Equipment

Equipment

In terms of equipment, I am fortunate enough to be involved with Rising Brook Film Collective thus allowing me to borrow other equipment from other members. In this case, I borrowed another camera, a Canon 650D to add different angles and variety to my film, give the audience an increased depth and thus hopefully making the film more interesting. As well as this camera, I used my own Canon DSLR, the 60D.

Canon 60D












Canon 650D

The advances within technology means that, modern day DSLR camera's are extremely capable of capturing high quality, industry standard footage even though the camera itself is relatively affordable. Therefore such technology really helped project, improving the overall image quality and feel of the film - making it appear more professional.

Lenses

Whilst shooting my film, I used various different lenses to capture the image differently and to add variety to my shots.

As you can see here, the 50mm Canon Lens beautifully captures the subject, using a shallow depth of field, blurring out the background and allowing the audience to view the subject clearly.

Another lens I used was the 24-70mm Wide lens. The Wide lens allowed me to capture moments between my Grandfather and Grandmother, keeping them both in the frame, allowing the audience to observe their connection and love. This lens allows more of the scene to be included within the shot. 

The Last Lens I used was the 18-135mm Lens, this lens is quite simply a standard to short telephoto telezoom Lens, allowing me to shoot film from a distance. 

Sound

Due to the lack of quality on the built in sound recording system within the DSLR's I used an external mic to record sound. In this case I used the Rode VideoMic. The Rode VideoMic is a directional shotgun mic, therefore perfect for recording interviews and directional sound. Thus making it ideal for documentary filmmaking.

Editing

I used Final Cut Pro 7 to edit my short documentary.  Final Cut is often regarded as industry standard editing equipment and is highly accessible for amateur filmmakers like myself due to its relatively low cost, therefore allowing me to edit my film professionally, using software like this can sometimes greatly improve the final product. 

The viewing browser in the top right corner (above) allows me to view the final, edited footage, and the viewing browser in the middle allows me to view original footage, the playback quality within Final Cut is extremely good therefore it gave me a good sense of what my final outcome would be like, allowing me to observe mistakes and successfully correct them. 

This image (above) displays the timeline, which consequently shows the sequence of my film. The timeline allows me to not only observe the length of the film, but to adjust clips, add transitions, adjust sound and add captions to various clips. When playing back the edited footage, if you observe mistakes in the viewing browser, you return to the sequence and adjust the issues. The green sequence represents the sound and the blue represents the footage, when altering footage and sound, Final Cut requests you to render the altered footage/sound in order to view it. As you can see, the bottom two sound clips represent the non diegetic sound track, and above that the diegetic sound of the surroundings and live interviews. 

Due to my previous experiences with Final Cut, when I came to editing my documentary I felt fairly confident in using it, therefore I could could concentrate more on the film's content, instead of learning how to edit throughout the process. I had initially had difficulty with colour correction, as some of my shots completely differed to others in terms of brightness and colour, making the film seem substandard, therefore in order to develop my knowledge and skills in terms of colour correction in post production I observed various online tutorials, especially made for people in my circumstance.

I also experienced issues in terms of sound quality. However in order to fully change the quality of the sound I would've had to record the original sound again, therefore meaning I would have to re-film interviews with would be time consuming and the quality of the footage might differentiate from before. Therefore I had to edit the sound in post production. Final Cut offers adequate sound editing within the program, however I felt that it was below standard therefore I used Soundtrack Pro to edit the sound. 

Within Soundtrack Pro I was able to highlight the unneeded background noise, create a "noise print" then remove the noise using a "noise reduction" application, allowing me to successfully remove most of the background noise out of the recording. Therefore giving my sound a more crisp and professional quality to it. 

"Ode To Joy" - Finished Documentary Film.

Ode To Joy

Upon receiving audience feedback, I used the feedback and criticisms to improve my film. Specific areas that I needed to improve were the voiceovers, sound quality and introducing my subjects through the use of captions, all key elements within Documentary filmmaking. 

This is the final outcome. I altered the voiceover as previous voiceover lacked direction and authority in the tone and style. I was also told to "answer the question and message I set myself" therefore I had to change the introductory voiceover in order for the rest of the film to reflect this introduction and thus answer any questions and tasks I set myself. I also included a concluding voiceover to summarise the film and also add my personal thoughts and feelings in order to connect with the audience on a more personal level.

All in all, I believe the feedback I have received has reflected the success of the film. My aim's were for the documentary to connect with audiences, to be moving and powerful and to also serve as a dedication to my Grandma, something I can look back on and reflect upon. The only negative thing I found through the production process was difficulty with the sound quality. In order to fully improve this I would have had to re-record sound again which would be too difficult and complicated. However the sound quality for the recordings is good enough for the film to still be greatly successful.  

Evaluation

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before I began planning the actual film and filming it, I deeply researched the documentary genre with specific focus into the expository and observational modes of documentary. I initially figured that these two modes would reflect my film and its ideas and conventions, I planned to expose what life is like with Alzheimer's and its effects on my family through using conventions such as authoritative voice over's, titles, and my point of view, creating a more personal film. However it could be said that I challenged this form with the exclusion of one of its conventions, the nature of a strong argument being made through the use of footage. I felt that this element needed to be left out as the final footage resembled more of an observational approach thus why I combined both observational and expository modes into my film, thus developing the forms and intertwining them. The film itself allows audiences to "observe" how my Grandma lives now as well as observe and find out about the journey we have been on.

