According to Stella Bruzzi, “documentary is a negotiation between reality on the one hand and image, interpretation and bias on the other”. We think that this applies to our documentary, as we edited our film in order to present our desired opinion. Our documentary is biased because we consecutively attempt to transmit a certain ideology. We do think that this detracts from the quality of our documentary as any interpretation of anything is, to an extent, fictional, as it is a personal opinion. We believe that documentaries by definition, are biased, and cannot be unbiased as the aim of documentaries is to inform the audience of an issue, while attempting to get the audience to agree with a certain point of view. Our documentary is an expository documentary, as we attempt to expose the unjust stereotypes which are held of skateboarders.
We choose to put the photo shoped image at the beginning to introduce out documentary. We imported an image of a skater onto photoshop and edited it with dark colours to reflect the serious nature of our documentary. This image is a signifier of the generic picture of skateboarders which people automatically imagine due to stereotypes and bad press. The iconography of the dark colours shows the fear and distrust which some feel regarding skaters, as is the graffiti style text, which shows the illegality which some associate with skateboarders. The audience is made immediately aware of our subject matter. It also added a unique element to our documentary.
We were going to add an animation of a skater which group member shona made to introduce the documentary. However, we were unable to do this as the quality of the animation was considerably impaired by changing to a movie (MPEG) format. Its original format was not applicable to our film. We were also unable to incorporate the title made by group member Reiss as the title would make the audio for the rest of the film out of sync.
We added titles in an attempt to remove the feeling of anonymity our documentary would have otherwise had.
We shot James on a sofa to show him in a comfortable environment and to avoid the interview looking staged and awkward.
We cut away to a skating clip to make our documentary more aesthetically appealing and to play into the conventions of skateboarding documentaries which we had identified in our pre production research. We found that a typical convention of skateboarding documentaries was to cutaway to skaters, we identified this in documentaries such as Hot Chocolate, which consecutively showed footage of skating throughout the documentary.
We choose to use a young persons perspective throughout in order to give our documentary a unique selling point through its positivity. We choose young interviewees so that the audience would identify with them, and as a result, identify with our message and our interviewees point of view. As our target audience is young teenagers, we used slightly older teenagers for our interviewees so that our audience would aspire to their ‘skater lifestyle’. We positioned the audience to agree with our message by attempting to create a sense of identification between the interviewees and our audience - we did this by using young interviewees who had friendly and welcoming dispositions and appearances.
The mise-en-scene of Edward's shot with a river in the background, and on a sunny day to co-inside with the light-hearted message of our documentary. We choose this interviewee because he was articulate and calm, and we thought that this would subvert stereotypes and represent skateboarders as intelligent and unoffensive.
We cut away to laughing skaters in a skate-park to reinforce the message that skateboarders are happy and normal people. The Mise-En-Scene of this shot shows skaters in their regular environment and gives the audience some background info, while the non-diegetic music reinforces the positivity of our documentary.
We attempted to include lots of cutaway footage of people skateboarding as we noticed that this was a convention of many of the skateboarding films which we looked at pre-production, such as "Hot Chocolate". We thought that the use of this convention would appeal to our target audience and make our interviews more interesting, as we could cutaway to skateboarding clips while people were speaking - this tecnique was used in "Scratch", where during interviews there were frequent cutaways to performances.
The shot of interviewee, Jen, was intended to make her appear more approachable, as we thought that her outward appearance may be interpreted as intimidating and this may conflict with our positive message of skateboarders and youth. We thought that the dog, fireplace and soft lighting may make her easier to identify with.
The cutaway to the clip of the skateboarding video game was initially accidental, however, we thought that it worked well as it broke up Jen's relatively lenghtly interview, gave the audience something aesthetically pleasing to look at and gave some diversity to our cutaways.
This clip (bad boy clip) was mainly for comedic effect and to show the irritation which skaters have at being negatively stereotyped.
We included a social worker in our documentary to give a professional and an authoritative perspective opinion. We tried not to force our message on viewers and thought that this may make our documentary slightly less biased, while still enabling us to transmit the main message. We filmed her in her office to show her professionalism and position of relative authority.
We choose skaters who were possibly slightly older than our target audience so that they might be aspirational figures, increasing the market for our documentary. We included people smiling with friends to sell a lifestyle of popularity to our target audience, young male teenagers, who would aspire to this. We tried not to make our skater interviewees too old, so that our audience will still be able to identify with them - further increasing the potential market for our film.
We added a voiceover to our documentary to incorporate some factual information, and to avoid our documentary being completely opinion based. We did this in an attempt to educate our audience and abolish any negative stereotypes, and to present a positive picture of youth.
We added this clip to give our audience an interesting insight into the background of skateboarding, allowing them to better understand the opinions expressed in our documentary.
We used this cutaway to cover up a zoom which was unfocused and shakey.
The Mise-En-Scene of this shot with Daniel shows the freedom and self expression which skateboarding represents for him. We thought that the lighting and visuals of this shot made it one of our most aesthtically pleasing interviews.
We choose to begin to expose some of the harrasment and verbal abuse which skaters have been subjected to simpley because they are skaters. We thought that this would challenge stereotypes.
The Mise-En-Scene of Edwards shot with the teddy subverts stereotypes of threatening skateboarders and makes him appear as non-offensive as possible. We also thought that it added subtle humour to our documentary. The non-diegetic music which we have used throughout also reflects the non-offensive tone of our documnetary and the non-offensive message which we are trying to transmit regarding skateboarders.
We had a phone interview with Rory Milanes but the audio was very unclear, so we decided to give the script to someone to read for us
We thought that the subtle movements which Daniel made, made him look at ease with the situation and the interview.
We continued addressing stereotypes which others held of skateboarders and hence, Daniel himself, and attempted to discourage these by trying to make the audience identify with him. We thought that consecutively using the same people (Edward, James and Daniel), allowed our audience to identify on a more personal level with our interviewees. If they were liked, our audience would be more likely to take on board what they say.
In this shot the Mise-En-Scene shows the relaxed side of skaters in their own enviroment. We thought that our ending showed skaters in a positive and non-menacing light, and also attempted to provide our audience with positive representations of modern youth.
Daniels jumping shot emphasised his friendly and carefree personality and acted as a humourous segues to the ending credits.
While we adhered to genre conventions such as voiceover transitions and cutaways, we thought that our documentary is untypical as it presents a positive message about contemporary youth and seeks to show the creative and enthusiastic side of youth which is often neglected in the media. Popular documentaries such as Micheal Moors film focus' on a negative situation or mindset and elaborate on how deep rooted this negativity is. We decided to subvert this convention and present a positive perspective.
