Nurturing Nature

Here is our final documentary video:

Documentary | Project Evaluation

When starting this unit, I was quite nervous as I had never ventured into documentary films before, and I didn't know what to expect. As we got further into the project, I realised that it's quite hard, but the challenge is effective in improving my skill and ability.

What worked?

My favourite part about this project was filming the wildlife and the editing. At first, working in my group, we were all determined to get the work done and do it well. After a few challenging times and hurdles we had to overcome, we managed to get back into that mind set and that was when our documentary turned into something we could be proud of.
Due to being on a farm, typically it would be quite difficult to find some pretty and interesting shots of the landscape, however the location we were on was quite the opposite. We found some lovely scenery, and we captured some artistic shots of bluebells. Although the wildlife was very hard to find, we still managed to capture a good amount and they really helped make our documentary come to life.
When it came to editing our documentary, we didn't really know what we wanted our outcome to be. We had a storyboard and a shot list that we stuck to at first, but we had so much interview footage, that we struggled to shorten it down. By going back to our edit, day after day, with a new set of eyes, we were able to keep making changes and cutting the interviews down. We also had some disagreements with what type of shot we wanted and whether something was working or not, but we talked these over as a group and came up with a solution, which I felt was a good thing for us to do.
The placement of the music, and the atmosphere audio is really good, and it brings everything to life while keeping the main focus on the interviews and the information being said.

What didn't work?

When filming the first time round, we didn't really know what we wanted which caused us to have very long interviews for us to cut around. This wasn't very useful for us, when editing, as most of the time, the presenter and the farmer were talking over each other, which meant it was very hard to get a clean cut.
Also, as we filmed outside on a few windy days, the audio isn't the best. If I could choose one thing to improve or change it would be the audio from the clip mic and the H4 recorder. However, in the end, we worked well with what we had and it doesn't sound overly bad. There are a few clips of audio that sound quite windy, but they match the the picture on the screen, so it's not too out of place. However, we did try and diffuse the wind sound but we couldn't quite get it the way we wanted it to sound.
There were a few times in our pre-production stages, and even after our first shoot, where we didn't  work well as a group. We had mis-communication issues, and disagreements that we didn't know how to overcome. This really put a stop to our documentary as we didn't really know how to deal with it at the time. After talking it through as a group, we all decided that we needed to get back on track and discuss our differences within the documentary so we knew when we were struggling or when we disagreed with something. This really helped us as a group, and it made us all strive to have a good outcome. Personally, I think this can be seen through our outcome and also how determined we were to get everything right.

What did I learn?

Within this documentary unit, I have learnt two very important things.

• Making a documentary is challenging.
• There are so many different aspects of a documentary that you have to think about when making one. You have to focus on your target audience, and you have to make sure you are telling the truth. Not only do you have to think about the topic itself, you also have to think about how it's going to be shot, where it's going to be shot, who is going to be involved.
• There are also many different types of documentary styles which you have to look into so you can come to the decision on what style your documentary will be. When you pick a style, you need to make sure your documentary fits that style which can be quite challenging as you may have to adjust the storyline or the edit in some way.
• It's somewhat similar to making a normal film/TV programme, but you have to make sure it is factual and not made up, otherwise it could be argued that it's not a documentary. There is a lot of hard work and planning that goes into making a documentary and I didn't realise this until having to experience it myself.
• Working in a group is challenging.
• When you work with other people, personalities might clash and opinions might differ and it's very hard to deal with. But you have to overcome the problems, and you have to communicate with each other, otherwise the outcome won't be what you desired.
• At first, I struggled with working in a team when it came to communication and different ideas, but I got used to it, and I managed to overcome the problems we faced along the way.

Editing | Development

When we started to edit our documentary, the first thing we did was put the clips into bins to help us navigate the footage and to make it easier for us.

Before Re-Shoot Day

• We started by putting together all of the clips we had, and all of the clips we wanted to use, in order to see how long it would be without cutting the clips. This came to a very long duration, which we understood as there was a lot of dialogue and clips that we didn't need.
• We then proceeded to cut the parts of the interview that we didn't need.
• This was quite a long process as we kept going back and deleting more and more parts of the interview that we decided didn't need to be there.
• We got a few other people to watch our edit as we wanted their opinion on what should be cut and what she be left in.
• This helped us a lot as we needed a fresh pair of eyes and ears due to all three of us watching it too many times.
• Once we had edited the clips together, we focused on the sound. We decided that the sound on the H4 recordings - which was John's audio - wasn't very good and we should re-shoot to get better audio. However the clip mic on Carol did sound usable, so we cut around her dialogue so we knew what parts we were keeping.
• We then decided that we would re-film in different locations so we took out the clips that we were going to re-shoot so we could replace them once they were filmed.
• We also added a few cutaways of the birds so we knew, roughly, where they would go.

