Interview - harassed skateboarder

Tomorrow I will conduct an interview with a skateboarder who has been harassed. As of yet I am not completely sure how the interview will go as the interviewee has not disclosed under what circumstances he was harrassed other than that it was due to him having a skateboard at the time and "looking like a skateboarder".

Our feedback from the audience screening advised that we get an interview of a skateboarder who had been harrassed or assaulted and stereotyped, and hopefully this will help us achieve our goal and round off our documentary.

First Audience Screening - Feedback

A concern was expressed about the sound on our film, and we will bring the sound metre to six and normalise everything.

Some also thought that we should change the music - we may keep this music but also add some different music to different sections of our film.

We also need to add some footage of what London authorities have done to prevent skateboarding.

We will also interview a skater who has been harrassed.

Revisions

Originally our documentary was going to show different sides of the 'skateboarding argument' those for and against, but as we've gotten closer to the completion of our project, we've found that this isn't feasible. Not only were we unable to get in contact with all our interviewees who were against skateboarding, but they didn't fit in with the tone of our piece, and broke the flow of our film. So we decided, instead, to make our documentary focused on the more positive side of skateboarding, using all our interviewees who enjoyed and practiced skateboarding to reveal the creativity of the activity. Even though this makes our documentary biased I think, personally, that it won't effect our piece, and that forcibly trying to make our film unbiased could not only be fruitless but could also damage our project in the long run.

Shona ☺

Styles of Animation

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm interested in animation, and before I started my animation project  I researched different styles of animation, mainly styles used in documentaries, or education films. I first looked at 'Persepolis' an Autobiographical piece which was originally a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. The film was done entirely in black and white and had very fluid animation making the piece flow neatly from one scene into another, also the drawing style was simplistic and cartoony but very effective. While I admired the style I didn't think it suited the subject matter of our documentary, however I decided to incorporate the cartoon-like style of the drawing into my animation as it worked well with the image skateboarding creates.

 I then looked at 'Waltz with Bashir', an Israeli feature length animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon war. The colours were dark and brooding corresponding with the subject matter, and the animation was very direct, with no wasted movement. I found the animation style itself very appealing and decided to attempt to use a similar style for my opening animation. I've also taken the bold block colours and shadows which suit the rebellious side of skateboarding very well.

Shona ☺

Radio Advertisement

We intend for our radio advert to be broadcast on XFM at 16:15pm. We have chosen this time as this is when our target audience will be on their way home from school or are already home, this will mean that they will be most likely to hear the podcast. We also chose this time slot as this is during 'Dave Berry's' broadcasting time, this particular presenter is quite young and he is the most likely presenter to attract a youth audience. He tends to include things which would attract younger people, and hence our target audience, such as celebrity gossip and new music. XFMs 'rock and roll' reputation means that it would appeal more to younger people who are interested in non-conformist sports and activities such as skateboarding - unlike radio stations such as 'kiss fm' or 'heart' as they tend to appeal to a more mainstream audience, and for this reason, we have decided that XFM would be the ideal station for our podcast. 

We have also chosen to use "the motorbike song" as the music for our radio advert. We found this fitting as it was indie, upbeat music, which we found fit in with the tone of our documentary. 

Last minute filming

Today I was able to arrange and complete an interview with a youth worker. An outline of my questions and topics of discussion are as follows:

Do you think that young people are badly represented by the media?




Do you find that people hold unfounded stereotypes on young people are certain groups of young people?


In your experience, are skateboarders generally regarded as being anti-establishment?


Do you think that the stereotype of skateboarders as anti-establishment is a valid one?


Do you agree that a general trend for authority figures is to regard skateboarders, and young people as a whole, as delinquents?


Do you think that skateboarding is badly represented?


Do you think that the general public regard skateboaders as anti-establishment?


Do you think that older members of the public, or people from certain social backgrounds regard skateboaders as anti-establishment?


Do you think that older members of the public, or people from certain social spheres regard young people in general as delinquents?


Do you think that such stereotypes should be disgarded or that they are simply exaggerated truths?


Do you think that the state establishes such biases for any particular reason?

Hopefully this interview will add more film to our sequence and give a different perspective to our film. Tomorrow we will capture this and continue editing.