Research
For this topic not only do I just have to research on other documentaries but I also have to research the topics my documentary would be on
Alongside other research below are the three different doccumentary ideas
Narrative Theory / Story Arcs / Narrative structure
Narrative theory
Narrative theory states that a story is the guidelines of your narrative piece. The story is your events, characters, places the narrative is what ties them all together into one cohesive piece. Different writers are able to use the same story and yet create completely different naratives for example the multiple different takes on the Spider-man comics or Sherlock Holmes.
Narative Theory makes people think about the piece was made and why the creator made it the way they have. By looking at the narrative it allows people to come up with their own interpretations and better formed opinions about the story and overall piece. Studying a narrative helps you find key patterns in other pieces of a same or different story and genre.
There are different narrative theories from different people
For example Vladimir Propp found 8 specific character roles in old folk tales and roles they may have some of these roles include; The Hero, The villain, The donor, The helper, The princess etc. these roles serve certain purposes. The princess is the hero's reward, The hero moves the plot along, the donor provides the hero something useful.
Other theories include Tzvetan Todorov's theory that states that stories start with an "equilibrium" a problem causes "disequilibrium" events then take place in order to establish "new equilibrium" and Claude Lévi-Strauss's theory that stories depend on a binary opposition, a conflict between two opposite sides. Coyboys and Indians, Christians and Pagans, The law and Outlaws.
Story Arcs
Story arcs show the progression and development of a character and the plot during the course of the story. In order for a story to be interesting and not just events happening there must be a rise and fall in the narrative, a problem and a solution. This rise and fall is easily shown in the graph made by Kurt Vonnnegut.
The man in a hole story arc shows the character and how they progress through the story with each event that happens. The x axis just shows the length of the story and the y axis show the state the character is, positive or negative. The graph above shows an arc where the character starts off in a good place, the problem of the plot occurs and knocks the character down to a bad place and then solves the problem ending the story better than the start. During a lecture Kurt spoke about different types of plots all with different arcs. Rags to Riches (rise) Man in a Hole (fall then rise) Cinderella (rise then slight fall then rise) Riches to Rags (fall) Oedipus (fall then rise then fall) Icarus (rise then fall).
Narrative structure
A narrative structure is the order that the events are organised into a plots beggining, middle and end in a story. The structure is incredibly important as it directly affects the characters goals, intentions, how the overall plot unfolds and making sure the writers goals are met. It's also important to keep a good pace with the structure to make sure every event gets the designated time that it deserves to fully flesh out the moment. There are many different structures that people can follow for their plots. The most basic structure follows the same 5 beats; The status quo, The catalyst, Rising action, All is lost, resolution however different writers have their own structures which they have made and used in their works time and time again. A good example of this is writer Dan Harmon's (creator of community and Rick and Morty) story circle. The circle structure has 8 stages that follow the main characters time in the story. Because this structure focuses more on the characters than on the story and plot it can be used for a number of different genres and plots. Dan Harmon explains this cycle using one of the episodes for rick and morty to show the circle in use (shown on the right). Another episode of Rick and Morty (Season 4 Episode 6 "Never Ricking Morty") uses Narrative Structures as a punchline for the episode. The episode takes place on "the story train" which is going in a circle, Much like the story circle, the cycle is then broken and starts to use other narrative structures to progress the story. A different Narrative structure is the Fichtean Curve that only uses 3 main beats; Rising action, Climax, Falling action. The fichtean curve starts on a conflict and only goes up from there with each climax, it often explains the plot, scene and world at later climaxes. The curve is often seen as good for character driven stories. The curve puts the character through the paces and really pushes your characters to their limits with the multiple climaxes they have to go through.
Examples in media
I decided to watch a documentary to see if I could find any examples of narrative theories, structures and story arcs in the writing or the editing.
The documentary I decided to look at was indie game the movie because I had already followed the story behind the development of the games in the film before watching this
The film looks at the video game industry especially from the perspective of independent creators.
Whilst the main focus of the film is on the creation of the games "Super Meatboy" and "Fez" the film takes on the topic of the stuggles of being an independent developer in the industry beyond just these two games.