After Re-Shoot Day

• We added the footage that we needed into the empty slots we created before hand.
• Doing this saved us a lot of time as we didn't need to change the order of everything too much, and also we were much more prepared.
• We put some more cutaways of the birds and the actuality shots into the timeline to give the documentary some life, and we also added the audio clips that we wanted to use for the interviews.
• Myself and Nisserin decided to start looking at graphics for our opening title, and we came up with the idea of grass as our text. With some work on Photoshop, we produced an effective title which we really liked. We put it over the top of a panning shot of the farm, and added some music and created our opening sequence.
• We made up another one with a duck as we weren't sure which one we preferred. We showed Sammi both of them and she really liked the first one, so we decided to stick with that.

After Sync Assembly Viewing

• After getting Helens feedback, we went back to our edit and made some of the changes she wanted us to make. We started by writing more commentary for the opening sequence and the several other sequences in the documentary. We then shortened the opening sequence and wrote Carol's introduction as commentary.
• We moved some of the cutaway shots around so they would fit in better and also to make the video run smoother.
• We made the interview shots tighter, and got rid of the questions which made the video seem more like a documentary. We sped up the NFU segment by getting rid of one of the farmer quotes, and by placing the other two on one shot to make the pace quicker.

After Fine Cut Viewing

• After getting Helens feedback, we went back to the edit to make the last few changes.
• We made the landscape shot in the opening title sequence static, we added an atmosphere track of birds to make the location come to life and to make it more realistic and pleasing to watch.
• We cleaned up the cuts, an adjusted the volume levels of the audio to make sure they all sounded the same.
• We then moved on to colour correcting. To do this, we picked one clip that we liked the colour and the brightness of and we tried to match all the other clips to that one. There were quite a lot of shots that were different colours, but we tried to match it as best as we could by using the three-way colour correcting tool.

Once we were happy with our edit, we watched it on full screen and pointed out a few small changes that needed to be made to make it better. Once those changes were made, and we were happy with the final outcome, we had finished our edit.

Recording - Commentary | Production

Once we had re-written our commentary to something we liked and thought sounded effective, we recorded it, in the studios, with Carol.

• We taped Carol's commentary onto a surface so she could read them without the paper being heard.
• We then played, at the same time, the documentary so she knew where in the documentary the commentary will go.
• This was also useful for Sammi when timing Carol to start talking.
• I recorded the sound on the computer and I made sure that the audio wasn't peaking too high as we didn't want the audio to sound too loud and muffled.
• Nisserin listened to what Carol was saying through the headphones, so she knew whether it sounded alright and whether there was any noise in the background.

• We started by doing a rehearsal for Carol so she could get used to the commentary and also for me so I could get used to the technology.
• Once we had done a run-through of all of the different sections of commentary, we recorded for real.
• I made sure everyone was happy with everything we recorded before saving and naming the files.
• Once we had finished recording the commentary, we added it to the video and made sure it fitted in with the shots that we have going over it. We adjusted the durations of some of the shots slightly, but not enough to drastically change our documentary length.

I'm really happy with the outcome of the commentary as it sounds clear and it sounds professional.

Fine Cut | Development

Our edit before the fine cut had all of the elements we wanted in it, while also having the improved bits that Helen wanted us to change. We hadn't colour corrected it yet, and the sound wasn't at the right volume, but Helen didn't mind as those changes wouldn't effect our storyline and script. We also hadn't recorded the commentary with Carol, but to give Helen the right idea as to what it would sound like, Nisserin recorded herself saying it and placed it in the order and the slots that we would put the actual commentary in.

Feedback

Here is the feedback Helen gave us after watching our fine cut edit:

• Don't put a static image over a moving one.
• For our opening title, we need to put the text over a static landscape rather than one that is moving otherwise it looks like the titles are floating.
• Add bird noises in the background of the video to create atmosphere.
• We need to adjust our wording in the commentary slightly.
• We have decided that we will look through the commentary, change it and see Helen once more with our script to give us some feedback before we record it.
• Rearrange some of the actuality shots of John so they are featured throughout the video and not just at the end.
• Get rid of some of the clicks in the audio.
• Before the ending credits, start the music earlier and fade it in to keep the atmosphere the same.
• Move some of the archive footage around.
• Much tighter in the beginning sequence.
• Liked the cutaways we added and where they are.
• It's building very nicely.

Overall, we are very happy with Helen's feedback and we will change the commentary and make the changes we need to in order to make the documentary better.

Script Udate | Development

After going to Helen and getting feedback on our new commentary - she helped us write it so it would work with our storyline, and also so the audience would know what is happening - Sammi  re-wrote script so the new commentary was correctly written, and also so it matched the interviews in our documentary.