The document summarizes the process of creating a documentary about the Lewis chessmen. A group researched the chess pieces with help from the British Museum and a film company. They learned filming and editing skills. The group planned interviews, collected footage of the chess pieces and museum, and edited the documentary. Feedback was positive and showed the group successfully educated viewers about the chess pieces in an entertaining way.

1. Introduction
My group and I have been working on a short documentary for the past few months
about the Lewis chessmen and what we had to do was find out so information about
the Lewis chessmen and put it on this documentary we did that with the help of the
British museum and chocolate film company. How did company help us? Well the
British Museum gave us an inside to the chess pieces and we had back stage passed
to the museum and places where the public didn’t have access to they let us record
great shots of the museum and the chess pieces which helped us introduce our
documentary and also we had an experts that know a lot about the Lewis chessmen
they helped us a lot on our documentary because they gave us so much information
about the chess pieces and the history how they got there and it was really helpfully
for my group to find out and gain knowledge about it also we got couple of shots of
the experts and put it in our documentary. Chocolate films helped us with how to
make our documentary look better, like teaching us how to edit and do the voice
overs, the lighting and all those technical stuff, the target audience for this
documentary is people who are visiting the museum and might not know much about
the chess pieces.
The research process
I personally learned and gained a lot of information and Knowledge during this
research process because I found out so much history behind every chess piece
before this process I didn’t know much about the Lewis chess pieces. I have never
made a documentary before so to understand how to make a successful one that’s
worth presenting it to the British museum my group and I had to watch a lot of other
documentaries from the past some about the Lewis chessmen some about other
things and that really helped my group because we would catch the things that we
should not do so our documentary could be successful , for example we watched this
one documentary that the lighting was really bad, and it was getting boring because

2. they was repeating the same shots and the sounding wasn’t clear, so my group and I
took that in to consideration and acted on that we checked that our sounding was
clear, and lighting was right and made sure that throughout whole documentary it
was interesting because many documentaries find it really hard to keep peoples
interest, for example it will start really good and when it gets to the middle it will
get repetitive .
I learned some conventions of a documentary are real footage of events, for example
we had some shots of the museum people walking around, and the other footage of
the expert speaking about the chessmen makes it all real. Another convention would
be technicality of realism, including natural, sounding and lighting these have big
effects on the documentary because this is some of the stuff people look in when
watch a documentary to find out if it’s a successful or not.
The conventions that I used in my documentary is text/tiles because images ,labels
and dates etc. tend to be believed unquestioningly and are a quick and cheap way of
conveying information to people. Another convention that I used would be the
sounding we had great music playing throughout the whole documentary, this has a
big effect on the viewers because the music we put on gave that impression that
something big was about to happen which gave the audience more excitement to
watch the documentary, also another convention I used was visual coding we had
scenes when the expert was talking, had the chess pieces behind him giving that
impression that they are in the museum, we had another shot of 2 members of my
group playing chess and which shows that young people play chess and that is a fun
game.
The pre-production process
As a group we started with the story board first planning it talking about what we
going to do and what shot should go where it was good start with because it pushed

3. us in right direction, then we started planning the interviews talking about what
questions we wanted to ask, who is going to get interviewed and if we wanted to ask
the public any questions.
My research planning was really effective for me and my group because it gave us an
idea of how documentary is what footages you need what type of information you
need other things that went well for us was planning interviews it was good to plan
them so when we went to the museum we already knew what questions to ask and it
was helpful for our documentary because we got great footages of the expert’s
where we ask them questions and the reply back.
Things that could be improved would be the way I researched things I didn’t get
detailed information and could have used my time wisely to find out more
information about the chess pieces and maybe better questions to ask.
The production process
The strength and weakness of producing our footages was it was hard for us to
recorded some footages without it being shaky because it didn’t have some
equipment’s to use to make the video camera stand still the strength would be us
having some great shots of the chess pieces.
We collected some great shots of the chess pieces close ups of their faces and
getting all the details that’s on them also we got some shots of the museum itself
inside where we showed where the chess pieces where people walking around then
we got some shots outside the museum panning shots.
What went well is the way we came together as a team, everyone knew what they
needed to do, and had a job role we all did well individually and as a team we could
of used our time wisely we spend more time looking for good shots that we didn’t
edited as much as needed.

4. The shot that’s worked well was panning shot we used during some parts of the
documentary and it looked really good. Something that we could improve would be
the lighting because some parts of the documentary was dark and could of look
better if we invest that time in.
The post-production process
The editing process was good experience I personally gained lots of knowledge from
it learned how to fade and put different shots together and everyone in my group
had a go and learned how to edit and our group worked really well together because
everyone got to try during the editing process. One thing that didn’t go well is the
time management we wasted lots of time rendering the clips and watching them
instead of getting started with the editing.
The transition we used that where effective is visual styling that was effect because
it gave impression that this documentary was about chess pieces from the beginning
because we had two young boys playing chess, another transition would be the
fading it was effective because it made our do documentary look more professional.
The pictures we used where effective to our audience because we had one image of
the chess piece when the expert where talking about it and it just pops up this is
affective because the audience can see what she’s talking about and look on the
details she’s talking about.
We created the music on crag band got our own beats and the affect are song had is
that it had that sound of something big happen made the audience want to focus on
it more because they think some big is going to happen and that’s the impression we
was given to our audience then we matched are song to the interview so it would
still play in the background while the expert is speaking.

5. I personally think our final product is good, we spend lots of time on it did the
editing and one thing I liked about our documentary is we brought sense of humor in
to it the game of chess many young people can agree on that’s is a boring game but
we made it look fun buy having some funny jokes on it, it’s very interesting for
people to watch it. The weakness is for me the lighting I think we should of spend
some time on the lighting because some clips are dark and didn’t look like a
professional documentary so that was my only issue with it.
It changed a lot compared to the original one because once we got the feedbacks we
knew we had a lot of work to do first we didn’t do any fading our music was more
like rock music and had nothing to do with museum, also we didn’t add any pictures
to it so there was many things that was missing, also are original idea was so serious
we just wanted to have the interview and couple shots of the museum and make it
as simple we can.
Our final product was appropriate for are audience because it gives lots of
information about the chess pieces and that’s what most of our audience wanted to
know history about the chess pieces and some facts so they really enjoyed it and we
made it more fun to watch by adding some funny scene in to the documentary to
make are audience more interested.
One conventions I used was visual coding, I used that because it gave the audience
idea of what this documentary is about and just makes it look good also the place we
choose to film at museum it gives the audience impression that it’s about chess
pieces and makes it look professional.
The shot types and the lighting the sound the voice over all these styles we used for
are documentary and it look really good and professional it had big effective on the
viewers because it makes it look interesting and look nice.

6. The process took most of our time and it was worth it we managed to put all the clips
we needed in order cut some clips and we did some faded to it the editing process is
very effective to the audience because it makes it look professional and entertaining
because it looks like an actual documentary.
We got so many positive feedbacks from our audience in the museum teachers and
friends, we got feedbacks saying how entertaining it was and the fact we made it
look like a real documentary the editing skills, and how fun we made the game of
chess look, we managed to give information and educate people who don’t know
about Lewis chessmen in fun and very entertaining way.