The Story of Red Dwarf – Comedy Connections
My goal when I found this documentary was that I needed to know how documentary’s get structured and made. I wanted to learn about the format of interviews and how they get filmed. Also how often they are. I am going to research this by watching some docs online
The docs that I am going to watch are The Story of Red Dwarf – Comedy Connections and Professional Cuddler // 60 Second Docs
I found out that the interviews had the rule of thirds used in them. I went into watching this documentary wanting to find out how the show got made and many behind the scenes facts on it. Seeing as the documentary is from the BBC themselves who also made Red Dwarf for its first 8 series before co-produced with Dave from 2009’s special ‘Back to Earth’ up to now. I wanted to know as much behind the scenes information as possible but I knew that the history of the show was going to be very compact as it was only a 30 minute episode. The documentary did deliver though talking about the pain staking efforts it took to get Red Dwarf to even be green lit never mind being made. The show got rejected 3 times, co-creator Doug Naylor explains that they didn’t rewrite the script but just kept sending it in again and again. but it was funds that had been given to Paul Jackson to produce ‘Happy Families 2’ that he did not want to make and thus with a shed load of money given by the BBC that Jackson had nothing to do with he happily worked with Red Dwarf creators ‘Grant Naylor’ (Doug Naylor and Rob Grant) to put money into the show to help it get off the ground and after the BBC saw that Jackson was backing Red Dwarf they reluctantly accepted the show and began production. Casting for ‘Dave Lister’ the last human on earth came about when Craig Charles who at the time was making a living reading poems on ‘Wogan’ about racism and other matters was asked by Grant-Naylor to read the script to see if the part of The Cat was racist, after defending the script and saying the part was not racist Charles put his hat in the ring to be audition for the role of Lister, Chris Barrie (Spitting Image, Happy Families…) was put forward by Paul Jackson who Barrie knew from Happy families and wanted to be known as more then ‘The guy who does voices’ on spitting image. Danny John-Jules completes the trio with his portrayal of The Cat, Danny wanted a change to dancing which he had been famous for beforehand. All this I learnt from the documentary. This doc was on YouTube but it originally aired as part of BBC’s Comedy Connection’s show counting down all the best British comedy shows ever. I noticed that the sets were brightly lit and the interviews were using the rule of third method to make them as professional as possible. You don’t hear the interviewee, the assumption is that there isn’t one and they are responding to whatever the previous VT involved.
This will help my project because it shows how a documentary is meant to be in its most basic form and how they’re presented.
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Professional Cuddler // 60 Second Docs
Going into watching this documentary i wanted to learn how i could format my documentary, i learnt that the structure of these documentaries are very similar throughout all the other documentaries that exist on 60 second documentary. The issue i had was i didn’t know how i could fit all the stuff i may want to talk about into a documentary this small, but after watching this i learnt that it was possible and i had to condense everything down if i wanted it to all fit in my documentary. The format will be as close to the linked one above as possible because the way it’s put together helps a lot to keep the audience interested as there is a nice ratio of interview to VT in the short minute long documentary. I saw every 60 second documentary to see how each one differs from the last one and i found out that they are mostly the same. These were all the same format and structure which is good as i may use the structure and stretch it out to 5 minutes for my documentary. I noticed that there was a voiceover throughout but it also cut to the shot of the interview, The voiceover is the continued sound but to keep audiences interested it’s played over shots that relate to the documentary’s themes and plots. This is also accompanied by text that would give more information about the topic of interest in the documentary. In conclusion i found out that most of the 60 second documentaries follow the same format and that is most likely the format i will follow when i make my documentary, this will help keep people interested and engaged with the documentary instead of it being really boring
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I wanted to learn how I could compose shots properly when filming my documentary. I also wanted to find out how I could use these in my documentary, also how they could be filmed. These shots included… rule of thirds, diagonals, framing, symmetry and angles. All these are the types of shots that I went out to film to try and replicate so I got a good idea of how they are shot
I used a few different methods to find all this information out, mainly websites on the internet and I visited the library as well to find books that I could use to research the information I need. I found a few books that had screen used different angles as examples which gave me inspiration and helped me to think about how I could make film these shots and where I could film them. For example the book ‘Capture the Portrait’ by Jenni Binder published in 2008 gave me the information i present here.
