Production: Lesson Progress - 31st October

Today I worked more on my editing for my documentary. I recorded my voiceover for my indent at the very start of my documentary which is shown below:

I also found an advert for documentaries on Channel 4 which I feel adds to the verisimilitude of my media product as is a good addition to the start intro. I also found the indents which is shown in previous blog post. By using these features makes my documentary appear more professional.


Indent Voiceover from Ella on Vimeo.

Research: The Wedding Day Trailer

I have decided to watch some trailers for TV shows about weddings. These are short and are used to intrigue and interest audiences enough so they are persuaded to watch the whole documentary.

The first one that I found was called 'The Wedding Day' which aired in February 2017 on Channel 4. The trailer is linked here.



The show is about the coming together of two families and the unfolding drama of the marriage. It is available on All4 on demand so I will be watching this in my spare time.

I also want to consider the day and time my documentary will air. This show has aired on the same platform I feel my documentary would be best suited to. The Wedding Day aired on a Monday at 10pm which may be a suitable time for my documentary to be aired.



My purpose of my documentary is to entertain and inform and part of this involves escapism. This plays in Blumlber and Katz' theory of uses and gratifications. After seeing the advert, audiences may be more likely to actively seek out the documentary e.g. trying to find it online, recording it for later viewing or planning it watch the show when it airs.

There is a review to this documentary linked here from The Telegraph.

Research: Lucy Can't Dance: Case Study

Lucy Can't Dance is a bridal wear designer which specialises in non traditional wedding dresses. I am going to be interviewing Lucy and filming her studio in the next week which is located in Chelmsford. I am very grateful to be interviewing Lucy as this will provide me with more footage for my documentary which allows me to cherry pick the best shots creating the best overall media product.

Lucy uses the phrase 'you don't have to wear white anymore' to illustrate her big variety of dresses including a variety of colours.

Lucy's website states her dresses are - 'Experimenting with laces and colour techniques to give you exciting, elegant and unique wedding dress designs. We love bold laces, dip dye silk skirts, breathtaking back details and buttons. Our dresses have a bohemian and vintage feel with a fresh modern twist.'

The dresses range between £800-£3000 and can also be shipped internationally. The website states that Lucy was inspired by the fashion from the 1950s-1970s. Her designs have featured in Vogue magazine and she is growing in the bridal industry.

The website is linked here.

The company also has a promotional video which I have watched which has given me a deeper understanding of the company and the different options of dresses available.

This video is also linked here.

Production: Extra Footage: Interviewing a Bridal Designer

I decided that I wanted to have a bigger choice of footage for my documentary. I chose to seek out some people involved in the wedding industry to ask permission if I could interview them and their opinions of wedding dress trends.

I decided to join some wedding groups in the Essex area and post a message onto the pages which has members who are suppliers of wedding products or brides looking for deals/inspiration for their own wedding.



I decided to use social media as I felt it was a good platform to reach a wide range of people who could give me permission to film them.

I was lucky enough for someone to reply with the idea to contact a wedding dress designer called Lucy Scragg, the owner of Lucy Can't Dance! a dressmaker who makes unique bridal wear.

 

I then sent a message to Lucy Scragg asking if she would be willing to help and this was our conversation:






I feel that the footage I will get will be very good as Lucys USP to her company is the designing of more 'out of the box' dresses so I am able to contrast this with my original footage of very traditional white dresses showing a variety.

Production: My First Draft

First Draft from Ella on Vimeo.

Above is my first draft for my documentary. In some areas I have not included the audio as I have not edited it yet but I have specified which audio voiceover will be where.

Research: Audience Theory- The Long Tail

Today I looked further into academic theory including Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory and considered where my documentary would sit. Chris Anderson notes how the internet enables niche markets.

An example would be Waterstones Book Store in which they stock a large variety of genres of books. However they do have a limited physical shelf space, however due to the internet advancement, sites such as Amazon have unlimited holding space in which can offer a bigger variety of niche books.

