Final Documentary & Thumbnail

 This is my final documentary & final thumbnail

(g.drive link:https://drive.google.com/file/d/15-jfYNxdP6dZrH8gzqWfrL8UTOBx7ETd/view?usp=sharing)

Thumbnail

Critical Reflection

This post is my own personal reflection on our project

For this project, our brief outlines that we have to create a short 3-5 minute long introduction sequence within the crime documentary sub genre. For my group, we went and created a celebrity crime video with the primary audience being younger people who are still in high school who follow celebrities or influencers and also keep up whenever there is drama.

For our documentary we tried to focus on making the rivalry between Resha & Ata more dynamic, not in just a good vs evil way but in a way where each person is given their own merits and demerits. We also tried to focus on making the argument for and against Resha & Ata more ambiguous by having back to back interview clips with people from either side contradicting each other. Two of our portrayals were of freshly popular young artist, we chose to go with some stereotypes for this for example, Resha & Ata are portrayed as having a strong personality, like able although they might be petty or a little arrogant, we also tried to make them relatable and understandable in order to make them seem like a fresh new star who hasn’t risen to be an “untouchable” celebrity who is known world wide like a Hollywood actor. We chose this way of interpreting a newly popular artist as nowadays when people see those kinds of celebrities who are new to fame, it can be easier to like the celebrities as they are often more down to earth and we can understand them as they still control their actions instead of having a manager do all the work regarding their outside appearance. We also chose to portray the friends or old friends of Resha & Ata, for Resha’s friend, Kevin Stuart Bob, we chose to portray a quieter and more stable person who was slightly irritated with Resha in the past, we did this by choosing a guy with a soft voice that doesn’t give him a menacing presence, and making him seem more like a befriendable regular kind guy. On the other hand, for Ata’s friend Abu Rafiking Kong we chose to portray him as a vibrant and emotive man who has strong beliefs, he speaks in a loud and clear voice as he exclaims his opinions and views, we did this to match Ata’s challenge prone personality as somebody who always clearly states their opinions aloud are often people who get into arguments, however in this case, the relationship between the 2 is more like sparring partner than rival. As for Ata, we chose to portray him as being a chill but confrontational guy to conform with the hip hop artist stereotype of being confrontational, dissing people and aggravating them. Then there is the portrayal of the reporter who is based off of stereotypical paparazzi, intrusive, loud, pushing mics to the celebrities face & trying to get their opinion with questions that might tick them off as confrontational or controversial questions often get the biggest reactions. We have used some technical elements to show this, such as the mise-en-scene of the reporter being in places where they probably shouldn’t be, such as Ata’s house or the choice to hold up the microphone to the artist’s face.

We tried to create a production piece which mostly shouldn’t stand out from other crime documentaries and aims to try and blend our product in with those media text types. We tried to do this as we think that branding our text to be a conformity would help audiences know what might be in our video even without watching it, for example if our thumbnail is placed in the netflix crime documentary genre category, we would not stand out as much. That might initially lead to less exposure however it would mean that potential audiences who like regular crime documentaries would know what the contents of our documentary would be like therefore at some point they might come to watch it. However for our thumbnail, it would look relatively more rugged than the actual documentary as we tried to conform with the thumbnail convention of having that dirty look.

As we target younger people, ones who are still in high school, we chose to portray celebrities as in this day and age, many young students are often informed in their social media drama between celebrities having a spat over the internet, we tried to incorporate this into our documentary by having a celebrity spat, specially with young & relatable celebrities who might both resonate with the audience and also cater to their want to see the drama between the 2. Another way we targeted a young audience was the choice to shoot our interviews in a high school classroom which was implied to be where Kevin Stuart Bob & Abu Rafiking Kong associated with their respective friends. We also tried to make the characters more relatable with the help of Blumer & Katz U&G theory personal identity, where it states that audiences watch in order to get some part of their personality expanded, for example, we tried to portray Resha as somewhat sensitive as we believed that most of our audience could be ticked off like that, we also made Ata more grounded and made it seem like he can become chill when he was confronted & ambushed by the reporter in his own house.

