Research

Codes and Conventions

What are codes and convention?

            Codes are the signs which providing a meaning a scene, as an example character’s costumes, camera angles.

            Conventions are the accepted way to do something. And it could repeat use. Example, a love song in romantic films.

Convention of Documentary

1.      Actuality footage- this is more like recording live situations and events with real people, not actors.

2.      Voiceovers – this used for documentaries most of the time. We couldn’t see anyone but have their voice to describe the things in the documentary.

3.      Interview- the interview is we are going to record a person talk with their permission. Basically, there’s an interviewer and an interviewee, and the interviewer is asking the question and interviewee is answering the question and make a conversation about a topic.

4.      Narrative – this means, making an event or some kind of a situation in a certain order and it would help to understand.

5.      Graphics and Text- basically, providing information, such as birthdays, special days, relative details about the topic by text, and graphics could be pictures, clip arts, gits etc.

6.       Re-enactment- they are more like a film type of information. And it would act by actors according to a script.

7.      Archival footages- this could be stock footage, material from a film library or film of historical event etc. these are really important because it provides more details to your documentary, it helps to prove your the point you would talk about in your documentary.
Modes of documentary

Poetic Documentary

These types of documentaries are focusing on truth. It always presented the reality. We could find a narrative at that documentaries, but we could say it has a flow of scene related to each one. If I explain that little more, if you see a monk in this kind of documentary we accepting to a temple after that, but sometimes next scene would be gun making factory. As it mentions representing truth, the scenes I explained before representing peace and war. That is the deep truth of that scenes.  The purpose of poetic documentaries also describes the deep meaning or the truth of world. “samsara” is good example documentary. It has so many different kinds of scene, people and cultures. We could see some uncomfortable scene during a poetic documentary, but we all know that is the truth; that’s making you to think about some wisely.

Observational Documentary

These documentaries are making around one or few people and covering up their life events. Commonly, we couldn’t see that much of interview the documentary. It focused more about the visual things. Therefore, we could see handheld or the shaky camera shots to these documentaries. “Armadillo” is great example. It’s about soldiers who were in front-line of war zone in Afghanistan. It hadn’t any interview. It was all about live events. Observational documentary presents the truth in an observational way.  

Expository Documentary

We could say “expository documentaries” are “educational documentaries”. These kinds of documentary always provide something new but with more details. It means this documentary make to educate their audience. During the documentary we wouldn’t see interviews, but they used to have voice overs. Also, visual content is so important in these documentaries, so they always try to bring us the best quality of pictures. Sir David Attenborough’s “plant earth” documentary series is the best example I could say without any doubts.

Participatory documentary

 Nichole describe this as “when the encounter between filmmaker and subject is recorded and the filmmaker actively engages with the situation, they are documentary”. Often, filmmakers used this mode to do investigation film. In these kinds of interviews interviewer has to change according to the situation.  It means the filmmaker become a part of the documentary. Louis Theroux is a legend of making this type of documentaries.

Reflexive documentary

in the reflexive documentary, the filmmaker acknowledges their presence in front of the camera and provide a narrative to documentary. The reflexive style of documentaries are associated with experimental documentaries, where the viewer is just as interested about how the film is constructed as they are the content.

As Nichols wrote “the reflexive mode will provoke audiences to question the authenticity of documentary in general”.

Performative documentary

The performative documentary is the direct opposite of the observational mode. In the observational documentaries, unobtrusive observation of the subject is the director’s aim. A performative documentary shows the filmmaker’s own involvement with the subject. They tend to be more emotionally driven and may have a larger political or historical motivation. 

Interview Techniques

What is an interview?

            Interview is the main part of a documentary. It can give more details, especially real-life stories, different kind of experience, different kind of opinions & ideas etc. Also, I think the reasons interviews are important to have in documentaries because one thing is audience would be acceptable to have it, second one is if you put interviews to the documentary it would be makes sense the topic which is talking about in that.

why “Research” is important?

The reason is why because research is so important to an interview is, if you did some research about your interviewee before meeting them, it would be really helpful to you to go through the interview. You could have the chance to make a connection between your interviewee and have his or her trust. I think interviewer- interviewee trust is so important to do have a great output. When you’re going to have an interview with a good research it could help to get more information from them, and also new information and evidence as well. It means it helps you to have confident to that interview and understand your interviewee.

Understanding, as I mentioned before understanding is such an important to have on interview. Interview is a conversation between to people. Interviewer there for to ask questions and interviewee there to answer to that questions, basically. But if you don’t understand each other’s duties, it would not worth it have that interview.  Before the interview, during the interview and end of the interview understanding is so important. It would help you have complete interview.

