Introduction to the news

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17224370

I have previewed a news article on BBC which is 'Political Week in 60 Seconds in the East Midlands'. This is a news article which headlines news from the East Midlands in just 60 seconds. Within this 60 seconds there was four stories covered. The first story tells the audience about how plans to unite Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in a devolution deal are not going ahead says a conservative MP. It announces how 6 different councils were against the scheme. Nottingham city council and the police have started a campaign to cease people from giving money to beggars on the street as they say it is more effective if you donate money to homeless charities instead. Work starts soon on a £1.4 million investment to include more seating into Derby city center and a sculpture in hope to bring more people to the city. A police investigation to financial irregularity of the election campaign which is run by Kate Alsop has been dropped due to her campaign costed more than what was legal. That is a summary of the news in 60 seconds and a brief description of the four stories. The stories are placed in order of importance, the news is political and has a lot of involvement with the police. When the story comes up about how the council are trying to disable to opportunity of giving money to beggars there is a visual image of a homeless man on the street, this engages the audience and probably upsets most as it is a upsetting thing to hear. The story of the Derby's city center has moving images of the city and it makes you visualize how things are going to change and how it will look in the future.  The last story about Kate Alsop shows her on camera throughout the whole clip, this shows her importance and power as she is the main focus and how she is walking with pace gives the audience an idea on how determined she is in doing what she does.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b073qpnh/bbc-news-at-six-22032016

This is another news report i found which involves a few news reporters. The first 20 minutes of the report is about the devastating bombings which happened at Brussels airport. Ben Wright is reporting live on scene just outside Brussels airport as hundreds of people such as airport workers, holiday makers, communists etc. are travelling away from the airport. Ben Wright interviews a woman who was just a few meters away from the explosion and how lucky she is to be alive. Speaking to one of the witnesses helps to engage the audience and make them realize what a upsetting time people are going through in Belgium. Footage of cars and the audio of police, ambulance etc. is upsetting to watch, it is told that the cars are going to collect the victims, all of this isn't nice to watch and it shows how dangerous the world is becoming, bombings which are causing death of innocent citizens makes you understand what the world is coming to. Ben Wright is Washington Correspondent for BBC news which is the main news-gathering department of the BBC. He was formerly Chief Political Correspondent for BBC Radio 4. Ben is the son of Tony Wright (Former Labour MP), his wife is Moira Phillips and he was born in Birmingham. He was educated at the voluntary-aided grammar school 'King Edward VI Five Ways which is in Bartley Green. 

News ordering is the way the news is placed from most important to least important. Top stories which are bound to catch the viewers attention are stated first and they usually have a longer plot to the less important stories. Negative stories are always placed before positive stories as this will help increase viewers and make people want to carry on watching.

Every morning there is a prospect list written up to decide what stories are going to be aired on that morning/evening. The director makes the decision on what stories are going to be shown and then the rest of the team choose whether the story is relevant and if it should be on the news. The news tends to start of with quite an emotional story of something upsetting which has happened. The negative stories soon merge into positive stories so that the viewers are left with a happy story so they aren't left saddened. The stories are done like this so that society keeps connected and enticed.

Negativity - Negative stories are always rated above positive stories. These are usually tragic stories such as death, violence, damage etc.

Closeness to home - The audience relates more to the stories which are geographically close to them or involving people from their country.

Recency - Newspapers do there best to reveal stories as soon as they happen and are also very competitive with breaking the news.

Currency - This is the opposite to recency. Stories which happened in the past are seen as valuables. For example, a murder could of happened weeks ago and although nothing has happened to do with the story this will still be spoken about for weeks or even months.

Continuity - These stories are extremely interesting and makes the audience tune into the news everyday to see what has changed and to keep up to date in the story.

Uniqueness - This is a unusual if not kind of surreal story which you would definitely not be expected in the news. An example of this could be 'man marries his car'

Simplicity - These are simple stories which are easy to understand just by reading the headline i.e. 'Cat stuck up tree'

Personality - These are stories which are based on a certain person either celebrity or an ordinary individual.

Expectedness - These are all stories which everyone knows are bound to happen, the audience expect these stories and therefor not surprised when they are revealed in the news.

Elite Nations or People - These can be any stories which cover an important, powerful nation which have higher news values than a story which would cover a less important nation.

Exclusivity - If there is only one newspaper or news programme covering a breaking news story then they will get scored a high score in the topic. The UK Sunday papers do this by breaking a story which no other news companies have revealed.

Size - If the story has a big impact such as an emotional story then the more people it will affect. The more money and resources involved, the higher its value will be.

