Production

Original Idea

This is my first edit of the footage that I captured for the Headless Women documentary. There is no sound yet as I hadn't recorded any of the dialogue or sounds but I had captured the interview conducted with Raymond Ward. This edit only shows all the footage put together and is uncut - which means that I had not started planning what is the most useful footage to use and how to make my documentary effective.

This is the edit where I have cut the footage down to what I will be using - this is the most important and relevant to my documentary.

After making these two edits, I decided to change my idea to my third idea - this is the paintbrush idea that I have written about in my Idea page. I decided to do this for the main reason of not having enough evidence, footage and dialogue to make a compelling documentary about the topic of the Headless Women.

Actual Product Edits

This is the first edit of my paintbrush documentary. This video only shows my footage without the voice-over and without the stock footage.

Finished Product

When producing my moving images for the documentary, I started by setting up the background and finding all of the equipment I would be using in the shots - for example, the paintbrushes and paints and the straw for the watercolour painting of a tree. This was a quick and easy process and didn't require me having to go out and spend money on the paints seeing as I already had some available to me. The majority of my footage was recorded on my iPhone 6S camera as at the time I did not have a digital camera provided by the college when I needed to start capturing footage. However, this wasn't a bad thing in my opinion as it meant that I could get closer to the paint with my phone without worrying if the safety around the camera lens was going to get covered in acrylic paint. When capturing the footage, I had my phone on a small tripod so that I could do the painting without having to hold the camera as well.

Feedback

Use of Conventions

The voice over was used quite well, as the presenter speaks in an elegant and informative tone. Another positive is where a clip of Bob Ross was used to demonstrate how paint brushes are used. Quieter music and louder voice-over as was sometime distant. There was not any interviews but I feel for this type of documentary it worked well you not using any. I feel as though it was a bit jumpy between the cuts of Bob Ross and the different scenes and the sound change made me jump a little.

Technical

The Paint Brush documentary was created in a professional manner, utilising a good variety of cinematography, such as slow pans and zoom ins and outs. Make sure all clips and pictures are in focus and not as blurry as hard to see / make out.  Some scenes went on for a long time so in the future maybe add different clips and make them shorter. Maybe have the text on the screen for longer and in more visible colours / fonts as sometimes were difficult to see.

Content and communication

It did communicate to the watcher what you was talking about in the first couple of seconds without using a title but I feel as though you should have a title. Should have explained the two types of paintbrushes before the 19^th century. Communicated well the topic of the documentary.



Overall, I think that the feedback that I got wasn't very helpful to me as they talked about aspects that I thought where alright, such as the text that I had on screen which was visible and large enough to see. Especially since I got this feedback towards the end of the project and it would be impossible to film and edit in the extra footage into my documentary so I wouldn't be able to "add different clips" or make the already existing clips shorter.