Inform, inform is basically the information provided by your interviewee. That are the information which is, keep going the interview and make the interview more interesting to your audience. And very important thing is, the information is needed to be true information.

Interpretive, I think this part has to done by interviewer. Because I’m saying after this stage where the audience is going to understand the interview more than in the beginning. If interview gives a good interpretive to it, we’ll see a very informative and productive interview.

Types of questions we’re using for interview

Open question- open question is the questions we used to ask about something but accepting an answer more than having ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

            Ex: How do you keep focused on your work?

Close questions- close question is basically used start to conversation with interviewee. We can call it “yes or no questions” because from that question we would only have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for the answer?

            Ex: Is math your favourite subject?

Single question- single question direct questions.

            Ex: what is your school?

Multiple question- these questions are asked for to having more than one answer in one question?

            Ex: why did you choose to do media and why this college?

Direct question- direct question asked for to have a direct answer for the certain moment in the interview.

            Ex: how do you define ‘success’?

Leading question- these questions used for to keep going the interview and get more information from the interviewee.

            Ex: as a viewer, what do you think about this incident?

Documentary Analysing 

Celebs, Brands & Fake fans Documentary- Real Stories

This the documentary had done by Real Stories YouTube channel; it licensed by various kind of media platforms. This documentary is basically about the wrong way of advertising in social media, fake celebrities and fake brands.

The documentary has two main areas they did cover, in the first session of the person who conducted this, were hold an audition, chose some random singers and asked them to make the music band. And they named it a "wrong direction" then, speaker of this the documentary made some social media accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook. After that, he wanted to make that profile look as he reached profile/ upcoming band. So, I searched on the internet and found a website which had provided likes and YouTube views for money. And he purchased to that website. But also, he started research over that and found out where these likes and opinions coming from. Dhaka, Bangladesh was the location. So, he went there and started to meet the people who were involved in this. He recorded everything used of a secret camera, and we could see, and hear them very clearly because of that. However, he found out that cyber company used to control about 1000 of Facebook accounts. This company was worked even with a large scale of international companies also. But when he informed that to those companies, they ignore that and delete their content after that.

The second session is while he was in Bangladesh, he found out these fake followers and likes auto generator has directly connected with some social media advertising company in the UK. So, he tracked down that found out celebrities and upcoming celebrities were using these services. So, he's started that research about that. But this was quite different than another situation. Because at this point, celebrities were doing promoting a product they didn't even use. And they were earning from that, but there's the company between these products and celebrities. He tracked down that company and making a fake relationship with them. He was acting as their customer. He found so many celebrities around The UK doing this. After getting some services from them, he had been a customer. After a couple of meetings, these people told about another work doing similar to this. It's gifting a different kind of upcoming products and ask them to twitter about that product. So, the process was these celebrities and upcoming celebrities had that upcoming product and posted a twitter about that. And they did that, and some celebrities got a payment for that some didn't have.

However, this documentary was all about that wrong side of social media.  How people were getting their like and views this much a faster way, how people using a fake profile and ow people faked about their life and their audience.  Social media is not 100% secure platform.  You can't trust another. So, it means we need to consider our privacy, what we're putting to our profile etc. we could follow a fake celebrity like this, but we never know. As my opinion, I think it's better to have a social media account but never need to addict to that. Because if you spend that same time to the more productive thing, you will never regret that.

  

From this documentary, I hope to get the details, how people fake about their self, how they are doing that etc.

Talking about the mode and the microelements of this documentary. This documentary goes to the participatory mode documentary. It means the speaker of this documentary participating in a different situation and collecting evidence procedures. the documentary is well organized with details and evidence. The narrative of the documentary is good. The combination of each topic is good, every topic smoothly describes and linked to the main topic.

Cinematography this documentary is a little bit poor. But every scene we see during the documentary make the connection with the detail we hear from behind. They used a particular sound effect to it. Most of the hearing ‘mysterious music’ and it helps to make sense with scenes as well. Mise- en- scene elements are hard to identify and describe in this documentary. There are so many live events in it. And there wasn’t any actor to identify, but the scene they’re doing ‘fake material selling scene’ they acted like sellers. He used this as his main setting. 

Social media is it good or bad?

According to statics of 2019, we could find out nearly 3.5 billion active social media users and 3.2 billion mobile media users.

  

The reason I’m doing this research and this documentary, I think nowadays, social media has transformed into a massive impact on people’s lives. There should have good and bad effects. First, I like to talk about the positive impact on social media.