Proposal

For my three minute wonder i am going to be focusing on skateboarding and the public's views of skateboarders in today's society. I have a huge interest in skateboarding and have been part of the hobby for like 7 years so i think that basing my documentary on skateboarding will be a good idea considering the amount of information i know on the sport and will be able to base my own opinions to my views on skateboarding.

My film will be an expository documentary as my presence will not be in the film as it will just show on screen questions with a range of different people answering them on camera. My primary demographic will range from 13-55+ year old's, i will interview teens and adults to hopefully alter their opinions on skateboarders. The aim of my documentary is to prove that skaters aren't what they are stereotyped to be and how they are just ordinary individuals causing no harm whatsoever.

I will be filming outside of the Rec Skate park in Gorleston as that is a suitable environment for my documentary. I will also capture footage of people skating at the skate park so i can involve little cuts in the film. I won't need to travel far and it will cost nothing due to the skate park being dead opposite my college. I will be filming the whole production and i will get friends, both skaters and non skaters to answer questions and hopefully be able to involve public if they accept to be on camera.

In my documentary i will be asking questions such as:

• Do you believe that skateboarding is a good way to interact with new people? Please provide a reason to your answer. 
• Are there enough skate parks within accessible distance, if not then why should more be added? 
• What are your general thoughts of skateboarders/skateboarding? 
• Would skateboarders be thought of differently if there were more people involved in the sport? 
• Would you recommend skateboarding to other people (If you skate)

I won't be needing any props for my production but i will be hiring out a Canon EOS 700D camera from the AV room at my college, along with the camera i will get a tripod for nice steady shots and a microphone to prevent high wind sounds. Skateboards will be used in my documentary but my friends already have their own so nothing will have to be bought. My budget for the production is £0 i don't need to purchase anything as the equipment i need is easily accessible to hire from East Norfolk Sixth Form.

3 Minute Wonder

A 3 minute wonder is short television slot on channel 4 which broadcasts a three minute television programme aired in the middle of the channels prime time schedule. The three minute documentaries allow first time directors an opportunity to screen there work to a large audience, this provides the directors with a small step towards the competitive UK Film industry. There are also a few other projects involved in the scheme such as; FourDocs and Channel 4 Sheffield Pitch, which is a documentary competition. The three minute wonders may be short be they enable the viewers to get a decent understanding about the topic and after watching you are given information which you may of never known. The documentaries usually just involve one specific character such as Karl Pilkington who explains to the audience about different things which have occurred in his life. New directors are offered £4000 from Channel 4 to help assist them in making shorts. The documentaries are then aired at 7:55pm every weekday. The short films are primarily documentaries which highlight a current issue in the world but is very rarely noticed by the public eye.
 

This is one of my favourite 3 minute wonders by Karl Pilkington, it is a short documentary where Karl explores a museum and explains about life. The reason why i like Karl Pilkington's documentaries so much is because he gets straight to the point. He is interesting to watch because all though his points are so serious he includes humor. You learn a lot about life in this documentary and how the world has changed, Karl says and inspiring quote at the very start which was 'They say it all started with the big bang, but what i wonder is, was it actually a big bang or did it just seem big because there was no other noise to drown it out at the time'. This line really gets to the viewers and makes them think about the world.

This is another 3 minute wonder i found interesting. It is about a group of street artists who go round spray painting walls. The documentary explains how differently they work when with each other and how the paintings will be jumbled up if a the group are working on a piece together. Half of the group went to art school and actually have a degree in art, they seem to have no intention on caring about the public and how they are putting the prices down on buildings. They all have there own individual masks so they are not shown on camera. Graffiti to them is something they have always been interested in and they also sell paintings and sculptures as a job. They crew have all being doing graffiti since the 80's.

Here is a three minute wonder i chose which explains a woman's birth. This documentary explains how the woman found she was pregnant with the baby for 26 weeks but only thought she had a stomach bug from the flight back from holiday. The woman had a few tests and unfortunately she had a disease that affected the placenta, this meant that the doctors had to deliver the baby at 27 weeks, this gave the woman only a week and a half to realize she was having a baby. The baby had a lot of operations and tubes attached until finally the baby was breathing by herself and luckily two months later she was home with her mother. This story is extremely engaging and quite emotional but livens up at the end, this is a good way to share the story with an audience so they get in to the story but are not left upset at the end. 

This chart shows the listings on Saturday 16th April on Channel 5 from 12 pm - 12 am there was 6 documentaries aired, these 6 were together in a big chunk from 12 pm - 6 pm. The first documentary is 'Puppies Make You Laugh Out Loud' But the following 5 are all of the same series which is 'Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away'. All of these are grouped together around peak time which enables them to grab more viewers.




