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Sunday, 2 April 2017
Monday, 27 March 2017
Evaluation Question 1
How do your products follow conventions? (Jack)
The use of conventions make or break a product as we have learned throughout our course. We have been very meticulous as a group in researching conventions and experimenting with how to apply it in our products, more specifically with replicating form and genre codes effectively.
Our analytical research into various ‘social commentary’ documentaries relating to Qatar has shown that there is a trend of displaying statistics on-screen in between shots to increase credibility. This is a convention we replicated in response to the social documentary ‘Sealine: Reckless Driving’. Like the former, our documentary uses a predominantly black-and-white colour scheme for strong visual contrast without distracting the viewer too much from the information provided and the message. Some shades of red are also added in for the graphics, as our research into colour psychology has suggested the colour red symbolises danger, violence and fear, which is what we want our viewers to associate with the phenomenon of reckless driving. This points the audience into a dominant preferred reading. The red provides a simple splash of colour that pulls the viewer’s attention to the statistics shown on the screen and illustrates the grave and serious nature of our documentary without overcrowding the screen. Semantically, the colour also serves as a narrative plot device as it foreshadows the following shots and statistics that elaborate on the fatalities of reckless driving. The statistics were pulled from yearly reports from official authorities and institutions to add a sense of gravitas and realism to our product. This further communicates to the audience the urgency of the matter before calling into action. The reason we did this is because it adds cohesive structure to the narrative of the film, as a constant use of direct address too early has the risk of being seen as too confrontational. Instead, the filler shots combined with the bold statistics create a healthy balance in effectively bringing to light this social issue without enabling passiveness in the audience.
Another convention incorporated was the use of point-of-view shots of stunts being performed. This forces the audience to take a more active stance and live through another person’s, gaining a better understanding of the circumstances and more importantly realise a greater emphasis on just how dangerous stunts can be. We realised this might be an uncomfortable for some viewers so we shortened the clip’s duration until we felt it made our point without causing distress. This feature was far too integral to delete as it connects with the viewer on a personal level and forces them to think about whether they side with our message or take a more negotiated or even oppositional reading.
More universal documentary genre codes, however, include voice-overs and interviews, both of which can be seen in our film product. The voice-over was a result of analysis of various documentary modes, through which we learned expository modes conventionally have an ‘omniscient’ narrator who voices over stills and rolls to provide background information. This was written following further research into more general statistics and facts about Qatar to provide a backstory to less aware watchers, or viewers outside Qatar and the GCC region. This is because our product is a call to action not only to locals but for a more global audience; many documentaries provide a backstory to further audience comprehension and promote the globalisation of products. This kind of backstory is also available on our website, with plot descriptions and cast and crew information in an effort expand our target demographic. As for the use of interviews, these can be used to bring in a second opinion that support the filmmaker’s message, through a more objective approach or, in our case, a more personal approach. Any heartfelt emotion conveyed through interviews are arguably a persuasive device to convert the viewer’s line of beliefs to a more similar format that lines up with the message of our documentary. When we see Ian Maund expressing subtle sorrow over the loss of his friend to stunt driving, a sense of sympathy is sparked within the viewer, perhaps guilting them into agreeing with Ian and bring to focus that this is a real issue that affects real people. This is an effective rhetorical device used in most personal documentaries that attempt to call about social change, for example in reckless driving documentary ‘The Impact of Your Choice’. The emotions are used to explain the dangers and risks of reckless driving, rather than through the use of statistics alone. This is another blend of conventions used to create an effective message delivery system.
Our products follow some other general conventions associated with short film documentaries, such as font. Documentaries often use spaced out black or white font with hardened edges to create a smooth, sophisticated look that does not overcrowd the occupying scene. We replicated this form convention in our documentary titles, postcard and website. This provides the audience with a clear heading that gives most of the attention to the representative picture in the postcard, the minimalistic background of the website and the establishing shot in the documentary.