Specific research into Alzheimer's documentaries allowed me to view the techniques and ways of approaching the practical aspect of making my documentary, the techniques I observed had a great emotional impact on the viewer, which is something I wanted to capture within my film. I wanted to elicit a specific emotional and personal response, connecting with the audience on a personal level and I believe that I did achieve this as my audience feedback reflects this. Through researching Alzheimer's documentaries I studied the HBO Alzheimer's Project, which was a great example of what I wanted to create as it used extreme close up's of the subject and their family to capture their emotion as they discussed Alzheimer's disease, this is something I recreated when filming my Grandma in the care home. The use of extreme close up's allow the audience to build a relationship with the filmmaker and the subject thus eliciting an emotional response. Similar to this I used B-roll footage to create a more engaging experience for the audience. Through observing other media products that dealt with similar issues to my film, it gave me a deeper understanding of how I was to transfer my message and views onto the audience.

I knew that music would be a key focus in my documentary due to my Grandma's love of piano (hence the title) I wanted to use Ode To Joy as the backing track due to its relevance to my Grandma's name, and its relevance to my Grandma herself as the song itself was one of her personal favourites, therefore I believed that the music could play a key part in translating a message to the audience, as similarly seen in the documentary "You're Looking At Me Like I Live Here But I Don't", the quiet, gentle tone of the music sets the scene for the actual documentary. Therefore I felt that music was of vital importance in my documentary, as well as the diegetic sound of the interview as music helps to create a tone and a specific mood that can often reflect the actual film.

In terms of real media products, the most difficult aspect is the promotion and marketing of the product, therefore I believe that my product challenged those conventions due to its lack of funding and resources, yet used some conventions such as promotion through radio advertisement and magazine article. These two ancillary tasks reflect the everyday marketing of real media products. The purpose of these is to promote and advertise my product and gather audience interest in the film. Due to my lack of funding and resources my purpose was to not generate a revenue, but to connect with audiences on a broad scale, and in order to achieve this I believed that social media would play a large role. Through researching documentary film and their promotional campaign's, its clear that sites such as YouTube and Vimeo allow the filmmaker to broadcast and advertise their product on a global scale for a fee of zero, therefore I used the advances in technology to challenge and develop the conventions of real media product advertisement.

How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary task?

When I initially observed the ancillary tasks I saw them as a form of marketing and advertisement in a real world situation, the primary use of these ancillary tasks were to not only broaden my use of media, but through this broaden the target audience and thus gather more interest and potential viewers. Radio Advertisement can connect to a specific audience on a personal level and due to it being a film, I wanted to make sure the audience could visualise the setting and atmosphere within the film through the advert. Similarly I wanted to create this kind of tone through my magazine extract, therefore I approached it on a more personal level. Especially after observing the Sight & Sound interview with Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing.

This chart displays the effectiveness of advertisement through print ads (magazine extract) and radio advertisement. Although both relatively inferior to digital and television advertisement, when combining both, not only does it create a cheaper alternative but it can reach out to a broader scale of audience. The use of these tasks in order to promote the product however, is limited. Therefore I believe that if the ancillary tasks have the designated effect I attempted to create through them, then they can be a tool for creating a "buzz" around the product and thus enforce the use of word of mouth as a means of promotion, as perhaps this is the most effective method of marketing for a media product.

The radio advert itself was more of a broader and less personal promotion tool than the magazine as it had one purpose - to advertise. The use of an authoritative, commanding voice immediately attracts the audience to the subject at hand, and this is what I tried to recreate with my radio advertisement. It is difficult to successfully give the audience an insight to the film without visual representation as it is harder to understand the subject matter, but the use of additional voice recordings sampled from the documentary itself give the audience a deeper insight into the film and its topic and allows the audience to recognise the true tone and atmosphere of the documentary.

I used the radio advert primarily for promotion of the film itself, however the article allowed me to connect with the audience on a deeper and more personal level through the style of an interview with the director. My research had shown that successful film magazines often adopted this approach in order for the audience and reader to connect with the filmmaker and thus understand their aims, objectives and feelings around the film. The extract itself is a fictional interview with myself in which I give a backstory to the film, allowing the reader to understand my point of view and personalising the story as well, then talked about the creative techniques and ideas I used in order to capture emotion, so the reader can recognise how the film was made and why it was made thus adding more interest. I was able to talk about my inspirations within the film, I would like to believe that due to this personal tone, in a real world situation, the article would directly promote the film and ignite further interest in the media product.

Although not in a real world situation with real media products, I believe that combining the main product with the ancillary tasks would be highly effective in terms of marketing and promotion of my media product. The use of marketing on various other media fronts allowed me to reach a broader target audience and thus gain more viewers. I believe that the purpose of the ancillary tasks are to directly combine with the film itself and spread the media product across the market.