Research

This is my 5 research for documentaries.

The final attack on Wembley, (2024)

Self reflection: This documentary would be categorized as sports documentary as it talks about a football match, the target Audience would be sports fans (people who are interested in football) as people with interest in sports would more likely to be interested in what id happening behind the sport. The conventions followed were the suspenseful music as a lot of documentaries use those types of music. Which is created using camera angle such as tracking, pan, long shot(to show the mess), close up for interviews. Sounds that this documentary use is suspenseful music. Mis en scene shown from the documentary is the place, glasses, mess, ect. I find the interviews to scene inspiring, I might use that for my project.

Worst roommate ever, (2022)

The sub genre of this documentary is a crime documentary which was targeted for adults as it was more mature, dark and heavy. This documentary follows the convention of crime documentaries as it uses lots of discordant sound, mis en scene is very dark, lots of red (usually converted as blood or danger). Suspense is created from the sound which uses discordant sound alot and mis en scene that is really dark. I find the scene where they show pictures of the best friends inspiring as it creates the question of how she can do that to her own best friend which makes the killer represented as cruel, evil.

"Carmel: Who Killed Maria Marta?", (2020)

This is the trailer for the movie "Carmel: Who Killed Maria Marta?" 

The crime documentary "Carmel: Who Killed Maria Marta?" was created in 2020. They used an old picture of her in a frame which was rusty which is connoted as old, long ago. This crime documentary was from a real life crime from 18 years ago so it is very long ago.  In the background there was also pictures of guns and pictures of her and her husband which audience can assume that the husband killed her using a gun. This also makes the audience wonder why he would do such thing which adds mystery into the story. The font is very neat and organized, which really matches the theme.

this was another old picture of her, she was portrayed as innocent which is why they used pictures of her that are calm and not intimidating to make the audience feel bad for her and engaging more. 

This was an interview session, the interview was made to be quite casual as seen on the informal sofa, in the house and the guy smoking. This makes the audience feels the casualness in the interview.

Self reflection: This documentary would be categorized as crime documentary as it talks about a murder scene, the target Audience would be people interested in mystery as they would be more likely to want to find out what happened in the scene. The conventions followed were the suspenseful music as a lot of documentaries use those types of music for the mystery feeling. 

Which is created using camera angle such as tracking, pan, long shot(to show the mess), close up for interviews. Sounds that this documentary use is suspenseful music. Mis en scene shown from the documentary is the place, glasses, mess, ect. I find the interviews to scene inspiring, I might use that for my project.

Girl in picture, (2022)

The sub-genre of the crime documentary is true crime. The audience that were targeted is people who have interest in crime, mystery and real life situations that are happening in the world. The demographics for the audience targeted is Older people, maybe in Youth to adult age as the contents of the trailer is darker and more mature. The typical conventions used in this trailer is the pictures of victims being placed in the movie, in additional to suspenseful music. They also use alot of red colour which is connoted as danger which confirms the conventions of this genre. It creates suspense using camera angles such as close ups of scenes, pictures of the victim and the situation. This is to show movements to audience, expressions which the audience can understand the situation better. Mis en scene used in this trailer is lots of red in pictures, everything is dim and dark to show the situation as serious and dangerous even clothings were all that and it adds suspense as dark is denoted as scary, dangerous. The sound that is used is music that sounds like heartbeat which they use edit to cut the pictures according to the tempo of the sound. From my research the faster the tempo is, the more suspenseful it is.

I would probably use the edit for my crime documentary because I like how it makes the documentary very exciting to watch and builds suspense very well.

The sub genre of the crime documentary is murder, true crime which targets the audience that are matured and older such as adults which are interested in crime, mystery, has a lot of free time to watch documentaries. The typical conventions used by this crime documentary is the use of dark settings and dim lightings which confirms the conventions used in usual crime documentary. This this crime documentary also confirms the conventions of using interviews, as how most documentaries does. The suspense was created a scene of the corridors where the camera angle from a long shot to a closer shot by tracking which was blurred on purpose for mystery. The expression of the people in there were also captured very well using medium shot as they look scared, terrified and traumatized which would make the audience feel the same way. They use the mis en scene very dim, dirty and dark which confirms what the victims have been explaining and the situation of the hotel was captured using close up shots of running dirty water, making the audience feel disgust. The suspense was created using edits of clips being cut shown of dirty running water. The sound used was minim, not the very suspenseful but it was more informative as it was interview form. 

I like the interview part where they used close up shots to really shot the victim's expression to make the audience feel what the victims are feeling. 