_cover_art.png)
The overall structure of these people's lives is most comparable to the man in the hole arc. Starting with a passion to make games which just got worse and worse the more it started to take over their life.
The film is just recorded in the same few locations. Each persons respective "office" and that helps to make the viewer feel a similar way to the creators in being cooped up in the same room all day everyday.
It's definitely told in the style of a fictean curve, the developers are constantly getting more and more challenges that are getting alot harder to deal with and taking a much larger toll on the creators until they get to the end of creating their games and are met with the praise and relief of finishing what was essentially their life's work. The film constantly switches between the two different games and and shows how much worse the problems are getting for both of them getting so bad that they think of completely giving up and are having panic attacks and breakdowns. The two games had different challenges to overcome but still managed to have the same thoughts and have an experience that represents the entirety of the independent games industry.
Bias and Agenda
Bias
Bias and Agenda are two things that are hard to avoid in not just documentaries but in society as a whole
Agenda
Bias is the prejudice and preference shown towards a specific group or thing in comparison to something else usually seen in an unfair way
An agenda is an outcome that drives someone's behaviour into doing what they have to, to get the desired goal/intention
Bias and Agenda make it more or less imposible to be completely impartial. Everyone has a bias towards something and everyone has grown up with different people following different beliefs getting told all sorts of different things. Even if unintentionally it's hard to remove personal bias towards things.
Depending on the purpose presenting information with a bias and agenda can be wrong and fine respectively. If presenting the news a bias should be completley ignored and only the facts should be shown letting people form their own opinions. For documentaries i think having an agenda is completely fine as it's all a part of the narrative. The information you've gotten is being used to show the point you wanted to make. For example in finding neverland it's agenda is that Micheal Jackson was a predator and an offender showing you all the evidence that proves that. The doccumentary has this agenda as a part of it's narrative. If this was news not a documentary then having an agenda of trying to tell you he is an offender wouldn't be completely ok because there isn't completely concrete undeniable evidence. being presented.
Film Crew
Productions are alot of work which can't exactly all be done by one person which is where film crews come in. With smaller groups to help work on the production film crews only have the essential roles and are called skeleton film crews
Camera people
Director
Lighting
Roles in a skeleton film crew
Boom operator
Production assistant
Sound recordist
Below are more details on the specific roles. in film crews
Camera operations
There are three important things to know in order to get great shots
Shutter Speed
Apeture
ISO
Shutter speed
Shutter speed effects the length of time that he sensor is exposed to light. The speed show the length of time that it takes for the shutter to open. This effects the how clear you can make out smaller details on the screen. With a faster shutter speed you can capture the finer detail in images like getting seeing every droplet from a splash of water or seeing every petal folling from a tree. Slower shutter speeds struggle to capture faster moving objects and fine details. A good example of a faster shutter speed being used in a movie is in the fight on Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan.
You can see all of the droplets of the water crashing against the boats
The shutter speed makes the juttery camera more noticable showing the chaos of the war incredibly well
Apeture
The apeture is the size of the hole that lets light throught to the sensors. The sizes of the holes are measured in f.stops. Smaller f.stops have bigger holes and let more light through. The apeture changes your depth of field. In order for a deep shot you want a smaller hole and thus a larger f.stop. Deep focuses are good for emphasising a point and showing depth in the scene.
The image on the left is taken from Citizen Kane and uses a smaller apeture to show the depth of the table and emphasise the type of people that are sitting at the table being all rich, pompous men.
ISO
The ISO stands for the International Standards Organation. This organisation specialised in making sure old film had enough silver nitrate on it and was sensitive enough to burn the images into. Now that cameras don't need film anymore the ISO is used for it's sensitivity of the light sensor. Making the ISO less sensitive gives you less light but makes the quality more smooth however it can also ruin some of the depth of the shot, making the ISO too sensetive makes the footage very grainy but can capture the depth.
.jpeg)
These all have bi products in one way and effect the amount of light that can be seen by the camera.
If you're using a small apeture and a fast shutter speed the shot will be really dark. The two solutions are to either raise the ISO and have grainy footage or bring in more lights to better light the scene so that you can have still have good looking footage without lighting being a problem.
