Documentary Assignment 2

When it comes to the topic of culture, Manchester is 3rd most diverse city in the UK. 200 languages are spoken in a city with a population of less than 500,000 and it's a tourist attraction especially in November/December when Santa's grotto, ice skating rink and the Christmas markets hit the city centre.

RESEARCH DIARY

WEBSITES
Quote
"What began as a dozen stalls outside the town hall now occupies four of the city's biggest squares and several other streets besides, attracting around 7m visitors to its 300 stalls." By Sarah Walters, MEN. X

Summary
Every mid November, Manchester City Centre is changed into an area busting with wooden cabins and European delicacy's - known as the Christmas Markets, which isn't a disappointment this year.
With over 300 stalls you can follow the trail and buy goods from France, Germany, Holland and more along the way, not forgetting the food and drink that's on offer! From


Bullet Points

• 120,000 people visited the markets over the opening weekend.
• The food and drink stalls have been expanded into Exchange Square.
• They attract around 7 million shoppers annually.
• The success of the stalls have gone up 15% from last year. From

Evaluation
The secondary research was useful because all the websites gave me relevant information as the articles were written recently, they also include photos from the markets so I know the writer has been there and is giving me an accurate report. In a way all 3 websites are biased because they're all saying how good the markets are, none are criticising them because it's promotion so more people will go.

BOOKS

Quote
"They headed for the large cities of London, Manchester and Leeds. In these cities were the greatest opportunity for work." Multicultural Britain, page 12.

Summary
The work of a director is meant to act on the audience, the stories shown can be educational. For example to warn of danger, to show people how different some people are - murderers etc, your aim as a director is to draw your audience in and keep it interesting. Directing the Documentary, page 13.

Bullet Points

• Researchers involved with documentaries observe audience viewing histories. 
• Audience levels are a way of measuring the success.
• The programmes are made for people to watch so you have to take their thoughts into consideration and think about what they would watch. 
• Audiences like the whole action part to documentaries and footage that's interesting and engaging, you have to consider this as without it, for some people, it defeats the point of one. Introduction to Documentary, page 15. 

Evaluation
The sources that I found were okay, the first book I found, "Multicultural Britain" was quite dated and the information wasn't exactly what I wanted. The majority of the chapters I took from were relevant to the subject but some went off topic a lot and you had to scan over that and carry on.
Because the books were made a while ago, the vocabulary tended to be big words and the phrasing was different to what i'm used to reading which made it harder to understand.

NEWSPAPER
Quote
"Britain 'falling behind' due to lack of foreign language skills..
A poll found three in four people can’t speak either Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish or Japanese." From

Summary In a poll of 4,000 adults by YouGov, 3 in 4 of those couldn't hold a proper conversation in any of the main European languages. John Worne argues that the UK needs to take more people up on the opportunity to learn and use these languages, adding that we'll lose out economically and culturally. From

Bullet Points

• Manchester has being applauded for having a vibrant and individual culture.
• It was voted as the best UK city of 2013.
• In some countries, you find all the culture in the capital but here that isn't the case.
• For the 15th year running, the rest of Europe are bringing their culture to Manchester for Christmas. X & X

Evaluation

These newspaper articles were all very useful because it gave me statistics which makes any statement sound better because it's backed up by research. The text was all easy to understand and it all made sense. The articles in a way are biased in both directions, for example the first quote is being negative saying that Britain isn't taking advantage of the multi-culture we have going on and we're not learning anything new from it. Whereas from the article I took bullet points from is praising individual cities for being unique and diverse and a great place to be because it's welcoming to new people to bring their culture and share it - for example the markets in the city centre over the Christmas holiday.

ANALYSIS OF A SIMILAR DOCUMENTARY

"Make Bradford British" appeals to its target audience because it's reality and it about a certain group of people. I also think it appeals to people because it's set in a specific area so anyone who lives in Bradford will be more inclined to watch it because it's in their neighbourhood.
In the documentary it focuses on 8 people who are of different ethnicities and throughout the programme there are interviews with them and the families they're staying with, what keeps the documentary interesting, is that there is a lot of footage from Mosques and when the selected people live with the new families so you know that it's not put on and you get to see yourself what happens.

