Kieran Beal evaluates the research process for their documentary film project. They felt their content research went well with ample information on psychological links in videogames. Audience research proved more difficult, particularly determining the target age group and psychographic. A survey on Facebook yielded fewer responses than hoped. Contextual research focused primarily on other documentary filmmakers. Overall, the research provided useful information but could have been expanded in some areas like additional product research.

1. EvaluationKieran Beal

2. Research
One of the first concerns I had with producing a documentary film was having a lack of content to talk about, as
a result of this I feel that the content research section of this project went very well for me, with news articles
and researchers addressing psychological links in videogames. I had an ample supply of information to work
with, fact checking was a rather simple matter, using google scholar to double check the validity of the article
made it easy. However I believe that other areas of research were somewhat more challenging for me,
specifically the audience research, I found this to be difficult due to the genre of my film being inherently
flawed in this area.
Finding the demographic for the most part wasn't difficult except for the age group, on the one hand I felt it
needed to be more targeted towards to older generation as they typically carry the more hostile reaction
towards videogames. However on the other hand the younger generation are typically more neutral towards
videogames, with that being the case they are far more likely to listen to a documentary that addresses an issue
they may not know much on. However I concluded that the older generations are the ones that needed both
sides of the argument the most and therefore the documentary should be more for them, even if they are less
likely to listen, I gave them the opportunity to do so.
I found that the psychographic was also difficult to figure out. Because my film wasn't a fictional piece, and it
was difficult to pin point the main psychographics used in marketing as there are many of them, I eventually
had to settle for what seemed like the closest fit I could get towards the target audience, it still wasn't exact but
I don’t think I could have gotten an exact match as I am simply relaying facts the audience, not a story.

3. ResearchThe core method I used to collect data for my audience research was by conducting a survey which I displayed
on my Facebook page, which I then had people who had different contacts than me from all age groups share
my survey to reach out to as many age brackets as possible. In an ideal world I would have dozens of replies to
this survey, over one hundred at least, however this didn't happen.With that being the case I feel I missed out
on opportunities to get my survey shared and displayed by other people, therefore increasing the amount of
possible respondents. However I did not capitalise on this at the time and I believe that seriously limited how
many people answered my survey and as a consequence limited how effective my audience research was.
I also feel that other areas of my research felt a bit thin in terms of how much I found. For instance in
the product research section I studied the production techniques of 3 documentary films, however I feel as
though this may have not been enough, I did gather sufficient information to utilise common production
techniques, however I think I could have employed them more effectively if I had researched two or three
more products.With that being said the information that I could gather from the three films I found was
incredibly useful, showing me effective ways to keep the visuals interesting, as well as deliver the information
the audience needs in an engaging and clear way.
I feel this is something I have achieved in my film to a large degree but not entirely, for instance there were
still areas where gameplay footage carries on for a little too long, and there are also segments where my
narrator will break in the continuity of her narration. She did this by reducing the volume of her voice by the
end of her sentence (seemed instinctive), giving a trail off effect and sometimes making the narration hard
to understand. However despite this being the case, I feel that my narration and visuals are fitting for that of
a documentary.

4. Contextual research
Towards the end of my research I was not entirely certain on what I should do next, especially with the
contextual research, this was about working on technical and written aspects of the project, primarily by
researching other famous documentary film makers and the products they have directed.While this was an
effective method of research to an extent, it is also practically the only kind of research in context I performed
for this project and I feel like the key flaw in this area was that it wasn't varied enough.There aren't enough
different kinds of research or methods of research that could have possibly helped me in this area, and
therefore I feel this was one of the weak points of the project, despite that being the case I believe that the
research I have done is clear and relevant, it just has it's limits in terms of what it can offer me without other
research to buffer it.

