Final Documentary and Thumbnail

Here is my final crime documentary video and thumbnail.

Here is a link just in case the Youtube video gets taken down.

Here is the thumbnail:

Here is what our documentary would look like in a Netflix home page.

Reflection:

Honestly, the result is very unsatisfactory to me. Due to the documentary and thumbnail being procrastinated on (it was not my job), everything looks super rushed and unprofessional. I feel rather disappointed and wished that I would've gotten to edit the documentary instead because I had to interfere and help a lot with it throughout the end anyways and I felt like we just wasted so much time that we could've spent to revise and rework on the documentary. Overall, I just felt like we could've done so much better given our resources and time. We ended up straying so far away from our intended vision and storyboard and part of it is probably because I wasn't even able to see the process on the editing at all during the middle of the project. It's just such a shame because I felt like we had such a good concept with really bad execution. Next time, I will probably be in charge of the editing and I will try to learn from the mistakes made on this project. 

Critical Self Reflection

Here is my critical self reflection for the documentary project.

Here are the questions being answered:

CR 1

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

CR 2

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

CR 3

How do your products engage with the audience?

CR 4

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Branding in media is known as the factor that allows the audience to create connections through themes, making them associate multiple pieces of media with one another.  Branding is important because it creates a sense of coherence so that storytelling becomes  more clear instead of confusing for the audience who is trying to keep up with the story(ies). In our project, branding was established as for example, our thumbnail and documentary share some similarities with one another. Firstly, the title text for both of them use the same typography. This is because we purposefully designed the title (especially the Christopher text that was handwritten) to be eye-catching and memorable to the audience, therefore if they see that specific red text elsewhere, they will associate it with this documentary.

Another visual similarity is the character which is Christopher. He is depicted as the main focus in both the thumbnail and documentary, the thumbnail even blurring out the other characters to support this. The main theme we tried to portray was a sense of fear and danger due to the impacts of the crime to the victim, the cool colour scheme we tried to use enhanced this sense as they connote lifelessness and paranoia. 

The thumbnail’s purpose was to hook the audience and make them interested in the contents of the documentary. Our documentary was made to raise awareness for the dangers of sexism in influencing how we react to certain situations, in this case the teenage boy in the documentary let his guard down from the teenage girl, resulting in the kidnapping. By putting forward this issue in our documentary, we are aiming to increase awareness of the dangers that lie between these misconceptions and hopefully prevent crimes like this in the future. Though the acting doesn’t really convey much, the visuals do. For example, the thumbnail picture has all the other student’s faces blurred out connoting  a sense of distrust that the victim will feel forever after the crime. 

For our documentary opening, my team and I decided to conform to some genre conventions such as having the survivor from the crime retelling the story while revisiting the site of the crime. We were inspired by the documentary opening for the Netflix episode of Worst Roommate Ever (2024) as it would be the best way to share vague details of the crime, simultaneously creating suspense as the audience knows that the victim survived, making them wonder about how the victim survived. This use of the Hermeneutic code by Barthes will help to make our audience question all the details of what happens next in the documentary, hooking them in. 

Another convention used by crime documentary openings is also having clips of interviews with the parties involved in the crime. This includes the criminal themselves, those close to the victim and others. In this case for our documentary, we decided to make one of the main focuses the interview with the criminal. Though it isn’t completely revealed, it is heavily implied that Harper (shown below) is the criminal.

This is shown through multiple elements, like mise-en-scene where Harper seems anxious (due to having done the crime) making her sweaty and the acting done by me where I purposely tried to make her act jittery, messing up details when answering the interview questions. The close up camera angle was chosen due to the majority of spontaneous interviews being done with this angle and because this camera angle can capture smaller details like sweat. These all work together to connote Harper is secretive. 

However, we subverted the usual conventions of the criminal being represented as inhuman. Typically, producers tend to dehumanise the criminals due to their crimes, making them alike to monsters instead (Representation theory by Hall) preventing audiences from forming sympathy by isolating them from the lives they lived outside their crime. For our documentary, we wanted to subvert this and instead wanted the dominant reading (Reception theory by Hall) to be that even “harmless” humans can be criminals. We did this by using recreation scenes to show what the criminal did at home, which fit into the usual stereotypes of teenagers, showing that she too was seemingly like the others. We made this decision especially since the criminal is a girl, further making it unexpected that a boy “stronger” than her would fall victim. 