Before beginning production of this project, we as a whole group did our own research into the crime documentaries we have seen or sought out on our own to research in order to shape our documentary and give us a general starting point. Firstly, we can understand by the usage of Neale’s Genre Theory that conventions can be seen as what the audience wants to see from the genre, so we tried to mostly conform with the genre instead of trying to create a further sub genre, the conventions we used were second hand footage or photos which were not directly supposed to be used for the documentary such as the old photos of Resha or the paparazzi interviews as second hand footage is very common with documentaries, another way we tried to conform is by the usage of interviews, especially interviews with people who have had direct relationships with the assailants or the victims recorder with the primary goal of being used in this documentary. As for the thumbnail, we tried to conform by having the image of the assailant on one of the side thirds of the thumbnail which is rugged and is mostly dark as this is also a common thumbnail convention for crime documentaries.

Thumbnail Research & Development

 This is the process of how we ended up with our final Thumbnail, post made by Louis

In the beginning, I started by looking at some crime related film project posters, to get a good idea of what mostly the fonts need to be like, as well as gathering inspiration on which font to use and how I would use them in my final project's documentary thumbnail. I used fontmeme.com to take a look at some posters, as I feel like this website quickly shows me what poster of thumbnail it's form, as well as the name of the font

Eventually I was satisfied with the font used in Narcos where it looks simplistic and modern, the look I was trying to go for for my crime documentary. However, I later found out that the information about what font they used was wrong, and it looked slightly different from the way it looked in the thumbnail. because of this, I decided to manually look for the font used from Narcos.

Afterwards, I looked at some Netflix thumbnails to get a good sense of how I should frame my thumbnail. Most crime documentary thumbnails in Netflix have their title on the left hand side, as well as having a red N to signify that it's a Netflix original while having a main subject about the documentary be on the right hand side. So then, I began working on my thumbnail and started by making a few designs

I was very excited with my first draft, and I really liked the way it turned out. I included an image of Resha, who is the celebrity, as well as an autograph on that image, so signify that he's a popular person. I also added blood splatter across the screen to follow crime documentary conventions having blood splatter in their thumbnail, as well as giving a hint that murder is present in this documentary.

I tried to include Resha in the title since the documentary is about how his popularity lead him to doing bad choices. I was unhappy with this design, as I felt like it looked a little bit too cluttered. I really like the previous design, however I needed to incorporate Resha's name into the thumbnail somehow without making it look too cluttered and tacky

Eventually I stuck with this design, having a subtitle called The Resha Case, taking inspiration form Curry and Cyanide's title choice since I feel like it would fit nicely and in the thumbnail using the same font but a thinner version to make it look less messy and cluttery.

Self reflection: With the thumbnail research, I only helped louis with advising him to lower down the brightness of the final thumbnail because I saw that it contrasted too much with other crime documentary thumbnails when I tried to insert the thumbnail into Netflix to see what it would look like if it were on the website.

Editing

 This is the progress and final report on our editing process throughout the whole project, post done by Louis as he did all the editing.

For my editing software, I am going to be using a mix of Premier Pro and Capcut, as I feel that I can better arrange and match up clips in premier pro, while Capcut can help with any effects or that I need post production, like subtitles or captions. Since I've had some experiences with Premier Pro, I feel like I would be familiar to the software, making the editing process slightly more efficient than usual

For any template videos or songs, like the netflix intro, I am using Youtube as I feel that it's the best platform to find any template videos for my project, and I can easily and simply download any video from the platform. I find this to be the easiest method of quickly picking and choosing a template video, as I don't need to go into any websites and check their legitimacy for each video. Since They're all in one platform, I can easily pick and choose my wanted clip

After Choosing the video that I want, I can then copy the video link and paste it in a Youtube to mp4 converter, so that I am able to download my chosen video and import it into my timeline in my editing software. This process for me felt quick enough to me, as I didn't need to do any weird tricks to download a video. Other websites may require me to do a captcha for every video that I download, which would be extremely tedious

For any sound effects that I may need in my project, I use a website called Pixabay, where they provide stock sound effects that can be previewed and  easily downloaded with a single click. This to me is the most efficient way for short sound effects, since the youtube link method would take too long for such a short audio clip that I can quickly get in one click

After having a portion of the video be reviewed by my teacher, He gave me recommendations on what I should do make the situation more convincing and gave some example shots that we could include in our video. He also recommended to test the audio in different output devices, since speakers and headphones may have a different sound and may change the outcome of our product to seem poor

Self Reflection: The editing was the hardest part of making this whole documentary as it was very subjective and time consuming, I helped louis pick out some of the sound effects used for this project as he asked me for which sounds the best to the average ear.

