Final Documentary ( video and thumbnail)

 This is the final documentary and thumbnail for our project

This is the link to the video just in case the video doesn't work: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sNhg5v4ZcZE2-vDlSLFQ5SwCcYssnR8S/view?usp=sharing

Critical self reflection

 This is a post for my critical self reflection

This is the link just in case if the text doesn't load properly: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16cWY7By_SiN377jwkExIPsvO60sxAKBqpOLhWxfULb4/edit

    We were tasked to create an opening for a crime documentary, around 3 to 5 minutes according to the brief. Me and my team ( Bagus, Nicho , Saka) chose to create a documentary with murder and kidnapping as the main issue. It tells a story of  how a boy named Bagus changes from being a happy guy to then becoming depressed and suddenly disappearing, because he got rejected by a girl he had a crush on. 

    Before starting the documentary or any sort of production, me and my team did individual research as tasked by our teacher. Before we started , we absolutely had no Idea since this was our first time. Though doing research gave us an opening or a picture on what we can do. First we had to identify the general conventions of a crime documentary, such as the camera angles used, the mis-en-scene, sound and editing. This was done in order to measure the things we can actually do as students. An example of this is that usually documentaries would use props that are from the actual scene or real life evidence of the crime scene.  This became a problem for us, however according to my research I have done from “raincoat killer”, a feature I liked about the opening is that I liked how it recreated the crime instead of using actual evidence at first.  This is important because it will make our documentary seem more authentic towards the audience, making it a unique selling point to differentiate our documentary with other crime documentaries. 

    Another convention I have discovered are the camera shots used in documentaries. Most of the scenes of the interviews were using ]close up shots. Close up shots were the most useful in this case for my documentary.  The use of the close up shots for my documentary was to capture the interviewees' subtle expressions and emotions, I think this would make a connection between viewer and what's happening in the scene making the story more compelling. As well, when the story progresses the plot becomes darker in a way that it starts describing the negative things that have happened.  To create the atmosphere that I intend to show the viewer, I progressively make the close shots ‘closer’ . This is because I wanted to heighten the tension and drama, especially when it was discussing critical moments. Such as the ending where Nicho mentions that the disappearance of the girl and Bagus had a connection. Making Nicho’s face closer to the camera creates a sense of isolation which adds to the tension and dramatic effect as this could evoke more empathy towards the viewers. So according to the reserach, our documentary has conformed to this convention. 

    As for the mis-en-scne used in crime documentaries, the usual conventions is that the props and the color of the scenes are dominantly dark coloured. This was mostly shown during the interview of Nicho with the dark clothing. This dark clothing helps connote a serious, somber atmosphere, to make the scene more ominous. As seen as well, we did minimal lighting, this darkness was intentional. It was to symbolize the unknown or mystery in the documentary. This is a way we have developed the Hermeneutic code from the 5 Narrative Codes theory by Barthes. This will keep the audience engaged and hooked on to understand further on what is going on. Though as seen that the other two interviewees have very different mis-en-scene compared to Nicho’s, hence if i tried to combine the clips it wouldn’t make sense. This is where I used the vignette effect, to narrow the focus on the surrounding and focus more on the interviewees. Although it's not as dark as Nicho’s, the way it creates a dark edge around the screen shows as if there is danger approaching or tension is building up. This could create an uneasy effect to make the scene more intense. Though a convention we subverted from these crime documentaries is that we didn’t have the police involved. This is because we didn’t have the right props to represent the police.

    For the diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds of the documentary, I got it mostly from youtube.  A convention between documentaries for its sound is that it has a non-diegetic suspense music in the background. I did this by making the sound crescendo towards the end. This will build the anticipation towards the scene. Additionally, this was a part of the feedback from the edits I got. My teacher recommended not instantly introducing the music to the documentary as it makes it boring and too repetitive. Instead, making it appear later in the scene makes it more interesting to watch as the conversation gets deeper the music increases, Indicating the build up of suspense and seriousness of the situation.   

    Lastly for the edit, a cool inspiration me and my teammates found was that it uses past images of the criminal within the documentary such as newspaper shots or memorical photos in the past. Me and my friends wanted to show an emotional effect for the audeince on how much Bagus means to them. This will also make the audience feel as if they were actually having the conversation with the interviewee.

