Evaluation of the three styles

 1.       Evaluation of documentary work so far….

·         Evaluate the three types/styles of documentary; expository, observational, participatory

·         In terms of practical work what went well, what could have gone better and why (so the group documentaries and the interview)

·       

Observational

In terms of the practical work for the observational documentary our group was clear from the start about what they wanted to film and the topic matter they wanted to include/cover. The camera angles that were used highlighted the struggles that I as a wheelchair user face every day at college, however it would have been better if I had held the camera so that the viewer could see things from my own perspective. Another thing that went well was that we had a filming schedule and we stuck to this really well, we knew exactly what we were doing and what scenes we would be filming each day.

The techniques we used while we were editing the footage were very effective. We sped some of the footage up to make it more interesting for the viewer. We also added some captions to the footage to make the message in the skit clear.

Something that might have made the documentary better would have been if I could have forgotten about the camera so it appeared more natural instead of being staged footage. Also we could have improved the documentary by highlighting more of the issues that I face day to day such as personal care, note taking in lessons and getting help when going for lunch in the college canteen.

Expository

The group I was in for this documentary were much organised and were clear from the beginning about the ideas they had and how they would put things together. The fact that the documentary was about me made it easy for me to think about what needed to be included and what areas we should cover too. For this documentary we had to do research and get facts about disabled people in the UK, education and benefits. Everyone researched a different part and we put everything together as a group, we all took responsibility and so the work load was shared equally. We worked well as a group and our communication with each other was really good too, we finished our research before the other groups which meant we had more time to dedicate to filming. The techniques we used were; having interview footage in the documentary, using voice overs alongside footage of me moving around the college in my wheelchair, we added music to the opening scenes of the documentary which was upbeat to reflect my personality. I feel like that the music shows the audience that my disability doesn’t affect my personality.  I also think that having the interview was useful because it was informative and allowed me to express myself and to bring awareness to my disability. One thing that we wanted to include in the documentary was a time lapse piece of footage to show the hustle and bustle of The Street. However we didn’t manage to include this as every time we went to film it was during lessons and there were not enough students in The Street. So if we had the chance to do this again I would suggest we film during lesson change over or at lunch time to get the right effect.

Participatory

I decided to do this documentary by myself because I didn’t want to rely on others to do the work and wanted to feel responsible for my own but also, the other reason for this, is I had planned to interview Elodie about what she feels and knows about analogue &digital photography.
To come up with questions to ask Elodie i thought to have a talk with her about the topic, then from that talk to wrote up 10 questions that I thought were informative and also inresting. these questions played a part in my research for this documentary.
The difficulties that occurred, was that I had to make sure that timetabling was essential as Elodie has a different and full timetable than mine so, I had to ensure that the interview was in my free time and hers.
Another disadvantage was the fact that i had to do all my editing myself and that was time consuming because of my fine motor skills. Another point is that i did not know how to resize my photos in Adobe Premium Pro, therefore, Julian (technician) helped me.
However, the pros where that i had a very clear idea on what i wanted to include in my documentary and what i did not, so when it came to filming my idea, there was no difficulties, as well as editing.
Another pro is that, i informed Julian that i needed two cameras becuase i needed two angle shots. Also i knew i wanted to film in the studio, therefore i ensured i booked that in advance to ensure i have enough time to film, making sure my timing schedules were met.
The aspects i will need to improve next time will be that i should add music to my documentary, as well as, to attract the wider audience put French subtitles (becuase Elodie is French)