Behind the Scenes

This is the behind the scenes to our production process

Self Reflection: Looking at this post after every recording session helped me see some of the challenges we faced and also it did help me one or two times with avoiding mistakes I've made, for example how  it can be tiring to hold my hand up to the wall to become the cctv, so the next time I did it, I only put my arms up whenever I needed to.

Filming Schedule

 This post is our schedule for shooting so that we can keep on track credit to Haresha

DATES	ACTIVITY	PEOPLE INVOLVED	LOCATION	STATUS
27/08/24	Recording voice over of Louis tweaking and panicking after seeing dead body A photo of Haresha saving mini pomeranian doggo, in the shakes hand with a fan	Louis Haresha	School (for voice over) Haresha’s house (photo)	Completed
30/08/24 | 31/08/24	Recording the crime scene of Ata getting murdered in the POV of CCTVs Recording pre-crime scene, interactions between Ata and Louis Recording of Louis’ shocked reaction finding dead body Recording the angle of items (water and snacks) dropping from Louis’ hand.	Haresha Louis Ata Nathan	Haresha’s bedroom	Completed
4/09/24 | 5/09/24	Record interview of Louis, Bagas, and Nicho	Loui, Nathan Nicho Bagas Haresha	Classroom	Completed
10/09/24	Recording of Ata’s interview	Nathan Ata	Haresha’s alleyway (in front of his house)	Completed
02/09/24 | 03/09/24	Taking pictures (stock photos) of Haresha	Louis Haresha	Around the school	Completed
13/09/24	Re-recording of Haresha interview at the emergency stairs	Nathan Louis Ata Haresha	Emergency stairs near canteen	In progress
				Not started

Self Reflection: For me personally, I think that this schedule was only somewhat useful as we mostly didn't know how long shoots would take so we often had to shoot overtime, we also shot some scenes out of order not according to the shooting schedule if we felt like it would be convenient to record it on that day.

Location Scout & Risk Assessment

 This post will show all the problems and reasons with choosing our preferred shooting locations 

Location 1
Location:	Where is it? Bedroom
Events in scene:	What will happen? (e.g. action, interview, B roll) The scene where the murdering of Ata by Haresha occurs, in the POV of CCTVs footage.
Pros of location:	Why is this a good location? Because the place fits with the genre convention of where killing happens at a place where no one is passing by, a tightly closed space. In Particular, we want to subvert the stereotype of a bedroom to be a peaceful and comfortable place into a place where crime scenes occur, sending messages to the audience to remain on guard at anytime, even in your most comfortable safe-room.
Cons of location:	What are some issues with the location? Very limited space and distractions, as we tend to get tired coming from school directly to recording so we tend to rest first.
Alternatives:	What other locations can you shoot at if there are issues here? Living room - because this place has a similar stereotype as the bedroom, yet may not be as strongly stereotyped as the bedroom itself.
Risk Assessment
Potential hazards:	What dangers are there? Sharp objects (table, drawer, and bed edges) that may hit someone’s leg as well as slippery floor.
Evaluate risks:	What bad things could happen with these ‘dangers’? Someone might trip due to the slippery floor and fall, leading to injuries. Getting hit by one of the hard-wooden furniture edges
Control measures:	How will you prevent these from happening? Be mindful on where we move around the room and don't move mindlessly
Responsibility:	Who will be in charge of the control measures? Haresha
Time frame:	When will you have the control measures in place by? Before and after the recording we will make spaces by moving obstacles away so it minimizes the chance of us hitting it.
Other notes:	Anything else? .