    These technical elements are also used to represent social groups. Our documentary tries to include young Indonesian students at the age of 17, both female and male. We did this by using multiple different interviews such as using the Indonesian language to represent Indonesians, doing the interview at school to represent students and using a female actor to represent females.  We want to deliver a message that kidnapping is a dangerous thing, his is our dominant reading for this documentary that we want our audience to derive (reception theory by Stuart Hall).  By using technical elements such as a zoom on their serious faces as they show their concern on the people missing indicates that dont like the idea of kidnapping, as their friend has been taken. Combined with the mood set with the mis-en-scene, for example black clothing from nicho or the vigenette effect, makes the scene more dramatic and ominous.     

    Another way we targeted the audience is by using branding. Branding is a way that shows all of our production work compiled into a way we attract an audience. It is important as it holds the value of our documentary and its reputation. This is done by the thumbnail of the documentary. To show a similarity, we added a hint of the plot by showing how his smile with a white background shows him being happy but as the color soon fades to black it shows him being depressed. This is the same with the flow of the documentary as we started off with a slow paced, dramatical moment to share the happy moments with Bagus. Then as soon as the lights are switched back on and the mis-en-scene darkens, that is where his smiles start to disappear. The purpose of this thumbnail is to tell the audience to give a small preview of the content before they actually watch it, hence its important to grab the attention of the audience. 

     Our target audience for this documentary was targeting both male and female, with its demographics being people of age 17+ and people who live in Indonesia, as well as for its psychographic is for people who enjoy mystery or crime documentaries. We chose this target audience because we felt like we could describe them the best, since we are the age of 17 and live in Indonesia. To appeal to the target audience, we added a scenario which would likely happen for teens which is rejection. During this time and age teens encounter love relationships and rejections like our plot, this will make it relatable to them showing that they are not alone. As well, our actors are all teens, using interviews as a way to deliver the information would make it seem like a conversation making it welcome to the audience watching. It's as if they are actually talking with the person on screen. This is also shown in the thumbnail where we used a 17-year-old Indonesian boy for our thumbnail. As well, the word good usually indicates positive things, in the thumbnail it is labeled red. This will make the audience question why the word is good colored red, this is because red symbolizes danger and caution referring to the crime. This would make the audience intrigued to discover more by having to watch the documentary itself. This would make it a part of the Hermeneutic codes as well ( 5 narrative codes by barthes). But aside from 5 narrative codes, we would like to also portray the uses and gratifications theory by Blulmer and Katz. Diversion as a way the audience could use it as a source of entertainment. Personal Identitiy as a way to not become someone like Bagus. Social relationships as if people would have the same problem they can talk it out with each other .Finally, surveillance as a way to raise surveillance on people’s mental health.

 

Sound/Music Decision

 this is our decision for choosing the music

As for the music I chose, I based of mainly from youtube. However before I started finding the music I asked our teacher if I  am allowed to use copyrighted music or not. since most of youtube's music is copyrighted

To start, I optimized youtube's search engine by typing "suspense music background". This was the link to the playlist I found. 

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyiH5bnBV4URC5DpBmofjOfdGQ0Af_WL2&si=_u2tFxfDP4qoBtlo

Though the one I chose was :

https://youtu.be/NWaNW-aYhVY?si=Es38DtAhAHCDvn5q

The build up of suspense in the music I think was a perfect match for our plot. Since we started of with a not so suspenseful atmosphere we didn't want to hit the audience with an instant boom for music as it will become boring and too monotone. As the music crescendo's the suspense increases, I think this slow build up makes the documentary have more energy to it, it builds anticipation and creates the ominous atmosphere.  As the documentary opening reaches the end the plot becomes darker in a way it starts to become more serious,  synchronized with the music, I think will succesfully build the suspense me and my group want to create. 

For the beginning, it doesn't need to be suspenseful because we wanted to create a memorical/dramatic moment as the interviewee describes their moments with Bagus. Therefore I asked my teammates their opinons towards multiple and songs and we all agreed on this background music. The slow rhytm in the music allows the audience to breathe and connect to the interviewees. The music also uses instrumental music such as a piano that tends to evoke a sense of calm

Reflection: Using youtube as a way to get music was the easiest way, as I can screen record a extract the audio. A problem I had doing this was probably just finding the right music, I had to get some feedback on the music choices from friends and my teacher which increases the time it took. What Ill do next time is I would probably do more documentary research to identify the type of music they use.

