Extended Project- Documentary
Evaluation
The Process
When we were given the task to create a documentary, my immediate thoughts were that I wanted my subject to be based on religion, as it is a subject I am interesting in learning about. The initial idea was that the documentary would be about five different beliefs of the world, including strange and unheard of beliefs, along with the more conventional and popular beliefs of Christianity and Atheism. After some consideration I decided that it would be best to change the five beliefs to three, using Christianity and Atheism, and one other, more taboo belief. Scientology seemed like the best choice as it is becoming more and more popular, yet still holds some mystery to it. I wanted to create a documentary that would also incorporate the theme of being judged based on your belief, and inform the audience about them. I began first researching into the history of documentary, where the origin of documentary comes from and how different forms have been created over the years, to become the modern documentary. I also analysed five different documentaries some that included the subject of religion, so that I could understand how they are put together. I also looked into the codes and conventions of documentary, finding out what a typical documentary includes so that mine will be successful. I will include the key codes and conventions such as: voiceover, archive footage and text to anchor images.
I conducted a questionnaire into audience, so I could find out who my target audience would be ad found that a youthful audience would be ideal, as they would prefer to watch a short documentary about religion.
Once I had researched into documentary, I began to look into the three beliefs, finding out as much information as possible that has relevance to what my documentary will be about. I looked into the history of the beliefs, as well as famous faces of those beliefs. I began coming up with a few questions that I could ask people of these beliefs, that would reveal more information and follow the theme of being judged. Then I began the planning of the documentary as a whole, producing a storyboard that included all of the elements I had looked into, including footage I had found online. Once I had done all of this I produced a list of the final questions, and wrote the ‘Poetry Standoff’. Whilst preparing the documentary I found the different people to take part in my documentary that included organising the filming, and e-mailing the Scientologist.
I then began filming and editing the documentary which proved a long and difficult process to work on a project individually that would be around ten minutes long. I experienced many problems and changes.
Problems and Changes
There were a few problems regarding the making of my documentary, including the difficulty of using the belief Scientology. I had to use very persuasive e-mails in order to get Christian Harland an executive at the church to participate in the documentary. As I was unable to film, I had to find an interesting way to put his answers on screen, so I did this by having his answers type onto screen.
Another problem I had was with the audio levels of the documentary, and after excessive editing, I still think this is something that could have been improved on.
The different changes I made were adding a Kings of Leon clip to the Christian section as I found there was too much of a bias towards Atheism. I also changed the footage of the church because it was too unclear, and edited the Christian footage to vary the camera shots. I then decided to change the order of the Atheism footage, so that it linked and connected together more.
The Final Product
I am happy with how the documentary turned out to some extent, as I think it has fulfilled the targets I had set for myself. I think the documentary shows and portrays the three beliefs in a varied bias, and the found footage is unique and relevant to the subject matter. I think I could have handled the production of the documentary better, in terms of time management and the planning process, however I think that the documentary is successful in terms of it’s purpose: to inform and to entertain. I also think that it would appeal to my target youthful audience because of the different clips I have added.
If I were to do the documentary again, I would make sure I planned the whole process better and completed a proper schedule. I would also change the settings of some of the Christian scenes to be more relevant to its subject.
Overall, although there are things I would change and do better, I have learnt a lot from this project in terms of how long a product of this length takes and what working to a deadline would be like in the media industry.
