We managed to get a total of 8 boys to fill in the questionnaire and had some interesting feedback from them. We also interviewed three boys from different race, white, black and asian. This feedback was highly important to us because it gave us an idea of what the beginning sequence of our overall documentary would be like. Overall, we found that our audience viewed and defined ‘rude boys’ as:
- People who intimidates others
- Steals
- Wear branded labels such as Nike trainers and often had their hoods on
- They behave in a gangster manner
- Listen to hip-hop music e.g. Jay-Z a hip-hop artist
This research proved that the stereotypical image of ‘rude boys’ does exist in society and therefore we wanted to portray this in the beginning sequence of our overall documentary. We decided to do this because we wanted the audience to feel comfortable at this stage showing them their knowledge about the culture and then challenging this knowledge as the documentary progresses. These ideas were then presented to the rest of the class as our pitch. This is the process where we try to sell our documentary to our audience telling them about our ideas of the overall context of our documentary and giving them information with research evidence.
In our pitch, we had to present our overall idea for our documentary and then chose a section we wanted to film. Seeing as we had a rough idea of what we wanted to show at the beginning of our whole documentary, we decided to film the opening sequence because this would give the audience a taste of our overall documentary. During the opening sequence, our aim was to focus on one main person’s life as a “rude boy” and portray his views about the culture. We felt that this would be a good tactic to grab the audience’s attention. Within the opening 5 minute of our documentary, we aimed to cover facts such as:
- How and where the culture originated
- The time is started to spread and got popular or viewed as ‘fashion’
- What are it influences
- How it influenced our main person’s life.
During our pitch, we explained how we wanted visuals to illustrate these facts and add some screen texts that will explain these points in depth. After a while, we would then introduce our main person in his everyday life of today. For example, we wanted to film him socializing with his friends or at work/school. At his interview stage, we want him to start talking about when he was first introduced to the ‘rude boy’ culture and what influenced him to become one himself. Throughout the interview we want to cut his talking and have cut-away showing pictures of him doing the things he does as a ‘rude boy’. We also explained how we wanted a past rude boy to focus on (one who was a rude boy as a teenager and then later decided to abandon the culture). However, this idea proved rather difficult because we could not find someone who fitted this criterion. With time not on our side we decided to go with the second best choice which was to find someone who would easily match the stereotypical image of a ‘rude boy’. Eventually, we found someone called Kyle William-Hall who was 16 years of age and suited the stereotypical image.
We also explained that we wanted to film an Expository mode of documentary because our aim was to inform and educate the audience about the subject matter. We also wanted to use voice-overs and archive footage which will enhance the audience’s understanding about this culture.
Storyboarding our idea proved rather difficult because each member of my group had their interpretation of how the documentary would be like. Therefore we decided to give the storyboarding task to the director of my group to complete and then the rest of us could give some suggestions afterwards. Our plan was to get the overall information about ‘rude boys’ in general. I carried out this research and found some secondary information from the internet about ‘rude boys’ and where the term originated from. I found that the culture and the term ‘rude boy’ originated in Jamaica’s capital city Kingston and from there, spread across the world. We condensed this information and decided to present it at the start of the documentary. What our documentary lacked was statistical information which proved very hard to find. We also want to show archive footage of ‘rude boys’ during this which was also very difficult to find. During the research I found an audio extract which almost sounded like a radio report from a website that mentioned a few facts about ‘rude boys’ in general. This was then followed on by reggae music. This helped developed the idea of using the audio during the viewing of the archive footage.
The documentary would then show clips of our main character Kyle socializing with his friends and then zoom the camera in, in order to get a clear one shot frame of him alone. We planed to have a voice-over during this which would introduce Kyle to the audience and present him as our main character. We would then have shots of the school Kyle attends (Dunraven secondary school) and show an interview of Kyle’s former English teacher Ms Boyle. The shots of Dunraven School showed our audience where our first interview actually took place. We wanted to film the teacher in her office where she feels comfortable and relaxed. During her interview we would show cut-away shots of Kyle (our main character). These would be still frames of him in his year 11 school photo. We would then have an interview of Kyle in his “hang-out’ area where he would often go to socialize with his friends after school. This will show the audience where this interview was taking place but also hopefully make Kyle feel relaxed as his was in his own comfortable environment.