Documentaries also often tend to have background music, colouring and lighting that matches the tone of the product. While the tone of our documentary shifts, it can overall be described as ‘serious, gloomy and critical’. This is firstly seen in the use of melancholic soundtracks to implement the eventual fatality and gloominess associated with reckless driving. This allows our documentary to introduce the decidedly moody tone of the product and stay in the back of our audience’s minds. I used simple yet professional looking transitions between shots in our short film documentary and timed it accordingly to create a subconscious connection to the background music and as a result a constant awareness of the mood. I did this to make our documentary not only look better but follow generic conventions associated with short film documentaries. The documentary also starts off with somewhat static shots that utilise high-key lighting which eventually turns into low-key lighting shots to reflect the narrative progression of a more idealistic, peaceful tone to a more grim and gritty mood in our documentary. This sense of tonal shifting is a convention used to create a sense of symbolic contrast that further illustrates why reckless driving is wrong to the viewer on a subliminal level.
Moreover, the determining of setting was a convention that we followed somewhat sparingly as we had less control over location as this was a documentary, however in more personal documentaries interviewees are often matched to a setting based on comfort level as well as symbolic representation. This can be seen in all of our interviews, many of which we have scrapped to preserve the narrative device of ‘Chekhov’s gun’, in other words making sure every shot in the film was absolutely necessary in the overall plot of the film. For example, Ian Maund, a more reserved and professional figure, can be seen in his area of workplace, matching his more experienced outlook on the subject matter, whereas Torque, a younger stunt driver, is interviewed in the privacy of his home, reflecting his more open attitude and youthful outlook on the matter.
To complement the short film documentary our group created posters and a website not only to follow with conventions usually associated with documentaries but also to promote our short film documentary. Our postcard follows conventions through the use of composition and colour scheme as it corresponds to the other products’ colour scheme of black font on light backgrounds and a picture that incorporates the rule of thirds. These are all generic conventions although in order to challenge them aswell we did not freeze frame a part of our short film documentary we actually had a photoshoot to make our postcard look more professional and challenge generic conventions. Our website follows conventions through the use of simplicity and basic layout to not over complicate our audience. This works well as it links with the postcard and the documentary’s minimalistic and simplistic design, creating a sense of branding and further promoting globalisation due to the website’s easy navigation and the postcard’s clear headlining.
-Don’t know what you were trying to say about freeze framing, so use your own words
-Also mention more editing stuff you did - longer takes follow expository conventions etc
How do your products challenge conventions? (Sanaz)
As a group we tried progressing from A2 in terms of conventions. We learned that certain conventions can define a genre so we previously mostly only followed them.
However over the course of our time making different products we learned that genre conventions are not set in stone, that genre is a more fluid concept that is less easy to define. This made us feel more comfortable with subverting conventions, deconstructing them and even challenging them instead of simply ascribing to them.
Most documentary conventions are followed, such as the use of interviews, dialogue, voiceovers, and a non-diegetic score as previously mentioned. However, we ended up subverting and challenging several conventions along the way for the sake of creating an effective delivery system and an overall coherent, thoughtful short documentary.
Creating an objectively ‘thought-provoking’ documentary is not always about following established rules, but rather modifying or tweaking them to both the producer and consumer’s liking to contribute to an overall efficient and methodical outcome.
One prominent example of challenging conventions that we decided on very early was the purpose and message behind the documentary. We got this idea of tweaking a more abstract narrative convention while conducting our audience research.
A focus group stated that they had a high preference for documentaries that take strong stances on social issues rather than documentaries that play devil’s advocate. As a representative sample of our target audience, the focus group believed documentaries that don’t argue for a particular side or turn important issues into ‘debates’ are in abundance, so we decided to forego the objective ‘omniscient’ approach typical of most expository documentaries and instead opt for a more personal, subjective approach on a controversial topic.
