Pre production: Preliminary Research

This is my research before I started doing Comp 3. Made by Kenzo

Weekly Progress

This is my weekly progress for Comp 3. Made by Kenzo

My Team

This is a list and picture of my team for Comp 3.  Made by Kenzo

Brief

This is the brief for Comp 3. This is made by Kenzo

Final Submission

Here is my final submission for the documentary project:

Final video:

Final Thumbnail:

Documentary Self Critical Reflection

Here is my self-critical reflection essay for my team's documentary project.

CR 1 - How do your products represent social groups or issues?

CR 2 - How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

CR 3 - How do your products engage with the audience?

CR 4 - How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?


For our crime documentary, my team created an opening entitled "The Cult of the Living World" that follows the story of a journalist who infiltrates a secret cult that supports environmental sustainability; however, it's more than just a cult.

Products Made:
- Documentary
- Thumbnail

Branding refers to how products are connected together to form an image that attracts the audience to make it recognisable. Bulmer and Katz's theory on Uses and Gratification states the thumbnail serves as the bait and hook to draw viewers in, and the documentary acts as the meat and bones, used for surveillance to learn about the cult's wrongdoings and acts as an exposé. In this case, the similarities between our thumbnail and our interview are what produce consensus and unity, which can help streamline the storytelling and style. Our documentary wanted to call out extremist organisations that can be harmful to their followers when watching. Police sketches and pictures of individuals outside of the cult headquarters are similar to the found footage style of the thumbnail. These technical elements add a sense of mystery as the thumbnail contains a blurred figure in a forest setting that acts as a hermeneutic code, making the audience wonder who these people are. Fig 1.1 used a split composition design, where the left side features a blurry figure that hints at real documentary footage, and the right side is composed of sketched faces layered onto each other, symbolising psychological distortion and a mix of realism with surreal illustration, suggesting that facts are blurred with myth.

fig1.1

As anticipated, our documentary also includes some noteworthy crime documentary conventions. For example, we got inspiration for the interviews from a Netflix documentary we studied called The Puppet Master, in which the interviewer is off camera and his voice isn't properly miced up, making it sound muffled and echoey. This is done to keep the audience's attention on the interviewee. Additionally, we used the interview scenes as a guide to determine when to cross-cut to evidence-related B-roll and when to add sound effects. The video game named "Far Cry 5" also had a significant influence because of its documentary-like introduction, which features interviews with various community members intercut with footage of the cult. "Fred Angles (actor)" was also inspired to portray a group of civilians who have seen the cult and are concerned about the future. The creation of the cult was inspired by a game called Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, "Cult of Kosmos", since they had a powerful female leader named Cassandra, with a mystical aesthetic type of vibe that my group was looking for. This is also a subversion of "The Shepherd"; according to Laura Mulvey's gender theory, the antagonists in media texts are typically men. This is because males are usually the ones who actively participate in stories, and women stay passive.


The portrayal of the cult leader known as "The Shepherd" is another common thing between our products. She is constantly hidden in the thumbnail and the documentary film. For instance, her eyes are continuously covered, which was done to conceal her intentions and feelings because the audience can read emotions from the eyes, which creates a sense of fear and mystery. According to Stuart Hall's reception theory, viewers can interpret media in a variety of ways, so in this case, rather than being mysterious and cryptic, they might view the documentary as scary and horror. We recognise this and lean into adding elements like low-key lighting and a forestry setting. The main theme/brand we show using technical elements like mise en scene and diegetic dialogue is to evoke a sense of mystery, suggesting that not much about the cult is known because they are very cryptic.


The crime documentary portrays the journalist (main character), the cult members (antagonists), and ordinary people (as side characters) as part of our social group. Our documentary represents the journalist as a daring investigator who is a hard worker and willing to sacrifice anything to expose the cult to the public, no matter what. For the cult members, we represent them as dangerous, mysterious individuals covered by darkness to create an eerie sensation for the audience. People in their late teens to early adulthood who are interested in spiritual living and horror are the primary target audience. We wanted to portray this cult as worthless and its message as defective; therefore, we incorporated the Chants "Lorem ipsum…." to appeal to those with spiritual inclinations. Using actual chants may offend some. As previously said, we incorporated elements from horror literature that we believe would resonate with fans of the paranormal or horror genres. As the thumbnail shows blurred footage with police sketches, scribbles (which also function as a hermeneutic code), and a red title, we hope to draw in true crime enthusiasts. We showed crimes like murder, kidnapping, and fraud, which further render it inappropriate for young children and teenagers.

Editting

This is our editing process and improvement

To edit this documentary, Im using capcut and I bought the pro version. To help me editing in more advanced way and access all effect and tools.

1)

This is our first version of editing, using all of the footage we got.

The feedback I got from the teacher is to add more effect like the glitch, and resolution on the body cam to make it a little bit blur and low resolution to add the realism. Also adding few sound effect that could help to add suspense into the scene, also by removing things that are not important, like too long question from the interviewer, and also the time when the interviewee think and waste a few second. And by adding more footage while the interviewee are still talking, so its not boring for the audience to watch.

I got inspired by seeing some documentaries which about crime, thriller, they're showing lot of sound effect to add suspense and other stuff that conform to a crime, thriller documentary, and one of them is 

Far War Cry opening scene, which also about a cult.

  

This in a new version with more improvements, as I got the feedback already. It is better because I try to put more of the footage and photos showing the cult to make it more interesting, rather than showing lots of the interview scene. Also I gave the effect on the body cam scene which is lowering the resolution and giving static glitch effect, as we want the audience to understand and know that its in the jungle, and its hard to get signals. I also removed the scene where the interviewee were asked a long question and just go straight into the point, because if I leave it like that, audience might get bored of just hearing that long question. Also I put Zoom in some photos and videos, to add suspense and make the audience focus only on that photo.

2)

This video shows where the subtitles are not consistent ,where it all have different size, our feedback to is to change the size and make it all the same, additionally change how the text popped out, where first one we use the typing effect, but Mr. Nick suggest to just put all the sentence without giving the effect of typing, to make audience easier to read and not making the audience in hurry to watch it.

I was inspired by looking at the Netflix documentary where the subtitles are clear and don't use any excessive effect, and just keep it simple for the audience to easily read it.

This how it looks, all of the text are already in same size, I also use a simple type face similar to Netflix, and eras the typing effect which now its much easier to ready and doesn't need to be hurry when reading it. This will help the audience to understand the meaning of the documentary better and doesn't miss information because its hard to read the subtitles.

3)

So this is the scene where the drone scene suddenly be shown out of nowhere after Zalfas Interview which is not match to Zalfas Interview or the plot of the documentary, Mr. Nick also said that it doesn't make sense and the context about the drone.In the drone shot, it shows that the drone suddenly crash because it hit the tree,but audience wouldn't know why did the drone hit the tree what is the problem actually until the drone was hit by a tree ans then fell down and stay still on the ground.

I was inspired by the other interviewee from Ambamovic and Fred,where every time they speak there is their own footage that is the eveidence of what they are saying and talking about,for example Ambamovic talking about the cult and the insider,then we showed the insider camera footage.

This is after we add 1 more interviewee which is the Hacker/Drone operator that worked together to investigate the cult with Ambamovic.In this interview the hacker explain in detailed about why do they flew a drone into the cult head quarters,and why do they crash into a tree is clearly explain in the interview,which now audience could understand about the drone scene.We also add hermeneutic code,which is from how we show the hacker with effected sound and we doesnt show the face, and only dark.In this new interview too,we add several camera angles which is from the side and infront of the interviewee,to make more variation and show to show important information when we shoot it straight infront of the drone operator.