Linking research to product

1. Linking research to product
There are a lot of things to be considered when thinking about some
of the creative decisions to be made for the product but the viewing
of these documentaries definitely helped finalise some of these
decisions. One of the very first things we made a decision on was the
formal interviews. Something that was quite common was the use
layout of the formal interviews. We saw this layout of the interviews
as important as it helps convey to the audience what the expert
actually does, which is definitely something we want to portray as
they are the brains of the documentary, they provide the experience
and knowledge that the documentary requires. Another creative
decision made by us will be to use the Rule of Thirds. In all of the
documentaries, not once is the subject placed in the middle of the
frame. We saw this as a vital point due to the fact that by placing
them in the middle of the frame, it can imply an uncomfortable
environment whereas if they are placed on the sides of the frame,
there’s more room in the shot, especially for mise-en-scene type
elements and props that may present them more. Another thing we
found interesting that we would use are captions. In a lot of the
interviews, they use captions/titles briefly saying/explaining the
name of the person, their profession, what they do etc. We found
that these titles would be a good way to tell the audience more
about these people as we want the documentary to seem as
personal as possible to the audience due to it being quite a personal
topic that we are choosing to look at.
In terms of how some of the Vox Pops are organised we are tending
to go down the route of including snippets or short clips of them
throughout the documentary. This seemed to be quite a similar
convention within a lot of the documentaries as they are a lot more
basic views but are still the voice of the people so are still extremely
important. The interviewers are no more important in the interviews
than the interviewee’s themselves. Since we are planning to have 2

2. presenters in the documentary, we found that representing this
chemistry was vital so we are looking at including two cameras: one
directed at the subject and then one directed at the interviewee’s
themselves. This will hopefully highlight this chemistry that we
would like to portray to the audience.
Background footage and music is also very important. It seems as if
in a lot of the documentaries, there is a hefty amount of background
footage. This footage can range from simply someone scrolling
through a phone to simply using the internet. Some of the common
footage used tends to be things like scrolling through the internet or
using footage from YouTube videos. This background footage is key
to the success of the documentary as it can outline a lot of things
even if it doesn’t have words over it. It also fills up a lot of the space
of where footage will go as the documentary will be mainly filled up
with background footage. Archival footage is just as important as
will. This includes more real life footage i.e. news reels, news reports
etc. We look to include information from these and use them as
statistics. Finally, the narrations are also quite important. The
narrations will accompany a lot of the statistics and will cover
whatever isn’t covered within the presenting.