During the research process, I personally thought the research of watching the multiple documentary openings helped a ton as we took lots of bits and pieces of the documentary openings we watched such as some of the conventions mentioned above, combining them into one opening. This was the best method of making our documentary blend in with others in the same convention. Next time, I’ll be more specific with my research, only researching ones that relate to the genre my team will try to recreate (Kidnapping and stalking). This way, we will be able to fit the specific genre conventions better through observation.

As for our target audience, we are mainly trying to target young adults or students from the age of 16 to 25. As the characters involved in our documentary are teenagers, those around their age would find it more relatable. There are many people that are just like the victim, feeling that they can’t speak up or perhaps just have the same personality as him. In this sense, the audience may possibly feel a personal connection (Personal identity from Uses and Gratification theory by Bulmer and Katz), making the documentary appeal to them due to the heightened empathy towards Christopher. Social relationships could also be a reason which attracts the audience as this documentary may also become a talking point between the audience (teenagers), resulting in more people also watching due to curiosity. We are also trying to target the people living in the area of the crime. Due to the proximity of the crime, they may become worried about their own safety since they can also become a victim of a crime like that. In this case, they will watch the documentary for surveillance in order to become more aware of how these types of crimes start and how to avoid getting involved in them. 

As for psychographic, surveillance also applies for those who watch this documentary due to their fear of getting kidnapped. The text in the thumbnail uses the Julius Sans One font aside from in Christopher. This text was created by my handwriting and is meant to impersonate Harper’s writing as she is obsessed with Christopher. For those who don’t know this, they may now be drawn in by a hermeneutic code (by Barthes) as they may wonder why the text is written in such a cutesy manner especially since it is a crime documentary. Wondering this, they may watch the documentary due to curiosity. This code can also be applied to the blurred faces of students in the background. The audience may now wonder if anything also happened to those in the background and may also start to question more as the details of the students are obscured.

Our documentary represents some social groups such as teenage girls and boys.The preferred reading we had in mind for teenage girls is that even though they may act innocent, there may be more than meets the eye. We showed this by displaying the “double life” of Harper showing that she was able to try and hide her crime by lying in the interview, shamelessly while she would be a stalker in private (easter-egg in the recreation laptop scene). Through mise-en-scene such as Harper being well-groomed, this made her also seem trustworthy as the ability to take care of yourself connotes being responsible and safe. 

For teenage boys, we wanted to send the message that men can also be victims. This will mainly be conveyed as the victim himself is a man. Other than that, the victim, Christopher would be represented as stronger as his actor is much bigger than Harper. The use of his clothing also supports this as hoodies usually connote masculinity or a sense of unapproachability. Even as Christopher seems strong, we wanted to show that that doesn’t make him invincible. 

Sexism is an issue we would like to address as misogynistic views make society look down on male victims of crime, calling them weak and incapable. We want to validate male victims as they tend to hide their stories due to being ashamed. The way we chose to portray this was by having the plot twist be that Harper was the criminal since again, it is hard (with sexist views) to imagine that a teenage, younger girl would be the perpetrator. Although this is the case, we didn’t downplay the situation and many were worrying about Christopher. We hope that the audience will take this and understand that Harper is more than just a teenage girl, but a human that like any other is able to hurt others.

Thumbnail Research and Development

This post outlines the process of development and research that we did in order to create our final thumbnail for the crime documentary opening.

Thumbnail Research and Development:

This was mainly written by Rachelle while I threw in some of my thoughts and opinions for a few parts of the research.