Researcher
It's a researchers job to do the research on the narrative, finding people to interview, information about the narrative and locations that might be good.
In this job you're discussing with producers ideas for programmes, movies or documentaries and what research will need to be done for the chosen idea. Once you have gotten your information and fact checked you'll have to write a brief for presenters and script writers. Alongside finding information you'll need to find studio audiences and locations you can use.
Location scout/manager
A location scout is exactly what it says on the tin, they're in charge of finding out if the location either given to them by the researcher or that they found is good for what they need. When they arrive at the location they take photos of the area from different angles that they think sells the area the best. With each location you must have permission to record there and make sure you understand what you can and can't do. It's in your best interest to negotiate the best price for the location and to plan any problems that there might be with the location when using it. The location manager works closely with the unit manager who makes sure that the shoot on the location runs smoothly alongside cleaning up any mess left behind afterwords and setting up a unit base before hand.
Sound crew
Sound is one of the most important things when recording for your shoot. Bad footage can be fixed in editing however bad audio can destroy an entire production. Bad audio is almost impossible to salvage so it's important the audio is perfect when you do the shoot. There are different types of microphones that can be used for different situations depending on what you're recording.
A cardioid is commonly known as a shotgun mic, it records audio straight ahead from where it's pointed. This is specifically useful for getting the audio you want from a scene and not picking up any background noise. Omnidirectional mics record all of the audio in a space in all directions from the microphone. These are quite useful for desk setups like we had on the last project, Radio. Bidirectional mics record on both sides of the microphone, it's essentially two cardinal microphones pointed in either direction. This is useful for interviews so that you can capture both the interviewer and the interviewee speaking without having to move the mic excessively.
Cardioid microphones are used for boom pole mics. Boom pole mics are used in order to get the clearest audio from a scene without having your actors wear lavalier microphones (Clip on mics). The boom pole mic helps record the audio from a distance. Boom mics are quite heavy to hold so you have to be quite strong, like the picture on the left, to hold it for longer shots. The mics have a foam muffler on them to stop wind from hitting the mic and effecting the audio. In the images you can see that the wire is wrapped around the pole, this is in order to stop the wire from hitting the pole and effecting the audio. The Microphone should be held this way in order to prevent anything rubbing against the mic and creating noise. The mic is held from the top facing down so that once you get the person speaking, the microphone shouldn't pick up further audio as it's positioned towards the ground. If the microphone was pointing up the microphone would also be recording anything upwards; birds, planes, anything above the actor.
When recording audio there are usually multiple people. Someone that takes the more technical side to the work and someone that holds the equipment. The person on the technical side looks at the audio levels, listens to the audio in real time and makes sure everything is working as it should.
Lighting
Lighting is important to make sure that you can get the type of shot to look how you want it. Lighting can completely change a scenes tone and feel just by simply changing and angle or the amount of light given. With the right lighting you can make people go from looking sinister to looking calm and relaxed.
The most basic of lighting is three point lighting which was shown in further detail during my MVP but essentially three point lighting is a system that gives a person the best possible lighting whilst also giving alot of options for different lighting
When looking at lighting it's good to look at the contrast as it can have a big influence on the image. The contrast effects the colour range for images and shots. Images with a high contrast will have a wide colour range, bright colours will be highlighted and clear darker colours will have very dark shadows. With high contrast the colours all pop and stick out from one another. A low contrast has a much smaller colour range and as a result has the opposite effects, the colours will blend together more and have a flatter softer look.
Director
The director is in charge of the production, the director has a vision that everyone is brought on to follow. The only people that can get in the director's way is the producers as they handle the budget. The director directs the actors, camera and sound crew, lighting operators and most other people on set.
The director has a roll that they go through
on set so everyone knows what to do.
The roll in the order of being called is
Quiet on Set
Turnover - start recording
Slate - show the clap board
Set-get ready
Action
Cut
Editing
Editing is what makes a production what it is. It's importance can be shown easily through a quote from Robert Bresson. Editing involves putting the clips together and manipulating the footage to make it work for the production. Editing is used in a variety of materials like movies, tv, youtube videos, doccumentaries etc.
