Wednesday, 8 September 2010
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.
Friday, 3 September 2010
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'.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
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.
Friday, 2 July 2010
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.
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.
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. Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Friday, 18 June 2010
Testing out the other widgets I found
'How to add custom fonts to blogger'
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.
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.
'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:
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 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;
- Reflexive documentary
- Poetic documentary
- Observational documentary
- Nick Broomfield's style of having filming equipment in the camera shot
- 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.
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.
http://www.nickbroomfield.com/proud_trailer.html
These stills taken of the film were found on Nick Broomfield's official website.
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