The filming process was not as easy as expected as we encountered quite a lot of problems during this time. We first took shots of the school Kyle attended (Dunraven School) and then went on to shoot the teacher’s interview. When doing the Reccy that day we found that teacher’s office (Ms Boyle) was inappropriate for an interview so we decided to take the interview into the school’s library where the shelved books in the background symbolized her profession. During the shooting of this interview, our tripod’s handle broke and we were unable to fix or replace it in the short time we had that day. Being the camera person, I was forced to hold the camera in a way that the frame was as steady as possible during the interview. We encountered problems with the camera itself. For the first half of the interview the camera was on night vision so the shots appeared lighter in color than natural. We quickly realized this problem and changed the mode to natural for the second half of the interview. We thought this problem could easily to fix at the editing stage but found that it was impossible to adjust the light mode and was forced to cut out that section of the interview from our documentary. We could not change the tripod because we were shooting during the Easter holidays and therefore had to shoot Kyle’s (our main character) interview without a tripod. We planed to have shots of Kyle playing football in order to use them as cut-aways but they did not have football practice during the filming time space we were given. Kyle our main character was terribly unreliable and as a result, we had to do the editing of our documentary in parallel with the filming. Whenever we planed dates to take shots of him (Kyle), he sometimes would not show up, and with time not on our side, we had to edit and at the same time, film the remaining shots for our documentary.
The editing process was just as difficult as the filming stage. Whilst working through our documentary we felt that it lacked cut-aways because the duration of both interviews was too long and the audience would lose concentration. We felt that we needed more cut-aways because this would make the interviews more effective and would constantly remind the audience what the subject matter of our documentary was. The visuals would enhance the audience’s understanding whilst hearing the interviewee talking about the subject matter. I took on the initiative of operation manager and kept calling Kyle to make sure that he was available when we needed him. However promises were sometimes broken and he was not around when we needed to take shots of him which resulted to us not having enough cut-aways. We felt that we needed footage of random look-a-like ‘rude boys’ of today and decided take shots of boys who looked and fitted the ‘rude boy’ image. We had footage of Kyle’s year 11 class photo and noticed that this was not as clear as it could be and therefore took re-shots of the photo. We wanted to use some archive footage at the start of the documentary and use some statistical facts about rude boys of today. Both of these proved hard to find and considering the time space we had till the documentary’s due date, it was impossible to find anything and therefore had to eliminate this idea. The radio sound-a-like audio extract that I found on the internet and planned to use was also eliminated. This was because when we added this to the screen texts we had, we felt that it did not flow as we thought it would and the audio (which was a reporter talking about ‘rude boys’) did not fit well with the screen text which made the documentary seem distorted and confusing. In place of this (the audio extract), we decided to use reggae music which fitted better. Due to the tight time constraints, we decided not to use voice-overs. The other frustration was that our documentary ran over the 5 minute slot and because we felt that all the footage we already had was important made further condensing really hard in order to fit the running length.
PART 2 - ANALYSIS
Our chosen mode of documentary is Expository which vary in its use of code and conventions. These may be:
- Voice-overs: this is one of the conventions that made Expository mode different from other modes.
- Talking Heads: these are people who are in a one shot frame and talking to the audience
- Interviews: this is a common conventions of all modes of documentaries
- Extra textual autonomy: this may be use in place of a narrator.
- Direct and indirect address: direct addresses are the narration and interviews and indirect addresses are the voices of social actors
- Character: they must be real characters and not actors
The distinguish convention of an Expository mode of documentary is the use of over-voices. However in our documentary, we inverted this convention by using text as our voice-over. We did this because we wanted the interviewees (the people that are being interviewed) to have a more powerful voice in the documentary and therefore we felt that using an over-voice would destroy this. Another typical convention of a documentary is that some of the interviewees are people of high status in society. We felt that we needed a different viewpoint from someone else that is of high status than our main character and had some sort of relationship with him.
