Research: The Theory of Documentary

Genre  -Generic patterns of repetition and difference - for example, a generic pattern for a documentary could be a voiceover to narrate, cutaways to illustrate the narrative etc. I have been influenced by Say Yes to the Dress however my media product will be less like a reality show but more informative with the use of statistics and interviews to reinforce my exploration into wedding dresses.

Language - Preferred meaning is anchored through the use of language, for example typography on the screen, the use of mise-en-scene which can reinforce the meaning the documentary maker wants to convey. The voiceover can also show this as the actual script can be written to make the audience have a certain opinion on the subject.

Audience - Audiences can mediate the representation and meaning of the documentary which the documentary maker has constructed.

Representation - With my topic of my documentary the representation of wedding dresses is that they are extremely important to some women, with some dreaming of their wedding since them being young girls.

Narrative -

Roland Barthes - pointed out that meaning changes with time and place and cultural hegemony (for example the thought that everyone should go to school in the UK).
Cultural expectation that women should spend a long time and a lot of money looking and buying a wedding dress - expectation in this country for women to wear a big white dress
Codes and conventions - what does the audience expect?
All audiences de code a text in different ways - texts mean different things to different audiences meaning there is no one way audiences understand a text

Levi Strauss - Binary opposition of an opposing view on wedding dresses

Dvid Gauntlett - 'identity is complicated, everyone's got one'
Everyone is more pluralistic and there is more choice - more expletive  with their

Research: Videographer Advice

Videographer Research from Ella on Vimeo.
As part of my research, I wanted to ask the opinions of people who film wedding dresses for a living - wedding videographers. I chose to message some through Facebook asking on how they would typically film a dress, specific shots they may use or just tips and tricks to showing them in the best light. I wanted to get an expert opinion on this as I have personally had no experience in filming weddings or wedding dresses.

Production: Lesson Progress - 26th September

In todays lesson I wanted to broaden my iMovie skills and wanted to explore how I can use my interview audio as a voiceover to put over cutaways.



This strategy did not work for my version of iMovie so I needed to look into other ways of doing this.




This worked for my version of iMovie and I unattached my audio from my interview with wedding dress shop owner Clorese Thompson. I wanted to include some of the details from her interview such as her speaking about the different styles of dress. When I first tried to delete the audio, the video deleted as well but I discovered if I moved the audio away from the footage, I was able to separate them and just keep the audio.


This was the effect I achieved. The order of the footage is not how the content will be shown in my documentary but I used this footage to show the effect I was trying to create and mirror from other documentaries such as Say Yes to The Dress. I will feature a voiceover as well as the audio from the interview as the main narration for my documentary (the footage shown below is not in the order in which it will be presented for my actual documentary).

Audio Detach & Overlay from Ella on Vimeo.

Research: My Documentary Arc

Research: Stuart Hall

 I have decided to research Stuart Hall as his views can be applied to my documentary. By establishing my preferred, negotiated and oppositional allows me to understand my audiences my different audiences more.

Research: The Results of my Questionnaire

I wanted to ask my focus group and target audience for their opinions on my choices of typography for my introduction of my documentary. I wanted the text to stand out against the white wedding dress but also have connotations of something elegant, delicate and dainty - which reflects the topic of my product - wedding dresses. I asked two simple questions in my questionnaire:

Which image do you feel is best suited to the title of my documentary? 
Why did you choose this option?

I chose 12 individuals, 4 of which who were in my focus group and 8 who were part of my target audience. 

I used Google Forms for this questionnaire as I could easily email it to participants and results are shown in pie charts and other graphs making it easy to compare.




As the results show, option 3 is the one which my focus group and target audience believe is best suited to my documentary.  I was not sure if this would be the right option however after consulting others I believe it would be the best one for my documentary.
















I asked people to explain why they chose this option and these are some of their answers:




With these comments I feel confident that this is the right choice for my product. The use of typography can give a documentary a certain look, and by incorporating the same typography into ancillary products and for adverts creates a recognisable house style. The font is called Zapfino and is one of fonts featured on iMovie.
I am also going to explore the comment about moving the text to the left third and also seeing if it can go over more than one line. The idea of having the language tiered, gives a connotation of a tiered wedding cake - reinforcing the symbolism of the typography.

Production: Introduction Practice 1

Practice Intro 1 from Ella on Vimeo.