"My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water"
- Robert Bresson
Different editing techniques
Vsevolod Pudovkin theorised that editing was not just about providing continuity between one shot and another, but about directing the psychology of the spectator, this was called relational editing and has had a big impact on editing techniques today.
When two radically different shots are put together.
When two different shots are matched together using a common element in both shots
When two cuts relate to something in a symbolic fashion
When two sets of action taking place at different locations (cross-cutting)
A recurring shot within a film that the audience has learned to associate with concepts
Finding Ideas
In order to create my documentary I had to find ideas that I was interested in and wanted to talk about
Gender and Identity documentary
The subject
The first idea I had was a funny take on gender be it societal norms, identity and the beliefs and opinions of others about it all
The topic of gender and identities is something I personally have a lot of interest in and feel very strongly about so I think it would be a great thing to look into and talk about in length for a documentary. For me, the best way for me to talk about something important in a way that it gets across to people is by implementing humour to it and it also gives me a way to express my thoughts and my own gender in a way that seems less like it's forced.
Conflict or Action
For the most part of the documentary I would be walking to different locations talking to different ,greatly dramatised, "characters" all with their own views on the subject matter at hand. Some of these may include a stereotypical far right disagreer or just a normal trans person, by drastically playing up the people against the topics at hand it should help to make people see that the people stopping people from expressing their gender end up looking more ridiculous than anyone else.
In terms of resolution there isn't really a full beat by beat story going on here that needs to be resolved, the piece is more an overall look at gender and telling a narrative based on the views and opinions of the public.
Subject Matter
I definitely think that the subject matter is achievable, not only do I think that the topic is interesting enough to be an entertaining documentary but I also think that there is a large potential for jokes and humour with this subject which is something I want to be a big part of the piece. I think that I'll have problems being able to find good places to record scenes and do interviews but I'm sure that for the interviews I'm can use any dark room with a few lights and outside scenes can just be done in quieter areas.
Cast and Crew.
I would like to be the main person of the piece just because I know my script and how I want it to turn out and be delivered, for any other members of the cast, other than any members of the public that might be interviewed, are the other interviewees. For these I would probably just use a few friends and classmates and have them play the role. Where the documentary isn't incredibly serious i won't need great actors to play these roles so they can just be anybody that is willing to help. For crew all I need is a camera operator that is willing to chip in for a few lines here and there. I'll need a camera as well as a gimbal to help keep it steady as I want the documentary to be moving from different places when not in an interview. I can use newsreel and archive footage if I have to but there isn't a real need to do so. Most of my interviews will be face to face. The only one that may not be is one that I want to try get an actual actor for, I think using a big actor for one line and about 8 seconds is really funny. However this isn't an important scene to get so it doesn't matter if i can't get it but i think trying for the slight chance and getting it would have a big pay off.
Pitch
I think a target audience for this is definitely people that are members of a gender community and even just people that want a laugh yet still want to be entertained and informed about a topic people are scared to talk about in the modern day. The subject isn't incredibly broad but i think that the humour will help it reach more audiences outside of just the subject matter.
M&Ms secret story
The subject
The second idea I had was to do a documentary on the M&Ms and a secret lore that i think might be behind the mascots. By watching way too many M&M advertisements and eating a lot more M&Ms than my braces should allow I've started to think of a secret lore behind the character. While the subject is quite comedic and strange I want it to be staged as if a deadly serious topic. The M&Ms uses 6 now 7 different coloured M&Ms with different personalities to advertise the product. The advertisements depict the M&Ms in different comedic situations together, and somehow by looking way too into the adverts trying to find anything that can help me put together a cohesive story I managed to find a few threads that lead to telling the story of the M&Ms and how they came to be.
Conflict and Action
A lot of the action comes from just how wild the story of the M&Ms would get. For example eventually when all of the M&Ms split up the lore that i'm working on could involve a great tragedy that occured between the M&Ms or when on halloween 2018 the yellow M&M died. The resolution of the piece comes from the development of the M&M group. I'd be going throught the group one member at a time talking about their backstory until we end up with the group that we have today. I think by adding some more serious moments branching from the M&Ms could work well, for example. Talking about the green M&M being transgender then branching how transgender is seen by the media and by the world as if a meta comentary, this makes people start asking questions about the more serious topic before making a cut to the green M&M reminding you the true purpose of the piece.
