Our
product uses a range of different elements from existing
documentaries, we took the voice-over idea from “The shoot” we
used the voice from the interview to distribute over the video to
make it like a second voice-over. This then gave us both a male and
female voice-over, which can lead people to debate weather the
environment is for men and women, or if it is a male dominated job
still.
Using
final cut express I was allowed to select the parts of the audio and
take the recorded volume down, then adding my voice-over recording to
final cut express in the correct places where we wanted it to fit,
while also fitting best. This gave the effect of a clear voice-over
but not a silent background. With a silent background it didn’t
sound right when the voice over had finished and then suddenly there
was a burst on noise. Using this technique the end result with doing
the voiceover this way not only was suitable but also worked well and
went into the context of following the voice -over from many
documentaries, as they all had background noise too, however, there
was one documentary that I viewed on the television and this didn’t
have any background noise throughout the whole documentary, I thought
that this seemed very unprofessional and didn’t set a mood at all,
as the silence was the most distracting thing of all. Because of this
I decided that I would definitely have background noise as we didn’t
want the same effect as that specific documentary.
With
the nature of the video I had to take into account that some people
may not like the idea of birds being killed, so I therefore had to
display a warning clip at the beginning. I found that this wasn’t
too much of problem because it only needed to be simple text that
explained that some people may not like the footage. Messages like
this are used a lot in some documentaries that does follow blood
sports or violence. In all I don’t think this effects the video in
a negative way, but only in positive, because not only are we making
a documentary we also have to keep peoples feelings in mind as they
may be very much against the shoot.
We
used a basic opening clip of the title, I thought that the simplistic
look would add to the feel of the calm environment at the beginning
of the morning. With it to do with the countryside it would be
inappropriate to have a flash title that jumped out at you because it
doesn’t work well with the opening shot, the fade I used I think
worked well and because I used it all the way through I think it
worked even better because it doesn’t draw you away from the main
point that’s happening, it was also a simple to have a low key
change of shots without making it too over the top.
The
pan at the beginning was used to establish that its in the middle of
the country, shots like these are used to let people get a grasp of
what the landscape is really like. In this case the lack of shelter
can give people the idea that its not sheltered and there fore must
be cold. This then makes them a little sympathetic towards people
that have to work like that. However, that wasn’t the idea to do
that on purpose, we mainly wanted it to be an establishing shot and
add to the mood of the early morning with the sun rise.
Just
using these few points we have used techniques from other
documentaries to help our own. The cuts and the angles of shots were
also thought out from watching other documentaries like BBC Airport,
secret millionaire, traffic cops, and Billy Connolly route 66. Using
these for examples we were able to have a general idea to what shot
types to use for the documentary. I think through this we have kept
to the conventions of the other documentaries, apart from the woman
voice-over. However I think this was just a healthy change from each
documentary that seems to be dominated from men.
We
didn’t use direct documentary interviews like on Billy Connolly
route 66 where he talks to the camera like it’s a person. We
understand that he does this because he is his own presenter and
therefore needs to do this. However, our documentary was more from a
far, as if we were looking into the life from a distance.
To
develop our idea’s we went through different processes, this was
mostly due to the date being moved around for when we could film. At
the beginning we wanted to do a shoot day, however this was still
when we were planning the documentary. We then had to take into mind
that we were going to do an institutional documentary which then
meant we had to follow Jim throughout the day. We then planned it out
of what shots we were going to take and what he would do throughout
the day. However this was hard, because in the life of a game keeper
its hard to know what will happen due to split second things
happening which can then effect the rest of the day. We tried our
hardest to be able try and predict what could happen. The dates got
moved back 2 more times when Jim invited us to film the shoot. We
took him up on his offer but this meant that we had to change the
story boarding again, however this was difficult enough in itself as
its was still hard to predict what would happen. In the end we just
had to film what we could, and get all the key main events. When we
arrived we talked to the keeper about were we needed to be, after
explaining that we wanted to focus on the shoot he sent us with the
retrievers were we could get the best and safest shots of the shoot.
I think this helped develop our documentary the most as all the guns
and retrievers told us the best places to go to get the better shots.
This allowed us to get more footage as we had better angles to get
the birds flying over head. Because of this I think it gave the
documentary a good edge to it which I think made it better in the
over all task as it was easier to edit too.
Compared
to other documentaries this one has small quality’s as them such as
the shoot that we referred to on our blog. a lot of our research is
more along the lines of presenting to the audience where as ours was
more outside looking in. I think it worked in a lot of ways although
I think that if I had the chance I would like to film again and try
it with that technique to see how it would compare to the one we have
now. I think in that sense we have broken the boundaries a little bit
as there are less documentaries that have done it the same as we
have. The techniques we have used from them have been used effetely.
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