Making the Final Decision on Theme

Today our group made the final decision that we are going to do a documentary on the attack of a young girl at school. We spent quite a lot of time on the BBC Crimewatch website looking for some inspiration and also to see how the majority of them are set out. One particular film which we liked was the 'Hayes Attempted Rape'. They used reconstruction, CCTV, interviews from close family members and lots more which we were thinking of which is good because now we know were on the right track. The pictures below are screen shots from the film on the BBC website. Click on an image to enlarge.

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Teen Cribs

After making 'Testing out... Interview Techniques', we realised that producing a documentary on Bipolar Disorder would be too challenging and sensitive to make as humourous so we decided to try out lots of different topics. This was one that we have made into a proper 'short' because we think we might like to use it for our main piece. 

Testing out... Interview Techniques

Unfortunately there was a problem with the computer we did this film on and by default is says 'Directed by Amy Michael', something we couldn't change.. It was actually made by myself, Matt Burge and Olivia Cope. 

Testing out ... Camera Angles

Testing out...

In last weeks lesson we had a task to make a mini documentary on different interview techniques. It really helped us decide what we liked and what we were not so keen on so we decided that it wouldn't be our last. we thought of the idea of making a mini series of documentaries on all sorts of things and we decided to call it 'Testing Out...' The second one we made was about all the different types of camera angle and they will both be placed on our blogs when fully completed, along with a montage of audience feedback to the 'Testing Out... Interview Techniques'.

Our work so far

At first, the idea of doing a test for our media sounded like a fun, hassle free challenge but we soon discovered that the style in which we intended on doing it in was going to be harder than we imagined. The style we wanted to achieve was black humour, a sort of mockumentary but as we did further research into Bipolar Disorder we discovered how sensitive it is and how it could upset certain viewers who are familiar with the illness or have family members with it. Because of this we have had to rethink our idea slightly and come up with something more serious. So, in conclusion, doing this test turned out to be a good idea because could have ended up making a really big error and now we have enough time to correct it.

Reseach into Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depressive illness) is a brain disorder that causes random and extreme changes in mood and energy levels. The changes in mood differ alot from the mood swings that everybody else experiences now and again. They are severe and very obvious. The illness, however, can be treated.

It is uncommon for Bipolar disorder to start in childhood and in most cases the symptoms will start showing from teenage years to young adulthood. It is also uncommon for Bipolar disorder to only start showing symtoms later than this. A study taken shows that at least half of all cases start before the age of 25.
Although the symptoms for Bipolar are easy to spot if you know what your looking for and may seem obvious, it is not easy to spot at the start as the symptons could look like seperate problems depending on how the person is reacting to them.
The phrase used to describe the two different personas that a person suffering from Bipolar disorder will go through is "mood episodes". A 'manic episode' is when the person is in an overly joyful and energetic state and an extremely sad or hopeless state is called a 'depressive episode'. Occasionally, their mood can reflect both a depressive episode and a manic episode and this is called a 'mixed state'. Whatever state they happen to be in, it can change instantly and they can suddenly explode for no reason.

The information which i used to write this post i found from these websites
http://www.kimandry.com/bipolar-disorder.html
http://www.psychotube.net/page/3/
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/complete-index.shtml

1st Idea - Crime

The first idea we had was to do a 'Crime Watch' style documentary. We were going to do a reconstruction of a crime, perhaps a robbery or a break in, and then interview people who had genuinley had this happen to them. After thinking this through we thought that it may get boring after a while and it may not be the best we could do as we would get bored watching it over and over and perhaps lose interest.

Coming back after summer

Over summer I watched a number of documentaries to help keep myself up to date whilst I wasn't studying at school. One in particular that interested me was Beckii Cruel: Schoolgirl Superstar at 14. It is a documentary about a 14 year old girl called Rebecca Flint who lives in the Isle of Man with her parents. She used to film herself dancing to Japanese music and was scouted by somebody over youtube to go to Japan. She now lives another life in Japan and is known nationwide as 'Beckii Cruel'.