I know some people don’t believe there is a positive impact on social media. But as we know, all things have a positive side and a negative side. There is a web article, saying there are ten positive impacts we could get from social media. Especially for teenagers.

There are,

1.      Younger students can feel empowered by teaching older relatives how to use technology.
2.      Social media could be used to create a positive digital footprint and search results.
3.      Social media provides parents with an opportunity for open communication.
4.      Social media can help students learn essential job skills.
5.      Social media can lead to more communication.
6.      Students can use technology to form study groups.
7.      Social media provides a platform to showcase technological savvy and creativity.
8.      Social media offers students a way to stay in touch with friends if they move.
9.      Students can utilize social media to spread social awareness and kindness.
10.  Student can learn new thing from social media.

At every point of these are saying how could be social media is an excellent place for teenagers. Professionals spoke all these topics. The web article I found: Positive impact of social media. If you go to this page, you will understand these points with more details.

As a summary of that article, it says the whole society put their attention to the negative side of social media, and there is a positive side also around that. Still, we need to understand and identify those positive impacts. And it would be helpful for a special teenager and young people if I explain about understanding and identifying more. Understand is how to understand what the internet for and built something like that. Also, it says, social media is an excellent platform to meet new people, professionals, modern societies. And it gives us new chances to do something different, learn new things & share your skills with others. I think that’s an excellent opportunity for everyone.

For this web article to get some idea about the positive side of social media. And I hope to include this information during the first part of the documentary. 

Social media is the platform with great opportunities. There is a dark side we should need to understand and control. There are so many things getting started with social media. Social media addiction is one of the main problems we are having social media.

For look into that with more details I made a survey. In that survey I asked people, how are they getting along with their life.

Survey 

This survey I made for two reasons. First reason was, to identify the target audience. The second reason was, to understand the target audience’s perspective on social media. 

Survey questions:

1.      Which age group you in?

2.      Are using any kind of social media?

3.      Which is your favourite social media platform?

4.      Do you think social media is important to your life?

5.      According to your answer to Q4, why is that?

6.      If said NO to Q2, don’t you like to have a social media account?

7.      If you still don’t like to have a social media account, what is the reason for that?

8.      Do you think you addicted to social media?

9.      Do you believe social media affect your mental health?

10.  Do you believe social media have any positive side effect?

As I expected, I ended up mixed answers. But I noticed some people have a clear view of what is social media and how they need to use it. I think that’s a positive thing. Because I’m saying that, during my documentary, I will talk about both side of the social media and I think it would help if I have an understandable audience. Because of this survey, I realise the audience which I’m talking to will understand the topic. It will be successful.

The survey was successful, and it gave me a better idea about the target audience.  There is some point I understand from this survey.

        I.            The audience thinks their social media is important to them.

      II.            Everyone who answers the question has any kind of social media account.

    III.            Most of them believe social media can affect their mental health.

    IV.            Also, 93% of them think social media have a positive side as well.

Reference:
The positive impact of social media: https://smartsocial.com/positive-impact-of-social-media/
Survey- social media and your life: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-Z8TWYXFR7/

Sample Interview:

College student interview

How can creative choices affect our perceptions?

Media is mixed up by ideas, concepts, theories or information. And the connection between the audience starts to be getting more powerful than ever before. There are plenty of choices and varieties now exist on this platform. But the thing is, these choices and variations can be affected by an individual.

As mentioned, this platform is improved rapidly. And because of that, filmmakers start to make it with more complexity. There’s always have something to think beyond film what we’ve seen. That’s good to have. And it helped for filmmakers to talk their audience directly, and they can speak to the individual. BBC Sherlock tv series (Sherlock 2017) was an excellent example of that. Sherlock Holmes is we all known detective who lived in 221B Baker’s Street and resolving a problem with his colleague Doctor John Watson. But this tv series represented The Sherlock Holmes differently. They made a modern Sherlock Holmes. They changed the whole narrative of Sherlock Holmes story (A Study in Scarlet 1888).

However, the audience excitingly got this concept. Everybody started to love it. Another thing is this series came up as a limited episode tv-series, and each episode got 70 minutes or longer runtime. Day by day, this series increased their fan-based. But in 2017 decided to stop the series and it after season 4. Everyone who watched this, started to ask one question; “why do they stop this at this peak time?”. And there were some reasons to they stopped production. End of season 4, Production team saw how massive their fan base is.  They had 100% attention to their audience, as a limited episode tv series, it was a massive achievement for them.  They were able to the whole concept of Sherlock Holmes. Whoever fan of Sherlock books became a fan of this series as well. That proved creative choice can be changed the perception of the audience upside down.

