1. Review of Documentary.
Our task for this project was to produce a short documentary in partnership with the British
Museum and Chocolate Films. This was to illustrate detailed information about the Lewis
Chessmen for those who have maybe not heard of them and those who would like to learn
a bit more about them. We figured this would be an effective way to do so as clips would
make them seem more interesting.
For this project we had to carry out a few research tasks so that we could make the
documentary feel as if it was a documentary. For instance we did primary and secondary
research on the codes and conventions of short documentaries. To get a basic
understanding of a successful documentary we had watched a few professionally made
ones. They were; Pong and Apology Line. This helped me contextualise the concept of short
documentaries. Some of the conventions I had learnt about are the visual styles of
documentaries, talking heads, titles and text, and exposition. What do these mean?
Talking heads - is when a person is displayed on camera giving information about a certain
topic or subject without the use of any illustrative material.
An exposition in a documentary is usual to set the theme and give the viewers a first
impression of the documentary. The exposition is at the beginning of a documentary.
Titles and text are used to quickly convey information about a certain scene or to introduce
a new segment.
The Visual style in documentaries is the Mise enscène. It is generally what is in the visual of
the audience so that they can interpret what the location is and if it is suited to the topic.
Forinstance if it was about Chess which is considered to be a game of intellect, they would
have the setting in a library or a place which connotes intellect.
The conventions I have used in my documentary are; Talking Heads, Titles and text, and
visual style. The reason I have used these conventions for our documentary is that these
conventions give the feel of a professionally made documentary. Our visual style was quite
formal/intellectual as it was based in a museum and in front of the Lewis Chessmen.
Museums usually connote information.
Before we had started making our documentaries we pitched our ideas on a storyboard to
get a general idea on what we aimed to produce. The story board consisted of telling us
what different shot types we had to use, if there is any dialogue during a certain scene or
even text and titles. After we had made our storyboards we planned on making our
interview questions and practiced them within our group to see what kind of responses we
could have received from the public or the curators at the museum

2. The pre-production task that I personally was responsible for was to come up with 7
different interview questions. Some of the questions were not related to the area of
information we were looking to get information about which meant we had to rewrite some
questions.
The effectiveness of our research and planning was quite effective as we conducted
secondary research. The secondary research was gathering information from the curators of
the Lewis Chessmen who knew a significant amount about the chess pieces. This was a
strong milestone in the making of the documentary. The reason for this being effective is
that the curators were a reliable source of information.
The let down in our research and planning was that we couldn’t decide who’s storyboard to
use which led to a little kerfuffle within the group. This was resolved by combining the ideas.