Class Word Clouds/Diamond 9

In class we made 'O-Clouds' which is like a hand made word cloud. I put mine into an electronic word cloud on www.worditout.com . We also made a 'Diamond 9' which is where you take words from a word cloud and put them in a particular place in the diamond to show their importance. It ranges from the most important being at the top to the least important at the bottom.

Class Work

In class, we had an assignment to write a slideshow about a type of documentary, a documentarist, or one documentary in particular, and present it to the class. My slideshow was about Louis Theroux and is in the post below this. I learnt a lot from the other sideshows in my class, for example:

MTV television shows: These are targetted at a young audience because they are about teenagers and teenage problems. The particular documentary that was in the presentation we watched was called '16 and Pregnant' and followed the lives of teenage girls in america and their partners and families who have gotten pregnant. It follows their lives during the pregnancy, during the birth and just after the birth. There has only been one series so far, which consisted of 6 episodes. Each episode was about a different girl. This show shows the flaws and problems in teenage pregnancy and shows the different types of lifestyles the girls will now have because they have had children at such a young age. Although the primary reason this is out on television is for entertainment it is also a warning to teenage girls and reasons why they should try not to get pregnant at 16. There is a follow-on series called 'Teen Mom'. The difference is that each episode involves all 6 of the girls from '16 and Pregnant' instead of only covering one girl per episode. It shows the different choices they all made from raising the baby alone, with their partners or putting the baby up for adoption.

Mockumentaries: These are fake documentaries, made for the pupose of entertainment only. They don't contain truth and are meant to be comedy. The first mockumentary was made in the 1950's and was called 'The Spinal Tap'. It was about a made up group of musicians on tour. The term 'Mockumentary' was coined by Rob Reiner when discussinn 'The Spinal Tap' in interview. Another famous Mockumentary maker is Sacha Baron Cohen. He wrote, directed and starred in Borat and Bruno. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are famous for the British sitcom, 'The Office'. It was first broascasted in the UK in 2001 on BBC2. It is about the day to day lives of office workers in Slough who work for the fictional company Wernham Hogg Paper Company.

Morgan Spurlock: Morgan Spurlock was born on the 7th of November in 1970 in West Virginia. He has one famous documentaries out there, called Supersize Me. Spurlock used shock tactics to allow the auduience to see the real effects of eating fast food for every meal, every day for month. He deicded to do this because he wanted to expose the fast food industry and show the American public what would happen to them if they carried on eating fast food the way that they stereotypically do. Spurlock used a reflexive method of filming and using himself as a 'human guinea pig' was the ultimate sacrifice for his film.

He did not only experience being physically unhealthy, but he also experienced extreme mental stress and trauma. He used semi structured interviews in this documentary to build up a relationship with the people he was talking to.

Ross Kemp: Ross Kemp is an actor-turned-documentarist from South-East London. He started a television series after leaving Eastenders called 'Ross Kemp On...'. His style is obsevational. He uses this technique to observe how the people he is documenting live and work. What makes his documentaries so unique is that he goes to places to film that most other documentary makers would not want to go, for example in Ross Kemp on Gangs he goes and talk to the Bloods and the Cripps. Some other of his famous documentaries have been Ross Kemp on Pirates, which consisted of 3 episodes in Somalia observing pirates lives, the British Navy and the local authorities, and Ross Kemp in Afghanistan which helped depict the trauma that the British soldiers went through whilst fighting there.

