Rushes + Evaluation

 

Within this first video, the actor is informing the audience about one of the killers victims. This means that we had to ensure that the tone of the video itself was serious and maintained a professional feeling. To make certain that this criteria was met, the speech needed to be clear and credible, which will also ensure the short film meets the conventions of a documentary, in regards to this clip, we decided that the overall tone matched the criteria we set. When editing, we plan to crop the clip so the only section that is in the final video is the information itself, which will grantee that the short film remains professional.  

Like the previous video, the topics that are mentioned in this unedited clip were discussing a murder committed by Allitt. Due to this the actions need to be serious and the natural lighting needs to ensure that this tone is present in the final edit. For this rush, we will need to cut the clips so that the information is the only part that is shown to the audience. This will again make certain that the conventions of a true-crime related documentary are fully met and respected. 

To make our documentary slightly different/unique, we decided to use two different actors so that it maintains the audience interest. So we chose this clip to edit and we will ensure that the documentary conventions are met. Due to the film being recorded remotely and in daylight, we needed to shield the bright like to convey a specific mood. This meant that when finding a clip to edit, the lighting needed to convey a darker mood due to the serous topic and the actors needed to be seen properly so they are not too bright; the camera can be focused easier.

Finally, this video was chosen to be in our final product because it is clear an precise. Ultimately we had to make sure that all the clips were uniform in regards to lighting and the unedited sound will need to be heard by the audience. If these specific factors are not the same, the final documentary will not flow as smoothly and the editing process will take longer than necessary.  

Evaluation

In summary, my short film meets the conventions of a true-crime documentary due to the time of the film being between 5-10 minutes long and the overall structure being simple and in chronological order so the information is not confusing to follow. To ensure that the basic conventions are met, we made sure that everything was factual and all the information that was included was correct. This ensures that the topic isn’t misinterpreted and we can avoid any offence being taken by the people involved due to the documentary being based on real-life events. The narrative of short film will follow a set structure, more specifically we will ensure that the order in which we present our information follows the timeline of the events. When making our documentary we made certain that when editing we included elements, such as images of specific people, textual information and locations, to make it clear to our audience that the information that is being presented is based on real life events and gives a further insight to what specific people look like. This also allows the audience to be more interested visually as well as factually as they can now see who/what we are talking about. We also tactically planned out our positioning when filming to create a more serious tone, for instance looking directly into the camera allows the mood to become more intense as doing so is the equivalent to looking directly at the viewer. This means that we can be more direct when talking and most importantly taken seriously. To further the interest of our audience, we filmed at the location where the subject is being kept by doing so A greater realism can be created- the audience will see this as more factual then storytelling. due to the location being outside we utilise the natural lighting and positioned the camera so that the lighting wasn't too bright so the continuous mood of intensity and seriousness can be seen through lighting. Whilst filming we also considered using soft box lighting which would provide us with Slightly brighter and more adaptable lighting, however, we decided against this as the overall brightness took away from the serious tone that we wanted to create.

When looking at documentary related narratives, I struggled too related theory to the convention that we used. However, I found that we practically based the overall structure on Todorov’s Narrative theory, in terms of us having a beginning middle end, which consisted with the story having a a problem at the beginning (the crimes themselves) and a solution at the end (Allitt being arrested). I feel that this will increase the audiences attention slightly more because they will want to know what happened, why it happened and what was the outcome, which resembles the conventions of a true crime documentary. This also meant that when filming we knew of what order to mention each fact so that the structure was more fluid and we didn't go over the time limit.

During the editing process of our short film we added basic effects in order to not take away from the information that is being presented. This will allow the documentary to have appropriate effects, because if we used bigger effects the documentary may be deemed disrespectful and to avoid this we included effects such as smoother transitions, which also meant that the short film in general will not look static. Images and textual information will also be added to the main film which will not only allowed audience to see the information in different formats but will also mean that more content can be included. This is evident during the final clip, written information rather than spoken information is included, which allows us to conclude the documentary itself and give the audience more information that if spoken can become too complicated.

During the distribution process we plan to utilise social media platforms such as YouTube so that‘s a higher demographic can view the documentary. Due to social media being on high demand, it will enable us to reach a wide audience and have no limitations when doing so. This will also be beneficial to us as the information that is presented within the documentary focuses on particular topics that may be seen as inappropriate to younger viewers therefore by using these social media platforms an age restriction can be put in place to avoid younger viewers from watching without parent permission. Furthermore distribution using this method is free meaning that we can still Our documentary to a wide audience without having to spend any money. Additionally, the overall duration of the short film means that we can use different social media platforms, which limits the length of videos such as Instagram and Twitter. By doing so results in our audience being able to access the video at all times and share it with people they have similar interests.