Subject matter
I do believe that the subject matter is achievable but I think that it may require more time than I have for the project to make in order for the idea to truely be entertaining, well made and thoroughly thought out. Because of this I feel that this idea is good enough to do outside of this project so that i can give it the time it needs and deserves. If i wanted to make this for the project in the allocated time I'd have to write a more dumbed down version of the script and ignore a few advertisements from different countries which to me feels like not doing the topic justice. I really like this idea and want to make sure that it gets the time and care that it deserves and rushing it for a 3/4 week time frame isn't exactly what I'd like to do. The only problem with this idea is that it will take alot of time to write a script that tells a cohesive story about these M&Ms that doesn't contradict itself or any of the advertisements. I would also have to make sure I haven't missed out on any advertisements wether it be from this country or not, in order to put together a full story can be told.
Cast and Crew
As for a cast I feel that the only actor I need is myself. Because i'm telling a story about these M&Ms that I have discovered researched and written there isn't a need for any interviews. If i really wanted to interview people I could just ask people there favourite M&M character or flavour. I should only need a camera and a gimbal (and someone to operate them) in terms of equipment. I can use archived footage of old M&M adverts throughout the piece.
Pitch
There isn't a specific audience of people that this is targeted towards like the other ideas however i think that it'll be watched by people that want to laugh and like the obsurdity of the topic. The subject matter is a fairly known brand and because I'm showing it as a "secret story"people would probably be interested to know the deep dark secrets behind a beloved chocolate snack
The problem with new pokémon
The subject
My last idea was for a serious documentary on a topic that I think is really interesting to think and talk about. The pokemon series of games is one that alot of people know about due to it's sheer popularity and overwealming presence in the world. Pokemon as a franchise is one of the highest grossing franchises in the entire world due to not only the games but it's incredibly marketable cast and designs that span across movies, shows and of course the vast and evergrowing sea of merchandise. The pokemon games have always been at the heart of the franchise but recently the games have started to become very lacklustre and seem to be made more for money instead of a genuine passion.
Conflict and Action
The documentary would talk about Pokemon from the start of the series to where we are today following beat for beat the releases of the games and the show looking at the quality of the games and peoples opinions as the franchise got bigger. For a resolution we could look at how the newest game is a small step into the right direction and then a look to the future for pokemon.
Subject Matter
I think that there should be enough to talk about with the subject matter to make it interesting and achievable. I may have to focus on a certain part of the series in order to get a more straight narrative but i think just following people's experiences the series from start to finish would be interesting enough. I might struggle to find a few people that are willing to be interviewed and talk about what pokemon means to them and how the games have affected them.
Cast and Crew
For a cast I'll need a few people to interview and follow. I'll also need people to help record the interviews and do the lighting. In order to find the right people to interview I'll need to ask around online to see if I could find some people that have good stories. For archive footage i could use old footage of pokemon adverts, the show and any footage from the creation of the games. I think if i have to do interviews it may have to be over zoom but if i can get one in person i would prefer that. Unlike the other ideas I won't apear in person in this documentary but I would quite like to do a voice over for it.
Pitch
My target audience is people that like pokemon and are interested in gaming as a whole. It's not an incredibly broad subject matter as most people don't care about the specifics of pokemon and why or how it's gotten worse.
Gender & Identity
Because this documentary is mostly acting I started by writing a script.
I'll be doing research on people that support different genders and identities and on why people disagree and then using that research for the characters I'll be interviewing
For the first interview I wanted to look at genders role in society so I looked at a website documenting this
M&Ms secret story
Where this documentary is about telling a narative I'll need a script and also a full story about the M&Ms
For my research I decided to watch the M&Ms adverts from the earliest ones I could find to today.
