The document discusses a short documentary produced about the Lewis Chessmen in conjunction with the British Museum. Research was conducted on documentary conventions by watching films about famous hip hop artists. Interviews and voiceovers were used as they are common conventions and easiest to film. When filming at the museum, footage was collected of the chessmen and curators were interviewed. Editing took too long on the opening scenes. The documentary was aimed at museum visitors and used conventions like interviews and voiceovers to discuss the mysterious history of the chessmen.

1. Review of documentary
In this task, we had to produce a short documentary about the Lewis
Chessmen in conjunction with the British Museum and Chocolate Films. The
target audience for our documentary was for people visiting the museum who
might want more information on the chessmen.
When conducting research for the documentary, we focused on conventions
on a successful documentary by watching other documentaries based on real
events such as the deaths of hip hop rappers Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. We
also had to research the Lewis Chessmen ourselves to get a good
understanding and knowledge of what our documentary will be about so we
could make it more professional.
I learnt that some conventions of a documentary are to use archival footage
relating to what the documentary would be about which will have a better
effect on the audience because it will allow them to see some of the events for
themselves and show that it really happened. However, re-enactment is also
used in documentaries to show the audience what would have happened if
they have no archival footage, this will have less of an effect on the audience
because the actuality footage might not be accurate. Voice-overs are
frequently used by the presenter in documentaries to give the audience more
information and opinions whilst there are shots of what he’s talking about.
Another convention of documentaries is interviews, which allows people to
speak directly about events; this can take place on or off the screen. Interviews
can give the viewer a sense of realism, that the documentary maker’s views
are mutually shared by another person or source, and thus more valid. I learnt
this information from watching documentaries and researching them.
The conventions I will try to use in my documentary are voice-overs and
interviews. I want to use these because these are very common conventions of
a documentary and will be easy to film and get information from. Archival
footage can’t be used for our documentary and neither can re-enactment due
to lack of historical information on the chess pieces; it would also be hard and
time consuming to film a re-enactment.

2. In our preproduction task, I planned questions for the interview and completed
more research on the chessmen, which helped make my questions better
because it allowed me to ask something different to what I already knew. I also
used storyboards to help structure and give direction to the documentary with
the ideas we had planned for our sequence.
The things that went well were mainly the research of the chessmen because it
helped us give our documentary a theme and what we want it to be about, e.g
the historical side, this was effective because I gave us more direction. In the
research and planning I could have improved the storyboarding because it was
incomplete and meant we had to work in a certain amount of time.
When filming at the museum, we collected a lot of footage from inside the
gallery, the outside and inside of the building and also interviews with the
public and the curators about the Lewis Chessmen. We got many shots of the
chessmen and close ups of the replicas which helped with showing the footage
in the documentary when we used the voice-overs. When editing the footage
together, the group’s technical abilities were good. However, our time
management was poor because we took too much time on the opening scenes
of the documentary. In future, I would make a time schedule to keep on track
of what I’m doing to help complete the work in the time set.
When filming the interviews we used mid shots to establish the person talking
and the chess pieces they we standing next to, this is a common convention in
documentaries. Close ups were mainly used on the chess pieces to show their
detail which is important for the audience to see because of how old and
defined they are, this worked well because it showed the pieces up close in the
documentary. If I were to make another short film I would make sure the
camera doesn’t shake when filming, I would do this by using a tripod. The
lighting was also very dark however we were able to edit that on the
computers and make it brighter, I would make sure there is enough light
needed when filming the shots next time to help improve work.

3. The music used in our documentary was created using Garageband which was
then imported into our film. I think the music help a lot because it made the
chessmen sound very mysterious which was effective because no one has
enough information about them to know when they were made and who
found them so it makes them sound very mysterious.
The strengths of our documentary is the opening and closing to the film
because of the intro we used of two students playing chess and closes with a
humorous wink. Other strengths is establishing where the filing took place and
what the theme was to the documentary.
The documentary changed a lot during the process of editing compared to our
original plans because of the ideas we came up with whilst putting together
the film. We added a different opening and ending and also changed most of
the beginning because it had no direction.
It is appropriate to our target audience because it is aimed at people from the
British Museum and is a historical short film. We used key conventions of
documentaries such as interviews and voice-overs.
In conclusion, I think our documentary was a success but would make some
improvements if I were to make another short film.