Louis Theroux Slideshow

Testing out the other widgets I found

'How to add custom fonts to blogger'

After taking a while trying to figure out how I could use edit my HTML template to incorporate new fonts I managed to work it out. Unfortunately the website which I got it from didn't give me enough information and actually all this widget could do was change the font of my whole blog, not just certain words or titles. This is a shame as I really would have liked to have been able to do this. I'm sure there are some widgets out there that do this so I shall have to do some more research closer to the time.

http://code.google.com/webfonts

http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2010/05/how-to-add-custom-fonts-to-blogger.html#google

'Numbered page navigation'

I followed the rules on this website (http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2009/09/numbered-page-navigation-for-blogger.html) and it was simple enough to figure out how it all worked. If you look to the bottom you can now see that you can choose which page you want to view, instead of having to click older posts, older posts, older posts.

'New advanced post editor'

This wasn't really a widget but a way of making posting easier! Here is a snapshot of the new post editing software in action.

Even uploading that snapshot took half the time that it normally would have taken on the old editing software.



'Picassa web album slideshow widget'
To use this widget you have to have a picassa account.
This is a screen shot of how I was instructed to use this widget:

I didn't think i had a picassa account so I thought i would have to make one but to my surprise when i got to the website it only asked me for my googlemail password. After logging in, i can see that all the photos i have uploaded to my blog are already there. This website is better than i thought! The practice slideshow I am going to do is just some pictures of some famous documentarists i have mentioned.




Unfortunately the website wasn't as easy as it first appeared and uploading a slideshow is actually quite hard. I'll need to find another program to help me do this.

Testing out the Word Cloud

WORD CLOUDS

Testing Out Different Types of Documentary

Today Olivia Cope and I were doing our blogs and thought that a better way of showing our understanding of types of documentary than writing it out, would be to film examples. We tried to incorporate the type of styles of those documentarists that we have been studying. We used our friend Helen Revell to act out a mini-documentary which consisted of;

1. Reflexive documentary
2. Poetic documentary
3. Observational documentary
4. Nick Broomfield's style of having filming equipment in the camera shot
5. Michael Moore's expository documentary style

It was fun to film and also gave us a little insight into what is it going to be like filming our main task. 

Louis Theroux's Wierd Weekends

In 1998 Louis Theroux made the decision to use porn stars as his latest idea for 'Louis Theroux's Wierd Weekends'.This documentary shows the two very different sides to the pornographic industry. Throughout this documentary Louis interviews many male and female porn stars. He reveals many graphic problems throughout the porn industry about gay and straight porn to name a few. 

Another one of Louis controversial topics was U.F.O. Hunters. The episode follows a few U.F.O. Hunters, one of whom is a man called Thor Templar who calls himself the 'Lord Commander of the Earth Portectorate'. It is his belief that he has killed over 20 aliens.

Proud to be British

Proud to be British was Nick Broomfield's first film at The National Film School. It started as a student exercise and became a film a year later in 1973. It only lasts 30 minutes but was still successful at the time. It is a mixture of black & white and colour. Apart from this there isn't much information about this film as the internet wasn't invented when it was brought out so unlike today when the media go crazy over a new film, there wasn't anything like that.

http://www.nickbroomfield.com/proud_trailer.html

These stills taken of the film were found on Nick Broomfield's official website.

Searching for Widgets

I wanted to make my blog look more fun and creative so I scoured google for some websites that would help me achieve this. I found two websites which told me a whole list of widgets especially for blogger.com. The particular ones which caught my eye were:

• 'How to add custom fonts to blogger'
• 'Numbered page navigation'
• 'New advanced post editor'
• 'Picassa web album slideshow widget'
• 'Word Clouds'

I'm going to test these programs and maybe use them later when I have more information to document and i don't want to have massive blocks of text that aren't split up at all.

http://www.mintblogger.com/2009/01/30-blogger-widgets-and-plugins.html

http://www.bloggerplugins.org

http://www.wordle.net/create

Top Documentary Films

topdocumentaryfilms.com was a website given to us to help our research. On this website you can search through over 1200 documentaries and watch them for free online. From going on this website and having a look around it is easy to see that without a doubt the most popular documentaries to watch are those with the most number of documentaries under the title. These are:

