Documentary Evaluation

Under the Gun Documentary Evaluation

Original Plans and Ideas

When thinking about the documentary the first things that I had to sort out were to decide on the style that I wanted it to be and the topic. I first started by looking at the different types of documentaries, for example; Observational, Expository, Interactive, Reflexive and Performative. After watching and doing some research on the different types I thought that my favorite type was interactive. This is because it has interviews and it makes it easier for you to follow and just generally the more enjoyable style to watch. My next problem was to think of an idea to base it on. I started off by mapping a few ideas using Prezi, from this I came to the final idea of creating a documentary based on shooting and conservation. I thought this would be great because it is something very close to me and my family but is also very interesting and people would hopefully find it very informative. 

Camera Angles

Generally with interactive documentaries there are many interviews but also content used as cutaways. For the interviews I had to go by the rule of thirds, this meant that during the interviews I would make sure that the person being filmed eye line would be 2 thirds up the screen. Furthermore another thing that I did was putting the interviewees on separate sides of the screen, for example for the first interview I had Paul in the left hand side, this helps with the continuity of the documentary and personally I think it looks better. When filming for the content used to overlap the interviews I tried to get some shot variation; including movements, angles and distances. For example I included a tracking shot into my dad shooting. I think this worked really well and added to the flow of it. Furthermore distance was an asset when filming as I used both close ups of the guns as well as long and medium shots. All of these worked very well and I think they worked and added to the aesthetics of the documentary. This is all because using a variety of shots means that the viewer will not get bored of seeing the same thing over and over again.

Sounds

Sound was always going to be challenging when making this production due to me having to film everything outside. Overall I think the audio in my documentary came out very well. Originally when filming my first interview with Paul I was worried bout acquiring wind noise in the footage and I didn't want his voice to be unclear because of the wind. Luckily when on site we found an area that was out of the wind and still had a good backdrop for the mise-on-scene. One advantage of filming outside was ambient sounds. I took advantage of these and I was very happy with the effect that it gave, for example in the background of the interviews you can hear birds. This makes the interviews sound a lot better and a lot more fitting for my documentary. The only piece of audio that I had problems with was for the second interview. This is because I had to use a different camera and the audio is slightly tinny and I had to turn it up in the editing as it was very quiet in the original footage. Overall I think the audio within my documentary came out very well. 

Editing

For my editing I decided to do all of the main editing in Premier Pro and some final touches in After Effects such as lower thirds. Originally I thought that editing my documentary to make it look the way that I wanted it to be was going to be very challenging. At first I found it difficult as I didn't have all my footage but after I had finished filming it was made a lot easier as I could see what duration my footage would be and after cutting the interviews down I managed to get close enough to the 3 minute marker. When cutting down the interviews I didn't want it to look like I was trying to disguise jump cuts, even though I made it so that each segment of the interviews flowed nicely onto the next part I didn't want to make it look like it was all in one take. I think in the editing I managed to find the perfect mix and I think it worked very well. Within the editing I used cuts and fades between clips, this is because I think it worked the best. After experimenting with transitions I came to the conclusion of using basic cuts for cutaways and in the interviews but between important sections for example different interviews I faded in and out. I did this because I think it added to the flow of the editing. Furthermore in some of the clips that I had filmed I was too zoomed out, but not by much. This was easily fixed in the editing as all I did was scale the clips up. I thought that I would have a problem with this as I was worried about losing quality but overall came out as I had hoped. Lastly for my lower thirds I used after effects. This is because it made it a lot easier to give the effect that I wanted as I wanted a camouflaged backdrop which meant that I had to feather it. Once I had created the lower third I exported it into Premier Pro and key framed it so that I could make it slide in and out of the screen at the beginning of an interview so that I could introduce the individual to the audience, but in a way that would grab their attention. 

Mise-on-scene

When thinking about mise-on-scene for my documentary I thought that this would be one of my stronger points. This is because I had already decided on what I wanted the backdrops to be for my interviews and what locations I could do them in. When on site for my interviews I wanted them to have a good backdrop of trees as it would make it very fitting during the interview. Another aspect of mise-on-scene was what they were wearing. I wanted them to be wearing suitable clothing to what they were being interviewed about. For example Paul is a gamekeeper and so I wanted him to wear his work clothes for his business and I wanted Angela to wear clothes that she would go shooting in. Personally I think that this worked very well. Lastly for the footage of actual shooting it was very difficult to control as it is a very spur of the moment thing so I did my best as director to make it as fitting as possible to the topic. I think that it worked very well overall and the mise-on-scene throughout the documentary met my expectations and came out as I hoped. 

Conclusion


Overall I am extremely happy with my documentary. Even with it being difficult for me to get footage due to the time of the year I think I have done very well. Apart from a couple of small minor faults such as quality of the audio in the second interview I think the rest of it met my expectation and came out as I hoped it would. The parts that I am the happiest with was how the first interview came out as the mise-on-scene and the quality of the interview itself was very good. Furthermore I am extremely happy with the editing side of things. I think it went very well due to how clean and the fluidity of it. Also the use of the lower thirds adds to the effect of the documentary and adds an extra aspect to it. All in all I am extremely happy with the result and am very proud of what I have accomplished.