PRIMARY RESEARCH
Questionnaire I used for my primary research

From doing this questionnaire I've learned now many younger people watch documentaries, as all of the 16 and unders who answered the questions said that they do watch them and it was useful because now I know that they're a big part of my target audience and I'll need to look at my feedback to see how I can make my documentary appeal to them.
                                 
TREATMENT
I'm want to aim my documentary at teenagers and under, I'd say 17 and below. From my primary research, everyone who I asked who was in that age bracket watched documentaries and some answered that they don't think Manchester has a diverse culture so I want to show them that there is a diverse culture but in a way that they'll find interesting.

After reading some of the Make Bradford British reviews, a lot of people said that the programme didn't go beyond the racial stereotypes and it was foccussed on working class white people and Pakistani/Southern Asians. bradford is one of the most racially divided places in england and obviously more ethnicities are around there but there was no mention of them in the programme in my documentary I'm aiming not to focus on one thing too much. I want to shift the focus around a bit and not have the whole thing on one topic, which in Make Bradford British almost wife swap with people switching lives and trying to learn from it
In my secondary research I looked at examples of culture in Manchester such as the German markets and how language plays a part in making it a multicultural city, I want to involve this in my documentary by including interviews with people - those who run stalls on the markets and people who go to them and try and talk to people who go to Mosques/any other religious buildings I can get to.
Like in Make Bradford British, I want to speak to a range of people, not just those who think there is a diverse culture in the city. I want there to be different opinions in the documentary so that it appeals to more people and talk to people who don't think there is a lot of culture and those who think there is "too much" culture.
by the end of the documentary I want to have educated my audience on the different types of people living in Manchester - different ethnic groups and how their culture they've brought here adds to ours making it better/worse in peoples' opinions.

Multicultural Manchester - websites

Quote
"What began as a dozen stalls outside the town hall now occupies four of the city's biggest squares and several other streets besides, attracting around 7m visitors to its 300 stalls." By Sarah Walters, MEN. X

Summary
Every mid November, Manchester City Centre is changed into an area busting with wooden cabins and European delicacy's - known as the Christmas Markets, which isn't a disappointment this year.
With over 300 stalls you can follow the trail and buy goods from France, Germany, Holland and more along the way, not forgetting the food and drink that's on offer! From


Bullet Points

• 120,000 people visited the markets over the opening weekend.
• The food and drink stalls have been expanded into Exchange Square.
• They attract around 7 million shoppers annually.
• The success of the stalls have gone up 15% from last year. From

Evaluation
The secondary research was useful because all the websites told me relevant information because it was written over the past few weeks. Although some of the websites I looked at were repetitive.
I found them useful because they were all easy to read and were easy to take things from, the articles were short but detailed and accurate.

Research Techniques

When you're researching into documentaries, there are a few different types of research to look at and consider, they are;
Qualitative Research
This is feedback from people that is just opinions. Film reviews, discussion in focus groups and reactions to TV programmes are examples of qualitative research.
Quantitative Research
Opposite to qualitative, quantitative is feedback that includes numbers. Examples of this is audience viewing figures, DVD sales, box office sales, and audience breakdowns by group - so how many women or men like a certain programme.

Both types of research are different, ones advantage is the others' disadvantage

Advantages of qualitative;

• the feedback can lead a project in the right direction.
• it can be used in future research.
• it's a good source of information.

Disadvantages of qualitative;

• the feedback can be quite general therefore tricky to get exact results.
• the findings are a result of quite a few variables - e.g. where, who, when.
• can be less valid because it's not backed up by numbers.

Advantages of quantitative;

• results are easy to analyse - you can put the results into a graph or chart.
• the facts can be used in your favour and can back your opinion up.

Disadvantages of quantitative;

• your results can't really be used for future research because they're current.
• the results can sometimes be vague and not be in much detail.

Both qualitative and quantitative research are very useful, but in pre production, i'd say that quantitative research is more beneficial because it's your starting point and from the beginning you want to put in facts that are true and interesting. 

When you're making a point, it sounds more believable when you have an example to back yourself up. Say if you're talking about which supermarket is cheapest, you can go to all of the leading ones and see which is cheapest but that's just you, it would be a lot better if you could get a handful of people to do the same so then you can say that from your findings 3/5 people would agree that ASDA was cheapest. That way you've done primary research and it's accurate so you can put in into your report. 

