The Documentary Problem

The Documentary Truth, signifies bias and subjectivity, as it is filmed from the film makers perspective. Documentaries often convey the filmmaker’s beliefs or agenda, leading to a biased or one sided portrayal of events. It also has selective storytelling as filmmaker’s may choose to emphazise certain facts while downplaying or ignoring others, affecting the objectivity of the narrative.

John Grierson, often considered the father of documentary filmmaking, famously defined the documentary as the creative treatment of actuality. This definition, coined in the 1920s, emphasizing two key elements.

“Actuality”. Documentaries are rooted in real life events, people, or situations. The goal is to present some aspect of the real world, unlike fictional films.

“Creative Treatment” Grierson acknowledged that documentaries are not just objective recordings of reality. Instead, they involve the filmmaker’s creative interpretation through techniques like editing, narration, and structure. This allows documentaries to create meaning, convey emotions or promote particular perspectives while still being based on real life events.

Grierson’s definition recognizes the balence between fact and artistic expression in documentary filmaking, acknowledging that while documentaries present real life, the filmaker’s choices can influence how that reality is depicted.

Documentary Pre Production

This is our production meeting agenda that our director created, we also all contributed as well.  This gives us a clear understanding on what we need to do for our shoot and when and where everything will take place.

We also had a risk assessement that our teacher checked to ensure our own safety. 

The cinematographer (me), the director, and editor all made a storyboard together. This helped me as cinematographer have a clear understanding on what shot types we would need and gives me a clear understanding on how to represent the story through particular shots.

 

Documentary Pitch

Please click on the link to see our documentary pitch
usp=sharinghttps://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kK1Yfvna2mfYD27wj4O0v0hXfcWaCNvm6BmYjj4c0WY/edit?usp=sharing

Me and my group created our pitch, we then presented it to our teacher for feedback. When we created are pitch this allowed us to have a clear understanding of each of our responsibilites within our roles and focusing on the key areas. Each of us made are own slide of are distict roles and what jobs we need to do within are roles.

Our teachers feedback:

We needed more pictures.

I needed to add more to my slide as the cinematographer as mine was a bit vague.

Horror Inquiry Page

The horror genre is a genre of literature, film and television that is meant to scare, startle and even repulse audiences. The key focus of a horror film is to elicit a sense of dread to the audience through the frightening imagery, the themes and situations. Within the horror genre story and characters are just as important as mood and atmosphere. A horror story often shocks and provokes with its exploration of the unknown.  Horror is mostly divided into sub genres like psychological horror, supernatural horror which are in the realm of speculative fiction. 

Monsters in horror movies are more than the object of fear; they represent the deep layers of meaning, conveying social fears, social anxieties and social phobias. For example in Frankenstein (1931) the main monster represents what humans fear with what we create. Which links with AI and how it can change the world. It also signifies prejudice as in Frankenstein he suffers from other humans due to the way he looks. This also links with how people get treated like today due to their race or sexuality. 

German expressionism was a design movement in the early 20th century. It is used to emphasise the artist’s inner emotions rather than attempting to replicate reality. German expressionists rejected cinematic realism and used visual distortions and hyper-expressive performances to reflect inner conflicts. German expressionist films feel dreamlike. They often use paranoia or plan weird atmospheres. Aesthetics and cinematography , within German expressionism they use exaggerated contrasts between light and dark. 

 Horror cinematography mostly uses camera, angle, and distance. This involves high angles that are used to represent birds eye views.Characters faces are thrown into shadow, that makes their actual faces seem like a mask. Shadows seem to take on a life of their own, buildings and objects cast shadows that make the landscape seem distorted. 

Editing is used for expressively cutting between reality and what is going on with the characters’ imaginations. An example of this is when the man contemplates on killing his wife in sunrise (1927.) Slow fades which makes scenes blur into each other. Dissolve is when the images are superimposed upon one another using double exposure. Cross cutting is when action in different locations creates moments of intense suspense.  

Horror sound design, there are two examples of this, these are diegetic and non diegetic sounds. Diegetic is the sound the people within the film can hear within the film, this involves characters speaking, sirens, gun shots. Also non diegetic, which is sound only the viewers and the audience can hear and the people within the film can’t hear. An example of this is voice over narration and music.  Music plays an important role in horror as it helps to create suspense as well as jump scares, with sudden loud sounds.  Sound is also important as part of the special effects which are key to successful horror. 

