Documentary Journal

Today we finished our final cut of our documentary and we exported in and put it on the hard drive. We were happy with the way it turned out and relieved that we got the work done earlier so we did not have to scramble to finish it. We did well to anticipate times where we would be busy and did well to avoid leaving our work to a time where it may have stressed us out. We also cut and glue the rest of our book work ready to be handed in with our documentary.

Today Jess came back from America. I showed her what I had done since she had been away and she seemed to be really happy about how it came out. She provided opinion on the ending and we worked to fix this. It did not take too long at all to fix. We played through our documentary from start to finish a few times fixing smaller things such as volume in different clips and making sure the effects we put in earlier were still effective. Our footage has all been edited so it flows and its just now a matter of double checking the entirety of the documentary. Today during study I finished the book work and shared with Jess the documentary breakdown and scripting that I had done over the holidays.

Today I continued to edit during study and after school so I could get the documentary done. I worked on the extra finicky bits in the ending as I haven't been entirely happy with the way its turned out.  I think I may wait until Jess gets back tomorrow so we can work on it together and she can provide opinion on how we shall end the documentary.

Today is the first day back from the holidays and Jess is still in America. I worked on finishing the final scenes of the documentary during the period, study and after school. I tend to be quite picky so I didn't mind working a lot on it in my own time because I wanted to make sure it looked alright. The ending including Cam's interview is proving to be a bit difficult to edit as Cam's interview recording is quite jolty so I'm experimenting with using footage as main visual focus and emphasising the voice recording instead.

Today Jess was away today. I got the whiteboard scene uploaded and edited so it is fast forwarded and works well with the voice over. I worked further on this during study and managed to get this done so it flows with the rest of the documentary. With this done we have finished around about 3/4 of our documentary. Its very helpful that we have got so much done as Jess will be leaving for America tomorrow and she wont be able to edit during the holidays. Looking at the remaining work that needs to be done, I'm sure that is easily achievable to get the documentary done within the first week back. During the holidays I will focus on the book work such as the production breakdown and updated interview profiles ect.

Today we filmed our white board scene which explains what celebrity worship syndrome actually is. This segment surprisingly did not take long and when it is fast forwarded it will provide a great visual aid for our voice over. This segment is quite different and helps add variety to the shots in our documentary hopefully making the information we are explaining more interesting.

Today, we uploaded our footage and  I continued to edit. We realised that we still had additional voice overs that needed to be done for later on in the documentary so Jess went and recorded those as I edited. We have been focusing particularly on the finicky parts such as transitions, fast cuts and matching the music to the shots.  I stayed behind again after school to edit as I didn't have any other work to do and we had quite a bit of footage to work through since interviewing Olivia, Sophie and Katie. We are now quite far through editing our documentary and after editing our interviews we will be half the way through it according to our production breakdown.

Today Jess had a turn at editing and I gave feedback. I was a bit preoccupied with some work that needed to be done before house singing tomorrow but I was lucky that Jess was happy to take most of the load today. Jess added the music that we had researched to put in and figured out the timing between shots to make it flow better. We wont have media tomorrow due to House singing so we can't edit. However this weekend, we will interview Sophie and Olivia Thomas and Katie Tollan who have both agreed on specific times during the Saturday.

Today I showed Jess the introduction that we worked on and she was really happy as to how it turned out. We continued with editing today and realised we needed to be careful regarding te amount of archival footage we use within our documentary. Our archival footage from Justin Bieber and One Direction would need to be limited so we made sure we set a limit and used only footage from these that we needed / would be useful.

Today we started the editing process and worked especially on the introduction montage sequence. I stayed after school this afternoon but Jess had work. I wanted to get this initial part done as I knew I did not have any other work on so wanted to get as much as we could done as possible before either of us got too busy. Jess does not enjoy editing as much as I do so was happy with me working on the sequence by myself as long as we made sure both of our ideas were taken on board and we were both happy with it.