Leading Lines – are where there parallel lines going somewhere and the subject e.g. walks down the middle of them this is quite a common shot and is seen in a lot of films and TV shows.
Rule of thirds – this is mostly used in interviews and consists of being in the right hand side or left hand side of the screen while looking in the other direction with a big space to the side of the subject, like I said this is in interviews mostly and is the most common type of composition
Diagonals – Diagonals are where you can picture an X going through the screen and the subject is in the center of that shot.
Framing – This is where an object will make a shape where you can see what the subject through the gap, this is common in films and can be used to create very dynamic shots.
Symmetry – This is where a shot will be almost mirrored on each side, a common place to shoot these are corridors and halls
Angles – this creates a low angle and high angle, it’s used a lot to show the differences between two subjects and is really atmospheric.
This was all found out by using primary and secondary research. The primary research i used was by using a book ‘Capture the Portrait’ by Jenni Binder published in 2008 This book told me many things about the types of shots i have written above. I learnt that i could display them in many different ways. This helped a lot because i will use the information i found when i come to filming my documentary in a few weeks.
I found out that that there are many different ways of filming these angles and many different ways to do them so me and my group tried as many as possible, link to the finished video is below
In conclusion I believe these shots can help me a lot to make a really good documentary, I will definitely try to use as many of these as possible when I film my documentary, I also learnt how rule of thirds is used and how it can be done in interviews. This will help my project because the use of these compositions will make for an interesting direction for the film and it can really help to keep people interested.
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Interview Techniques –
I wanted to find out how to shoot a successful interview, this involved using the skills i had learnt from the previous research and putting it to use today to shoot a good interview.
We used a lot of YouTube videos to help find this research. There was one video in particular from BBC studios that told us how to film the perfect interview. It told us how to conduct it as best as possible and gave us tips including how the background should be as bright as possible and how the person being interviewed should be as far to one side of the video as possible while looking towards the other direction. This tactic is called ‘Rule of Thirds’ Its very important this is used because it means that there is space for text that says the subjects name or any kind of important information that may need to be put. The video also helped us with techniques on not just how the interview looks but our interviewing techniques. It taught us how we should always keep our eyes on the interviewee and how body language is very important. All these factors and more will be used when i make my documentary.
Here is the video filmed that features all the interview techniques that were learnt from the book and the video.
The video uses all these techniques well and are easily shown that they have all been taken in and implemented into the video. I will continue to replicate this exact structure and techniques for my final video when i get around to making my video
It is going to help me because its very professional and is the most accurate way of making an interview with the subject looking in the right direction and the lights and backgrounds being very brightly lit. I also used the grid method to make the rule of third accurate and will use this when filming my actual documentary.
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Audio Research
I wanted to find out how i could record audio successful with different microphones, these included a shotgun mic and a lapel mic. I wanted to learn how i could record the audio separate from the video and put it together in editing to make the best sound possible.
To find out how i could do this i checked YouTube videos and information online, this lead me to learn that a clapper board is used to help sync the sound and the video together. Film and TV shows use these all the time to help with the syncing of the sound so its as professional as can be.
We found out that although the shotgun mics are the most professional its hard to always keep the right balance of volume because the mic is always moving due to it being held so its very easy for the subject to start sounding quieter then louder all of a sudden. This then lead us to the conclusion that lapel mic’s are the best because they’re closer to the subject and it means that they wont sound too quiet or too loud and if they do it can be altered in editing. A downside to the lapel mics being used is the fact they can pick up other sounds like wind because they don’t have a wind shield or anything to protect the mic from other sounds. This can be an issue which is why they are best used indoors. Which will be fine because i predict that they will be the ones i use for my documentary anyway.
Here are the videos that we shot for the findings we made two videos one where used a lapel mic to record a interview inside with myself, We used our tactics and skills that we learnt from our primary and secondary research to make these two videos.