This is the listings on the same date on time but on Channel 4. You can see from the chart that there is only one documentary shown within the 6 hours. The only documentary on within these hours is A place in the Sun which is on within peak times. This is a documentary involving property experts helping homeowners choose whether to invest in properties.

This is a chart which shows the TV viewings in March 2016 for the different genres on Television. Documentaries is the third most viewed genre which proves that the public have a high interest in documentaries. I had a slight glance at the previous month's and the percentage of viewers and nothing has really changed which proves documentaries are watched by a wide range of people.

research documentary

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3283929/Mother-six-year-old-terrified-taking-skateboarding-s-not-girls-praises-teen-boy-helped-learn-despite-getting-teased-friends.html

This is some research i found which shows how a mother took her little girl to the skate park thinking she wasn't going to fit in and how skateboarding is only for boys. The mother took her daughter to the skate park and after a few attempts at going down the ramps, a boy came over and guided her through the steps until she was able to skate comfortably at the park. This boy definitely pleased the mum and she was so honored with what had happened, this is a story which backs up my evidence that skateboarders aren't always bad people.

http://www.jomec.co.uk/altcardiff/active/not-enough-skate-parks-say-boarders

Here is a link from 2011 which is a news article about there not being enough skate parks and skaters are creating there own spots due to there being minimal facilities

http://skateboard.about.com/cs/proskaters/a/why_so_popular.htm

This is a short speech by Steven Cave. This is him explaining the reasons to why skateboarding is popular and all the positive sides to why skateboarding is a good sport.

Documentary Questionnaire

Questions

Age:
Gender:
Occupation: 

What do you think of skateboarders in today's society?

Do you believe skaters fit there stereotype of being thugs?

Do you think skate parks enable children and teens to engage with new people ? If so for the better or worse?

Are there enough skate parks within accessible distance from this area?

Documentary types

Expository Documentaries

An expository documentary is a documentary filmed to engage the audience by speaking directly too them. The way they are filmed is by using rhetorical information to attempt to persuade the viewer. In a expository documentary they often have a voice over or titles on top of a series of images which are used for description and information, the voice over is what addresses the viewer directly. An example of an expository documentary is David Attenborough's Frozen Planet, this is a film which shows wildlife in the Antarctica. David's voice is placed over the top of the animals and he gives in depth information about the lives of the animals. The documentary shows the penguins in there natural habitat and the dangerous situations they have to go through for survival, the documentary is not staged and it enables the audience to see what life is like for arctic animals. 





Observational Documentaries

This is a documentary where the filmmaker is a neutral observer. It is filmed to document how life is lived and observed by the filmmaker. The viewers are able to see how people/animals react when in different situations. The filmmaker is often out of shot and they rarely influence what is happening. The film is all substantial as nothing is staged which means the footage is often quite shaky due to the camera crew having to move quickly. Big Brother is a prime example of an observational documentary, it is a game show franchise where a group of people 'housemates' are put into the big brother house and  are forced to live with each other away from the outside world. Marcus Bentley is the voice over for Big Brother and he comments on all the activities and drama within the house. The housemates are often told to sit in the diary room and are spoken to by the big brother about there life in the house. Big Brother is an observational documentary because  

Interactive Documentaries


An interactive documentary is adverse to an observational documentary as instead of hiding the filmmaker, they make his/hers presence prominent. The filmmaker is in the documentary because it shows the interaction between them and the people being filmed. This way you are able to see the filmmakers reaction as well as the people getting spoken to. The filmmaker will appear on screen and ask the interviewee a variety of informal and formal questions. The camera work isn't done to perfection as the camera crew are following the interviewer around with a hand held camera. An example of an interactive documentary is Louis Feroux 'When Louis met Jimmy' This is a documentary when Louis follows Jimmy around asking him a variety of questions to try and stump him to find out information about his life, you see what everyday life is for Jimmy Saville. This is an interactive documentary as you see Louis speaking to Jimmy and you are able to see his reactions to Jimmy's responses. Louis spends a few days with Jimmy going to locations which Jimmy would usually go to, this allows the audience to have a good understanding of how he lives his life. Louis doesn't hesitate to input his opinion and doesn't always agree with what Jimmy says.  