This was received well in our audience feedback as it guides the viewer into taking a particular stance instead of sitting on the fence on such a relevant social issue that concerns life-or-death.
This is especially important because part of our main target demographic is youth living in Qatar, who may be uncertain of what stance to take because they are too close to the matter to form an appropriate, ethical or objective take on reckless driving, maybe out of peer pressure.
We address this by using a member of the target demographic, Torque, who actually shares our views to an extent. This subverts social expectations of youthful members of society agreeing with more ‘reckless’ and ‘dangerous’ activities that may be considered socially unacceptable by older generations. This allows us to use our target audience’s impressionability to an advantage as we suggest to them which way to lean.
Another convention we challenged was using only two interviews in our final product. While we initially had far more interviews, we eventually narrowed it down to the two interviews of Ian Maund and Torque as we felt they had the most honest and raw communication.
The sincerity is more likely to be appreciated by the audience, and more importantly their high amount of experience, however different, provides a realistic look at the world of stunt driving. It can be argued that documentaries that use fewer interviews are less informed due to the lack of outsider opinions making it more biased.
However, mostly interviews who support the documentary’s message are used anyway, and we feel comfortable using only two interviews. This is because they are both highly experienced so have a vast amount of knowledge of Qatar’s underground stunt driving scene, not to mention the fact that they both represent opposing sides of our target demographic in terms of age, nationality and opinion.
This creates a subtle sense of ‘binary opposition’ often not typical within documentary narratives. The binary opposition further communicates to our audience that it is acceptable to have conflicting opinions, allowing the documentary to provide a trustworthy argument that is more likely to be internalised by the viewer, converting their beliefs to ours.
The lack of variety in interviews also shifts the attention to the viewer instead, nudging them to actively consume our product and thus spurring action which is the ultimate purpose of our documentary.
One convention we subverted to further enhance the effectiveness of our product was using background music, voiceovers and interviews all in the same short documentary. This is a less genre-specific convention and more to do with shorter documentaries.
Regardless, through the various short documentaries we analysed, a pattern was noticed based on the approach taken and mode of the documentary. Those that used more personal approaches often had no voiceovers so instead emphasised intertitles and interviews.
Those with more objective tones almost always had voiceovers, often with no intertitles and very little emphasis on interviews. Our documentary subverts such a code and modifies it to create what seems to be an overall rounded, smooth and punchy short film. The combination of objective voiceovers and factual evidence in the form of statistical intertitles with sincere and personal experiences from the interviewees blends both contrasting approaches to form a holistic yet strongly aligned perspective that our viewers have the confidence to take a dominant preferred reading to.
-Also say anything you have to say about challenging postcard conventions
How do your products represent social groups or issues? (Mariam)
Our documentary discusses a very sensitive sociocultural topic that has the potential to often be interpreted negatively very easily. As a result we were very careful in planning the representation of different social groups within the product. We cut back on the interviews and narrowed them down to just two, as aforementioned, to represent a social dichotomy and incorporate a sense of binary opposition for narrative appeal; audiences are more likely to be affected when two elements of a product contrast strongly. This is also extended to the other products to support the synergic branding between our products, for example the contrasting saturation and colour tones displayed in our postcard as well as the black-and-white colour scheme on our website. Furthermore, the symbolisation of social dichotomy within our product plainly illustrates the complex and divisive nature of reckless driving, as many seem to strongly oppose it or strongly support it. By using two opposing forces in the form of characters as a representative sample of our target audiences, it is suggested to the viewer that the opinions of both social groups are valid and have some foundation of truth, whether young or old, foreign or local, professional or unemployed. This sense of acceptance is likely to quickly open the viewer to outside suggestion, allowing our product to discuss the ethical and moral issues that arise from reckless driving or stunt driving. Audiences are also more likely to consume a product through a dominant preferred reading if any of the characters are socially similar, which is why we chose two individuals from completely contrasting social backgrounds and experiences. The one thing they have in common is the opinion that reckless driving is potentially fatal and higher authorities need to work to control it, as well as a secondary urging for inexperienced drivers to either avoid doing stunts or wear protective gear and practice before resorting to such a dangerous lifestyle activity out of boredom. The fact that two very different individuals manage to share similar views suggests to the audience member that this is the morally correct decision and also shared by the majority of people regardless of background, making it more likely for the viewer to conform to our views. However, due to the highly controversial nature of our product, audiences may simply use a negotiated reading or even an oppositional reading in response to the strong stance we take.