There are two different types of research that you can do; primary and secondary. 

Primary research is research that you have done by yourself or your group these can be questionnaires, interviews, surveys or internet forums. 

Secondary research is research that you get off someone else, you can to rewrite it into your own words unless you're quoting and giving credit, examples of this can be text books, internet, or info off TV programmes.

The pro's of primary are that you've done it yourself and you don't have to worry about being accused of copying, the research is reliable and true because you've gone out and done it first hand.

The con's of this are that the process can be time consuming and you might get a low response off people which may lead to lack of evidence.

On the other hand the pro's of secondary are that it saves you time because you can just type in what you're looking for into Google and hundreds of websites will come up to help. This is also cheaper and can be the same as primary, only getting it off someone else.

The negatives of this are that any information you get might be dated, figures can be a few months or years old and aren't as relevant or accurate as they could be. You also have to think about how you're essentially copying someone else's work so you have to be careful about either making it a quote or re writing it in your own words which again, can be time consuming.

Primary and Secondary are both reliable because whether it's you or another person - someone's gone and done it. The question is just whether it's recent and if you can relate it to your work.

Prior to starting your project, it's important to do research so you know which market you're appealing to and what you can do to make your product sell more.
Market research is important because whenever you're starting a project, you need to know which products are similar in the market and how you can make something better. By looking at competing products (a new documentary for example) you can read feedback off it - what the public liked/disliked about it and you can use that to your advantage by including that in yours. Whether that being the type of documentary, the people in it or the way it was shot, this can be your starting point and can lead your project into being successful. You can do this by looking in catalogues or reading online reviews. 
Audience research so you know exactly who you're targeting your product at and what will appeal to them. Audience profiling is a way of doing this, audience profiling is splitting people up into different categories and getting a variety of opinions from people within those groups.
You can split people up into groups like; Men 16-34, Men ABC1, Men C2DE, Men 55+, Women 16-34, Women ABC1, Women C2DE, Women 55+, Housewives with Children, Children, Boys & TV, Girls & TV. 
Production research is important because you need to know what you need to achieve your end product. Things to consider in production research are;
Personnel: do the crew you've hired have the right skills to fulfil your brief or do you need to employ new staff to make certain parts of production easier?
Locations: are there locations in the local area that are available to shoot in/around? You'll need to do in depth research into where you can film because you have to get permission to film in most public places.
Tech resources: you need to think about what kind of equipment you need to use and how must it will cost so you also need to consider the financial side of things and your budget. With the technology you use, if you're renting it you need to think about the availability and book it out.
Production research is used to decide which resources you need to efficiently and profitably create and market your product.

Unit 1, Assignment 1

(improvements in bold.)

Time.
A shooting schedule is a plan of the day's shooting for a project, usually made by the assistant director it organised where scenes will be filmed and what equipment will be used. They're important because you need to know what equipment you're using and if you can use it, make sure someone else isn't already using it and so that everyone is organised and knows were they're filming.

It can take up to 10 days to get music or clips cleared, it depends on how quickly people respond to your phone calls and if you can afford the fees.

Personnel.
Full list of the crew who worked on The Imposter X 
Mike Cooper who worked on the documentary as a sound recordist had previously worked on; Diana: A Tribute to The Peoples' Princess, The Tonto Woman and Sarah Brightman: Harem - A Desert Fantasy. He worked for 17 years as a freelance music recording engineer and made his way up by working on lots of different projects.
Agueda Balogh worked as the first assistant camera man and it was his job to make sure everything in the shot stayed in focus and was responsible for the look of anything on screen. He previously worked with the camera on Professor Brofman. He worked from 1997 as a camera trainee up to where he is now, taking on roles such as a camera assistant and the clapper loader.
Will Stanbridge was the researcher for the documentary and had also been the researcher on other documentaries, such as; Sex: How It Works, Banged Up Abroad (14 episodes) and Breakout (8 episodes).
Andrew Hulme worked on the editing of the documentary, for him to fulfil the role of an editor he will have needed to have past experience and possibly a degree in media, television or film studies.
Bart Layton was the director and had previously worked on Banged Up Abroad, 16 For A Day and more. To be a director you need to be a creative person and again have past experience on other projects, not necessarily another directing job. To get this higher ranking, aspiring directors have to work their way up starting at being a runner or assistant and build up a portfolio. Some directors have bachelor degrees in film from university which helps with showing past work.