I had searched for crime documentaries on Netflix to look at their thumbnails as reference. A common convention that I noticed is the usage of medium to close-up shots of key figures such as the perpetrator or victim. These types of thumbnails made me question what those people did and their part in the story (e.g. "what crimes did they commit?", "what happened to them?", etc). I think that using thumbnails like this would help engage audiences more as it evokes an emotional connection. Another convention that I noticed is the use of dark color schemes. They typically use black, blue, and green color schemes. I noticed that these colors create an eerie and ominous atmosphere and create suspense as the audience feel that the documentary will reveal unsettling information, especially with the dark lighting used in most of them. Some documentaries use images of crime elements as thumbnails, such as the crime scene, weapon, etc. This feature gives the audience a hint of the crime, but doesn't reveal too much that they know exactly what the crime is. This follows the hermeneutic code cultivated by Barthes which refers to any element in a media product that isn’t fully explained, existing as an enigma for readers. This increases their engagement as it makes them question the context of the media product shown.

I made a few thumbnail sketches based on these conventions and showed them to my teammates to discuss which one we think would convey our message the most effectively. We want our audience to feel drawn to our thumbnail and feel uneasy about it, yet also curious about what our documentary is about. 

Hand holding door handle — Image of crime element

• A hand holding a door handle as a thumbnail would connote an invasion of privacy, this would evoke anxiety within the audience. This would make them question what was behind the door, who's holding the door, etc. However, door handle images are very commonly used in crime documentaries (as seen on the 'Worst Roommate Ever' thumbnail on my research above), so our thumbnail wouldn't really stand out from the others.

Silhouette figure behind window at night — Shot of key-figure

• Using a silhouette figure behind a window would create a very ominous and eerie atmosphere when audiences stumble across it. This thumbnail would definitely give the context of stalking to be connoted by the audience. The imagery of someone watching you from outside the window (the thumbnail is shot to look like the audience are actually looking out the window), is very disturbing, so this would very likely intrigue the viewers, specifically our target audience.

• After some thinking, I decided not to use this since taking outdoor pictures at night would be very difficult to do as we (me and my teammates) don’t have the proper lighting equipment to shoot these types of pictures, and none of our houses has windows that are clear enough and/or the windows are on the 3rd floor of the house. 

Picture of perpetrator during the interview — Shot of key-figure

• This is a very commonly used thumbnail in crime documentaries (as seen on the research I did). Pictures of perpetrators as thumbnails, usually medium to close-up shots, catch the audience’s attention as it creates an immediate connection between the two, making the audience question the perpetrator’s personality and what crimes they did. However, showing the perpetrator upfront will bring down the mystery. Especially since we don’t want to completely reveal the perpetrator in our documentary, this thumbnail will not be suitable. 

• I discussed with my teammates and we came to a conclusion that this thumbnail would be too cliché as it is too often used in crime documentaries, we want our thumbnail to stand out.

Basement — Image of crime element 

• Basements are often associated with captivity, this fits our kidnapping theme very well. The picture of the basement will be shot from a higher angle, this creates suspense as it makes the audience feel more vulnerable, as if they’re looking at something sinister down the basement. This creates fear and anxiety within the audience, but also makes them curious as to what lies in that basement and what crimes have happened there.

The street/neighborhood — Image of crime element

• Showing the street/neighborhood as the thumbnail creates a sense of familiarity and relatability, highlighting the fact that these crimes can happen anywhere, even in familiar spaces. However, I feel like a picture of only the street/neighborhood would be bland as it doesn’t really correlate to any of the crimes in our documentary. This wouldn’t be engaging enough for our audiences due to the lack of “eerie elements”, which may lead to less views.

Victim in crowd with face blurred and red circle around the face —Shot of key-figure 

• This thumbnail would display the theme of stalking very well as the blurred face creates a sense of curiosity within the audience, guessing who the victim is. The red circle highlights the fact that the victim is being ‘targeted’, this connotes the vulnerability of the victim, even in crowds. This further highlights the fact that stalkers can identify and isolate their victims, even in public spaces/crowds.

• After further discussion with my teammates, we thought that blurring out the victim’s face would create the unwanted connotation that the victim is dead (he’s not). So, we tried to think of a different thumbnail that revolves around this idea of putting a red circle around the face as it is a dramatic effect and would attract the audience’s attention.