Our second video was made with a boom mic outdoors once again we used all the tactics learnt from the primary and secondary research we used these to make a very professional looking videos where the mic doesn’t come into frame and the sound is very balanced there is no bits where its quiet or loud it’s just one volume all the way through. You can also hear Isaac the interviewer not as well as Josh who is being interviewed this is because the mic is aimed more towards him and not Isaac although while shooting i tried as hard as possible to make sure they were both heard through the boom mic.
In conclusion we found out that the lapel mics are the best ones to use as there is very little risk of sound change possible and due to the fact my documentary will be indoor there would be no room to hold a big boom mic anyway so for the interviews i will be using a lapel mic and making sure the audio is loud enough and can be heard while editing. This is going to help me as i have made the decision to use the lapel mics for my documentary and i couldn’t have made this decision without testing the two types of mic’s out to see which is best for sound quality and which is what i did and managed to come to the conclusion of using the lapel mics.
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How to Plan a Doc
For this section i needed to find out what i needed and how i could plan my doc. I needed an AV script to plan out what i was going to put in my documentary. An AV script is a document that tells you what visuals are on screen at that current moment in time and what audio will be played, this could be anything from music to voiceover to nothing at all. AV scripts are quite common and help to know how a video or film will be formatted and how its going to play out. To learn this we were shown a demo by our Tutor Sally who showed us how to make one and how one should look, I used secondary research as well by searching the internet for already made AV scripts to learn how they are done professionally and any tips that i could pick up for my AV script. I found some information on this website here https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/story/help/audio-visual-av-scripts.html This showed me some tips for the AV script and went into more detail on how they should be formatted.
Below is an AV script we made as a test to learn how they are done normally and to help us to go into detail and get the practise we needed for when we make our actual AV script for our documentary’s.
This is the AV script i used for the test video ‘Paper Aeroplane Guy’ this helped me to learn how i should make my actual AV script when i get round to making my actual documentary.
Here is my finished AV script which will be used for my documentary. Some things may be different when it comes to filming, this could be for numerous reasons, time, weather it actually fits or if the shot is even possible to do for any other reason but as it stands this is the AV script that’s going to be used and is as accurate as it can be.
| Production Title: Yoga, Skills and Benefits Director: Dan Kenworthy | Production Team: WFA Productions | ||
| Visuals | Audio | Shot Duration | Total Duration |
| Opening shot of Leanne setting up yoga equipment, this is an establishing shot, | Description of what yoga is and how it can help. | 5s | 5s |
| Medium shot in interview format which will be cut back and forth to this format. | Hi, I’m Leanne and I’ve been doing yoga for 2 and ½ years | 2s | 7s |
| Montage of different poses, these are establishing shots big enough to show the full pose. | Voiceover talking about yoga and all the different poses and stuff around it | 10s | 17s |
| Interview asking questions about Yoga, this is a medium shot in interview format | Voiceover answering question. | 10s | 27s |
| Establishing shot of all yoga equipment | Music / voiceover continued from interview | 5s | 32s |
| Continued montage of more yoga shots | Voiceover talking about health benefits of yoga | 8s | 40s |
| Shot of health drink being prepared, this is an establishing shot. | Voiceover talking about how important it is to keep healthy | 6s | 46s |
| Shot of favourite position, once again this is an establishing shot. | Voiceover talking about why it’s your favourite | 5s | 51s |
| Final interview talking about top tips for yoga | Voiceover answering questions | 6s | 57s |
| Final shot of another yoga position, establishing shot once again. | Music that begins to fade as the shot and documentary finished | 4s | 1m 1s |
In conclusion i found out how to make an AV script as professionally as possible, i used secondary research to find out more detail about what i should be putting in each box and how i should be formatting my AV script. It’s altogether going to help me to film my doc because AV scripts are very useful in making the video they tell you what is going to be shot and what will be seen and what will be heard as well as how long it will last. It also helps that there is a column on the end that tells you how long the video will be altogether after the column that says how long that shot will be it then tells you how long the video is going to be altogether. This is really helpful and useful as you can determine if your video is too long or short and if it is you can go back and edit the previous column to how long that shot is going to be. So it is really helpful.
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