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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.