Self reflection: I learned some key differences between crime documentaries and other documentaries such as dark lighting, messy mis en scene (not anything too neat), very minimal use of the colour white and very many music with beats and violins used for creating suspense. Overall im starting to really understand the keys of crime documentaries which i learned for the project. 

My team

 This is my team for the projects:

Regine's link: https://regine-regentsmedia.blogspot.com/ 

Aurelia's link: https://aurel-regentsmedia.blogspot.com/  

Beatrice's link: https://beatrice-regentsmedia.blogspot.com/

This is my team consisting of Beatrice, Regine, Me (sharon), and Aurelia.

Self reflection: This team was not purposely made at first, I just moved back to media class and there was no other group and so I went in their group as a group consist of 4 people. It was nice to work with different people who I don't normally work with. Regina is our editor, Aurelia is our script maker, Beatrice is our storyboard maker and I made the location scouts and help with bits that I can help with. Although we don't always see things the same as I wanted to make a more crime murder documentary, I think our documentary is also a good idea. However i wished that we clicked more so that we can have fun and possibly film something that I am actually really interested in, so that I can contribute more. Honestly, it was hard to contribute as sometimes i felt as if my ideas are not really heard, not only my group usually choose another idea that they prefer better. I think next time i need to find a group with the same ideas and values as its hard to contribute with different perspectives. But they were great teammates, I think we did a great job.

Weekly progress & plan

 This is my weekly progress and plan for TERM 1

Week 1: had my first media class, was introduced to our projects and i think its pretty exciting! (Were making a crime documentary)

Week 2: We did our researches by watching some documentaries about football and crime, there was very obvious difference that i learned and i might use their ideas in my project, we also made our groups for the projects. One of my team aurelia has already got some ideas for our project which we can use for the project.

Week 3: I learned how different regulation can effect the media’s contents such as in china they use doyuin which has regulation where governments can control or punish them for the users content and they also have this regulation where kids below 14 years old will only be able to open the application at 8am - 10pm only for 40 minutes and the contents are also educational. However in Tiktok they have no regulations for time limit, only optional. The US government has a rule in section 230 where the media companies wont be punished for the contents as the governments does not interfere unless it has something to do with copyrights, sex trafficking, ect.

Problem: i dont really know alot about china tiktok
Solution: mr nick teaches us more about the regulations which helps me understand more

To do: find actors, make plots

Week 4: I learned about how media can effect people's opinion for political reasons. My group also continued our ad project which i finished my location scout, my friend regine and aurelia is making the story line plot + script, while beatrice is making storyboard.

Problem : we do not have much time on media to finish our projects 

Solution: we use our time effectively by splitting our works into 4

To do: finish our script and storyboard

Week 5: I learned about representation which is how media represents people. I think that how we can represent people through media really affects how people see. For example for a crime documentary the murderer would be evil, psychotic and those. My friend beatrice also finished her storyboard, regina and aurelia also finished the story line and i finished my location scout. Next we did shooting this week to practice

Problem : Our time is limited as media is only 2 periods which isn't enough to do projects

Solution: We did the project, shooting at lunch or afterschool

To do: practice shoot

Week 6: Our teacher introduced us to critical reflection and how to answer the questions. We were also introduced the dystopian movies in theories. We also finished all our shooting for the documentary and it was pretty fun.

Problem: the critical reflection is not completely done as we haven't fully finish our filming, so we aren't able to analyze as much. We also had some problems in shooting day as we are not sure when to shoot.

Solution: we already made our plan and adjusted for shooting :), we also did the critical reflection after the filming is done to further analyze

To do: we need to edit and make thumbnail and the title for our documentary.

Week 7: We started on editing as we need to finish our documentary more

Problem: the problem was in making the research as we dont have as much done

Solutions: We got time to finish and research more on our class

Todo list: self reflection, editing, thumbnail, team picture, finish up blog, location and risk assessment pictures

Week 8: We did the whole week filled with project lessons as our deadline is by the end of the week.

Problem: Most of us are not done with our blogspots and we needed to be done by this week as the grading closes.

Solutions: We all focuses on this, as it is almost very near

Self reflection: I think that on this term, I should have started earlier on project instead of doing it when the due date is near so that I am able to get more time to get it done. I also think I have tackled the problems here, however would be better if I forecasted the problems in the future so that I can prepare better.

Ad project brief

 This is my project brief for media.

Self reflection: This was going to be our very first documentary, the first short movie we are filming where all the theories are going to be put in action. Im very excited for our first project, I love that the theme is crime as its more suspenseful.