The student undertook a project to create a short documentary film about the Lewis Chessman pieces housed at the British Museum. They researched documentary filmmaking techniques and used conventions like archival footage, voiceovers, titles/text, and interviews. The student conducted interviews and research to gather information. Storyboards helped plan shots and structure. The final 3-minute documentary provided historical facts about the Chessman pieces for museum visitors. Feedback was that it was educational but could have been longer.

1. Review of documentary
In my group were Hadila and Dylan we had to produce a short film
documentary about the Lewis Chessman pieces conjunction with British
Museum and Chocolate film factory. Our target audience was for people who
visited the British museum and wanted more factual information that they
couldn’t see on the plaque about the Lewis chessman pieces by watching a
short film/documentary.
In my group we did some research about documentary conventions to find
ways to improve and make our documentary as professional looking as it can
be. To help us to get an idea of how to make a successful documentary we
watched a bit of Biggie & Tupac, Kurt & Courtney, An Inconvenient truth and
Fahrenheit 911 documentaries to show us some conventions that a
successful documentaries use.
I learnt few conventions of a documentary they are exposition,
reconstruction, montage and visual coding the main ones we are going to use
are archival footage it’s a video or picture of the real incident or thing on the
specific date and time of when it happened to show historical events or to add
additional information in the film. Another convention is a voice over it’s a
commentary or soundtrack during the production this is when the filmmaker
can speak directly to the viewer, offering information, explanation and
opinions. Another is text and titles simple showing a quick way of conveying
information to the viewer. Lastly another convention we learnt was interviews
it’s quite common in documentaries and it allows people to be filmed and
speak directly to the camera giving out additional information you would need
in your documentary.
The conventions we used in our documentary are archival footages, titles and
text, voice over and interview everything I have explained before in the last
paragraph. I want to use these conventions because first of all archival
footage will help with showing the Lewis chessman pieces and the historic
footages of the Lewis chessman to the viewers. Titles and text to show who is
speaking to the camera and give a quick way of conveying information to the
viewer’sshowing who these people are and what questions we were asking to
get the information we wanted to give out to the viewers about the Lewis
chessman. I would also like to add commentary or soundtrack so if an image
shows up on the documentary as it goes along of the Lewis chessman pieces
images a commentator will still be talking behind it about the chessman
pieces giving out information. Lastly I would like to add interviews as well into
our documentary so it can feel like the interviewees are talking to the viewers
and make it more interesting. I want to use all these conventions because it
will make my documentary look as professional it can be and it will give it
more educational purpose.

2. I undertook various preproduction tasks to help with making the
documentary to the best it could be. When my group did research on the
Lewis chessman we searched the history on the internet, asking questions in
interviews to the curator and other interviewees that had a good knowledge
of these chess pieces or even just even to the public to make our
documentary as factual and reliable it could be. Also making our storyboards
to plan out a structure of the documentary and how it was going to be set out.
My group planned to get different shot types outside of the British museum to
establish where the documentary was set and were we was filming and
establishing shots inside the British museum but also we added images of the
Lewis chessman pieces between the establishing shots. These were useful
because it helped me and my group to get a clear idea of what we were going
to do and gave us a clear structure of how our documentary was going to be
about and what our documentary was going to look like when we started
editing and our main topic of our documentary was about the history of the
Lewis chessman pieces.
The things that went well were the storyboards and the interviews. These
were effective because the interviews we gathered all the information we
needed to make our documentary as factual and reliable as possible as our
aim was to make a documentary about the Lewis chessman pieces history
that you don’t see on the plaque in the British museum and give facts to
people who doesn’t know about the Lewis chessman pieces at all. By
gathering all the information we needed we was able to give a clear structure
to our documentary and make a storyboard that would make our
documentary successful. In the research and planning I could have improved
the way we filmed and caught the footage and the archival images we had
collected and try to make it a longer length as our documentary was roughly
around 3 minutes when we should have done it till 5 minutes long.
The strengths in the documentary and the actual production process were
the footages we had collected were the interviews, actual footage of the
chessman pieces, close ups of the replicas, inside the gallery and inside and
outside around the British museum. The things that went well with the whole
production were the footages and information we had collected to add into
the documentary as it doesn’t show on the plaque in the gallery of the Lewis
chessman pieces. The things that did not go well were the time length of the
documentary we made which was 3 minutes long. The teamwork we always
got together and tried to make our documentary as successful but sometimes
there would be times were only one person would be in doing all the editing
for one day as the others would be poorly on that day and couldn’t turn up.
The shots that worked well in our documentary were the panning and close
ups outside the British Museum and as the footage we caught slowly panning
down to the columns which gave it a nice effect of where the documentary

3. was established also what went well was the shots of the replicas and the
Lewis chessman pieces in the gallery it looked professional as there was
good lightning in the room. The bits that could have been improved were the
sounds of the backgrounds when we were catching some footage some
sounds sounded a bit muffled when other members of the public were
passing by at the time in the gallery which made this documentary a bit hard
to hear for the viewers if we didn’t sorted it out in the editing process.
The editing process of the documentary was a bit hard for me as this was my
first time doing anything with editing I found it difficult but luckily I had people
in my group who knew few skills and taught me how to apply to the
documentary like fading visuals, text & titles on live type and the background
music on garage band. What also went well in the editing process was we had
a clear idea of the structure as we done the storyboard to help us how we
was going to make the documentary and the archival images we added into
the documentary. The parts that did not go so well was the time management
we kept between in the group as most of the time one person would be poorly
to be in and if we had enough time we could of made the documentary a bit
longer to 5 minutes. We searched for images that we thought that looked
professional and didn’t have a copyright on it but we got most of the images
from the British museum website and added into the documentary. We had a
commentator talking facts about the Lewis chessman while the images will
fade or pop up and this is when the fading visuals came in handy as it looked
much nicer and more professional then every picture or footage would have
popped up and wouldn’t look as smooth. My group also made the background
music on garage band we made it into a classical upbeat song and after
making the background music we placed it on to the footage all way through
but quietened it when there would be a commentator speaking. The strengths
of this documentary are its defines the history of the Lewis chessman pieces
but the weakness of this finished documentary is the time length where it’s 3
minutes long when it should have been 5 minutes we tried to long the shots
out but when we did it made it felt to long and boring and we had a aim were
we wanted to keep the audience attracted and not bored. The plan we had
first were to make our documentary stick to the original piece of the
storyboard but we tried to keep it that way but while we started to edit there
was a few changes of different shots at the beginning and decided to add
some other footage of the Lewis chessman pieces into the beginning of the
documentary with the outside exterior of the British museum shots.
Our target audience was visitors of the British museum who would like to
know more about the Lewis chessman and visited the gallery before and
would like to know more information about it that they couldn’t see on the
plaque and we kept it age appropriate to all ages so it was suitable for the
family.

4. We made this documentary as professional as possible and we tried to add all
the effects and editing skills we had to our knowledge to make it a successful
documentary. After we went to the lecture room in the British museum to
show to an audience and gave a speech of what we done in the past 2 months
we got feedback from the audience and the main comments we received was
it had a good humour to it but also had a good historic facts for people who
didn’t know nothing about it and it was an educational documentary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IABpeGc233g&safe=active