Location 2
Location:	Where is it? Classroom
Events in scene:	What will happen? (e.g. action, interview, B roll) Interviews
Pros of location:	Why is this a good location? Classroom looks formal, accessible,
Cons of location:	What are some issues with the location? Posters that are hang on the walls which makes the atmosphere less serious as well as the tables and chairs that might obscure the camera's vision.
Alternatives:	What other locations can you shoot at if there are issues here? Music Room
Risk Assessment
Potential hazards:	What dangers are there? Tripping hazards
Evaluate risks:	What bad things could happen with these ‘dangers’? Cause injuries which prone to a delay in shooting scenes
Control measures:	How will you prevent these from happening? Be mindful on where we move around the room and don't move mindlessly
Responsibility:	Who will be in charge of the control measures? Nathaniel
Time frame:	When will you have the control measures in place? Before the recording or during the recording we might do some changes to constantly minimise the risk.
Other notes:	Anything else? .

Location 3
Location:	Where is it? Alleyway
Events in scene:	What will happen? (e.g. action, interview, B roll) Reporter sudden interviews with Ata
Pros of location:	Why is this a good location? It's good because the MeS props of Ata having a sportbike indicates that he is a successful rapper, and the alleyway is perfect as it is wide enough to shoot the interview scenes for Ata.
Cons of location:	What are some issues with the location? Motorbike passing by, sounds of neighbor chattering, dog poo
Alternatives:	What other locations can you shoot at if there are issues here? -
Risk Assessment
Potential hazards:	What dangers are there? Fast-moving motorcycles
Evaluate risks:	What bad things could happen with these ‘dangers’? If we don't pay attention to the incoming motorbike, someone could get hit by the motorcycle leading to the driver of the motorbike also fell down, each parties get injured
Control measures:	How will you prevent these from happening? One person reminds the other that a vehicle is coming in the way, so we have enough time to evade.
Responsibility:	Who will be in charge of the control measures? Haresha
Time frame:	When will you have the control measures in place by? During the scenes, we will keep reminding each other that a vehicle is coming so that we should stop shooting temporarily.
Other notes:	Anything else? The scene is quite fast, so we don't face much problem here.

Location 4
Location:	Where is it? Emergency stairs near school canteen
Events in scene:	What will happen? (e.g. action, interview, B roll) Reporter interviewing Haresha, and Haresha getting fed up with Ata after finding out that he dissed him
Pros of location:	Why is this a good location? - The lighting is good, can record at high shutter and low iso
Cons of location:	What are some issues with the location? People passing by after school dismissal, sound of cars
Alternatives:	What other locations can you shoot at if there are issues here? The other emergency stairs.
Risk Assessment
Potential hazards:	What dangers are there? Tripping hazards
Evaluate risks:	What bad things could happen with these ‘dangers’? Haresha could fell from the stairs, he might also hit his head on sharp edges of the stairs.
Control measures:	How will you prevent these from happening? He should be mindful when stepping on the stairs.
Responsibility:	Who will be in charge of the control measures? Nathaniel
Time frame:	When will you have the control measures in place by? Before the scenes.
Other notes:	Anything else? -

Location 5
Location:	Where is it? Music room (TBC)
Events in scene:	What will happen? (e.g. action, interview, B roll)
Pros of location:	Why is this a good location? - Good echo dampening
Cons of location:	What are some issues with the location? People passing by after school dismissal, sound of cars
Alternatives:	What other locations can you shoot at if there are issues here? The other emergency stairs.
Risk Assessment
Potential hazards:	What dangers are there? Tripping hazards
Evaluate risks:	What bad things could happen with these ‘dangers’? Haresha could fell from the stairs, he might also hit his head on sharp edges of the stairs.
Control measures:	How will you prevent these from happening? He should be mindful when stepping on the stairs.
Responsibility:	Who will be in charge of the control measures? Nathaniel
Time frame:	When will you have the control measures in place by? Before the scenes.
Other notes:	Anything else? -

Making this helped us be more attentive and careful when we choose our time and place to record as sometimes the risks maybe too compromising so that we have to wait longer, to avoid that we used this risk assessment to think of problems which might come up during filming and how to deal with them in order to not be affected.