Close up of the victim’s eyes – Shot of key-figure (Jasmine developed this)

• Jasmine gave me the idea of using the victim’s eyes as a thumbnail so that it immediately evokes a sense of uneasiness. The extreme close up shot of the eyes of the victim (being wide-eyed) could convey a sense of fear towards the audience. Wide eyes connote a person being scared or panicked. In addition, we could possibly add the detail of the criminal being reflected in the victim’s eyes through edit to give the audience a little peek as to what the victim is scared of. This would use the Hermeneutic code by Barthes to make the audience ask questions as to what the criminal did to make the victim become scared.

Victim and perpetrator in a class picture with everyone else’s face blurred and red circle around Harper (perpetrator) and Christopher’s (victim) faces – Shot of key-figure (Jasmine developed this)

•  While discussing the thumbnails with my teammates and teacher, I suddenly had an idea, which is to use a class picture with the victim and perpetrator where their faces are circled red and everyone else’s faces are blurred out. I thought that this would be good as it would add a sense of realism as the picture would seem to come from real life, reminding the audience that the crime actually happened in real life. This may hook the audience who will become more interested. In addition, it would fit the narrative as Harper mentioned that Christopher wasn’t close to her and they only met through clubs. Using this idea can help the audience see that the crime wasn’t predictable and before it, they seemed like just regular students that attended the same school. 

Medium shot of victim in a classroom picture with classmates around him with their faces blurred out – Shot of key-figure

• I tried to think of other ideas that could combine both 6th and 8th thumbnail ideas and had come up with this. I had decided not to choose the class picture with Harper and Christopher as the main focus as we don’t want to reveal who the perpetrator is yet so putting the focus on those two would make it obvious. Moreover, since putting red circles around the victim’s face would make it seem like he didn’t survive the crime and died, I decided to scratch that idea.

After further discussions with my teammates, we decided to use the medium shot of the victim in a classroom picture with classmates around him with their faces blurred out as a thumbnail since we thought that this would convey our message/dominant reading that says “anyone can be a victim”. On the first look, people would assume that Christopher was the perpetrator when he’s not, this means that anyone, no matter their race, behavior, and appearance can still fall victim to these types of crimes, which is why we would like to spread awareness regarding personal safety to our audiences, so that they can always be aware of their surroundings, to prevent themselves from falling victim to these crimes.

Thumbnail Research and Development (Typography R&D) written by Rachelle

This section of the thumbnail research was also mainly written by Rachelle though the rest of the team and I threw a few ideas here and there.

I had done some observations with the usual typographies used in crime documentaries (I looked back at the thumbnail picture research screenshots on Netflix), and I realized that the font used is typically always bold yet clean.

I went on Google Docs and scrolled through the font options to search for fonts that would fit our documentary. Here are some of the best fonts I found. 

Where Did Christopher Go? – Impact

When I was scrolling through the font options, this font (Impact) immediately caught my eye. This font is bold and direct, which makes it a great tool to grab the audience’s attention. Additionally, the font is very intense, which paints the theme of stalking and kidnapping well, as tension is created using this font. Despite this, Impact may be too bold of a font to be used on the thumbnail as it would take the attention away from the picture, and that’s not what we want. There may be a detraction in the emotional impact of our thumbnail image as the font may come across as too aggressive. 

This font gives off a formal look, this connotes that the documentary is professional. Audiences would be attracted to this font if they are looking for a high-quality, serious documentary. In addition, they may also feel as if the documentary has an important message to convey as they may feel like the documentary will discuss investigative and/or intellectual crimes, due to the professional font used. However, the Cinzel font isn’t really eye-catching and may lessen the intensity of the thumbnail, which goes against our kidnapping and stalking theme, or even crimes in general. I personally also think that this font gives off historical vibes, which doesn’t fit our documentary as it features modern high school students.

Where Did Christopher Go? – Times New Roman

The Times New Roman font is neutral, which gives the audiences a serious tone yet doesn’t distract them from the thumbnail image either. This font is also formal and very readable, creating a sense of professionalism. However, this font is frequently used in many different contexts (not just documentaries), so it may not create any impact to the audience and may just come across as bland. Additionally, it doesn’t implement any sense of fear or anxiety into the audience, which takes away the purpose of our thumbnail.