Characters -
- Ian Maund: Stereotypical male representation; ‘biker’/racer image, sports enthusiast, strong build and frame, etc. However, challenges social stereotypes in his penultimate response where he attempts to choke back tears (display of emotions unconventional for males, especially in documentaries where content is meant to be sincere and personal to provoke reactions). Subverts age expectations to an extent: while he does proactively encourage control and regulation in driving amongst youth/the newly licensed, he fully embraces the ‘stunt driving’ lifestyle. Cultural representation: foreign to country of focus, part of a ‘gentrification’ process?
- Torque: Stereotypical cultural male representation: reckless/stunt driver - this is stereotypical of an Arab male his age, which happens to be our primary target audience. The fact that a member of the demographic we are targeting happens to act as a narrative foil that helps us spread our message means that members of our target audience are more likely to have a negotiated or even dominant preferred reading to our product and conform to our line of thinking i.e. reckless driving is dangerous and needs to be controlled. However, due to the highly provocative nature of our product, we also expect oppositional reading and in fact address it with a plethora of facts, statistical evidence and logical reasoning/common sense.
- In terms of cultural representation, our products generally represent Qatari culture quite realistically since Qatar has one of the highest number of traffic fatalities in the world This is the main subject of the documentary, wherein we attempt to challenge cultural perceptions and modify cultural norms, which is where oppositional reading would occur. It can be argued that the postcard is quite stereotypical with the expensive high-end vehicle shown. This is a fairly accurate depiction of most vehicles owned by Qatari locals, representative of the overindulgence that is the core of Qatari culture.
Evaluation Question 4
Website - M
As one of the secondary tasks of our Advanced Portfolio, creating a website was a careful and methodical process to ensure an effective sense of branding across our productions and to create a natural synergy with the other products. We had to match the website to the postcard and documentary on all levels, including font types, font sizes, spacing, logo design, colour scheme, layout, and last but not least, the mood conveyed. This enlisted a lot of deliberation when it came to designing decisions between the group members, as we had to ensure that every decision, big or small, not only upheld the synergy between the film, website and postcard, but also conveyed the appropriate mood, more specifically a gloomy mood that conveys a sense of urgency and reflects the disapproving, critical tone of our documentary. Creating a website, however, required the consideration of more than just visual synergy as websites combine graphic visuals and information. Websites seek to provide both information and entertainment, a gap I found surprisingly difficult to bridge. This involved many trials and errors when it came to technologies used, drafts and plans, and audience feedback.
- Slide share and google docs are platforms for the public sharing of information and material, which is why they were so integral in the planning stage of the website process. Slideshare provided me with an abundance of secondary data and resources on short film website conventions, where I learned such websites often tend to have little to no writing and a minimalistic design which I replicated, allowing for easy navigation to other conventional components like an ‘About’ page or ‘Cast’ page. Google Docs remains as the primary form of online technology for me to gather the secondary data I find as it allows fast and easy collaboration with my peers, among other digital technologies.
- PowerPoint + blogger for detailing research on film website conventions and discussing how I planned to follow conventions, challenge conventions, deconstruct conventions and subvert conventions, etc. Powerpoint as a platform allowed me to input information quickly and efficiently in a clear effective manner. Powerpoint allowed me to do this while also providing features that encourage visual consumption, like font editing, background editing, inserting charts and so on. Furthermore, programmes like Microsoft Powerpoint are compatible with presentation websites like SlideShare where I can simply upload a Powerpoint and share it online with little effort. Blogger provides an opportunity to consistently update our coursework with specific, detailed blog posts in a variety of formats, allowing for easy visual immersion and orderly display of the progression of our project’s stages.