Today we used this day to upload our footage from the camera onto the computer ready to edit. This turned out to be a bit of a hassle as it took a while to locate the cord for the camera. We found it eventually and imported all of our footage. We spent the rest of this period sorting which footage would not be useful to us such as multiple takes and mistakes.

This media period was used for us to be able to catch our bus at 2pm in order for us to arrive in Auckland at 4.30. This would allow us to have enough time to get all of our filming done. We used our time on the bus well by ensuring we had directions to each location and Jess memorised her lines. Once we were there we made our way to the music store called "Real Groovy"  which had an abundance of celebrity posters, merchandise and music. With the thumbs up from the store, we filmed shots in here which would be used as visual footage for our voice over narration. From there we also spend some time filming some of our narration on the street outside of the store where ther were also celebrity posters. This went surprisingly well as we thought the street noise would be distracting however, with the back up audio recording and Jess knowing she had to speak loudly, we got the footage we needed. We also went to an area where there were less distractions and filmed a segment there as there were less people around. The sound was a bit more difficult to record as the area echoed however we were successful in fixing this through our back up audio recording. We then made our way to Vector Arena where the 5 Seconds of Summer had their concert. There were many fans waiting in line outside so it provided for very useful footage. The general atmosphere of portrayed the feeling of excitement that we were looking to film. Overall I spent most of the time operating the camera where as Jess was always in front of the camera due to narrating. During the general footage scenes Jess also had a go with the camera to ensure we both had a fair go. There were times when we had to wait for people to walk past which was difficult. It also proved to be difficult to film without a tripod which we did not want to bring due to it being difficult to carry around Auckland. However, we gained a substantial amount of footage in order to be beneficial to our documentary. It was a fun experience which gave us a positive attitude towards our own documentary.

Today I was out of class for this period however, I did work at home and finished the script for things that will be said by the narrator (Jess) whilst we are in Auckland. I also devised a plan as to where these narrations will take plan and looked at options for where we could film and how far it would take to get from place to place. I also booked the tickets for our trip which will be on Thursday afternoon / evening.

Today we worked on finishing our voice recordings. We also looked at booking bus tickets to Auckland in order to go and film at the concert for the boy band 5 seconds of summer. This concert will be helpful for our potential vox pop interviews and footage of fans waiting in line.

Today we spent the period recording voice overs. This took the entire period as there were a few segments that we needed to record and we had to make sure the voice overs were consistent with sound quality. We only have a few left which we will record in the following days.

I was away this day so I talked to Jess about working on recording our voice overs that I wrote out in the script so we can put them in later during editing.

 Today we continued to look at songs and we decided songs that had something to do with fame / paparazzi would be suitable as background music. We also wanted a song that would be relatable for the audience we were targeting so we discussed popular song options such as one direction which was one of the main celebrities mentioned in our initial survey. We also listened to basic songs that are basic and would go well as simple background instrumental music for under the voice over. We made a list of possible options.

Fame - Lady Gaga
One way or another - One Direction
One way or another - Stalker version
Hollywood - Marina and the Diamonds
Just jammin - Gramatik
Paparazzi - Lady Gaga

Today I was out of town however I contacted Jess and we agreed that it would be helpful if she could research songs that would work well as background music for our documentary as that was one of the conventions we want to incorporate.

Today we had our Skype call with our social media expert Cam Mansel. After a few complications with skype (which was expected) we managed to get the footage we needed. We changed the questions slightly and tried to ask questions which would emphasis the negative aspects of CWS to back up that particular point in the documentary. He answered really well and brought up points that are relevant to our documentary point. We had some trouble with the jolty-ness of the screen recording however we will look into just using the voice recording in most parts when we are editing as that is what is relevant.

Today we were meant to have our interview with our expert, however we have now postponed this for Wednesday (tomorrow) due to his prior engagements. We exchanged Skype contact names in order to make sure that everything has been set up and we ran a test to make sure that our screen recording procedures work for the interview.

Today we got a reply from one of our social media experts called Cameron Mansel who has agreed to partake in an interview. We're very lucky her replied as he is a radio and tv presenter so he has quite a busy schedule. He interview will be of great merit because of his background in the entertainment industry.