I personally find this font really unique and decorative as I don’t see this font being used often. Due to the font’s uniqueness (as it looks different from everyday fonts), the curiosity within the readers could be evoked due to the sense of unfamiliarity. This font gives off mysterious vibes to the audience, which may make them question the hidden truths and unresolved issues, increasing audience engagement. This font is also eye-catching and isn’t bland, yet still clean and readable, increasing the chances of audiences being intrigued by the title yet also not having their attentions completely distracted by it so that they can still feel the emotional impact from the thumbnail image.  

After some discussions with my teammates, we decided to use Julius Sans One as the font for our thumbnail typography. This is because we want to catch the reader's attention and differentiate our crime documentary from others, but not too much (which is why i chose a clean and readable font) that it takes their attention away from the thumbnail image, following the genre theory cultivated by Steve Neale, which states that a media product must be different enough to stand out from other products, yet similar enough to fit into a category. 

Reflection:

This blogpost was very useful for our project as again, its purpose was to help us develop our documentary thumbnail. Although Rachelle did almost the entirety of the blogpost, I participated in discussions regarding the development of the thumbnail as well as developed some of the ideas for the thumbnail concepts. I had fun coming up with potential concepts for the thumbnail because we had to have as many creative inputs as possible. By further analyzing the connotations helped make pathways onto which direction the thumbnail should branch into. For example, initially the eye idea for the thumbnail was just supposed to be purely of the victim's eyes showing fear. However, after further pondering, I thought that since wide eyes connoted to fear, we could also add an extra detail of the criminal being reflected as that would further justify the reason for fear being present in the victim's eyes. Initially, Rachelle was supposed to do the entire blogpost but I opted to assist with a few of the development due to time constrictions so I just wanted to help in any way that I could. I did almost have a little argument with Rachelle because of the division of task though but thankfully, it didn't escalate due to us properly communicating with one another.

Editing

Here is the editing process for our crime documentary. This post was written by Jocelyn.

Issues:

All of our clips start with our clapperboards to show the scene number and number of takes, which would help us a lot when it came to editing, as we could find our best clips and put it in editing really quickly. However, when I input all the clips into my editing software (Microsoft Clipchamp), none of the clapperboards were shown in the thumbnail (one did, but that’s one out of hundreds of other clips) so it was harder for me to see which clips were which.



Editing app (microsoft clipchamp) lags out often, it takes longer to make changes to the edit. Fortunately for the most part, the app runs smoothly and all goes well, but sometimes there’s a chance the software lags out and makes the editing process slower.

Premiere pro and davinci isn’t loading on my laptop and i dont have the time to wait for it to load/work (playing it safe cuz deadline stinks - using the crappy free editing software i normally use)

Process

Scene 1 (All background audios are found and researched by my teammates Jasmine and Rachelle)

Sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UTRApG_9kY&list=PL_jsUlLsYUHrVuGhz-91VNcx-KGTIioPv&index=6 - Gathering Darkness by Kevin Macleod

I first tried an audio from youtube called “Gathering Darkness” by Kevin Macleod, but I felt like it was more like a creepy lullaby than it was an introduction to a crime documentary. Rather than feeling like a retelling of a horrible crime, it sounded more like a cinematic to a short horror film, which makes the audience lose the idea that this documentary was about a terrible crime that had happened, and instead get the idea that this is just a creepy story being told. We don’t want this effect as obviously we don’t want the audience to be out of touch with a real life crime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zvQoPyY2XE “Dark tension rising music” by Mattia Cupelli

The second audio I tried was “Dark tension rising music” by Mattia Cupelli on youtube. I think this audio induces more anxiety and tension than it did the last, as it wasn’t as loud and overexaggerated as Gathering Darkness by Kevin Macleod. I matched the text for the intro to our documentary to come in at the beat dropping on 0:11 seconds into the youtube video, I had also cut off a few seconds in the start as the text in our intro only appears for a total of 10 seconds, and audio’s intro on youtube was too long.

