Production: Documentary Audio Fade

I wasn't happy with how when I inserted one of my interviews the audio seemed very jumpy as he started talking. To counter this I wanted it to slightly fade in terms of volume. In order to do this I found a tutorial and then used the effects tab in premier pro to apply a constant power audio crossfade transition and then made it shorter so that the volume increased quicker. 

Planning: Final Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment by George Crocombe on Scribd

Production: Ancillary V2 Changes

After asking a member of my focus group for feedback I went back into inDesign and made the changes they recommended. I removed the colon after the name of the documentary as it is not necessary and doesn't match convention.  

I then exported it again with the changes made. 

Audience feedback: Ancillary Poster V2

I asked a member of my focus group for feedback for any little changes I could make to my second production of my Ancillary poster and this is the feedback I received. 

Chris seemed to love the piece in general. The only piece of criticism he gave was to remove the colons after the title fighting for first as they don't follow conventions of other media products. 

Audience Feedback: Questionnaire

I asked for feedback to see if people thought that my narrative structure was good and interesting. Every single person that answered my questionnaire agreed that it is a good idea and very interesting and engaging. This tells me that my documentary has a strong narrative structure and will be appealing to the target demographic. 

I also wanted to find out  if people liked the name of my documentary. In order to ensure the answers are legitimate I asked the question by asking which name people preferred as I felt if I just asked if they like the name people would be tempted to just say yes, so by doing this I will get more accurate feedback. Regardless of this my results still show the name of my documentary is the most popular receiving all but 3 of the votes.  

As the quality of footage is very important to a successful piece I wanted to ensure that the audience thought the footage is of a high resolution. 100% of the people I asked answered yes, meaning the equipment I used is good enough and I don't need to improve anything. 

Having an appropriate target audience is important to ensure that the product is being produced to meet the expectations and need that these people will have from a documentary. The general answer was younger people from older teens till about 30, and mainly males as all of my footage shows male cycling and doesn't represent women. 

Following codes and conventions is an important aspect to creating a piece as this allows the audience to recognise the product. 94% of people agreed that my product did this.

From my questionnaire I can see that my first ancillary product poster is by far the most popular. Due to this I will go with what people like the best and use this as my final product. 

My posters must follow conventions of real products to allow them to easily be identified. 100% of people agreed that they did this successfully meaning that they will be easily seen as fit for the purpose by all people. 

Brand identity is very important, this is created by all products sharing similar features and due to this clearly relating to each other. All of the people in my questionnaire agreed that my poster relates to my documentary meaning I have a strong sense of brand identity and it will be clear that the poster is advertising my documentary. 

Production: Ancillary Poster V2

After producing my first set of ancillary products I decided that I was not happy with the images that I had used as the resolution was less than desirable. This was due to the images being screenshots from my footage. I did this to ensure that they gave an accurate representation of what will be in the documentary and be extremely relevant, this did however mean the images where rather pixelated. Due to this I searched through all of the images I have from previous races and found an image that I liked. It shows my actor in a previous race in his kit, which he is also wearing in my footage and at a venue that is also included in my footage.

In addition to this the image is more visually pleasing as he is coming towards the camera and is obviously at the top of a hill. This adds to the narrative. In both of my other images he isn't facing the camera and is riding away. 

Production: Ancillary Posters V1

After asking my focus group which image they prefer I used two of my images which they identified as their favourites to produce a final piece for each. I will then change elements on the posters and gain audience feedback on the final pieces and decide on an end product. 

Production: Ancillary Poster Pt1

I added my chosen font and text: "Fighting for First, New Documentary, Starts tonight 10pm" On top of a white box in my chosen carefully researched and downloaded font. At the moment I have decided to keep the colours plain and simple, I will soon try some different variants. I can now add this to my other images to see which one works best and gain some audience feedback and see which variant my focus group like best. 

Production: Ancillary Poster Image Editing

I wasn't happy with the colours or exposure of one of my images so I decided to improve the quality of it in Adobe Lightroom. I slightly decreased the exposure to make the image less bright,  I then upped the contrast to make the colours pop more. I also played about with the Highlights and Shadows until I was happy with how they where exposed before changing the Whites and Blacks. I also bumped up the Clarity as I like the way it adds a dirty look and I feel this is suitable to the image as it shows grit and determination. 

 

Production: Channel 4 Font

I had a look on a variety of websites and it has come to my attention that many people have had a similar problem to what I have encountered. However I found a page that recommended a font supposedly similar to the channel 4 font so I found a website to download it and installed it on my mac. 

The Font recommended is: Etelka Pro. I found a variety of styles of the same font that I will be able to use for different parts of the product. 

 

Audience Feedback: Images for Ancillary Poster

I asked 2 members from my focus group which of my 4 chosen images they preferred. They both gave different responses so I will focus on these two images. I will still however, make an example for all 4 images then get feedback on what they prefer as a finished product.  

Production: Ancillary Poster Images

After searching through all my images and footage I have narrowed it down to 4 best potential images to be used for my Ancillary Poster. These images are as follows: 

1)

2)

3)

4)

I will use all of these images to produce an example of an ancillary product and decide upon the best one with the help of my focus group to give audience feedback. 

Production: First Edit

Production: Adobe Media Encoder

Another programme I have used is Adobe Media encoder. I used this to export my videos from Premier Pro as this allows me to choose all of the export settings. I can choose the frame rate along with the resolution etc. 

Planning: Storyboard

Observation: Micro Elements

In my interviews I have included very specific costumes in order to show the generic conventions of a cyclist to make him easily recognisable. I asked my model to wear a Castelli top (which is a well known cycling brand) and specific bottoms along with other extra items such as helmet and gloves.