Thumbnail reserach + development

 This is my thumbnail research ( by Bagus) and development (by Me and Nicho) for my documentary

RESEARCH

Typical general conventions of documentary thumbnails

Mise En Scene

• They typically have a darker vibe, with shades of red and black which correlates to negativity, in this case, the colour red correlates to blood, which humans bleed when they get hurt or murdered. While black correlates to general negativity, this is done usually for the backdrop of the thumbnail, and the background and base colours of the thumbnail. 

• They either used an establishing shot of the crime location as the picture of the thumbnail, this is used to further add suspense and gives the movie a chance to hook the reader on so they will be wondering if that location actually relates to the real crime or is it really where the crime happened, which makes them watch the whole movie. 

• Most of the time, documentaries use a picture of the victim/perpetrator in order to give a direct hint to the viewer who was involved. Still relating to the topic of colour, documentaries usually colour grade their faces to be black, or dark. In order to correlate to the aspect of crime and its negativity. 

Camera Angle

The common camera shots used in the thumbnails would be

• Close ups, often used to close up to the characters in order for the viewers to focus on the main subject (usually the culprit or the victim), these can often use the main facial expressions of each character that is involved in order to set the vibe and tone, 

• Establishing shots in order to give the sense of setting.

Edit

• Split screen images to directly associate victim and culprit.

1. What Jennifer did. 

Mis En Scene

• Happy picture of Jennifer on the left side, this is in order to show her persona, her happy self that she portrays outside. The expression also brings a good vibe to her name in this case. Here, she looks neat and she has a proper make up. Which shows her positive side

• In contrast, a bad/ugly mugshot of Jennifer was used, this implies that she also has a bad side, her hair all scruffy, her face unhappy and unneat, all contributing to the suggestion that this is her other side. A bad side

• Red filter was used on her bad side in order to enhance the aspect of negativity on her bad side. This also enables the viewer to somewhat guess what happened, as the colour red connotes blood, murder and death. And in this scene, death happened, murder happened, blood happened

Camera Angles

• On both sides, a closeup is used in order to shift the viewers focus on the expression of each picture. This will help viewers get the vibe of the thumbnail. And it can let the guess and hook into the documentary to catch on what actually happened. In this case, the close ups helped zoom in the positive smile of Jennifer (Her Persona) and the mugshot (the reality)

Edit

• The split screen is used in order to create the impression of persona and reality, this helps to make the viewers know that there were two sides to the story, that not all smiles are genuine and pure, and some, “angels” could be devils.  2. American Murder: The Family Next Door

There are multiple versions of the thumbnails, but i will analyze each based on their similarities

Mise En Scene (First thumbnail)

• For the first thumbnail, they intend to be vague in their production of their thumbnail, as they use an EKG machine reading that shapes into a house in the end, with red colours, firstly, this EKG scale is used to show what was once life, turned into mystery, the houses are used to symbolize the crime happened in some couple of houses. The colour red connotes death and blood, which will give the viewer a clue that death is involved, this also builds up mystery and suspense as viewers are left to solve the mystery, by watching the movie. 

• Semi bolded words are used in this thumbnail to give the sense of strictness, stiffness and mystery to the viewer

Camera angles

• The only specific shot is a close up shot, which focuses on the key mystery making of the movie through the thumbnail.

Edit

• There are no specific edits in this thumbnail extract. 

Mis En Scene

• For the second thumbnail, the thumbnail producers decided to use the blurred out picture of the convicted killer, Chris Watts, this conforms to the typical conventions of crime documentary thumbnails as they use the killers’ picture in theri thumbnail. This is to give a direct clue to the viewers to keep them guessing and asking the question, “is it this guy in the thumbnail who did it”, this also creates the sense of suspense and mystery. 

• The use of red. Bold fonts are also used, this also conveys to the typical conventions of crime documentaries, the red colour of the font connotes again, murder and blood, the bold makes the scene more serious. 

• Conclusion, red+chris watts= direct clue of chris watts being the murderer. 

Edit

• There are no specific edits in this thumbnail extract. 

3. Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso.

Mis En Scene

• This thumbnail somewhat conforms to the typical genre conventions of crime documentaries, as it uses the picture of the alleged perpetrator (Jessica Wongso), again, this is in order to give the viewer a sense of interest and a direct hint, “what is the correlation of this woman and the case’ (suspense, mystery, questioning)

• There were cropped shots of newspapers and article headlines. This gives the reader the idea that this case was famous, and they can’t miss out on this documentary and they have to watch it. 