I have been practicing different skills in iMovie for my introduction. After researching the different codes and conventions and looking through different example documentaries and my own footage, a slow motion drop of a wedding dress is used in the introduction that Say Yes to the Dress. I felt that the dress drop in slow motion creates an image of almost royalty, being the centre of attention and the individual having someone attending to their special dress.  A clip of this is linked here. I was unsure of the typography to use and have been playing around with different options. I also asked my focus group by conducting a questionnaire:





I wanted to keep my questionnaire simply and sent it to those in my focus group and also others who I feel would be in the target audience of my documentary. My target audience would be females, aged from 16-30 who could have an interest in fashion, possibly engaged looking for their wedding dress or just enjoy the aesthetic and design of the wedding dresses. They would be fans of shows such as Say Yes to the Dress, Four Weddings, Don't Tell the Bride etc. Shows about weddings could typically appeal to females considering the representation surrounding the wedding dress - many young girls dream of their weddings from young ages and to some women it is a very important component in getting married.

The different fonts I was exploring are shown below:

I liked my second option as I felt it stood out the most and made the most impact compared to the others which are less noticeable when they appear on the screen. A similar font is used in The Wedding Shop documentary which I am taking inspiration from. By appropriating generic patterns from similar documentaries I am able to reconstruct the codes and conventions typically seen in this genre. However, I am awaiting feedback from my focus group an target audience to help me decide which typography would best suit my product.

Research: Types of Documentaries

Production - Video Overlay

In shows such as Say Yes to the Dress confetti like overlays are used as shown below:



I was curious on how I could do this in iMovie so went on Youtube to research if I was able to do it.

I found a website called KeepVid which allows you to download videos to import into iMovie. I found an overlay video I liked which showed heart shaped cherry blossom which looked like confetti. I felt this would work well as the pink colour contrasted well over the white dresses and the hearts are very symbolic of love, marriage and what the wedding dresses represent. I wanted to use this effect in my introduction for my documentary as I want to follow the codes and conventions set in the genre. There is a link to this video here.
I was not sure if I would be able to use the video due to copyright issues however in the video bio it specifies that the video is not copyrighted and free for anyone to use.

I put the link of the video - (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNpcFiWa_4k) into the download bar  which it then downloaded onto my desktop.



I then imported the video into iMovie by dragging and dropping it over my current footage. However, I realised that the video was black and that the overlay would not show my other footage. I thought I would be unable to make the video how I wanted by discovered I could change the opacity.






I turned the opacity down slightly which removed the black background and revealed my wedding dress footage.
This was the outcome of the effect:



Video Overlay Example from Ella on Vimeo.

Production: Lesson Progress - 13th September

Today I decided to start writing the script I need for my voiceover. After watching a lot of wedding documentaries I have found that a lot of them use a large amount of cutaways, some interviews and a main narrative voiceover. This is one of the codes and conventions of the genre. I have decided to space out my script which represents each change of a scene or a different shot. I also spent the lesson refreshing myself on my footage and seeing if I needed to obtain anymore. 

Research: The Wedding Shop Documentary (Textual Analysis 2)

After deciding on my topic for my documentary I have decided to do some research on the context of my topic - the different styles of wedding dresses. 

I have been watching a variety of wedding dress programs such as Say Yes to the Dress which explores the different dress styles available - it is filmed in Confetti and Lace. The shop also partook in a documentary from ITV called The Wedding Shop (Series 1 Episode 1 linked here ) . This documentary is good inspiration as it provides similar editing styles and shot types that I want to use for my own personal documentary. 

From the ITV website, details have been posted about the shop and details of the show. 'Every year around 250,000 couples tie the knot in the UK with Confetti and Lace being one of Yorkshire busiest wedding shops with up to 100 brides a month coming to choose their wedding dress' - link to the website here . 

Here is an article about the documentary linked here:

The show was aired on Tuesday 12th February 2013 and the 60 minute documentary follows day to day life at the shop and the stories of the brides leading up to their wedding days. ITV describes the documentary as 'a funny, heartfelt and unique insight into British lives and attitudes to marriage'. 



In the shot below, there is an interview with the owner of the shop - I have mirrored this and also conducted an interview with the owner of the shop I used. By copying the style of existing documentaries allows me to follow the codes and conventions of shows in the genre. 







This is a clip from an interview I have conducted from wedding dress shop - Chantilly Lace. 










Raw Interview Footage from Ella on Vimeo.