(02/10) Introduction:
So in the component that I need to submit Cambridge this year, we can either choose to do a short movie (5mins), a Music Video or a documentary. To prepare us for that project, our teacher walked us through the brief, basic of what is a documentary and assigned us to create a real documentary about topic of our choice. The teacher then divided us into group, my group consist of: me (Dinh Uy), Minh Tam, Phuong Linh and Ha Phuong.
(03/10) About the documentary:
After a short discussion of brainstorming ideas for the documentary, we agreed on doing about traffic helmet, or to be specific, wearing traffic helmet in Vietnam. We all believed that this is a big problem in a country that the majority of people traveling by motorcycles and the helmet is a must to protect people life.
The decision of what style to follow was also quickly made. We chose to combine the style of a observational documentary and a social issues documentary.
(04/10) The pre-production:
The planning for the project was relatively smooth, there were not as many problems as we expected to have as we all seem have a same vision for this project. The tasks delegation were carried out perfectly as no one in the group do most of the works or do more than the others, to be specific: Uy - editor, actor; Phuong Linh - cinematographer, actor; Tam - art director, cinematographer; Ha Phuong - script writer, actor.
In general, all tasks was done on time and none of the work in the pre-production phase were delayed. Here is a link to our planning document as well as a picture of our storyboard:
We also have planned our shooting date. However, out of a sudden, Tam's family was busy on that day so we need to push the date back a week. Except for that, other parts in the planning go quite well.
Beside that, in order to gain a more specified data, we have created a survey to a sample of 58 students and teachers around the school. Tran Phuong Linh was assigned this task and she created a short survey with 5 questions about how often people wear helmets, where do they buy them and why do they wear helmets. While some of the response were quite shocking, the others were expectable, as shown below:
From the survey, we had have enough things to put into our documentary about wearing traffic helmets in Vietnam.
(15/10) Production:
Lucky for us, we was able to complete all the necessary filming for the comparison and the ending on that one shooting day. Works were done effectively and quickly, that is why we did not need to have to reshoot any of our footage (at least that was what we thought before moving to the post-production...) Things went according to plan
(02/11) Though we still need a 2 minutes footage of road traffic in the beginning. We was decided to put our camera on a tripod, and set it up on the side of the road, however, we found that it may not work as the traffic is usually very crowd, especially in rush hour (we want to record the traffic in rush hour because that is when many people do not wear the helmets in Vietnam). So we need to change our plan which is to use my house balcony and set up the camera, tilt downward to the road below. This turn out quite well and was just what we need for our documentary.
Also, we were planned to record and took pictures of helmet selling on the side of roads where the quality of the helmet are concerning. However, is was quite hard for us to record things undercover without irritating the shops' owners, we was just able to took some quick pictures with relatively bad quality to demonstrate what we are trying to deliver.
(28/10 - 03/11) Post-production:
I am the editor of this project and I would say this time our planning was not detailed enough. Being the editor, I need to rearrange a lot of the contents as well as cut some of it because the documentary was too long. This is due to our inefficient planning on the duration of each scene/shot. Also, this is the first time I edit a documentary so I was not sure at first how to do it. After going around on the internet (watching these videos for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZrPVUzYHKE; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MbHN-9d30Y&t=304s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdX0JkqzrAY&t=287s), I finally was able to get the hang of it on where to start at, what should I do at first. However, I will say that in general the editing is quite boring because I can not come up with any ideas of how to edit the talking part with statistic, numbers, names so that it can entertain the viewers.
The editing was also longer than I expected because of the sound quality, I need to upload each files on Adobe Podcast to enhance the speech but because I don't have the premium version, I need to upload files one by one which waste me a lot of times. In the part of drop testing the helmets, it feel a bit disconnected between scenes due to fail and error footage when we was filming. I also need to remove the survey part in the final product because it will make the video exceed 5 minutes, which is what we don't want to happen.
However, thanks to this project, I have enhance the skill of using the mask tool, animation and effects in Adobe Premiere Pro which will help me a lot in the future projects when I need to use those kind of tools. Nevertheless, the working with balancing audio so that all sound heard like it was recorded by the same microphone was also not an easy task to do but by accomplishing that, I have gain new experience on working with sound for my future media products.
OUTCOME:
Here is the 5 minutes short documentary about wearing traffic helmet that we have done, please enjoy!!!
CONCLUSION:
Thanks to the project, I have been able to rewind and enhance all the skills that I have learn in AS level after 3 summer months haven't touch the camera and the editing software. Also, I have a chance to research, look more at the field of documentaries: look at different types of documentaries, needed elements in a documentary and especially how to edit a documentary (though I still need lots of practice in this part).
Overall, the planning can go more in details with specific duration for each shots/footage will be used in the video so that it creates an easier job for the editor. The flow of idea and content could also be improved next time so that it make it easier for viewers to keep up with the video; understand what is going on in the documentary. Some of the friends I send this to suggest that the voice in the documentary also need improvement: the way I stress and lower/higher my pitch should be adjusted to make the video more like a professional documentary.
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