventions of typical music videos/ performances. Amy wore a glamorous sequin top, looked directly at camera, and the editing followed the rhythm of the music so as to achieve a continuous flow.
The 'hidden camera footage' section, in black and white and from a straight simple angle throughout, was to imitate that of a hidden camera/CCTV footage. As someone commented in our audience feedback on YouTube, we should have made the caption more subtle, probably along the bottom, and it should have remained on screen for the entirity of the shot, with a timer, like in this real CCTV shot. This would have made for a more convincing portion of the documentary.
We were aiming to provide entertainment and information to our audience, and a chance to see the 'real' Lola; often people enjoy watching documentaries about particular celebrities where they are 'exposed'. Richard Dyer's Theory of Entertainment describes ways in which an audience gains entertainment from the media. Our documentary utilises three of his five main points: transparency (where the main character is 'exposed', honest), intensity (emotional highs and lows, as in Lola's rise and fall) and energy where a high-action sequence can re-fuel a tired person (singing and dancing scene).
Overall it worked well. Humour proved tricky to accomplish as it was to tailor to many people, but generally the puns and sarcasm worked well. The documentary is, in some elements, similar to Pete Doherty's rise and fall (in its light heartedness), or the Michael Jackson one (armchair interview style).
How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary tasks?
In the main production we were aiming to portray the two sides of the protagonist: one was Lola as a glamorous star and socialite, the other is her as she is now, deluded and, in reality, fallen from grace. In the promotional poster, Lola stands beneath a glittering disco ball, with her microphone and sequin dress. This represents her as the star she was. No image of her now was necessary as the poster is simply meant as a teaser; the title shows that the 'fall' will also be the focus of the documentary. The poster serves its function well. It is simply a teaser to entice viewers from an early stage in the release, prompting them to keep a look out for further promotional material. It doesn't give too much away and its simplicity works well. As mentioned in the poster research, my poster idea was inspired by the promotional picture for Kerry Katona’s documentary, depicting her in a black tracksuit looking angry contrasting to a picture of her smiling serenely in a white tracksuit. My poster portrays the two sides of Lola in a similar way.
The Channel 4 Logo posed some problems to edit as we could not find a suitable image. Finally we settled on this one:
I used the 'magic wand' tool to delete the background...
...but this made the logo pretty much invisible as it had no edge. To solve this I went to the Layer toolbar and Layer Style to add a 'drop shadow' to the outer edges, and added a glow.
The final poster encapsulates all the best features from our three individual posters: simplicity, striking image, glowing C4 logo, the disco ball, "coming soon".
The radio trailer uses the same song as in the film, When Love Takes Over. We chose this song for Lola because of its energy and star quality- the piano opening and the upbeat chorus, plus the powerful female voice. The trailer uses the same song for a continuous, themed effect- the opening performance sequence linking the film, poster and radio trailer in some way. The trailer uses the same ‘interviewer’ from the film, to also add to the continuous feel. It uses a mixture of sound clips from the finished film, footage we never used in the film, plus some short recordings we made using Flash recorders. The audience hears Lola’s rise and fall in compacted into a 30 second teaser. The final ‘coming soon, on 4’ from the narrator entices the listener to prepare for the programme.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From the two choices (documentary or film), the group instantly leant more toward the documentary. Initially planning to each come up with an idea and then present it to the rest of the group, we decided instead to just talk together about recent or memorable documentaries we had seen, and the idea of a 'rise and fall' documentary was mentioned. Our intended audience is one comprising of mainly young adults. Imagining Lola was a real celebrity, she would more than likely attract a mainly female teenage audience, plus women of other ages. This in mind, these 'fans' would be the target audience for a documentary about her rise and fall. However, the public usually enjoy a scandal- for instance I personally am not a Britney Spears fan but have watched a documentary on her infamous downfall. As such, we kept a target audience in mind but recognised that it may extend to a wider variety of people. We distributed a questionnaire early on in the planning stage to acquire information from our target audience about what channel they would expect it to be shown on, do they like the idea of rise and fall, etc. When we trialled the unfinished film to classmates (fitting our target audience of young adults), some said that they would like to see whereabouts Lola lived from the outside. We tackled this by adding a few establishing shots, which did clarify the setting much better- it is not a shot of Jacob’s house but of a run-down estate we came across near college, which worked perfectly. Overall, however, most enjoyed the film, saying that it was original and energetic. There could be a variety of possible interpretations of the documentary depending on the situation of the viewer. For example, people who are religious, or older people, may not approve of the swearing, even if it is censored. Working class people may appreciate the documentary more as Lola is seen to be having to live life now as 'one of them', in a housing estate etc. Despite having a female protagonist, there is no reason why the documentary could not appeal to both genders.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In the construction of the documentary, we used digital sound recording equipment (and for the radio trailer) and a video camera to capture the raw visuals and audio. Recording some of the sound for the documentary separately made for a better quality of sound in the production, enabled us to do a voiceover, and it also meant that we could use additional sound at any point necessary, as the flash recorders are small and simple to operate. The group used Photoshop twice. Primarily we needed Photoshop to create three terribly edited, super-imposed photographs of Lola stood with several of her celebrity 'friends'. This had to be done fairly early on as we physically needed to take hard copies to Jacob's house to film the interview scenes. The second use of Photoshop was for the advertising poster. Photoshop is such an advanced programme that virtually anything was possible to create- a photograph of Amy from her Facebook site became an edited version in one of the preliminary ideas. We found it simple to use (after some tutorials) and soon all came up with various posters. This year we used Final Cut to edit. It proved to be much better than iMovie which was used at AS level. On Final Cut we were able to use key framing to censor Lola's mouth when she swore using a black box.
However, we also used iMovie to edit Lola’s studio performance. This was the first task of the entire production, as this sequence had to be burned to DVD before the interview could be filmed. Digital cameras were used to photograph locations, props, costumes and characters, plus specific shots that we had planned. We used the internet and search engines to find other documentaries, posters and trailers to analyse to inspire our production. Creating a blog was simple and eliminated paperwork, plus it also meant that the whole group could access our work from any computer with the internet, both at home and at college, meaning work could be added whenever desired. Our documentary was posted on YouTube to gain audience feedback. As YouTube is so widely available, this was convenient for easy access for anyone to view it. We used contacts on Facebook to gain a wider audience response than from people just from Barnsley.
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