Camera

• In the snippets of these newspapers, there are various close ups of the articles in the edit. This shows a sneak peak of the newspapers with the words visible and can be readable, from here, the audience can get a clue of who was involved, with small details of the story being spilled out which hyped them up, they felt that it was appropriate to be watched. 

Edit

• They have used split screens in order to get the subject in one room with the newspapers at that time.  4. Worst Roommate ever, 2022

Mis En Scene

• This thumbnail really conforms to a crime documentary as they use a presumably unneat man with unneat brows sneaking through a door and peeking. The act of peekoing is usually connoted with stalking, being a creep and basically invading privacy

• The kind of beat up wooden door suggests that this may be set in an old setting or old house, or that this is a horror house, but it seems not. 

• Thorough words, they bolded white in order to make it way more serious and direct to the reader and it can make them ask the question, “why is he/she the worst roommate?”What did she do?, this really helps bring suspense to life with just a picture

Camera Angle

• They use an extremely close up shot, hiding the rest of the face and body, firstly, this scares the viewer as you don’t see an eye peeking at you everyday as a thumbnail. This can give them that negative/positive feeling in the cinema. Which creates a new trend and keeps them attached. 

• Secondly, the hiding of the face and other parts of the body may connote to the fact of hiding something and not being honest. 

Edit

• There are no credible edits worth to give effect.  5.Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. 

Mise En Scene

• The bell has an extremely spooky shadowy figure in the middle, this creates a feeling of unease which conforms to the typically dark and mysterious genre conventions of crime documentaries. This figure also will get the viewers questioning, “does this figure have something to do with the disappearance?Is she the one who disappeared?, these questions can make them hook on to the documentary searching for the outcome

• In the background, the blurred "Do Not Cross" police tape and flashing lights connotes and suggests danger, crime, and urgency. This layer makes the crime scene aspect more tangible and is able to spark a good amount of curiosity about what exactly went wrong at the hotel.. And as usual, the presence of police conform to the genre stereotype of crime documentaries.

Camera angle

• The low angle and closeup makes the bell seem strong, this basically says that this bell has a massive role and presence in this documentary, symbolizing the importance of the hotel in question as bells=hotel lobby. It also immerses the viewer into the environment.

Edit

• Dark colour grading really conforms to the dark natured genre stereotype of any crime production. This is to give a sense of negativity and suspicion to the eyes of the viewer, which can make them suspect that something has happened. 

• Blurring of the figure in the bell, this really adds to the element of suspense as this makes the viewer wonder who this person is blurred in the bell and what is her correlation. 

DEVELOPMENT

This will be our development for the thumbnail including our improvements and the challenges.

Making the thumbnail was quite challenging as this was our first time creating this type of project. Our research turned out to be quite useful as we used them as guides on how to make a documentary thumbnail with the genre of murder. 

We made a total of 40 drafts for our thumbnail. This is too much to choose from so we shortlisted and nominated 4 of the most developed thumbnail ideas and the final thumbnail for our documentary. 

1st Draft

We tried to make our thumbnail using inverted colours such as green and red. This is made to show how our actor has 2 sides and implement this meaning to the audience. The inverted colours should also make the audience feel eerie and disturbed as the colours aren't the usual colours that would be used by anyone when making a thumbnail. 

2nd Draft

This time we changed the color for our documentary to make things seem less eerie. We would also like to show how Bagus, our main character is a nonchalant guy whoundergoes catalysts making him a different person.  In this documentary, that case will be about shampoos. I don't know how but we will work it out eventually. The colour of the fonts is also similar to how it should look and according to our first draft, the title scene should not be tha long and difficult. 

3rd Draft

For our 3rd draft, we just decided to use grey as the inverse of red to show how surprised his friends are. Instead of black, we made the ‘not so’ coloured white as it would be necessary to show that the left side of him is his happy side. The colour white connotes peace and freedom which was what Bagus was, his rejection changed all of his behaviour making him look even more bay. 

4th draft

For this draft we made Bagus’s face half blurred to make it seem more mysterious and imply to the audience that there is something wrong with him. We wanted to make the audience think he isn't his normal self and something in him changed. This is not our final thumbnail as we made some changes to the final one.