It's important to get the right crew because you may have a certain vision for how you want your documentary to look like/be and to put that into practise you'll need to hire the right people - for example if you're doing an in depth documentary that's full of facts, a good researcher is necessary or if you want it to look very professional and precise, you'd need to hire a camera man with lots of experience and is credited for his work.

 Finance.
The money used to make a documentary can come from fund raising, bank loans, your own money if you're independent  or a studio you work for might give you a budget. We watched the 2012 documentary, "The Imposter" and it was funded by the BFI Film Fund and produced by A&E Films.
There are more funding companies such as The Documentary Company who will help to finance your project by putting money towards it but the topic of it has to fall under these categories; Human Interest, Politics, Music, or Nature and the Environment. Also there are companies such as Sponsume, iFeatures and the British Film Institute. - More here 
Thinking about the funding of your documentary is important because you will have a budget to stick to and the money is essentially what will put your plans in to practise. You'll need to research into different companies and you will want to chose a trusted company that has good reviews with other filmmakers.

The studios usually charge on a per clip or per cut, per minute basis. For Premium products this is usually at around 5p per song, multiplied by the number of units manufactured with a minimum fee of £200 per song.
£275 (+VAT) per production: A brand new tariff for music used in corporate, promo videos or audio-visual productions

• All media, including online
• All territories
• Unlimited copies

Basic rate: £40 per 30 second unit (so 31-60 seconds of a track would cost £70, 61-90 seconds of a track would cost £120)
All-you-can-use flat rate: £275 (+VAT) per production Taken from this website.

Locations.
The Imposter was filmed in Texas (interviews) and re-enactments were filmed in Phoenix - Arizona, Madrid - Spain and San Antonio - Texas.
They had to get permission off the local council where they were filming by getting a filming permit, or getting permission of land owners if they were filming in a specific place. To get permission to film in the San Antonio area of Texas, this website would be your starting point as it tells you which locations do/don't require permits, for those that do it gives you telephone numbers and names. Also to film in this area of Texas you could also contact Drew Mayer-Oakes who is the Director of the San Antonio Film Commission  on 210-207-6730 or email him at drew@filmsanantonio.com.
You have to get permission because if you're in a public place, there are a lot of things that you have to take into account, especially if your location includes iconic, religious or government buildings.
There are many different national agencies you can contact depending on where you want to film they are; National Trust, Royal Parks, English Heritage, Ministry of Defence, Forestry Commission and British Waterways. This website goes into more detail about each one X
In some cases if you don't get permission you can get into trouble for breaching copyright protection and you can even be sued.

Facilities.
For any type of filming you'll need basic kit - a decent video camera, tripod, and a shotgun microphone with a boom pole. The Imposter uses a lot of interviews so they will have needed to use lights to set up 3 point lighting to illuminate the person talking and light filters to control them. Also they may have used a variety of different lenses so that they can take something simple and turn it onto something more interesting just by the way it's been filmed such as in interview scenes where you have a mid shot and it goes to a close up, they'd need a macro lens so it stays in focus.
In the re enactment scenes, I think they used a tripod dolly because you often see the subject being followed by the camera from behind and it looks very smooth. Also for the end shot when the camera pans up they used a jib crane to tilt the camera and make it pan upwards, and when we see Frederic's character on the run, the camera would've been mounted onto a dolly and pushed along on rails to keep up with the action.

To make my documentary I'll need a video camera, tripod, suitable microphone and boom pole, lights for any indoor scenes, filters, XLR cable, field recorder. In the filmmaking industry it depends which kind of project you're putting into practice to know what the standard kit is that you need.  A HD video camera along with a good lens is an essential because you need a good picture for whatever you're making to look professional. You'll also need a microphone that works for you - usually a directional one like a shotgun mic along with the XLR cable. Depending on the kit you need the rate for hiring is different this website shows different packages you can get for a day. It can cost from £2000 per day of filming for basic equipment and crew on a small project. Having the right kit is important because you might want your documentary to look a certain and way, and similar with the crew, you need to something/someone that's able to achieve that for you. For your documentary to look professional you need to have the basic kit that's right so you're not forgetting anything, for example some independent film makers forget about the whole prospect of sound and that you'll need equipment to enhance the quality of it so it matches the video.
The equipment you will need will be the same for the majority of projects and certain types will require more specialist kit, for example, Frozen Planet. Because of the remote location and tricky setting they had to adapt normal kit to suit them - special tripods so they'd grip to the ice, underwater cameras to film small fish/underwater animals and a time lapse kit.
For specialist kit like this, and the basics a lot of filmmakers will rent it out rather than buy it to save money. In pre production you can only organise to rent it out when you've finalised your shooting schedule, it's important to stick to your schedule because you will only have access to that kit for a certain amount of time and other people will want it after you and in most cases you can't just extend the time you want it for because there's a queue of people waiting.