I also filmed the interviews at a cycling specific location in order to add to this to keep it authentic. 

Production: Logo overlay

In order to overlay the channel 4 in my documentary I found an image of it online. This was a JPEG with a white background which I wanted to remove. In order to do this I opened the image in photoshop on a transparent canvas and used to magic want tool to remove the background and then exported it as a PNG file to keep the transparent background.

I will also be able to overlay this image on my ancillary products. 

Production: Archive footage

I have gone on youtube to get some archive footage of the olympics to help add to my narrative. I found a clip that I found relevant and used Quick time player to record a section of it from which I will pick and choose what specific small parts I want to use by cropping and cutting it in Premier Pro. 

Production: Checking Audio Quality

As the audio on my footage is extremely important especially on the interviews I have exported a small section of one of my interviews from PremierPro to check that the sound is clear and also to check that there is not background noise as even though I used an external microphone on my DLSR with a windshield it was filmed at a MTB track so could be windy.  



Audio from Interview from George Crocombe on Vimeo.

Generic Research: The long Tail - Chris Anderson

The 'head' of the graph is the more popular products that are purchased by a lot of people very regularly. 

The 'tail' of the graph is the more niche products that are very specific and much less popular. This in theory will continue exponentially getting closer to 0 but never reaching it as a product will always have some sort of market regardless of how small. 

This relates to the film industry as in modern day people are watching more niche films and programmes so are going out of their way to find and watch what they want rather than just sitting through whatever mainstream product comes on on TV hence why sites such as Youtube have seen a massive increase inn traffic over recent years. 

Generic Research: Media in the Online Age

Today in our lesson we read a section from a textbook entitled "Media in the Online Age" It included details on 'The long Tail' and "Wikinomics' both of which have helped deepen my general knowledge of how media is consumed and received in the current day and how things change. 

Research: Ancillary Poster C4

I wanted to find out what font was used for the official Channel 4 Posters so I can keep a consistant house style from my documentary and keep it authentic to the channel.  So I used Google Chrome in order to try and shed some light. While doing so I came across this document from Channel 4 themselves called the Channel 4 Identity style guide. 

It lists the conventions that must be followed in order to produce a piece that follows the recognisable style. 

It then goes on to explain how Channel 4 stray away from the generic convention of placing their logo in the bottom right hand of a piece and instead have it placed in a central position on the right hand side. This creates a very distinct look and is something I must use in my products. 

Another point mentioned is how the Logo must not be in any way modified. I will follow this 'rule' when producing my products. 

The next point mentioned in the document is the colour use for the logo. They provide a list of colours and Pantone codes that are allowed to be used for the logo. It then goes on to mention that any colour can be used when the image is overlaid on an image. This is important as it means I can use any colour in some of my products when the logo is on an image but when placed on a plain background I must use one of the specified colours. 

 

The document also states the font "C4" that has been specially commissioned for the organisation and use by them. I wanted to use this font to keep the style consistent. However after some research it seems that this is not possible as there is nowhere that allows this font to be downloaded so I will have to search for something very similar. 

http://www.channel4.com/about_c4/styleguide/downloads/C4StyleGuide1.1.pdf 

Planning: Online Risk Assessment Form

I found a Filming Risk Assessment form on Google which was on as a PDF and already filled in with the details of the other company. This was much more suited to my needs than any other forms I had found in word. 

In order to edit it I had to use Adobe Acrobat to convert from a PDF document to a word document.

Research: Ancillary Poster Analysis

Advert Poster Analysis from georgecro

Generic Research: Dochouse Cinema

http://dochouse.org/

Dochouse is a cinema that show only documentaries in the cinema. I used this website to check the conventions of many different types of niche and mainstream documentaries to help me follow them correctly in my work.

Production: Stabilising Footage

After reviewing some of my footage I realised that some of it is very shaky which is noticeable when edited together and really doesn't look very good as it distracts from what is on screen and just looks very amateur. 

To solve this I have used Adobe After Effects and within this the Warp Stabiliser tool. I found a Youtube tutorial on how to use this and after watching it applied it to a number of my own pieces of footage before putting them into Premier Pro for assembly.

 

Production: Title Shot

I have decided to open using quite a long shot of my main character riding. This pans across and tracks him onto the rocky feature. I decided to use this as I feel it is a nice shot to open with as it is quite slow paced but at the same time I like the calm effect this gives. I also like the audio of the tyres on the surface as I feel this really adds to help establish the documentary as it is a very unique sound that tells the audience exactly what is going on straight away. I have also added the title of my documentary to the first shot on the timeline. I have done this using the graphics section on premier pro by choosing the title graphic I like then replacing the text and font with my own. I also then added a transition effect to make the title fade off the screen as I didn't like the way it disappears all of a sudden. 

Production: Colour correction of footage

After reviewing my footage I decided that I needed to correct the colours and exposure. I did this using the colour editing section on Premier Pro. 

I have increased the contrast and saturation of most of the footage to make it more vibrant and punchy, I feel this has greatly improved the quality of the footage as it looks considerably better than how some of it did before as the colours looked slightly off. I have also on some of the footage that is in the woods decreased the tone of the whites and increased the tone of the blacks as this means that the darker parts of the video caused by the lack of light are easily visible but the bright parts where light comes through aren't over exposed. 

I haven't adjusted the colour balance (temperature or tint) as the weather that I filmed in had good lighting and the white balance on my camera was set accordingly.

Audience Research: Focus Group