Often successful horror films are more about what is suggested than what is actually seen on the screen and it is the true art of the horror director to convey a sense of fear through suggestion rather than through visualisation. 

Production Teams

This is the group agreement me and my team made for our documentary. This involves some planning and information from each of are roles, which gives us a clear guideline on what we need to achieve throughout each stage of the production process.

This allows us to have a clear guideline on what we need to do in each of are roles. As my role as cinematographer, it is my job to ensure the shots I am filming are good quality and to refilm any shots that aren’t. I will also consider the different shot types, movement and angles when filming to create meaning and signify contrast within our documentary.

 

Shoot 1 Reflection

As a group we all decided that we would out on location, including Cobo Bay, Grandes Rocques, the Cows Horn and cliff paths and in town. We were originally going to film in school because the weather forecast was for rain, however, the weather turned out nice so we decided to film outside. This suited our plan better as being outside helped us to convey the contrast of being our in the natural world versus being consumed on your phone by social media.

This is are production meeting agenda which helped us stay organised when filming.

We had agreed in advance on a few places on where we were going to film which helped us stay organised. We also had a wide range of shot types we were going to use for all the landscapes when filming.

We decided we wanted to film with the shoulder mount which we were borrowing from our teacher. However, this made us lose some time on particular shots because we had to collect the shoulder mount from another location. We resloved this by filming more shots near the location where we were going to collect the shoulder mount. However, becuase of our lack of planning around the collection of the shoulder mount, we could not take as many shots in the places where we had planned to film, which was disappointing. For the next shoot we will work more collaboratively and plan better which equipment we should bring, like the tripod, drone, and shoulder mount. We will also plan better with each other what we should use and who takes what and allocate task between ourselves.

While shooting some of the group were late as the location was quite far from where they live. This resulted in less filming time. In my job as cinematographer I would resolve this by filming more shots by myself. I would also plan better with my group on the location to make sure that everyone can turn up on time. This means that we would have more time to film.

We decided to use a drone while filming. This involved us going to someone’s house to pick it up. However, that person changed the time of the pick it up. This resulted in more time being lost. We then found that the drone was low on charge which meant that it ran out of battery fast. For our next shoot we will resolve this by making a clear plan with the owner of the drone regarding the pick up time and requesting that the drone is fully charged.

Our mode of transport was the bus which also resulted in less filming time, as we didn’t have a plan on which times we would take the bus. A way we can resolve this is for are next shoot we be more organised and schedule with each other when to get the bus so we have more time for filming.

As my role as cinematographer, I thought about the framing, lighting, movement, and composition.

  • For the movement I decided to use pans/tilts shots to fully capture the scenery and to provide context for my film so that the place where it was set was seen as an important part. For this I used a tripod and the pan handle to create successful movement.
  • For the framing I made sure to impliment the three main shot types, mid shots, long shots and close shots. These shots help to change the emphasis of the subject of the film, with close shots being more personal and intense and long shots putting the subject into the context of the environment and making them less significant within the setting.
  • For lighting I used places I thought would signify high key lighting with the sun to represent the contrast with people being on their phones and consumed by media.
  • For composition I implimented ways in which the scenery and the actors appear in respect to each other within the frame its self.

 

 

Representation Of Orlock

For this task we were put into pairs and we had to analyse two clips from the film Nosferatu (1922) the clips we analysed were 10:33-12:21, and 29:02 – 33.28.  We analysed how elements like cinematography, editing, sound, and mise en scene shape the audience’s perception of orlok’s charatcer. These choices contribute to the way viewers interpret his presence and the emotions he portrays.

Horror Monsters

For this task we were all allocated a monster each, mine was Frankinstein. For this we had to analyse the social anxiety the monsters represents.

Reflection:

After doing this task, it has deepend my understanding on how monsters are represented. Like the social anxiety or fear the monster represents, for example Frankinstein represents what humans fear with what we create. Which links with AI and how it can take over the world. It also links with people who suffer from predudice just on the way they look, which is just like how Frankenstein suffers prejudice from other humans who cannot bear his appearence.