5. Final concept
I believe that I made the right choice in terms of a concept for my final project for a multitude of reasons. In
truth there wasn't a very long thoguht process that led me to this idea, I started off by thinking about what
format of production I was better at.To figure this out I compared my documentary to my last fictional piece
that I created, after putting them side by side I concluded that I had an aptitude for creating factual pieces of
work, not only that but I feel more comfortable in this field, as I am not incredibly gifted in screenwriting.
After I had this figured out I started to think about what I was passionate about on a personal level, I've
virtually been playing video games since I could hold a controller so I immediatley thought I should do a
documentary on something in this area. After this I had to decide what area to focus on, the topicsto talk about
in this area are endless and it would be impossible to cover them all in 12 minutes. At first I thought it would be
best to cover the idea that videogames cause violence, however this idea had been debunked a while ago, so I
thought it would be best to cover multiple topics that I felt were the most important to convey to the audience
and were still relevant, despite this being the case I still felt it best to address the issue of violence to some
degree.
In addition to me having an aptitude for factual production, I also couldn’t see that a video game project could
work in a fictional setting, typically any film based on videogames don't do well at the box office, with a few
exceptions such as 'ready player one' and Black mirror's 'Bandersnatch', the concept of fictional videogame
films just don't seem to land according to historical film trends. On a personal note I don't see the point in
them, the idea of videogames in themselves is you can see an alternate world to view, however fictional films
already do that so having the two mix falls flat of expectations.

6. Planning
When I started my planning I knew there would one big problem I had to try and get started on immediatley.
Interviews are a crucial part of any documentary, I wanted to interview psychology professionals or therapists,
neurologists, anyone that might have experience in that field. However I realised there is a possibility that I
wouldn't be able to secure any interviews with people with this level of expertise, in the vent that this would
happen I also contacted small business inYork associated with gaming. My thinking was that at least in this
case I would some kind of interview to show so I can have some actual footage in my film, whether or not it
was exactly what I wanted, it's useful I made that backup plan because this is exactly what ended up
happening.(refer to planning notes for screenshots of emails)
After I secured these interviews I had to create a script, as I didn't want to just wing questions once I got there,
they did however turn out to be poorly co-ordinated with my documentary.(will develop upon in production
section)The shot list was difficult for me to write in this case. Due to the majority of my documentary being
captured footage or stock footage, there was very little room for actual footage, concequentially there wasn't
much to write on the shot list, barring the formulae for shooting the interviews that I would repeat for both. If I
had more resources at my disposal I would have certainly used an extra camera so that there is more visual
variety in each interview, I did research how to get multiple shots in an interview using only one camera
however it required far more space than what I had to work with at the time.
The final area of planning I can comment on is the team and supply, this was a fairly simplistic procedure as I
only had one crew member working with me on this, therefore it was easy to communicate and share the
neccesary documents, this area of planning didn't take much time so I don't have much to comment on.

7. Production
I feel this has been the most successful production I've done since I have started this course for multiple reasons.
The first most important point is that I have managed my time far better on this project than any previous one, I
never felt time pressure at any point to get something hastily finished, leaving me with extra time to put
finishing touches on my production. Previously mentioned co-ordination between my two interviews and the
documentary, this is because I forgot to referrence my interview script with the narrator script to see if they line
up well. Because I forgot to do this the footage I ended up getting from the interviews was largely useless, I
attempted to place interview footage where it seemed relevant but for the most part what they said was so far
from what was in my documentary that I had to leave it.

8. Production
Narration was another key point in this documentary that was crucial to get right, compared to my last
documentary piece I believe I did far better this time.To be sure it still wasn't perfect, there were still instances
where my narrator would trail off at the end of sentences, they would stop mid sentence very briefly when
tripping over a word. However there are not many instances where this happens and for the most part my
narration is clear and consistent, and compliments visuals well. Music was an equally important feature to
creating the documentary however I was at first stumped on where to get it, the problem I faced was that I am
not a musically gifted individual so creating my own music wasn't going to be an option. Secondly any
professional musicians charged a substantially high sum of money for their time, and I was operating on no
budget.
This issue led me to conclude that royalty free soundtrack websites was the best way to acquire music,
however I didn't want to use the popular websites like 'Bensound' as they typically don't have very high quality
tracks. I didn't have any solution to this problem until I was advertised about a subscription based music
website with high quality soundtracks with a month free trial (I have credited this website in my documentary
credits). However I still didn't want to just use the base soundtracks, so my final step after that was finding
soundtracks I liked and mixing them together in Adobe audition, overall I feel the music for my documentary
turned very well and varied, I believe the audio balancing at parts is still not quite correct but I can't seem to
rectify this issue, however these issues are incredibly minimal and barely noticeable.