Furthermore, it showed how narrative of a story can be affected to the audience. As you know Sherlock is an old-fashioned story. But writers of modern sherlock changed the narrative of the whole concept but thing need to mention, they never changed the originality of the story. They used same names for characters, same address. So, I think that’s the trick they used. And that’s why they had book readers’ attention same as tv series viewer.

Documentary is another platform which can affect to viewer’s perception. Documentary also have its theories and methods whoever make can follow. Code and convention and modes of documentary are the theories documentaries around with.

Abducted in plain sight (abducted in plain sight 2017) is crime documentary and the story are about a girl who abducted by her neighbour. This is an observational type of documentary. And this documentary is combined with conventions. Archival footage, they used lots of archival footages on this. And help to the narrative the story. Most of the footages were get from that man who abducted. Interviews, I think they are the most powerful convention they used and its full emotional scenes.  The girl who was abducted; she is a woman now. But the having an interview with her and share her feelings and it’s very emotional. Also, those interviews were the existing evidence, and that’s the thing which helped break down that into parts. Beginning, the problem and the solution, that are the parts we’re having from the narrative story. And re-enactment scenes were the combination with interviews and archival footages. The reason I’m saying that, interviews were the narrative of the story, and archival footages provided visual-based evidence to the story. But there’re some gaps needed to fill, for filmmaker used re-enactment scenes. Using actors and remaking the actual situations were happened in the past, can make a strong bond between the victim of the and the audience. And I think that’s what filmmakers expect to happen.

This documentary showed and proved how codes and conventions can be helpful to grab the audience’s attention. But sometimes filmmaker did ignore codes and conventions because there’s no law to have code conventions definitely. The thing is it can change with difference of documentary. But I would say documentary is always include one element of that at least.

There are six kinds of documentaries, poetic, observational, expository, performative, participatory and reflective. And these modes changes with the idea of the filmmaker. As example Sir David Attenborough’s seven worlds, one plant (seven worlds, one plant 2019) documentary series is an excellent example to show the differences and how single change can be affect to the whole documentary.   If we look at his past documentaries there were like combination between observational and participatory documentary. I know it actually seems like an observational documentary, but I have a good reason to say it had combination. If you watch the life of birds (the life of birds 1998) you can notice the different. in that documentary we could see how he involved with the scenes and came in front of the camera. So, it’s more like a participatory documentary but it changed into an observational because it shared new information and experience. So, you would see changing of one thing can be affect to whole product. But I see it’s as good sign for industry, maybe it might help us to make new mode or something. However, we cannot say it can happen definite. Again, if we go to seven worlds, one plant, it’s still an observational documentary but he changed the way how he is representing the information. I know in the past also he used to have voice overs but in this particular documentary he used voice overs less that his involvement with the situation.  But the nicest and unique thing he has in documentaries is the narrative. That’s real beauty, it kept audience’s attention to his every documentary. Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries are also a good example to explain the narrative in documentaries.

Talking about microelements, I would like to talk about that with Louis Theroux’s Selling sex (selling sex 2020) documentary. This documentary basically about three women who were selling sex as a profession. This documentary is a participatory documentary. And the thing is though, I understand while I was watching this, how something can change the way we see it in different directions. This quite emotional documentary, although the narrative Louis follows through, makes it more emotional. I would say Cinematography was brilliant, the way he tried to show that three women’s emotions. As an example, during the documentary, he tried to get more details from them, such as asking them why they end up with this kind of situation or do they enjoy what they’re doing. Every time it changes interviewee’s facial expression and body language. And he captured it nicely and put it in the time, the right question. And also, the use of sound he used well. It helps to keep the emotional sentiment during the documentary. I know this is not his well-made documentary, but I recently watched this one, and that’s why chosen to talk about this documentary.

  However, if we conclude this essay, in this essay, I wanted to show you how film can change our perception. How can creative choices affect our perception? How do documentary theories, such as conventions, modes or microelement, change our perception.

 Reference:

Sherlock. 2017. [video] Directed by M. Gatiss and S. Moffat. United KIngdom: BBC & Netflix.

Conan Doyle, S., 1888. A Study In Scarlet. 1st ed. London: Ward Lock & Co.

borgman, s., 2017. Abducted In Plain Sight. [video].

seven worlds, one plant. 2019. [film] Directed by S. Attenborough. BBC.

The life of birds. 1998. [film] Directed by S. Attenborough.

Selling sex. 2020. [film] Directed by L. Theroux. BBC.