- Internet for analysing different short film websites in terms of layouts, navigation, interactiveness, colour scheme and design, a process of researching that indicated that most short film websites tend to display the full short film on the home page for easy access with very little writing to avoid distracting the viewer from the product. Originally, we were going to replicate this form, however after careful consideration we instead decided to only use the trailer on the website to build audience anticipation and hype, in turn encouraging them to view our full film on other platforms.
- For the actual implementation of the aforementioned conventions in the design stage, I used Emaze for two different interactive mini-website renditions/prototypes. Emaze featured easy designing tools and interactive features that allow inexperienced designers to create a product that engages with the audience on a visual level, which is why I tested the prototypes on this website. Emaze is a quintessential example of Web 2.0 as it encourages audience participation and engagement, at times even providing opportunities for user-generated content. This flowed well in terms of synergy as our other products also directly engage with the audience by a call to action, further emphasising the focus on active consumption of our products.
- I also Wix.com for more advanced and sophisticated interactive website design, browsing through different templates on the ‘Advanced Interactive’ mode before deciding the designs did not coordinate with our other products very well.
- I finally settled on Squarespace for final product, a service that provides different website templates for all purposes. I admired the minimalistic designs of the service as it forms a cohesive synergic bond with the documentary and postcard. Squarespace gave me a variety of options when it came to website design and editing, including the input of original social network links and favicons for our production company’s logo. The varied features also allowed for matching the font type of our documentary, as well as size, spacing and so on. The layout of our website is overall simplistic with an emphasis on panel-wide images that incorporate parallax scrolling. Squarespace provides features that allow our product to encourage user-generated content, as seen in the ‘Contact Us’ page where viewers can send us fanmail, fan art, collaboration requests and more. This includes a ‘news’ layout that provides audiences with an up-to-date recounting of events that led up to the product, as well as screening dates for the product, encouraging audience involvement. Moreover, Squarespace also provides ‘counter’ visuals that show audience statistics, whether monthly or daily or even yearly. Overall, technology allowed me to create a smooth, sleek product that supports the overall cohesiveness and synergy between our products, something I likely wouldn’t have achieved without online technology.
Postcard - S
In the process of making the final postcard, heavy digital editing was incorporated as well as long and varied photoshoots at different times of the day. I used different props in a variety of viewpoints, angles and perspectives to master the composition and create an overall effective product that reflects the tone and mood of our short film documentary.
For the photoshoot, I used a variety of camera settings to create an ideal postcard. I finally narrowed the pictures down to the set of images taken at dusk, calling for high ISO and a high aperture. This created a moody atmosphere in the images that closely resembled the tone of the documentary.
The postcard is an ‘establishing product’ of sorts as it introduces first-time viewers to the concept of the film on a subliminal, personal level. We attempted to use this to our advantage to use subtle abstracted narrative devices, for example foreshadowing the documentary’s disapproving focal point on the effects of excessive wealth and overindulgence through the main prop which as seen is a luxurious, high-end 4x4.
This serves as a representative symbol of the dangerous mix of material wealth and a lack of stimulation, cited as the root cause of reckless driving in Qatar. The postcard focuses most of the attention on the expensive vehicle through composition in terms of the rule of thirds as well as through strong visual juxtaposition due to the pop of red colour contrasting with the dull, mute colours in the background sky.
I edited the background to have less saturated colouring in Photoshop to forcefully emphasise the car as much as possible. This draws the viewer’s eye to the vehicle, forcing them to think whether it serves as a symbolic component or not, which further entices them to watch the film. Moreover, the low-key lighting and cool-toned colouring matches that of the documentary, ensuring our products synergically complement each other and strengthening the branding across all media areas.
