Television Production

Interview Workshop. Today we shot a short interview in the studio to practice how to record an interview for our documentary. In a group of 3, myself, Ebony and Esme each interviewed each other to practice how we were going to use the microphones effectively, in order to get appropriate sound for either a formal interview or vox pops in louder settings. For our interview, we used a shotgun mic attached to the top of the camera and a clip mic on the subject of the interview. This worked well as it meant that in post, I was able to link the sound from the Tascam that was attached to the clip mic with the sound recorded onto the camera through the shotgun. This meant that we had the option of atmospheric sound, but I decided just to use the clip mic, and then shoot the questions with a reverse shot separately. It did work well but was a little time-consuming, so I'm considering that a two shot may be best for our style of documentary, with a shotgun mic being held by the present...

Surveillance Oz. Surveillance Oz is an Australian docu-series reviewing footage from CCTV cameras around Australia, and the crazy things that happen on them. It involves recreations of what happens in the CCTV offices and footage from the original CCTV camera when the incident occurred. There are also interviews with the people watching the CCTV cameras to get their opinions on what had happened. The interviews in Surveillance Oz are quite formal, but the editing of the show is quite informal and makes it easy to watch. The interviews are in the office itself or on a set, with professional lighting, and it's likely that there is a degree of scripting to the interviews. They also recreate the interactions between the controllers so that the viewer can get an understanding of their reaction, and it's likely quite close to what they were actually saying during the incidents, but there is also a sense of some scripting and direction added to the scenes. Along with this th...

Louis Theroux. Louis Theroux is a very well known British documentary film maker, who's work has inspired me for a very long time. His unique style of documentary-making has made him so popular, as he is able to provide a seemingly non-biased view on aspects of the world that the majority of the population don't know much about (i.e. gambling). I have seen all of his documentaries except for the Law and Disorder series which I will be watching for the purpose of this research. Theroux started when he graduated from Oxford in 1991, and started out as a print journalist the year after. He got his TV break from Michael Moore who hired him as a writer and correspondent for his satirical show TV Nation. [1] I found it interesting to know he originated from the same city as me and started out as a print journalist, as this shows how far he has come, which is inspiring. Louis' style of documentary is quite unique, in that he can almost effortlessly get the subject...

Icarus. Icarus is a documentary surrounding the illegal doping happening in Olympic sports. Film maker Bryan Fogel takes part in doping to document how it affects his performance in a French cycling competition, but unintentionally becomes involved in the details of a doping scandal after asking for the help of Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of a Russian anti-doping lab.  In Icarus they used formal and informal approaches to interviews, which represented the before and after of discovering the doping scandal, although both types of interview were used before and after. The interviews and phone calls were used to narrate and voice over the film, which kept up a dramatic style, and built tension along with the use of non-diegetic music. In the set up of the documentary and after Fogel's race, they used a lot of archive footage which fit to what they were speaking about in the interviews or phone calls, however in the lead up to the race they stopped using archive footage and m...

Ideas and Development. 13/03/18  Since beginning the project yesterday, my group and I have thought about what topic we could choose for our documentary. We have considered many controversial topics and we made a mind map of ideas we had, which included: Technology OCD Celebrities Addictions Sex Hyper Masculinity Religion Women's Body Image Obsessive Love Disorder We have each chosen a topic to research more into so we can decide what would be a better topic to make a documentary about and what is likely to be more realistic for access purposes. I'm going to be researching into Obsessive Love Disorder and maybe broaden the theme to abusive relationships, but I need to start my research into this topic as it is a very touchy subject which could make it particularly difficult to pull off. 14/03/18 We have researched some more refined ideas as a group, the ideas being: Puppy farms and the obsession over breeds and selective breeding Celebrity obsessi...

Documentary. Today we had our introduction to documentary as a topic. I know it's going to be a difficult unit, but I'm very excited to tackle it. In lesson, we discussed what 'documentary' means, the ethics behind it, and what we will be doing in the unit. What does it mean? 'Documentary' can be defined as " using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject." But documentary could be seen as an umbrella-term for films that 'document'. They are the depiction of the real life, which could be via fly-on-the-wall footage, interviews, re-enactments, graphics, and observational techniques. It can be depicted in different forms. We discussed what documentary meant to us: To document something A representation of something that not everyone may know about or can access To educate/inform It's real life There is a reason to tell the story It's to get involve...

Effie Directs Fargo. Here is the final finished film from the directions project.

Director's Statement. In this post I will be outlining how I got to the final product via the creative decisions that I made. I have used my research into directors and the way that they work as inspiration for how I directed my own project. I tried to maintain my own creative style by not taking too much inspiration from the original piece, but what did inspire me? In order to get a better understanding of the script I was undertaking, I took what we did in the lesson with Steve Finn and analysed and annotated my script as much as I could, so that I knew I was getting as much as I could from it in order to interpret it properly onto the screen. I wrote down the emotions that the characters were feeling, and this ultimately would help me understand what emotion I wanted my viewer to be feeling. This also helped largely with the character profiles . Steve Finn showed us how to properly analyse a script and at first it was difficult to look so deeply into the use of the...

Effie Directs Fargo: How did it go? For this project I had to take on the role of becoming a director, reshooting a scene from a chosen TV programme in our own style, making our own creative choices. I chose the TV show Fargo, with a scene from the pilot episode. So how did it go? What Worked? Starting off with the positives. Working on set with a great group of people (actors and crew alike) was a privilege and it was a great deal of fun to be making something bigger than anything I had done before (although still very small). To start, I feel that I prepared for the shoot well. My timing skills have improved from the last module and I was able to get nearly all of my blog posts done well ahead of time, which in turn really helped me during production and post-production as it meant that I could focus a lot more time into production and post-production. I arranged my crew almost immediately after the briefing, choosing people in the class that I got along with but also who ...