In 2008, 36.7% of Amazon sales were made up of niche markets.


My documentary would typically be quite mainstream due to it being a popular topic shown on TV and due to Western culture, weddings are considered to be a big deal and wedding dresses are seen a important items which girls dream of their whole lives. 

The topic would be popular but could be considered rather niche due to mostly appealing to women rather than men. Some audiences may not enjoy documentaries about weddings especially wedding dresses as my negotiated or oppositional reading may view weddings as unimportant and not essential for marriage. 

Research: Audience Theory - A Summary

I have been looking into different audience theories and how they can be applied to my own personal media product - my documentary looking into wedding dresses.

Production: Channel 4 and Indents

I have been trying to find an indent for my documentary. After evaluating the different channels which could show my documentary, I feel that Channel 4 would be suitable. The Channel 4 website which allows you to watch programs online and has a whole section dedicated to factual/documentary shows. This can be seen here.

 

There are some wedding documentaries on Channel 4 including Wedding Town, My Bit Fat Gypsy Wedding, The Wedding Day, My Big Fat Asian Wedding, Our Gay Wedding: The Musical etc.



I have been looking for the indents which are shown before documentaries on Channel 4. I have found this clip on Vimeo:



The link to this clip is here.

This video shows a collection of Channel 4 indents before different shows. The documentaries are sponsored by Honda so feature clips of cars, animals etc. By including an indent before my documentary adds to the realism of my media product and makes it seem more realistic.

Honda Channel 4 Documentary Idents from Chris Groom on Vimeo.

Production: Lesson Progress: 10th October

Today I have been playing around with my audio for my documentary. For a short cutaway at the start of my documentary, you can fairly hear the phone ringing in the shop. The idea of the shot is to show how busy the shop is and you can barely hear the sound of the ring. By adding the sound effect of a phone ringing would make it louder and also suggest to audiences that the shop is popular reinforcing the audio which states 'Chantilly Lace is one of the busiest shops in the Southend Borough'.



However, I did not like the options in iMovie as the telephone rings sounded very fact and not realistic and I wanted to create a sense of verisimilitude in my documentary. I found a video of a phone ringing on Youtube which is linked here:



This clip was more realistic and sounds better in my documentary. I simply downloaded the video, put it over the top of my clip and made the video transparent so you cannot see it.

Research: Narrative and Audience of Say Yes to the Dress

This article by Huffington Post, shows an example of a fan of the show Say Yes to the Dress. Although most people may view the show to be for people getting married and gaining inspiration for their own personal dress, this article by Debbie Leon highlights the variety of audiences. In the text she highlights how she is a fan of the show despite being 'already married'. She also highlights the typical narrative of the show which normally follows in 10 steps like this:

1) A bride appears and is introduced to the camera
2) A backstory about her spouse is normally shown including pictures of the two together, possibly including personal details about the bride
3) The brides entourage is introduced to the store managers/assistants which normally consists of mother of the bride, bridesmaids, sisters, mother in law and sometimes extended family such as cousins. Occasionally the father of the bride is present.
4) The bride will then state what she is looking for and her budget (which is nearly always broken) in which the assistants take her away to find dresses
5) Most brides try on around 3 dresses, one being extremely far away to what she is looking for and that her entourage do not like
6) There is normally a dramatic scene where a family member does not like the dress but the bride does which sometimes leads to arguments and tears and is normally paired with an interview with the bride away from her entourage
7) The bride finds her perfect dress, shows her family and they love it, typically it is over budget
8) Most brides have a family member pay for their dress and normally have to ask for an extension on their budget due to most dresses being presented too expensive
9) Once agreed, the shop owner/manager/assistant will ask the bride 'are you saying yes to this dress?'
10) The bride then agrees and there is reaction shots around to the different people in the scene

Some episodes do show variety with some brides not finding their dress etc.