Video:

The part of the scene where Devasya (our actor for Christopher) walks through the streets to revisit Harper’s house, the scene of the crime, I wanted to put a time and date in the bottom left corner of the screen pointing out that Christopher is with a camera crew to film a documentary, after the crime has happened.

This was the first font I chose, at first glance I thought it fit the scene and it looked like code on a computer, the way I wanted it to look like. However, after I looked over the editing, I realized it was too bubbly and just didn’t look right.




This was the second font I chose, one of the other reasons I didn’t like the first typeface was because I didn’t like how the zeros in the text had a dot in the center of it. This typeface with just a strike through the zeros looked a lot better on screen and the overall look of the typeface didn’t seem too bubbly.


Scene 2.2 (Harper places her bag on a chair)

My team and I tried out a different angle to see if it would look better.

Originally I preferred this first angle better, because it showed Rachelle (as Harper’s reenactment actor) walking into the frame and placing her bag on the chair. Post-filming however, when I played through the various clips we shot for this scene, I realized the lighting wasn’t on our side when it came to this angle. The backlight from the window was too bright and made the rest of the scene look darker, and it just didn’t make sense to use this.



I looked around for that other angle we tried out, and using this clip just made more sense. The backlight wasn’t against us, and the overall scene isn’t too bright or too dim (both pictures of the scenes aren’t color graded, these are the raw clips). I decided on using this version of the angle instead.



Harper’s main interview

The interview footage is taken from a news report that was live days after the “kidnapping”. I struggled to find a news template that looks good when edited onto the raw recording - I don’t have the Capcut application so I decided to find templates online in google. The problem with this however, is that the template would be still pictures and not animated.

This is one of the few templates I chose. Though it’s mostly because it looks bad and I could’ve chosen a better template for an example, I noticed the news template that are just still pictures would just look awkward on screen.



One of my teammates, Cheryl, has capcut and knows her way around it. However, we saw that all the news templates in capcut were short in duration, and the interview video is a total of 1 minute and 50 seconds (most of the templates in capcut were barely reaching 20 seconds). Picture below is taken from Cheryl’s capcut app.



This was the first template that was chosen. I commented on it and mentioned that the white borders above and below the screen didn’t look good, and ended up making the size of the frame look so squished. Another issue we had on this one was that this was the longest news template Cheryl had found on capcut, and it was only a minute long.



In the end, we ended up scrapping this as we were in a pinch for time so we ended up not using any news logo. Using this template would also obstruct too much of the clip so it would be a bit distracting.

The next thing to fix was the problem with the color. I’m not sure why but I’ve tried to import the file for Harper’s interview multiple times already but the color keeps on becoming super desaturated and yellow-ish. I tried to color grade to make the colors pop out better like the original video clip.



I accidentally made it a bit too cool-toned which will be bad for continuity since the color of the clip needs to be the same as the one playing on the TV interview clip.



I got rid of most of the cool tones so I think this is the best I could get to make it as similar as possible to the original. I do think that the pink tones from the original clip have disappeared and the contrast also increased quite a bit. Thankfully, it still looks natural.

Scene 4

For the scene where Harper walks down the staircase, we started shooting the scene at around 6 pm, which was an hour too late. The sun had started to go down and it ended up looking like there was a time skip from day to night. We planned another shoot and started recording hours earlier, however before we did another shoot, I tried to fix the lighting myself but the color grading ended up ruining the overall look of the scene.

First shooting:



Second shooting:



I’m glad we had a reshoot for scene 4, there was a window behind where my camera was placed at (refer to the pictures on Behind the Scene photos on Day 7), and the difference in time of day made Rachelle (our teammate and actor for Harper’s reenactment scenes) appear in a different shade and color, whilst the background stayed the same. The colors just looked off on the first shoot, Rachelle was in a darker blue tone as it was darker outside, and in the second shoot she was filmed on a different day but roughly the same time that the previous reenactment scene was shot at.