• Military and War
• 9/11
• Drugs
• Conspiracy
• Mystery

This has given me thought that maybe as these are the most popular I may like to do something along those lines for my main task as not only will it be entertaining for others to watch but also will be enjoyable to make.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/watch-online/

Nick Broomfield

Nick Broomfield is an English documentary maker, born in 1948. His distinctive style is created by his films not having very many members of crew, only himself and a one or two camera men. he is often the one holding the sound boom in the shot.
He was awarded the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Documentary.
Broomfield's first documentary that was shown on television was Driving me Crazy. After arguing profusely about the nature and budget of the documentary it was decided that the documentary would only be made if he could film the making of it. Everything including the arguments, the successes and the failures.


http://www.nickbroomfield.com/bio.html

Michael Moore

Michael Moore is an American documentarist born in April of 1954. He is also the author of his work and a liberal political commentator. He directed, wrote, narrated and produced, 'Bowling for Columbine', a documentary film. It brought Moore much attention as an up and coming filmmaker and won many awards. He also directed Farenhet 9/11. This was about how George Bush launched the war onIraq instead of focusing on getting the real culprits who were behind the terrorist attacks of September 11. It also focusses on controversial issues like how some Saudis were safely flown out of America after planes were grounded because of the attacks. His overall documentary form is expository which we can tell from the issues he deals with in his cinematic works like the American heathcare system and the Iraq War to name a few.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

Louis Theroux

Louis Theroux is a British-American broadcaster. He is known best for his Gonzo style of journalism. This style of journalism is similar to reflexive journalism. It is famous for sarcasm, exaggeration, humour and profanities and is written subjectively, in the first person narrative, including the reporter as a part of the story. This style of documentary uses personal experiences and emotions and is more partial to worrying that the style is appropriate than the actual accuracy of the facts.
Louis Theroux is famous for his show 'Louis Theroux's Wierd Weekends' which showed footage of everything controversial including 'Porn Stars and 'U.F.O. Hunters' in January 1998, 'Swingers' and 'Black Nationalism' in early 1999, and 'Thai Brides' and 'Gangsta Rap' in October of 2000. What made this more controversial was the time at which he did it. 10 years later in 2010 shows like this wouldnt be considered as daring as they were then. In 1998 this was very risky as people rarely spoke up about issues like these.

Here is an example of some of his work where he interviews one man during his filming of 'U.F.O. Hunters'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3t0RnkqBY

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0857621/

Introduction to Documentaries

At Heathside, the task that we have been set is to create a documentary aimed at a specific audience. Like our previous blog, we will research and document everything we do in this blog to show our progress.

What is their purpose?
Documentaries are shows on television that analyse facts in a way which is entertaining for people to watch and to express views and opinions. They aim to record real life footage of what is going on in the world. They can reveal truths that we didn't know and preserve facts so that people in the future can watch back and have a better understanding of the way we lived. But this is not the sole purpose of documentaries. Sometimes they are biased and used as a way of persuading people or promoting certain objects.

Types of Documentary
Reflexive - The maker of the documentary is seen throughout the programme. They are in front of the camera talking to the peolpe being interviewed.
Poetic - In poetic documentaries, the storyline is more artistic for example shows on Channel 5 like 'I am the Elephant Man: A Bodyshock Special' which was released in April 2008. They are more aimed towards human interest rather than current affairs.
Observational - These documentaries tend to follow a person on their journey whilst something is happening for example 'Tribal Wives' which follows the lives of English women living with Turkish no-mads.
Expository - This is an analysis and expoositiom or person or topic for example Michael Moore makes controversial documentaries about political corruption and makes points which the audience wouldn't have seen or known before.

Forms of Documentary
I am going to do some more research into these makers of documentaries:
Louis Theroux
Michael Moore
Nick Broomfield

by researching the Channel 4 website and researching former Channel 4/More4 documentaries.