Leon highlights that 'The bride generally has a cathartic moment and feels something for the first time: Powerful, pretty, thin, tall, loved. The chosen dress, and the experience in choosing it miraculously solves whatever problem she came with.'

Research: Say Yes to the Dress: A Study

Research: DocHouse

DocHouse cinemas is the UK's first cinema dedicated solely to documentary. It is based in Central London and they screen the best new releases, festival favourites and retrospective titles. It allows a new platform of exhibition for documentary filmmakers and allows documentary fans a new hub to view their favourite titles. There is a link to this site here.

Research: iMovie Technique

For my documentary, I wanted to use a specific effect which had pictures popping up at different angles on the screen which would then be paired with a voiceover. I explored iMovie and tried different ways to create this effect however I realised I would need to use a different platform.

I have taught myself how to screen record on Mac and also the different features of KeyNote so tried to explore both these platforms.

I used the Keynote presentation function and animation effects that I have discovered and took reviews from the new MissGuided bridal collection, screen shotted them and simply dragged them onto the slides. I used the confetti animation as I felt it reflects my genre and has connotations of weddings linking well with my main topic of investigation. By screen recording the reviews popping up I was able to crop the video and insert it into my drafted documentary.

The process of animating the screen shots is shown below:

Keynote and Screen Record from Ella on Vimeo.

Production: My Voiceover

Due to a typical convention of documentaries being a narration voiceover I have decided to use this technique for my own media product.

 
I decided to write down some statements that I wanted recorded and was able to give these to my chosen talent. I chose to get some assistance in my voiceover as I felt my voice would not be as well suited to my documentary.

I used the iPhone voice memo application to record each different section. I recorded them separately to make it easier to edit in iMovie and move around parts of audio if necessary. Most of my recordings are under 60 seconds which will be easier in the future when I am constructing/finishing my product.

Production: Practicing Title Affects

I want to use an effect on my title of my documentary to add to the aesthetic of the product. I have discovered that KeyNote on Mac has an animation section in which users can add affects to text and to make it stand out on the screen in presentations. I have used screen recording to show my use of this feature. I liked the features Confetti, Shimmer and Lens Flare as they are effects I have seen in some documentaries.







Here is some footage of exploring different affects of my title screen.
Title Affects 1 from Ella on Vimeo.

Production: Screen Recording Technique

I wanted to use a couple of seconds of screen recording in my documentary. Part of my documentary is going to be using statistics to illustrate how brides shop e.g. getting inspiration from Pinterest or other social media sites.
I used the screen recording feature on iPhone and took some footage of me scrolling through Pinterest and Instagram looking through wedding dresses however due to the portrait footage, this would not work in my documentary as it does not fill the screen. A contrast between the footage is shown in my clip. I knew I needed to screen record on my Mac but was unsure how to without having to download a program from the internet.

I then did some research and found this article (linked here)
 

I then searched for QuickTime Player which I have used for my documentary when presenting footage such as Kate Middleton's Wedding Dress footage.





I then simply clicked 'New Screen Recording' in which a small box popped up in the top right hand corner. After clicking this, the box disappeared and started recording everything on my screen including mouse movements and scrolling of pages. I wanted to include some screen recording as I felt it would be a nice feature due to a portion of my documentary touching on the use of the internet in the search of a brides perfect dress.



My recorded screen then popped up which I could then easily rename and add to my desktop. I then simply dragged and dropped the footage into iMovie and was able to edit it exactly how I wanted it. I chose to zoom in a little on the footage to remove the search bar and other details to make the footage seem more professional.

My screen recording is shown below as well as my first initial try from iPhone:
Screen Recording from Ella on Vimeo.

Research: Wedding Dress Trends 2017

I have been researching into wedding dress trends for 2017. I feel that understanding the industry and the trends that are currently popular will help me create a more realistic and informative documentary. I found the website hitched.com which had a post titled '17 Wedding Dress Trends You Will Need to Know About for 2017'. The website is linked here. Here were some examples of the trends: