Codes and Conventions Evaluation
Link to comparison video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNfidzB2KGE
For this project, I created a documentary all about the Events Industry in Chester. I wanted to highlight the fact that Chester isn’t just a tourist city and that it does put on events which are attended by a large amount of people and to do this, I wanted to conduct interviews with both event goers who have attended events such as Chester Rocks and also the creators of these events for a documentary showing both sides of the industry in Chester. I wanted my documentary to be mainly subjective, as I wanted to voice peoples opinions on the industry however I also wanted a part of my documentary to be objective, to educate viewers.
I wanted my documentary to be different and unique, something that no one else has thought about doing and by thinking of this, I decided to create the opening 5 minutes of a documentary that you would usually see before any title credits. I also didn’t want my documentary to be in any kind of sequence as I really liked the idea of cut scenes. The structure of my documentary isn’t that different from a video I have found on youtube. The video I am comparing my work to is called Chestival 2010 – Celebrating Chester’s Best Events and Festivals. (Chestival standing for Chester Festival) This video is five minutes long and consists of short, snappy clips of Chester and the events within the city followed by clips of interviewees talking about those events, which is just like my documentary as mine is also just under five minutes long with the same structure. There is one main difference between the structure of my documentary and the Chestival video found online and that is the fact that I have used a voice over, talking about each clip and what they mean and represent with a quiet, soft piece of music playing in the background. The music I have used is Never Shout Never’s Big City Dreams – Instrumental Version. The Chestival 2010 video is a lot more text based with titles on screen. There is not a voice over explaining what is going on and the music is a lot louder and a lot more upbeat than the music in my documentary. The music this documentary has is Vampire Weekend’s Giving Up the Gun. Another difference between this documentary and my own is the main reason of the video. The Chestival video looks as though it is made for advertisement where as mine is a documentary made more for voicing people’s opinions and also stating facts.
I haven’t used many camera angles and shots in my documentary, however the ones that I have used, I have managed to use quite frequently. The first camera angle used in my documentary is a high angle shot, which is also a library shot. This shot shows one of the most famous views of Chester – the view from the Eastgate Clock, looking down on passers by. Other camera angles used in my documentary are shots such as long shots, low angle shots, zooming, library shots, pan shots, medium shots, still pictures, handheld shots and also close ups. I have used these angles for filming things such as Chester Riverside, Chester’s Christmas market and the interviews with both interviewee’s. All other shots in my documentary are library shots and all footage used (both library shots and footage I filmed) are in deep focus. As I live in the heart of Chester, getting into the city centre to film was really easy and no hassle at all. I was unfortunate enough to not be able to film Chester’s Winter Wonderland because of weather problems and limiting time restrictions. As I was unable to do this, I was very lucky to find a short video on youtube of the winter wonderland and therefore used this video as a library shot. I also planned to film both Steven Mosley and a member of Cheshire West and Chester’s Council, interviewing them on the funding that Chester puts aside and spends on events each year, however after sending both possible interviewee’s emails asking if they would like to help me, I did not receive a reply from either of them and had to quickly change my idea from one event goers perspective, to two. Both the interviewee’s I questioned, were really helpful and answered the questions I asked them in as much detail as they could, which made the editing process a lot easier. I asked both open and closed questions as well as leading questions which you can see in my documentary. I feel that this made the answers to these questions really insightful. I positioned my interviewee’s on the side of the screen for one main reason, I really liked the way it looked. It made it look as though they were talking to someone behind the camera and not directly towards the camera.
Editing my documentary was time consuming, but I found it easy. Firstly, I used Garageband to produce my voice over and this was really easy to insert into iMovie, the software I used to edit my footage. To film my footage, I used both the college video camera’s and also my phone, which has a good camera. To keep the college camera steady whilst interviewing, I used a tripod. I created my title picture in photoshop, a task that was quick and easy and took me around 10 minutes to create and I also downloaded any library footage from youtube via en.savefrom.net.
Overall, I am happy with my documentary. I do feel small areas could be improved, one of these could be the fact that I only had two interviewee’s and I could have included more and I also could have used more than one piece of music, however I feel that the way it came out is really good and I am proud of what I have created. I feel the main point of this documentary – to advertise the events industry in Chester – has been put across in this video.
saskiasteelswright 