Reflexive Documentaries

In a reflexive documentary, the film maker usually acknowledges his/her presence on the camera and they give the audience a narrative for the documentary. This style of documentary makes the viewers just as interested in the construction of the documentary as they are the actual information in the film. Reflexive documentaries are usually filmed with very minimal camera crew, mostly just the interviewer and a camera man. The audience are very aware of of the problems the film maker faces when filming the documentary. Reflexive documentaries are truthful and they aim to provide the audience with realism. Nick Broomfield's 'Tales of the Grim Sleeper' this is a documentary about a notorious serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper who went to South Central Los Angeles and terrorized the location for 25 years. Nick interviews different people to gather as much information on the killing as possible. Nick is mostly known for his reflexive style when making documentary films, he also films with minimal camera crew, being himself and a camera man. Sometimes when filming he actually shows the camera crew in the documentary which is a good way to film in a reflexive style. Nick Broomfield has inspired many famous film makers with his style of creating a documentary. 


Performative Documentaries

Performative documentaries aim to stress 










(copied to gather information from)



 Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1991). This sub-genre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc) to ‘speak about themselves.’ Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.

Examples: Alain Resnais’ Night And Fog (1955), with a commentary by Holocaust survivior Jean Cayrol, is not a historical account of the Holocaust but instead a subjective account of it; it’s a film about memory. Also, Peter Forgacs’ Free Fall (1988) and Danube Exodus (1999); and Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss (1985), a film about India that I’ve long heard about and look forward to seeing.

I can use these different forms of documentary to analyse my own documentary technique. What I find particularly interesting is the role truth plays in documentaries and how the different forms presented here show facts in very different ways.

Documentary formats: Text

la Sortie des usines Lumíére 

This documentary seemed rather believable and everything that happened looked natural and not planned. It seems as if a camera has just been placed outside the factory as people were leaving to go home. The whole thing was done using one shot only which makes it look more realistic. There also seemed to be no editing which made the whole thing look more natural. 






Bowling for Columbine

From watching this documentary you can tell that it is definitely staged, the fact he just went into a bank and set up an account which comes with a free gun is truly unbelievable.  The way it is filmed makes the audience actually believe it is possible and so simple to go into a bank and set up an account with a free gun. You can see how unreal the documentary is, not just because of how easily he is getting a gun but how quick it all happens, Michael Moore didn't seem to care about the money and interest on the bank accounts, he just straight away chose the one with the gun. The process was all done so quick and he was walking out of the bank with a gun within 5 minutes. 



Louis and the Nazis  

This documentary was  

In a new post called 'Documentary formats: texts', summarise what you have watched so far and comment upon he authenticity and truthfulness of each text also saying why you feel that way from a technical point of view, e.g., editing, soundtrack, etc.:

- La sortie des usines Lumière

- NightMail

- Bowling for Columbine

- When Louis met Jimmy and Louis and the Nazis

- Side by Side

- The Act of Killing

NightMail



Bowling for Columbine


When Louis met Jimmy and Louis and the Nazis



Side by Side





The Act of Killing

The Act Of Killing

What is the film about?What happens?

The Act of Killing is a 2012 documentary about a group of individuals involving Anwar Congo and Adi Kuladry, working with the Pemuda Pancasila, who took part in the Indonesian killings of 1965-66. It shows you how over 1 million people from the communist community were killed. The filmer focused on showing the audience different ways in which the communists were killed, the film was done to show every single way the communists were killed. The documentry is focused mainly on Anwar Congo who explained his life of killing and therefor directed his own movie about it all.

Was there a scene that stood out to you?What was it and why?

The one scene that really stood out to me was when Anwar experienced the torture for himself when filming his death in the film. He finally noticed how bad everything he done was and couldn't believe what he put people through. I think this is the strongest scene as the main killer experienced how it would feel to be tortured. I also found the scene were he was gagging really interesting as you can tell from here that he regrets all the decisions made and is disgusted in what he has done to the communists. It makes you think that he is so sad and disappointed in his past actions.

Did the filmmaker have a presence?How and in what capacity?

The filmmaker didn't actually have a visual presence in the film but he did ask a question to Anwar. In a few of the scenes Anwar would refer to the filmmaker as Josh and make sure he is in the correct place for the best possible clips. 

What two honoured documentary filmmakers had executive producer credits on the film?

In the Art of Killing, two of the world's most honoured documentary filmmakers were used, being Wener Herzog and Errol Morris. For this film, both these filmmakers are credited as executive producers.

What was the follow up/'sequel' to the film? Find the title and describe what it was about.

A documentary named 'The Look of Silence' was the follow up to 'The Act of Killing'. This film was also directed by Joshua Oppenheimer. The Look of Silence is a documentary about a family that survives the genocide in Indonesia. The family end up confronting the men who killed one of their brothers. 

       

Anwar Congo