Expository documentaries also make use of the audience’s epistemic knowledge to reinforce the truth of the argument and the authority of the author. We decided to show the stereotypical image society had of ‘rude boys’ within the 5 minute slot because we feel that audience are familiar with this and can relate and engage with it more. However as the film progresses, we would show a different side of term ‘rude boy’ as the documentary starts to investigate the real meaning of the culture.
Looking at the topic we had chosen for our documentary, music played a big part in it and was an important aspect of the documentary. Through our audience research, we found that rude boys (or commonly known as street gangster boys) were more likely to listen to Hip-hop, Rap and Garage (Garage music is mainly heard in the UK). I was in charge of the sound editing and found that the choice of song was important because the music is another aspect of the culture which can encourage and influence boys to follow the culture. At the start of the documentary we showed clips with texts on them talking about how and where the culture originated. Since that culture began in Jamaica, I felt that is would be appropriate to play Reggae music during this to show the interrelation with the music. At one part of the documentary I chose to play Garage music particularly because one of the locations of Kyle’s (our main character) interview was the urban area which he classified as the” Ghetto”, and felt that the music would give the audience an idea of the location of the documentary. I chose to play Hip-Hop and Rap music as well because it would show that relationship culture had with the music.
Our chosen style of filming is similar to that of Nick Broomfield who directed and produced documentaries such as Biggie and Tupac and Aileen Wuornos life and death. Nick Broomfield’s approach to producing a documentary is more of a natural approach. For example, in his documentary called Biggie and Tupac, what his tends to do is leave the camera rolling after the interviews so it seems as if he was filming he process of the documentary. Sometime the interviewer was seen at the interviews. An example of this was when Nick Broomfield was filming Biggie and Tupac documentary, the audience could see him (Nick Broomfield) holding his equipments and stretching the microphone out towards the interviewee whilst both him and the interviewee were walking with him still in the frame. This is a technique his uses so that the audience would see how difficult it was when making the documentary and how he came about doing it. This enhanced the audience’s knowledge and made them believe in the documentary more. This is a technique we tried to incorporate in our documentary. We started to film Kyle’s interview as he was walking so the interview seemed more natural. But we decided to eliminate this footage from the documentary because the camera was too shaky at this point and the audience would not understand this and therefore decided to use the footage when we had Kyle standing still at some parts of the interview but with the interviewer still seen in the shot.
John Grierson define documentary as ‘the creative interpretation of reality’. He also argued that documentaries should combine information with education and propaganda. I feel that we successfully achieved this in different ways. One way that we were able to educate the audience was through the screen texts at the opening of our documentary which talked about where and how the ‘rude boy’ culture developed. We used different types of music genres and interview techniques which helped entertained the audience. Through the interviews, questions were directed at the audience which made them feel part of the documentary and made them interpretate their own answers and opinions. This I felt kept the audience thinking and helped draw their attention to what was being said during the interviews. This then allowed the audience to interact with the documentary.
AUDIENCE AND INSTITUTION
We decided to market our documentary on a terrestrial television channel. This is because the documentary is in Britain but also because we have only shown the culture practiced in London. The rest of my groups and I felt that the best channel to promote the documentary on would be Channel 4. Looking at Channel 4’s television guide, I found that documentaries are usually broadcasted on Monday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays starting at 21:00pm till 01:15pm. I also found that during these days at 21:00pm different documentaries such as ‘Riddles of the Human Hobbits’, ‘Bad Behavior’ and ‘Grand Designs Revisited’ were broadcasted. But from 23:00pm onwards, the same documentaries were broadcasted which were ‘Doctor Tatiana Sex Guide to all Creations’ and ‘Human Mutants’. Because of this broadcasting pattern, we decided that a 21:00pm scheduling for our documentary with the duration of 60 minutes would be appropriate. This is because we noticed that all the one-off documentaries were broadcasted at this time. We felt that the duration of our documentary should be 60 minutes because there are a lot of issues concerning the topic that would be brought out during this time. Some of our audience suggested that the duration time should 30 minutes maximum but this is because they were not able to see our vision for the whole of the documentary within the 5 minute extract they watched.