Materials/Copyrights.
In The Imposter, a lot of home videos were used and news reports from the time. Along with voice recordings from the police and pictures of fingerprints. To get permission to use these, the makers of the documentary would've had to contact the family and ask if it was okay to use certain clips, then go to the studio where the news programme was filmed and ask if they can use a section of the broadcast. They would need to get clearance from the FBI and also the police from both Spain and America for permission to show the fingerprints and play telephone recordings from that night.

By getting a clearance on music or clip, it means that you have permission to use it off whoever made it. Similar to copyright which is where you get permission off whoever made it/their management to include it in your work as long as you give credit and don't claim it was your own. To get clearance on music for example, you would have to go to that artists label and talk to their management and you'd pay that label. For video you would contact the studio where it was produced and pay them to use it.
For example channel 4 made a documentary about One Direction and for that they had to get different clips of concerts recorded by fans and they put most of the bands' songs throughout it to make it more interesting and show concert footage. To play their music without getting into legal trouble they would have to have contacted their management team and the copyright owner. They're managed and represented by Modest Management which is a company within Syco Music - their label and you could either contact Richard Griffiths, Harry Magee or Will Bloomfield to start off about getting clearance.

PRS in music is a UK copyright compant who will allow people the rights to a song on behalf of the songwriter or publishers. You pay this company and a fraction of that money goes to the artist and their management, this can be an easier way of being allowed to use a song if you can't get anything back from the artists' label. Ideally you want to use music which is "royalty free" this is music that you are free to use and you aren't subject to any fees or hidden costs.

Materials/Contributors.  
In the documentary they used a lot of interviews, they interviewed;
 Frédéric Bourdin who was the imposter
Carey Gibson, Nicholas' older sister 
Beverly Dollarhide, Nicholas and Carey's mother
Charlie Parker, PI on the case
Nancy Fisher, FBI Special Agent
Bryan Gibson, Carey Gibson's husband - Nicholas' uncle
Codey Gibson, Carey and Bryans son - Nicholas' nephew
Bruce Perry, child psychiatrist 
Phillip French, US Consul at the American Embassy in Madrid    

Researchers will have needed to talk to some specialist advisors so that they can put true facts into the documentary. For example, they can't just assume that the man who assumed Nicholas' identity has a mental problem or no conscience because of the way he acted, they would have to go to a specialist to confirm what it means to have that condition because they can't put false accusations into it.

I certify that this is my work.

Types of Audience Research

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UlMaRXGPJmCK9IdNbpFbY-PMy72ntrrIOnfsL4aJ3Z4/edit

Unit 26, Assignment 3 Final Feedback Form

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5-GPzEPfZ8KcEhuZk5saDY0QlE/edit?usp=sharing

I understand my feedback and I want to keep getting distinctions.

Pre production questions

What was the first thing production had to do?
Get project approval from BBC Fiction and BBC Training Heads.

 How did they find the crew?
They let them apply for roles based on their experience and enthusiasm.


How did they find the right location?
Looked through location libraries for places that met their spec, then urned to look at individual places that would be suitable.



When did they do the recce?
August.

What kit did they need?
Panasonic HD Varicam.



Who sorted out the shooting schedule?
Malcolm Davies.
What cost or quote did the production get that was 'through the roof'?
"Portaloo quotes going through the roof"



On what day in the directors diary did they get 'severely behind schedule'?
1st day of shooting on Wednesday 5th September.

Unit 26 Assignment 2 Feedback Form

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5-GPzEPfZ8KRG5tQVItWDBVSEU/edit?usp=sharing

I understand my feedback and I want to keep up getting distinctions