9. Production
The final problem I faced during production was script writing, I wanted to put all of the research I conducted
into the documentary, however I quickly realised this was not going to be a viable choice. I Had to filter out a
lot of the narration I recorded and leave it on the cutting room floor, this took several re-drafts before I finally
got a script of somewhat agreeable length.After this I was concerned about the level of interest that the
audience would have in my script, I was advised multiple times that I should not make my documentary as it
would not be able to capture my audiences attention for too long.
While I did everything that I could to combat this issue, I didn't see a way of making my documentary both
short and deliver on it's original promise of explaining basic psychology and neurology. I was able to shorten it
down from 14 minutes to 12 minutes which still seemed too long. However after peer feedback from multiple
people of different age groups, I can safely say that I have been able to both keep the longer runtime of my
documentary and keep it engaging for my audience, therefore I must conclude that the way I structured my
script successful.
Going back to the interviews that I conducted for this documentary, I believe that while they still had flaws
that have to be adressed they were significantly improved upon from my last set of interviews that I
conducted.To address the issues first, they were unrehearsed, watching the interviews unfold it is clear that
they weren't allowed to look the questions over and think over what they were going to say.This resulted in
them tripping over their words and pausing.Overall this reduced the quality of the interviews but addition to
this the camera quality and lighting were lacking, the low light levels resulted in noise on the camera which
reduced the picture quality as well as the lack of light in general ruining the shot.

10. Production
Therefore in the future to avoid this issue I would offer my subject the opportunity to look over the questions I
am going to ask them, so that they time to think what they are going to say, so that their answer is more fluid.
In addition to this, I would conduct the interviews where there is more natural lighting, in the event that I don't
have access to any artificial light sources like this time. I attempted to put them in the brightest areas I could
find that also had minimal background sound, however it was not an issue I could fix, I was however able to
eliminate the problem of background sound, a problem I had in all my previous interviews.
This is one of the improvements I made upon the interviews in this project, it was so much easier to hear the
subject and there was nothing to distract the audience.The other improvement is the general setup of the
interviews themselves, the interviewer was never seen on camera and their voice is never heard. In addition to
this since I used a boom mic attached to a boom pole, I was able to pick up the voice of the subject perfectly,
their voice came through clearly in editing, making assembling the interview far easier.
Finally the camera setup was coventional to that of an interview, the camera was always at eye level of the
subject and they were always talking past the camera, never at it.While that is a way of conducting interviews it
is not how I wanted to do it, overall it gives the interviews a more professional look. I would improve upon
interviews further in the future by acquiring an extra camera if I can, and using an additional camera angle in
the interviews will create more visual variety and overall make them more engaging to watch.

11. Post-ProductionAt first when I started assembling my footage into a sequence, I made the mistake of making it all
gameplay footage, however I was able to correct this issue later on.With that being said I kept the intro
sequence all videogame footage to help reinforce what the documentary is about, it also helps to illustrate
what my narrator is saying, in addition to this, keeping all of it gameplay footage allowed me to keep the more
detailed effects I created, helping to transition between the games. I had considered to continue implementing
these more complicated transitions throughout the entire documentary, I decided against doing this however
because this isn't a convention with documentaries. In addition to this, I don't want to risk the visuals to
distract the audience from the film itself, therefore I felt it best to leave these transitions out of the
documentary after the intro. Assorting music wasn't a difficult task, I had made them to accompany the
subjects I was discussing in the documentary to begin with, so it was just a matter of matching the soundtrack
with what I felt to be the corresponding segment. I feel as though all of the soundtracks I have created suit
each segment of the video very well, helping to set the mood for each one, particularly the violence section,
the darker and more somber mood of the soundtrack suited the subject very well.
Overall not many problems were suffered in the post production process that delayed production, only small
technical issues would temporarily delay my schedule. For instance there was a certain point where Premiere
pro, for no discernable reason; would replace an image I had placed in the sequence with another one at a
different point. I kept trying to fix this issue however it persisted by just changing another image once I had
fixed another at random, eventually it changed the age rating image at the beginning. I realised this wasn't
typically something seen in a documentary anyway so I simply removed it before the problem continued.

