New technologies became the backbone we used to create our entire documentary. From the research stage to post production we took every opportunity we could to take advantage of technologies to enhance the quality of the finished product.
The internet was one of the largest technologies that we used during the research phase of development. We created an online blog (a journal recording our progress and certain decisions we made during the creative process). It is also where we placed the information and research ideas that we collected from various websites for easy reference later on in production. Shown below is a screenshot of the online questionnaire taken from our blog. As part of the research, we needed to find out the reaction that the documentary would receive from its target audience and if it appeals to them. We printed this questionnaire out and gave to members of our target audience to fill in. In addition to this, we recorded a sample of the audience with a SonyHD3000 camera and uploaded the footage onto YouTube, the online video collection, which can be found at this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWMF8_YZrc.
During the planning stage, we took pictures of the various locations that we thought about filming in, using a Fujifilm camera and uploaded them to the blog. This made ample use of both technologies and on the next page are some of the photos that we took.
During this time we had to work out a filming schedule and had to make sure the weather conditions were as close as possible to each other due to continuity (it would look very forced if the weather were to change from scene to scene. To counter this, we used the BBC Weather forecast which is also an online feature to plan our schedule.
The filming stage gave us a wide range of technologies to use at our disposal. The HD camera was brought into use again to shoot the scenes, as well as a boom microphone to capture the audio as crisply as we possibly could. This higher sound quality added to the professional effect that was present at the end of the film. We also brought radio microphones for the actors to wear when the shot was taken at long range. These allowed us to get past the problem of the boom microphone not being able to get close enough to the actor to capture his voice, but made any conversations get picked up directly by the camera and have the film’s audio quality at a high standard despite not using the boom microphone. For the voiceover parts we used a zoom recorder when not on location. We have a narrator to take the audience through our film at the end so we recorded his voice along with the other scenes to place over the film at post production. We lastly took along a secondary smaller camera to make a behind the scenes footage and show what we had got up to behind the camera whilst filming over the days, which would come into play at a later time. Below is a typical setup from one of our location shots. Pictured is the boom microphone and the HD camera.
Lastly we had the technology used in the post production. For editing, we used a program called Final Cut, and we made extensive use of this to tie all of the shots we had previously made together. It also allows you to cut unnecessary parts of a scene away and allows you to make smooth transitions so accurate that it can be adjusted to a fraction of a second.
The previously used zoom recorder was on hand in case we noticed any additional voiceovers that we could make use of in the final edition of the film. Finally we used the blog to upload the ‘behind the scenes’ footage we had made previously to show everyone the process behind the making of the documentary.
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