Location Scout & Risk Assessment

 This is our Location Scout & Risk Assessment for our documentary project.

1st Location

(School)
Location Link:	https://share.google/IxOvrdJ7bj9meDGOz
Events in scene:	What will happen? Interviews Silly vlogs / videos from students
Pros of location:	Accessible  Familiar environment => easy to film + can engage audience (adds realism) Free  Controlled environment (can manage or adust the setting of props like table/chairs) Convenient (all casts and group members will be available to film with during school             days)
Cons of location:	We would need permission to film in different areas in the school, we would also need             to ask some teachers whether they are okay or want to be a part of the documentary Noise control, some locations like the canteen can be noisy during lunch time or break             time which can affect the quality of the sound Time limits, we might have to film outside school hours to get darker scene, we would             need to ask permission first on whether we could film during those hours.
Alternatives:	What other locations can you shoot at if there are issues here? Someones house
Risk Assessment
Potential hazards:	What dangers are there? Crowds of students Slips / trips while filming Harm of privacy
Evaluate risks:	What bad things could happen? It will be noisy => making the sound quality of the scenes bad / damage of filming             equipment          2. Cast / videographer can slip or trip over bags or object on the floor         3. Other students may be caught on camera without consent
Control measures:	How will you prevent these from happening? Avoid filming during break/lunch times  Keep the floor/area clear Only film with cast members who already gave permission
Responsibility:	Who will be in charge of the control measures? Group members Group members Group members
Time frame:	When will you have the control measure in place by? Before filming  Before and during filming  Before and during filming
Other notes:

2nd Location

(Cafe)
Location Link:	https://share.google/jB9Atf6R7WcENtwrs
Events in scene:	What will happen? Interviews
Pros of location:	More flexible filming hours, we can film during any time of the week, if there are any             mistakes we can easily go there and reshoot as the cafe is open everyday.
Cons of location:	There may be a lot of background noise which can affect the noise quality of the scene.  We might need permission from the staff or owner of the cafe The cafe may be crowded which can affect the accessibility to film and it may also             disturb customers We would have to buy drinks or food to film
Alternatives:	What other locations can you shoot at if there are issues here? Someones house
Risk Assessment
Potential hazards:	What dangers are there? Spillage of hot drinks Privacy issues
Evaluate risks:	What bad things could happen? It could burn casts or damage filming equipment  Customers may appear without consent
Control measures:	How will you prevent these from happening? Keep drinks away from equipments / filming  Film with permission / avoid getting customers/staff in frame
Responsibility:	Who will be in charge of the control measures? Group members Group members
Time frame:	When will you have the control measures in place by? Before filming  Before and during filming
Other notes:

Thumbnail (Research & Development)

This is the thumbnail for our crime documentary, it is made by Bams 12A

The software that I used would be paint.net as it includes simple features such as removing the background easily from images, being able to have a wide variety of fonts that can be used for our thumbnail and etc. 

RESEARCH THUMBNAIL 

Overall overview of most crime documentary within Netflix

The crime documentary thumbnails mostly stick to the conventions that crime genre has such as mugshot looking type and dark colors especially the red colors as it represents danger, crime, and violence. This would help us attract our target audience and what would be expected inside of the documentary. Based from the overall view on the image on Netflix's crime documentary search most of the thumbnails show the prepetrator's face or vintage and polaroid type pictures, this gives off a sense of tension and seriousness, so thus the audience would expect real and possible disturbing crimes. 

Here are two examples of the thumbnails that interests us:         

 

This is our start to our thumbnail...

More information is that when I started to use paint.net again and due to because that paint.net didn't have enough of the effects I had so the downside was that each time I had an idea to make the actors have more meaning towards them I had to switch back and forth to my editing software (Vegas Pro 18) to edit the photo and input back into paint.net. So this was technically the rough buildup of making the thumbnail.

Step 1

I masked out the paper overlay to match hazel's picture

Step 2

I delete the left part of hazel to fit rain into the other side of the picture to let it look like it is connected and it would fit our thumbnail like "Making a Murderer"

Step 3

I resized rain's image to fit into the thumbnail as previously it was too large and it wouldn't fit the thumbnail and make the thumbnail look stretched and compressed, which is not wanted in a thumbnail.

Step 4

I added vignette to the image to show that there is some sort of dark side on Hazel and give it that eerie feeling towards Hazel.

Step 5

I added the black and white filter on Hazel and gives off a gloomy mood towards him.

Step 6

I added the left side of Hazel again to be able to mask Rain onto the thumbnail and this is the result I got from doing so...

Result

I asked feedback from my team members and the teacher and due to the bad "ripped paper" overlay, I had to change the paper aswell as conform to other thumbnails such as the "What Jennifer Did" thumbnail from Netflix. The feedback that was given was that :

- The paper layer was too thick 

- It doesn't show the emotions of the two characters easily 

- The images were disproportionate

- The mouth and the clothing should match with each other so it looks like its connected

I took the feedback for the thumbnail and this is the final result...