The most interesting thing I found was a character that stopped getting used around 1980 "The M&M Man"
The M&Ms man would make the M&Ms. In my story i'm going to use the M&Ms man as the first villain for the M&Ms playing the role of a tyrant keeping the M&Ms away from humans
In more recent news the spokescandies where replaced with famous actor Maya Rudolph due to complaints aboout the spokescandies from the political right wing
This is where I would end the story having Maya come in as the end of the spokescandies
Using these points for a begining and end I think I could use an oedipus story arch (maybe doubled in length) having the M&M character live in a "perfect life" get tired and leave to go to the real world, they enjoy the real world but then start to realise that humans want to eat them. The different M&M characters go through their own story arcs having their own ups and downs, until eventually they are happy then sadly decomisioned and meet their end thanks to Maya Rudolph
Now that I had the overall story I need more specific stories for the specific M&Ms. For certain M&Ms this was easy.
The green M&M in earlier advertisements was shown as a male M&M which changed to a female M&M once they went to 3D advertisements. The green M&M without people even knowing is one of the earliest trans characters used in advertising
The next M&M I thought of a story for Crispy because he's always shown as a nervous axious wreck which paired with all of the "traumatic" events he goes through in the advertisements
The problem with modern pokémon
In order to find a bit more about the impact on peoples lifes that pokemon had I asked a pokemon group on reddit if they had any stories
After seeing some of the replies i thought that i could change my topic from talking about just pokemon and instead talk about how media can inmpact peoples lifes for the better.
Thinking about my own story about how a game helped me realise more about my gender, and my friends story how they found out their own gender because if shows they watched.
It's incredibly common for different peices of media to awaken things about people, i think it might be interesting to look at different peices of media that has impacted people's lifes and talk to them about their experiences.
Now that I had this new idea I made another post in a different group asking if anyone had any games that made a big imapct on people's lifes.
The replies weren't exactly what I wanted for my topic. I wanted stories about people's lifes changing or bing impacted due to a game but instead people just told me about games they liked and resonated with them.
Whilst looking on google for people's stories I found a youtuber named CallieMacN who makes normal gaming content but made a video talking about how the sonic the hedgehog series helped her to come out as transgender.
In the video she talks about how games used to be very much seen as a boys thing to do. In Sonic Adventure you can play as a female hedgehog Amy Rose, this was one of the earliest times when a female character was able to play a main action role in a family game. When playing this story Callie started to realise that anyone can play games regardless of their gender and that if they wanted to be a girl there isn't anything stopping them. The video goes alot more in depth and explains it alot better and the video can be seen here.
Production
Creating a typeface
For our title sequence we were told to make a font we could use so we could have our own typeface to use and understand how to design one.
To make my font I used Illustrator and a website called calligraphr
Calligraphr has a template you can download that gives you guidelines for your font design and turns the design into a downloadable, usable font
I started working on A, B and C to make sure that I could make a font with a style that looked good and semi-unique
I used the line segment tool to create most of my lines and used the pen tool to make the curves and flicks
When making my A I accidentally made a flick at a point but I quite liked how it looked and decided I could make it the theme for my font
I selected the flick and copied it so that I could apply it to other letters and have it as my theme for the font. After making the flick I thought that I could get more strange with my font so I tried to bend the bridge in the A but it looked really silly so I just made the bridge normal.
When adding the flicks to B I made the flicks on the left side where the bumps meet the straight line.
I struggled to add the flicks to C in a creative way so I just added it to the ends but it's not incredibly
I made the first three letters to test the font and was happy with how it looked so a continued to the rest of the font.
When making the lowercase letters it was a lot easier as I could copy other letters and shrink them down or use them to help me make the letters.
I went throught seven different drafts of the font trying them out using the same sentence so I could see if anything was wrong with the letters
Different Drafts/Final Font
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Final Font
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
There isn't too much difference between the fonts but they all have minor changes to certain letters. I was making sure that the letters where all sized similarly and nothing looked too unantural
The font isn't fully aligned but I think it adds to the character of the font. I think I need to make the font thicker as it was hard to read until I made it around 50 (px) The font also wasn't very good for a title sequence
Title Sequence
I had to make a title sequence for my documentary. I decided to make a title sequence for the M&Ms doccumentary as it was the documentary that I could work best with
I started making my title sequence in premier so that I could add my titles later and get a cohearent sequence.
