The campaign i have chosen is 'Sausage' which is a short animated film about synergy. for this campaign they have used synergy to promote their product, they have done through a short film, a website about the film and a film postcard. They all promote the same product but the more synergy they have with different types of promotion the better the chance of getting more recognition. so if there was only a film for a campaign with no website or postcard, it wouldn't be as recognised as a campaign that does have those things.
these are the 3 different types of promotion:
the website:
by having different types of promotion such as a website it allows the audience to interact with the campaign themselves, which is beneficial for both sides of the party by allowing the audience to feel part of the campaign whereas at the same time it self promotes itself. it can also show the final piece, for example for 'sausage' the short film i have picked they have a lot of information about the film and how it was made and they also have the final piece on showcase for anyone to see. so it helps promote the final piece as well.
the film postcard:
straight away you can tell who the main characters are from the postcard which is beneficial to the audience because it creates a sense of comfort that they already know what is going on. It is also very animated and uses very bold colours that stand out which draws in the attention of the audience and since it is animated you can instantly tell that the target audience is for children and the postcard looks more for a younger age group audience.
the short film:
you can straight away tell that this short film will be good because they display throughout all the different types of promotion that it has won multiple awards so that would be an immediate attraction. it also shows all the different film festivals it has been screened in showing that the target audience is worldwide.
however apart from all the different ways they have promoted it they maybe could've done more by using things such as posters or maybe even through social media by having a page on Facebook or a official twitter account. but this isn't very common for short indie films it is more common in longer films produced by major companies such as warner brothers.
The website that I'll be analysing is a short film called Curfew.
This is the homepage to their website:
The site layout is fairly simple, there isn't too much going on which is good because you don't want to overload the viewer with loads of different tabs or links to click on. It has the majority of different website conventions such as headings, subheadings, hyperlinks, images of productions, they even have trailers for the short film they have produced. however they are missing some of the key conventions of a documentary website such as a search box, drop down menus and even lacking in a wide range of photos, which is bad because it won't make it stand out as much to the viewer.the website itself is easy to navigate as the headings are very clear and big and the colour scheme used compliments this.
The colour scheme used for this website is fairly plain with the majority of the site being grey around the boarders in order for the picture or other colours to stand out more. The other major colour they used is orange because it probably the best colour used with grey in order for the the headings and subheadings to stand out. however i think this colour choice isn't the best because the colour grey enforces a dull and boring atmosphere which could reflect badly on the viewers opinion on the short film.
The font style used is a plain and normal font. they chose this type of font because they didn't want to make it too childish by using a more playful style font like comic sans and they didn't make it too grown up by using something like italic. the reason behind this is because they want the website to target all different types of audiences.
There is a lack of images used on this website which isn't ideal because it makes the website looks less attractive, putting the viewer. There is only one image used on each heading. the images that are used relate to the film itself, they are images taken out of the film.
There are many conventions of a documentary such as-
Voiceovers:
voiceovers will be authoritative is some way, making people believe that they have some kind of specialist knowledge. or in some cases make people concentrate on the 'right' opinion.
Footage:
the footage in documentaries is normally 'real' footage of real life events because documentaries are seen as non-ficton however this is debatable wether they are all non-ficton or not. Footage taken could be from any time period depends on what the documentary is about. for example if the documentary is on an event way in the past such as world war 2, the footage used will most likely be from that time so it will be in black and white and the quality won't be as good.
Still images are also commonly used in documentaries just to add a little bit more information or just to remind someone of a certain event if the narrator is talking about the event.
Interviews with 'experts':
they use a lot of interviews in documentaries really just to back up the authenticity of the message that they are trying to get across in the documentary. Sometimes they might disagree with the message but they add this in sometimes just so they can disprove them.
Sound:
for sound in documentaries they mostly use non-diegetic sound to add a bit of entertainment to it, because with sound the documentary would be quite boring and not very fun to watch. it can also represent different stereotypical sounds for different genres so the viewer knows what type of genre the documentary is.
documentary/short film 1
this documentary relates to our documentary/short film because it about the same problem diabetes.
visuals:
The story is not told told through a narrator speaking over everyone it is told through all the people in the interviews, which is different to other documentaries/short films that are mostly told through one narrator, almost like the voice of god.
They use some animations in this film to help the audience to locate where the problem is coming from when it is talking about the pancreas, which is a very good way of showing this because it is comfortable on the eye due to it being clear and simple, helping the audience to understand more.
for all the interviews that take part in this documentary they use mid close ups to only show the persons upper body because that is what part of the person they want the audience to focus on and usually they will do it with a dark background in order for the viewer to only focus on the person being interviewed. For the interviews they range from experts and every day people in order to expand the knowledge of diabetes through two different types of perspective, showing that it is a serious problem through using experts and by using every day people it can help relate to everyone around the world because they could easily go through the same thing, which emphasises the problem even more.
for the location through out the documentary it varies from health centres to public parks to show that this problem is everywhere in the world, hinting that the target audience is everyone not just any specific people and that is what we want our short film to be like.
for camera movement there isn't much movement because they only want you to focus on either what someone is saying or when they are showing something of importance.
