2. For constructing our documentary we used a Sony HXR-MC2000E video camera. It is a professional spec camera with High
Definition 1080p video. Its battery life is 280 minutes without the need to charge again. This made it really easy to film
long interviews and filming sessions without the worry of running out of battery. It has optical steady shot which makes
sure most if not all shots aren’t shaking on screen and ‘wobbling’ which usually occurs when videos are used as handheld
or when walking without a tripod. It has a solid state hard drive which uses less power, quick responsiveness and is almost
impossible to break, something CD’s, Tapes and other types of memory aren’t.
3. To upload our footage onto the computer from the camera a
simple USB to device cable was used which was fast and simple
and no messing around with tapes and burning it onto the
computer.
The computer used was a Dell XPS with an i7 processor and 16GB of
RAM, because of this high spec we had no problems with playback
when editing and no buffering occurred.
For the sound in the interviews we used clip microphones rather than
the on board microphone the camera has so we could cut out any
unnecessary background noise.
For the narration we used a professional radio DJ microphone in a
sound proof booth to record.
4. To edit our footage and construct it into a documentary we had to use Adobe Premier Pro CS5. It is used worldwide by
professional media and production companies who see it as one of the best and easiest editing suites to use. This gave us a
lot of effects to choose from including key-framing, chroma-key and sound balancing which in the end made the
documentary sound and look professional. We had to cut the footage we uploaded into the ‘bin’ to the length we wanted
using set in and set out tools in the preview window. We needed to trim the edges of the clip as our footage was far too
long to go into a 5 minute piece. Once this we done we started to select the shots we wanted to use in our documentary.
With some of the interviews the talking head shot angles were off frame so we had to use the scale tool to crop and
change/adjust the overall frame of the shot we were going to use. This was mainly done for Mike Grainger as the room was
small so he had to move around when he did it would change the angle and not look like a continuous piece. The next
problem we had was the sound as it only came out of one ear of the headphones. To change this we had to fill left or fill
right effect on Premiere on all of our clips and change the audio from mono to stereo so it will play fine and the sound
would be balanced. We also had to make the sound bed between the music, narration and interviews audible. To do this we
had to change the levels of the individual tracks, this was done in the effect controls menu. Some of the documentary was
automated, the music in which we had was made to fade in and fade out so the interviews were clear and at the end so it
would cut off after 5 minutes.
For the name bars that go across the screen for the documentary
interviews we used Adobe Photoshop CS5. We needed a layered
image for the vinyls and images to go across the screen and
Photoshop made this simple and quick whilst keeping the
professional look.
5. After constructing the constructing our main product the documentary our next task was the ancillary texts.
The Radio trailer and the poster which would appear in a newspaper. We made the posted using Adobe
Photoshop CS5, it is a software programme used by professionals and amateurs to enhance or change the
quality and detail of a picture. We took the image we wanted of the iPhone being held and listening to music
with a digital SLR camera so we could get a high quality resolution. Then it was imported into Photoshop. We
had to change many things such as the brightness, colour curves and contrast to make it stand out more and
look less dull also because the lighting was bad on the original photo. We wanted to follow the codes and
conventions of a channel 4 poster which is simple but effective and more focus is on the C4 logo and the name
just as much as what the documentary is about. We took a PNG file of the C4 logo from the internet to make it
perfect and placed it in the bottom right corner. We went for the PNG file as it is a lossless date
compression, basically meaning once edited we won’t lost the shape or quality of the picture even when we
rasterize it as the logo is a vector. Also keeping with the Channels poster conventions the text of the
date, time and slogan for the documentary was in a white box with black text to make it stand out as the
colours contrast and the audience would notice this in a newspaper. The rectangle tool helped us make the
boxes by making a rough drawing for size and then the scale tool to get the right fit. The font we used was
the “insert font here” as it was bold, plain but effective.
6. Our other ancillary text was the radio advert. We had to use two software pieces for this not just one. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
just like we used for the documentary as we had good knowledge how it worked. Also the Audacity system which is found
in radio booths usually to record callers who enter competitions and ask for requests. We had hardware as well with a
condenser radio microphone and a sixteen channel mixer with EQ control, level adjustments and gain control. The
hardware used here was what we also used for the narration part of the documentary. We got Gaz (narrator) to say the
narration speech and it was all recorded onto Audacity. We had to make sure everything was ok with the radio r0om and
mic such as volume control and the gain so it wouldn’t be distorted . Once all was finished we deleted the unwanted and
recordings with mistakes in them and kept only the ones that were needed by using the snipper tool. After all this was
done it was uploaded into Premiere in WAV file format as they were the highest quality of audio format available to us. At
the same time we also used Audacity to record our documentary narration and also uploaded into Premiere. We also were
using some bits from our documentary in the advert so decided to just create a new sequence and delete the unwanted
documentary files and use the files stored in the documentary bin. Some of Gaz’s speech went on too long so we used the
set in and set out tools along with scissors to get the right length and keep it 30 seconds and under. 3 audio tracks were
used to make the radio advert; one for narration, one for the music and one for the documentary clips.
7. For the Poster we had to edit what was shown on
the iPhone screen to 10 years of music and this was
easily done with the lasso tool around the edge of
the screen then fill in the box.
We used Microsoft Word and excel in the planning
stages to put questionnaires together, and then edit where do you get your
the data into pie charts, note ideas and plans in music from?
word which helped us come up with the music
iTunes
documentary.
Illegal
download
8. We used web browsers Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox for our
documentary research and construction. YouTube was what we
mainly used the browsers for to get archive footage and music to play
over some footage, Firefox was perfect for this as it has a lot of add-
ons and plug ins which allow you to download MP4 videos straight
from YouTube.
The main aim of the web was to put all our work on blogging site
Blogger, we kept a diary of everything we have done including
research, construction and planning, along with the final piece and
this evaluation.
We used SlideShare to put the word document with pie charts from
our questionnaire research onto Blogger.