I used the youtube sound library to get a song that made the topic look a lot more serious than it is I also tried a different song from the game "Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympics" just so I had more variety and a different style of intro something more high octane and energetic
I then found a lot of different advertisements for the M&Ms and put them into premire pro. I also found a video on youtube that was different shots of M&Ms which I used at the end of the sequence
I put the videos together in premier and made the title sequences without any titles and then imported the finished sequences to after effects so that I could add titles and animate them
I wasn't too sure where I could put titles during the sequence with the more energetic music so I just put a basic title that flies in using position keyframes and opacity keyframes
I used the M&Ms font for the titles but the image I used of the M&Ms logo had a gradient instead of a solid colour so the text looks out of place.
For the other sequence I used a different logo and it fit with the text a lot more.
When the words where flying in it looked a bit unnatural so I went into audition and added sounds to line up with it flying in
I used a reverse cymbal which hits when the M&M logo crashes onto the screen
I applied an effect to the audio to make it sound older and made it a preset called radio so that i could use it more in the future as i've used it twice before in different projects.
Final Sequence
After a few seconds into the final screen (above)I wanted the audio for the firs M&M trailer i used to start in order for a seemless transition from the title sequence to the documentary
My font wasn't great as a title font but i think it worked quite well as a quick text for an introduction for the characters
With both edits I was really happy with how the music is synced with the clips. In both of the edits when the music goes triumphant the scene of the M&Ms bag is on the screen
When making the first sequence I was struggling to find an ending point and i feel like it drones on longer than it should but i feel like i ammended that with the second
edit as it may be longer but it doesn't feel
like it's unnecessarily long.
Key Scenes
As a part of my script for my documentary there are a few scenes that I really want to get that I think would show what my documentary is all about well and would be good to use in my pitch.
The first scene I wanted to get was in london outside of the M&Ms world in Leicester square
In my script I wrote (pan to M&Ms world, walk into frame) "Is right behind me" this scene would be carrying on from the scene before where i talk about a brand that has "a big brand with a cast of advertisers"
I hired out a 4K canon xf and went into london to get my scenes
My initial idea was to pan towards M&M world and then walk into the frame but when we got there I got a shot that was static and I think it looked alot better.
After that shot I wanted a shot with me standing in front of M&Ms world from the same angle and at the same spot but closer to my face and with myself more in focus and the background blurred. This took
about 6 attempts to get right but it was really worth it.
I was incredibly happy with the shot, it looked exactly how I wanted it to
I debated whether in editing I should add the adverts i was talking about but I feel like the shot was good enough to keep it as it was
Click Me
I went closer up to the shop for the next shot so that I could get a shot with the M&Ms outside the front of the shop as I was talking about their popularity
I tried different settings on the camera changing both the focus and the iso to try and remove the reflection of the glass but I couldn't figure out a way to do it so the shot looks a little bit worse than i would have liked.
A little bit later I interviewed some people. Due to the fact that we where rushing to get the shot my camera person forgot to adjust the iso so the shot came out very dark, I brightened it in editing but the footage looks very grainy and unfocused.
For the rest of this scene I dubbed over footage of M&M adverts.
The other key scenes I wanted to make was for the green M&M and the Crispy M&M.I just wanted to use stock footage and M&M adverts for these however for the latter i also wanted to be in the scene so I used a green screen and chroma keyed myself into the M&M adverts
For the Green M&M I wanted to have a bit of a politcal comentary on how people overeact on things as small as an M&M and how the news sometimes doesn't just show news and just stories
In order to show how outragous the topic was i showed alot of different footage of arguments going by fast. I chose a really dramatic song and put audio of crowds arguing and war in the background. This all gets louder and louder building up to a big climax where the music dies and you realise all of this was about an M&M
For the crispy M&M I just used footage of M&M adverts and picked ones where the crispy M&M was being tortured or scared
Final Videos
I personally was really happy with my key shots. I think they show the different editing styles of my doccumentary well and do a good job of showing what the documentary will be like