THUMBNAIL :

The “ripped paper” effect down the middle suggests the different sides of people that could relate to the documentary as the audience would expect that the crime was caused by those two people. It also connotates that the left side which is Rain, the rich kid shows trophies and awards which is academic achievement, he is also seen using a light brown jacket this gives off that elegant vibe to him and the gold trophies behind implies that rich friend more. The right side which shows Hazel is in a deep red and shadowy filter this connotates violence, anger or possibly even obsession as Hazel was considered in the documentary to be fairly obsessed with getting valedictorian and studying. This contrasts heavily with the left side showing that it was bright and celebratory to imply that there was a cost or dark truth behind the success of becoming a valedictorian. We also decided to put the “N” (Netflix) logo to suggest this is a presented like a documentary so the audience would expect a serious and intense, story rather than something lighthearted. Thus, the viewers that would see the thumbnail would be led to feel curiosity, tension. Which hints that behind that polished image of a high achiever has a side of him that is evil.

TYPOGRAPHY :

For the typography, I used “British Green” font for the word VALEDICTORIAN on the thumbnail as it is often associated with formality and prestige which for the looks of Rain shows he comes from a wealthy family. This choice for the typeface reinforces the connotations for academic exellence and seriousness which fits the title of valedictorian. The title is also written in all caps, giving it that bold, commanding and powerful tone to the audience which could lead them to thinking like “ why is valedictorian that important to them both?”,  “what conflicts did it cause? “.  

The typography is also large which immediately draws the audience’s eye to the title before the details of the image, also the placement being a bit to the bottom left visually reinforces the conflict between the two people shown.

This is our crime documentary's thumbnail but inputted into the Netflix library to see how it would match with the other documentaries.

Editing

 This is the editing blog made by Alex 12B

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Teacher Feedback

1. Integrate an establishing shot

2. make the actors sit faster

Then Mr. showed me a Spoof Documentary American Vandal and it showed me about better ways of making people sit and how to do and establishing shot with a J cut included, the audio but the clips I was provided by my group was too soft for a J cut to be substantial.

American Vandal

This was after the feedback was implemented:

Thoughts: I think this was a great idea the establishing shot really sets the scene and lets the audience knows that we're in a school, and making the actors sit faster helps with pacing

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A problem I have found persistently during editing is the over exposure within the footage that my teammates sent, I have no idea if it's my editing software or their phones but it was a persistent problem I had to fix with all the tools I have.

Example of the video being normal in the video player (lots of others also had this):

Example of the problem inside premiere pro:

Solution I devised was using the effect Brightness & Contrast:

Thoughts: I have no idea why this happens, luckily I had options to fix it to maintain continuity within the video and between scenes. 

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After we send it back to Mr. for more feedback it was clear to him that it was heavily needed because he gave us a lot of feedback that was invaluable with improving our product

The numerous feedback he gave us:

Before the improvements:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ID5p_hKOmfC9SWDX1k33TYsPB91-FQnz/view?usp=sharing

After the Improvements were implemented:

Thoughts: If we didn't have that feedback I think this whole project would have been really difficult to work with as me as an editor personally, I NEED directions if I am to edit a video for someone. So the feedback was incredible is providing clear directions for improvement

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Behind The Scenes

This is our Documentary's behind the scenes, this blog is mostly made by our team member Kim.

Documentary opening behind-the-scenes

Storyboard

This is the storyboard for our Documentary project, everyone in the team is included into making this storyboard that is made by Bams.

This is a video that our teacher gave us to help with our storyboard, this video shows us all the details that we need to input so that, the whole team can understand what scene we are trying to get off from the storyboard and what camera angles, how long it needs to be, the edit, as well how the actor or things needs to be within that particular scene. 

It helped because :

- We easily learnt the basics from this video

- It shows that rough sketches can also be explained in detail with arrows and explanation of the scenes
( technical elements ). This was great because I was worried we didn't have enough time. After seeing this, I asked my teacher if we could also do a simpler version. He said as long as the first is in detail, the rest can be simple.

- The storyboard that we did is more detailed even when the sketch is all did quickly.

This is the storyboard that me and my team created for our crime documentary with all the details explained from the video, although this storyboard type takes too much time so, we won't have any time to do other stuff for our project thus, we did this other storyboard that is more less detail although, we did this storyboard very quickly.

This is the rest of the storyboard to explain further on what the next scenes should be this is more of a rough sketch unlike the storyboard we did previously which is more explained with the technical elements and description on what the scene is. In conclusion, this was the final products for our storyboard to get the main idea on what the crime documentary is going to look like.