Our first draft of our documentary can be found on the Documentary - Final Piece page on my blog. This is where we will gather audience feedback from our first draft and then make changes where it is necessary before we submit our final project in a few weeks time.
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Due to the structure being changed in our documentary with quite a negative representation of zoos being portrayed, we both felt that our titles where a bit too funky and light hearted for quite a serious documentary opening. These titles were okay when we had 'lion sleeps tonight' opening it but with Teardrop by Massive Attack being a very emotional song, we felt it was best to change them to convey this serious meaning and set the tone for our project. Below is the before and after the change... ![]() First idea before the change.... ![]() The idea and titles we both settled on is above which as you can see looks much more professional and conveys the right meaning for our documentary. The font is called Didcot and is available through iMovie, the software we used to put together our documentary.
Due to our documentary structure change and the change of our opening soundtrack from the 'Lion Sleeps Tonight' to 'Massive Attack - Teardrop' we contacted the owners to use their music for educational purposes for our A2 Coursework project.
As we looked at the structure of our documentary - we both believed we weren't conveying that deeper meaning of negative representation of zoo's. We decided with our teacher feedback giving from our original start clip with Lion Sleeps Tonight, it gave too much of a happy feeling towards it. We agreed on using Massive Attack - Teardrop as our opening sequence with the narration saying about 'Zoos can be wonderful places however around the world this is not always the case'. Whilst showing horrible, disturbing clips, we want the viewer and audience to react to this and therefore possibly shed a tear(drop) to this emotive music. This then will have an immediate impact on the viewer and therefore be intrigued to watch how this zoo (Bristol Zoo) looks after their animals. It will take time to get right but with the music it will really help convey the narration and make the audience sit up and want to watch more. This is also more appropriate as Massive Attack are a Bristol based band adding to the deeper meaning and Bristol 'ness' of the documentary. Using the archive footage at the start will be good as it will have an instant impact on viewer. We will source the footage from YouTube.
At Churchill Academy, we have the recording studio for us media, music, dance etc students to use to record specific bits of audio. Recording this professionally will add to the appeal of our documentary and make it like a proper TV documentary. We recorded one of our Drama teachers Mr Buckley who kindly offered to use his voice for our project. Below is the script we used and recorded as an mp3 file to then use throughout our project.
After putting together our documentary, and starting to see the structure form, we needed to decide whether to use a voice of god for our documentary Life Inside Bristol Zoo. Looking at parts of it where I have archive footage and there is no sound as yet we feel we need this Voice of God to help the documentary flow more and carry the meaning of the documentary. We decided as we are both students (and our interviews about zoos may appear in the documentary) we needed an older, more mature voice as people would respect this. We decided to use one of our teachers, Mr Buckley who is a drama teacher and will read the script to help tell our story of our documentary. This should therefore help the documentary's structure and be a good bridge between our introduction and archive footage, then before and after interviews in our 5 minutes.
![]() After reviewing our footage for the last month or so and looking at what we have, we needed to make another trip up to Bristol Zoo. Having our opening was a good start and we started to form the structure of our final product but we needed more footage and most importantly interviews to make the documentary flow and covey the conventions of documentary throughout our product. Having all ready got archive footage - we both knew this could be a part with a voice of God were we could have 30 seconds or so about the history of the zoo. This informs the viewer on the history as this documentary is Life Inside Bristol Zoo and it sets the scene. This with a small introduction will be about the first 2 minutes of our 5 minute opening of our documentary. We set off for the zoo on Weds 15th March having a plan to shoot external shoots (outside the zoo - traffic outside, visitors walking in, the front of the zoo) and internal shoots with more shoots of the lion (didn't get much of them last time) and all the animals of course. We also would try to get interviews with zookeepers as this was an important part and we only managed two short ones the first time we went up (Sun 15th Jan). We both knew that we would need filler clips and that we needed enough footage to fill 5 minutes of this project. We filmed everything we could spending 4 hours up at the zoo with a tripod and DSLR camera gathering footage. I also decided to film the main 'avenue' of Bristol Zoo so I could experiment with a time lapse of people walking past. When we get back to school - we will review the footage and see what we can use and look at the structure of how we want our documentary. After searching on YouTube for the right soundtrack we both settled on Lion Sleeps Tonight (Instrumental version) for our opening sequence. This light-hearted song felt right for our documentary. We contacted the owners of the track asking for permission to use it.
Me and Elise discussed having an opening sequence to our documentary and planned this with storyboards. Viewing other documentaries in my research and planning has helped us develop an idea of the compilation start with the use of the soundtrack 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' . This song is a light hearted song and we chose it because we don't zoos to be portrayed all negatively. The Zoo is a tourist attraction and has its negatives (which we want to convey as our deeper meaning) but it is a great place where you can see animals and a perfect place for families.
Below is our storyboard for our introduction and what we intend to start our documentary with... Typography for the documentary is so important - it is the front of the documentary and is part of the whole branding. After looking at examples from other documentaries, this has given us ideas to develop and use fonts that are specific for our documentary on Bristol Zoo. Planet Earth is one of the BBC's best example for an animal style documentary because the branding of the text is very distinctive. The is stood out and embossed and this shows BBC's identity. Another example of typography we looked at was Channel 4's Secret Life of the Zoo. This very distinctive giraffe skinned colour gives the documentary an identity. We also both quite liked the name and are looking at taking inspiration of this. Life Inside Bristol Zoo is a possible name we both like and it says what is on the tin. It is quite simple and therefore effective and with the right. ![]() Ideas for our title... These are the 3 ideas we have come up with, these are part of the iMovie selection (the software we are using to create the documentary) as using fonts off the internet would be copyright. After looking at 3 of the options and the clip we want to put the video over, we chose the last one as it was quite unique. It was a bit different and the other styles were a bit like Time New Roman and had no identity to them. It works as an overlay of the other clip we are using and therefore we decided that it was best for our Documentary called Life Inside Bristol Zoo. |
Dan AyersCandidate No: 0008 Archives
April 2017
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