Looking at Channel 4’s Program Policy for 2003, it states that the documentary department aims to combine ambition, intelligence and popular sensibility, taking risks with new talents on screen and behind cameras. These include programs such as ‘Wife Swap’ and ‘Parents and Children’ as well as contemporary single documentaries on popular cultures. Therefore, because almost everyone is familiar with the term ‘rude boy’ which is equivalent to street gang, shows that the culture is fairly popular. Also on Channel 4’s Statement of Promises 2004/5, it states that the channel encourages documentaries with social purpose, personal authorship and an international perspective such as ‘Breaking Point’ or ‘Aileen Wuornos’. Our documentary theme is known world wide and every country can relate to the topic which is why we are confident that we can promote our documentary on this channel because it has meant the international perspective requirements. Channel 4 also does not produce its own programs which is why we felt we stand I better chance at promoting our documentary on this channel.
Considering that our documentary may only appeal to more mature people (teenagers) due to our chosen topic, I watched a documentary called Supersize Kids which seemed to have a similar target audience. This documentary was about two children, a boy and a girl, who were heavily over Britain’s average teenage weight and was trying to lose it. If we were to film the whole of our documentary, we would want to centralize it around two case studies which may allow the audience to make assumptions and comparisons. The documentary introduced the first main character (the boy) socializing with his friends with an over-voice giving us information about his background. It then went on to interview the boy in his every day life style with him telling and showing the audience his everyday routines. The camera and crew were invited in the boy’s house and so each member of his family gave a short interview about themselves and their relationship with the boy. The whole purpose of this was to maybe identify a family pattern (an over weight family pattern). This is a technique my group and I really wanted to use but we were denied entry into Kyle’s home because he felt uncomfortable with this idea and fact that his mother would be talking to us about him was just unthinkable to him. The documentary (Supersize Kids) then went on to educate the audience by showing us what his eats and his relationship with his friends and family. This is something we were able to touch upon briefly. We were able to go into Kyle’s hang-out area for the interview and took footage of him with his friends. During this, the documentary (Supersize kids) had an over-voice mentioning statistical facts about over weight teenager in Britain. It then went on to an interview of the boy where he talked about how people and his peers viewed and looked at him and explain how they always called him names and teased him because of the fact that he was over weight. Afterwards, he (the boy) went on talking about why he was over weight and why he tends to eat the way he does. Continuing, he then explained how depression has lead him to became over weight, because people kept putting him down and therefore he felt that this opinion society had of him was not true and wanted to prove them wrong. This showed the audience their natural behavior and knowledge toward over weight kids and the views they had on them. It then continued to educate the audience further by telling them the real reason why the boy was over weight. This is an example of how the overall documentary would be like. We were successful in presenting the stereotypical image of ‘rude boys’ which society were familiar with but would later on challenge this and show things from a ‘rude boy’ point of view.
We previewed our documentary to wide audience and then afterwards asked them 6 questions in which to answer:
- What did you like and dislike about the documentary?
- How could we improve the filming and editing?
- Do you agree with our Target audience from 13 -19 years of age?
- What kind of documentary do you think it is?
- Do you agree with our decision to sell it on Channel 4?
- Does the topic interest you?
- Other comments
We found that the audience was particularly interested in the topic and found the documentary informative as a whole. It also showed that we successfully achieved our aim of making our documentary’s mode Expository. However there were other complaints such as the length of the interviews and limited use of cut-aways but this was because we ran out of time. These are some of the quotes we got from our audience after viewing our documentary.
- ‘ I think the subject and especially Kyle’s view were most interesting ’
- ‘ It was more informative ’
- ‘ both interviews were great ’
- ‘ the texts were a bit too fast ’
- ‘ some areas are a bit too shaky ’
- ‘ ends too suddenly ‘
We took the audience’s views on boards and made some improvements. Some of the audiences said that the documentary ended too suddenly. We corrected the problem by ending the documentary with a question. We figured that this would give the audience the intention that an answer would be given to the question afterwards. This would showed the audience that they only viewed the beginning of the whole documentary and the question was about to be answered afterwards. Through this feedback, we also found that audience felt that the camera was too shaky at some point which made them feel uncomfortable. Because of the confusion the audience had, we decided to cut out the shaky parts which helped the documentary flow more smoothly. We then also extended the length of some of the screen texts to give the audience enough time to read through it.