Final Thumbnail

Our research conducted things that we could use for our documentary project and this is the final thumbnail we chose for our project. This thumbnail we believe represents our actor’s negative side and positive side ensuring the meaning we wanted to imply to the audience is more reasonable and makes so much more sense. We decided to not make both pictures side to side but instead made them on opposite sides.

Reflection: Research was mostly done by Bagus for the thumbnail, though I participated by adding in inputs to things he could possibly add. This thumbnail research helped us create a vision of what is a thumbnail like in this genre. A problem we faced doing this is time management as we rushed it as well , which reduced our potential to research more. Next time we really need to manage our time well. As for the development, me and Nicho decided to test on and experiment around using the pictures and looking at the research. Though we were lost at one point because we did too many experiments and do not know which one to choose. Luckliy our friends were kind enough to give us some feedback and help us choose. In the end we came up with this one. A skill I learn is definitely the skill to use canva as everytime I experiment the more I get to explore canva.

Editing

This blog will contain the progress of editing the documentary

Pre-Editing

Since the shots we took were using multiple phones, we as a group decided to make a google drive to easen up the collection process and so that we could review all the clips at once. This also saved my storage space within my phone as it was nearly at its limit, as all of the footage combined was around 6 Gigabytes while my phone was only capable of holding another 2 Gigabytes.  

At the beginning of the week , when this project was introduced, I was confident that I could learn editing software within these months for this project. Davinci Resolve is an editing software that I chose at first.  This was very new to me, usually I use my mobile phone to quickly edit things but since this is a big project I may want to switch over to using a desktop software. However, a huge problem was that I didn’t manage my time well, therefore I didn’t have enough time to really explore and dig deep into the application. Hence, as time was ticking and the deadline got closer I decided to switch over to capcut on my mobile phone. As I do have experience editing using this software. 

Editing process

The first step I did was laying out all of the clips in order of the script, person by person. After that I matched up the audio with the correct clip and syncronized it with their lip movement. This is because we had a mic issue, the issue was not having an external mic, so we decided to use another phone to record the audio. The way I did this was by extracting the audio from the video itself, this is a cool feature I discovered in capcut while editing. Then I added pictures between the conversations, using things such as slideshows or screenshots of Bagus to make it more authentic and realistic. This feature of a crime documentary was also found in my research, the use of real life evidence . 

Then I added finishing touches such as effects, for example the flashback I added a black and white effect that connotes Bagus’s hopelessness after the rejection. Increasing the dramatic effect. Another effect I added was vignette, this was to increase the focus towards the interviewees . The dark edges create a sense of claustrophobia which makes the audience feel more uneasy. 

As well I added a blur effect towards the ending with a fade in transition as the flower drops, this is to make the audience anticipate on why the video was obscured and make them have to watch more to know what happens next. 

Lastly, I added the subtitles for the videos. A reason why I did subtitles last is because If I wanted to adjust the clips, for example moving the audio forwards or backwards I have to push every other clip. This is because, to my knowledge, capcut doesn’t have a feature that allows clips to stick to their audio or effects. Hence it will be a hassle to adjust everything again when it's already in place. Therefore doing subtitles last would be the most efficient way to finish the documentary. 

FEEDBACKS GIVEN:

A feedback we got from our teacher was that during a high angle shot when Nicho came out, the bed was in the shot making it not suit with the other clips. Therefore a solution we got was adding a split screen feature and cropping the clip so that the bed will not be showing. The other side was then used as a slideshow to show Bagus’s pictures. We as a team decided to keep this change by our teacher as we needed a way to put more pictures in the documentary, and this change helped us add more pictures.

 

Another feedback we got is the diegetic sound of the light turning off during the book closing scene. My teacher advised us to use the same sound effect for the light switch noise, we realised this was a problem as it made it as if the place was in two settings. In the end we were satisfied with this change as it now connects with the whole scene. 

Lastly we got feedback about the ending. My teacher recommended putting a picture or video behind the text in the end, because the background was pure black. By adding the video in the end, eventhough it was blurred, it helps build the suspenseful mood making the text seem more ominous. Therefore we decided to keep this change .

Reflection: This was probably one of the most annoying parts of the project and the one that took the most time. I had multiple problems such as storage and phone heating up way too quickly making it hard to edit as it kept on lagging. A solution I thought of was by buying Icloud which helped me save some space as well as not charging while editing helped the phone cooldown. As much as I dont like how this process took so long, I quite like it,getting feedback and then changing it multiple times, I felt proud of my work. Overall I improved my editing skills by doing this project.