The reason mostly Photoshop was used for the editing stage was due to the variety of options for all skill levels. This included layering different images over each other and blending them with other frames, texts etc as well as ‘masking’ away inappropriate components like the number plate, and so on.
After several sessions of editing, 3 different prototypes were created in order for us to choose our final outcome. We decided on a postcard based on its accurate depiction of mood in relation to the documentary, how it reinforces branding, and how it follows conventions. The final prototype was uploaded to Google Drive for group collaboration and commenting on any needed refinements.
We realised the postcard didn’t follow certain positioning conventions, for example the awards and nominations being placed to the right of the title when it would be more appropriate below it for stronger textual alignment. I used the text tool to modify font sizes and placing, followed by the rubber tool to delete some unnecessary extra rays in the background.
Overall this resulted in a postcard with visual integrity, strong positioning and appropriateness in form that accurately communicated to the viewer the nature of the main product.
Film - J
Being the main task of our Advanced Portfolio, most of the products used were incorporated in the actual film compared to the postcard and website. Firstly in terms of hardware, various DSLR cameras were used to shoot on different occasions for different shots based on the shot list we planned. GoPro Hero 4’s were used for the point-of-view shots of stunts being performed inside vehicles to provide the viewer with a connection to those who participate in Qatar’s stunt driving culture, allowing audiences to be more sympathetic and understanding as they can picture the thrill from another perspective without having to actually engage in the dangerous activity, effectively eliminating all the risk. Designated to different group members, Canon 70D’s and Canon 700D’s were also used to shoot individual interviews, due to the fairly high megapixel units that allowed for shooting of crisp, clear high-quality footage, providing sharp establishing shots and close-up interview sequences. This creates visual appeal to the viewer as high quality footage is more desirable in postmodern media, making audiences more likely to watch the entire product. Tripods were also used for stabilising purposes to aid in the smoothness and overall seamlessness of shot, in particular the pan shots seen in the beginning and tracking movements seen throughout the documentary. Varied camera settings were used depending on context, for example Ian Maund’s interview was shot in the daytime with plenty of flattering lighting, calling for a lower ISO and aperture. This resulted in a fairly bright, clean-looking interview with no grains or noise while dodging the risk of overexposure. The interview also contrasts with Torque’s dimly-lit nighttime interview which called for a high ISO and aperture as well as external light sources to provide ample lighting on the subject. As a result the low-key lighting of this directly contrasts with Ian Maund’s brighter high-key lit interview as a further emphasis on the binary opposition motif running throughout the documentary, with both interviewees serving as the other’s narrative foil.
With regards to software, mostly Photoshop and Adobe Premier Pro were used in the making of our final film product. With the help of Adobe Premier Pro I was able to manipulate footage into having lower saturation and a cooler colour palette to create a gloomy atmosphere that reflects the graveness of reckless driving. This consistency in depicting mood provides a strong foundation for the other products to base components off of, paving the way for refining the operational synergy between our products. I also had to deliberately time the soundtrack with the shots to create a more purposeful, nuanced product with an emphasis on the blending of different areas of media, whether it’s audio or postcards or websites. Photoshop was used for creating the production company’s logo and the fim’s title to which we were careful to synchronise font types and sizes, colour schemes, spacing to further maintain the branding between our products.
Finally, online technology was incorporated consistently throughout our research and planning stages, particularly using Youtube to search for documentaries similar in subject matter and tone to analyse, researching genre codes and conventions, documentary mode case studies, and searching for appropriate fonts for our logo and titles. Eventually this branched out to soundtrack research, through which we found the ideal background music after researching on Youtube and Soundcloud and various royalty-free websites. This resulted in a more fitting soundtrack for our product creating an effective, moving product that thoroughly invites the viewer to connect on a raw, emotional level thanks to appropriate digital technology.
Tuesday, 7 March 2017
Sunday, 5 March 2017
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