12. Post-productionPost was for the most part a relatively simple task, with that being the case it was also incredibly time
consuming.The main contributor to this extended time period of editing was the narration, it sounds very
consistent in the final product because I spent hours editing it in post.The audio recordings I had to begin with
were rough and were filled with many errors, mainly tripping over words, concequentially it took a considerable
amount of time to not only find every error in the narration, but then also cut it precisely so it sounds like she
doesn't trip up mid sentence at any point.This was of course not the fault of the narrator, due to her also having
a project to work on she didn't have time to rehearse my script, this meant that when we were recording it was
her first time reading the script.This naturally means mistakes were made, thankfully they were easily fixed in
post, despite it taking up most of the time, it had little to no negative consequence as I still had the
aforementioned spare time to refine my product at the end.
As mentioned previously I had to cut out much of my script to allow for the shorter run time, fortunately I found
it post-production that the way I had written the script, made it incredibly to skip over certain parts and connect
others together, making it sound like that's how the script was written in the first place. In addition to this the
audio balancing was incredibly easy complete, initially the music was far louder than my narrator. I adjusted the
music tracks individually due to their length, however I couldn't do this with my narration as there was just so
many cut parts to it. I bypassed this issue by putting all of the narration tracks on the same audio channel and
making a rule for that channel, which automatically prohibited audio going above a certain level, this
completely eliminated the issue and both soundtrack and narration runs at a constant, balanced audio level.

13. Post-production
Due to the lack of relevant content in the interviews that I used, I needed alternative sources for interview or
lecture based information to insert into my documentary to break up the monotony of the narration. However I
did not want to find some random person onYouTube discussing these topics, so I tried my best to stay away
from that, however in one case it was unavoidable. After finding them I tried to find the most appropriate
locations to place them into the video, I feel that for the most part I have done this well, however I feel it comes
up lacking in the interviews that I shot. I tried my best to place segments of interview in, originally I had it in
three places but in the final export of my product I only had 2 instances where it occurs, I made the decision to
cut one of them out of my film because it simply felt too out of place with what everyone else was saying. I think
overall the section flows better because of it, however now instead of the interview to break up the narration
and visuals, the footage of videogames goes on for slightly too long. However I think overall the constant
narration is what drags the film down in this area.

14. Management, technical, emotional
problemsOne area where management became an issue, and to it had major repercussions on the rest of the project. In
the time when I was looking for possible interviews to request, there was a delay in the replies, in this time I
decided to start writing the script for my narration and the scripts for the interviews so they were both ready,
however I forgot to cross reference all of the scripts to make sure what I was asking made sense in the context
of the documentary, which resulted in the mostly redundant interviews I now have. Managing people I was
working with was never an issue, due to the style of the product only a very small team was needed, making it
far easier to control.While filming the interviews I needed someone to ask the questions while I operated the
camera and audio, so that part was completed without any issue, the narration was slightly different. My
narrator found it difficult to focus for various reasons, however due to it just being the one person, I decided the
best way to approach the situation to get the product finished was to not be so strict on the person I was
working with, but occasionally remind them that we were on a time limit.
This method was very effective as they would then try their best to focus on the task at hand.The reason I chose
to approach it this way is because I want to make sure I am maintaining the morale of my production team, as
well as get the task completed, I believe that an unhappy team is an unproductive team.Therefore it is
important to allow them to enjoy themselves on set, as long as an appropriate amount work is also being done.
The one area where time management became an issue was during the production experiment phase, I spent a
large amount of time in this section of the project on furthering my research, instead of getting production
experiments done.Therefore while I was still able to get some experiments, there were certainly not enough
completed to make sure I was fully prepared for the project, this is certainly something I should focus on
improving upon in the future.

15. Management, technical, emotional problems
I have already explained the technical problems and how I either solved them or avoided them in previous
slides, so I won't be recapping them here. There have been times in this project where I would get stressed or
frustrated at certain points.The first most obvious where this occurred was around the planning phase, there
were multiple times when I tried to implement more into the planning, and I simply couldn't. Not by any
personal limitations, but the style of my documentary means that things like a shot list and a storyboard aren't
really things I could implement. However without these extra parts to the planning it felt very empty, like not
much planning had been put into the project, and so I was very concerned that I hadn't done enough.
I took care of this by taking a step back and looking at this problem from an objective stand point. From this
perspective I was able to remind myself about what was actually going to be in my project, and what I actually
needed to plan for.When I did this I realised that what I hadn't planned for, were things that weren't largely
going to be taken into account for my documentary, so there was no need for planning them. A point of
frustration for me was some of the very first edits I put in the documentary; the eyelid opening and closing
revealing a different scene and the portal dropping the camera into a different game.These both use a
masking technique. Personally masking has always been a very frustrating thing for me to do as it requires a
lot of attention to the smallest details after every frame, so it also requires a great deal patience to do
correctly. I was able to get round this by taking occasional breaks from doing this editing effect and focusing
on other areas until it was complete, I'm glad I did finish these effects because they make the intro sequence
far more impressive.