Editing:
for the pacing of the documentary they use a fairly normal pace so that it isn't too fast that people won't be able to understand what is going on and they don't make it too slow that people start to get bored.
to switch between different people they use a lot of jump cuts so there isn't really any continuity going on, they do this because they want to speed up the process a little bit so that the audience won't get bored of watching people sit around together and take it in turns to talk. by jump cutting to different interviews it helps reinforce this idea.
the majority of the scenes edited are direct interviews with either every day people with diabetes or doctors/experts. this is done because this is the most effective way of presenting their message people it gives the audiences a kind of 1 to 1 chat with the person in the documentary because the person being interviewed is talking to the audience.
Audio:
for this documentary there isn't really much non-diegetic sound used at all. There isn't any songs or sound effects used in the entire documentary, there is only some sound at the very begging when the guy is talking about his life but throughout the rest of the documentary there isn't any. Most of the sound used is just dialogue of the people being interviewed, which isn't really effective people sometimes people get bored quickly if it is just speaking and no music.
Mode: This documentary is a Participatory documentary because it employs interviews as testimonies from the documentary subject which is diabetes and it doesn't have any sound as well.
documentary/short film 2
The documentary that i will be analysing is a sports documentary on Arsenal legend Thierry Henry. The point of this documentary is to showcase all the achievements of Henry throughtout his playing time and give an insight on how his career progressed. The intended audience for this documentary is people who are interested in the sport football.
Visuals:
Again there is a lot of mid-close up shots used when different people are doing interviews, not for any particular reason just they only need to show the person speaking, there is no need to show their whole body.
A lot of the camera movement is taken from games that were broadcasted in the past so the camera movement is pretty fast because it needs to be to keep up with player when he is running with the ball.
For the interviews they only use lighting on the person that is speaking and no lighting in the background. they do this so that the viewer only focuses on the person rather than anything behind them.
The location throughout the documentary is mostly on a football pitch because it is showing highlights of his goals, which allows the audience to actually see what the people are talking about rather than them taking time trying to remember that 'certain goal'. making they viewer feel more comfortable.
Editing:
for editing there is a lot of jump cuts between different footage from different times to suggest that he has had a long career and is full of many highlights. it has been edited in a way where the older footage has been shown first and the more recent footage has been displayed after. this is done to make the audience feel as if they are going through his career with him, from the very start till the end, to create a sort of storyline throughout the documentary. there is no real sense of continuity in this documentary because they only want to show the best parts of his career so the use of the jump cuts helps speed up the process of showing the audience his whole career, making the pace of the documentary more fluid and quick. the editor has added in interviews with different people after each clip so that they can explain what is happening in the footage in order for the audience to have a more clear understanding of whats going on.
Structure:
for this documentary it is structured from the start of his career to where it answers the 5 W's who what when where and why, it gives a lot of background information about the player so that people will feel more comfortable throughout the documentary knowing where he came from. it then goes on to inform the audience of his peak in his career. Then finally ends of with how his career ended.
This type of documentary attempts to expose either a person or a topic. Main conventions of expository documentaries are to base them on facts and personal opinions, the video will involve rhetorical questions in order to try and persuade the audience.This is a classic type of documentaries and involves a picture playing with someone narrating over it or explaining the story as it goes along. They often refer to a specific historic event or person, the narrator will speak directly to the audience meanwhile interviews or exclusive pictures are shown of the event or person. here is an example:
Observational Documentary
For this type of documentary the equipment used can be informal, such as the use of handheld cameras. Usually there are no interviews in this type of documentary and also no voice overs. long takes are used in this type. an example of this would be MTV’s teen cribs. In this case for the editing the speeding up of clips helps to go past the less interesting moments and emphasises that a good part is coming up when the speed goes back to normal. they incorporate sound into this type of documentary to make it more enjoyable. here is an example:
Reflexive and participatory Documentary
Participatory-This type of documentary employs interviews as testimonies from documentary subjects
Reflexive-This type considers the quality of the documentary itself by demystifying its process and considering the implications. In these types of documentaries they usually are involved with experiments where the viewer is just as interested about how they constructed the film than the actual content of it. here is an example:
Poetic Documentary
Poetic documentaries are known for having the music develope the tone and mode of the film,music plays a key role in these types of documents as they are usually personal to the people involved as well as the target audience.it emphieses some ascpets of life via music and other things such as camera angles and the editing, this is seen as an artistic way of documenting. here is an example:
This is our first mind map that we did as rough on paper. In this mind map we brainstormed about ideas for our documentary. We wanted the documentary to have a strong message involving Doha in some way.
This is a mind map of our final decision, diabetes. We decided to go with this idea because doha has the highest rate of diabetes so we thought this would have the strongest messege and also one of our group members (Jeppe) has diabetes which is ideal because he knows a lot about it and has connections to main diabetes centres in Qatar.
We must create a 5 minute short film/documentary for our advanced media portfolio. We must produce 3 main projects as a group: a short film, a poster for our film and lastly a website for our film. My group consist of 3 other members Abdul, Maya and Jeppe and we will be producing a documentary as our short film.