Ending Scene:

Jasmine and I discussed the title card and previously, we thought that it would be good to make the thumbnail and the title card have the same image, but after reviewing other crime documentary openings, this would not fit the genre at all. Instead, Jasmine went ahead and made some backgrounds that we could use for the title card. There are two mock ups, one with the blood splatter effect and one without. We decided that it would be a good idea to use a picture of the neighborhood as the background as it would almost answer the question of where Christopher went.



With the blood splatter.



Without the blood splatter. We decided to use this one so it wouldn’t look too crowded.


Reflection:

At some points in time me and Jocelyn would have really good conversations of things to add in terms of editing for the documentary but we would often forget to document about it which is something I realized too late. For the editing, I tried my best to help like finding audios and background songs to use for the documentary. I am glad that I helped to narrow the options down for Jocelyn to make it quicker for her to pick the most suitable song to use. Another thing I suggested was color grading the clip of Harper's interview when I first saw how yellow and pale it was. I felt as if it wouldn't match the usual conventions of clips from crime documentaries. I told Jocelyn about it and she tried her best to make it look as similar as possible to the original clip. The editing process was really really slow especially once we realized very late that all of our clips did not add up to even 3 minutes. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out transitions and what content to add in order to make the clip last longer but eventually, we did it. I think that this was one of the most nerve-wrecking process and I really think that next time we should've planned more and taken more shots in order to make sure that we had more than just the bare minimum. I do think that the editing makes the storytelling a lot more engaging though. This whole process was a giant trial and error and we just kept trying different concepts and ideas to see which one would fit the best. Communication was a bit hard though at times since sometimes we wouldn't understand each other's vision leading to a few cases of miscommunication. I think that given the chance next time, I would like to take over a portion of the editing.

Behind The Scenes

Here is the blogpost for all the Behind the Scenes that we had throughout the production process of this documentary opening. This blogpost was entirely written by me, Jasmine.

Behind the Scenes:

Dates:

24th August, 2024: Day 1

On this first shooting day, we didn’t record much as we didn’t really have our script and storyboard finalized. We decided that it would be best if we just took the day to scout through the area and become more familiar with it so that we would be able to accurately create the scenes and avoid misunderstandings when it is actually time to shoot the scenes. Previously, we had made a plan to add a river scene to the script, however after looking through the location, we decided that it was too dangerous due to the environment and made adjustments to the script to remove it. 

31st August, 2024: Day 2

In this session, Jocelyn and I (Jasmine) aimed to just experiment and make mocks of the interview scene as well as the recreation scene for scene 2. When I arrived to Jocelyn’s house, I made a quick storyboard sketch in a couple of minutes as seen below:

Although it was super rough, it helped me share my vision with Jocelyn so that she could direct the scenes with what I had in mind. After that, we tried to actually act out the scene. To record this since it was just a mock and so it wouldn’t take too long to transfer the files, we just used Jocelyn’s phone to record the scenes.

After trying to act out the scenes based on the storyboard I made, Jocelyn and I realized that there were a lot of flaws. These flaws will be further explained in the storyboard development page, however since we identified the flaws by doing the mock, we decided to adjust the storyboard accordingly after.

After that, we went ahead and did the mock for the interview scene in Jocelyn’s room again since we wanted to experiment with angles and practice the script as well.

After filming this mock interview scene, we came to the conclusion that having the medium shot angle as well as having the scene shot straight-forward seems a bit too stiff and premeditated. After filming this scene, we decided to watch videos of crime interviews online and decided to use a phone camera next time with a close up shot to make the quality worse and make it look more spontaneous like a live TV interview.

Below is the image from the video we found most inspiring for our final interview shoot:

Live interview with Stephen Mcdaniel after the death of his victim.

(During these scenes recorded with just me and Jocelyn, it was a bit hard since the other’s were unavailable and it was just the two of us so we weren’t able to get as many behind the scenes shots.)

3rd September, 2024: Day 3

On this day, we recorded what we thought was the final recording for scene 1. Recording for this scene was a bit tough due to the neighborhood people that would walk by the road in a way which would disrupt our recording. Other than that, there were also problems with motorcycles which would also be a disturbance once in a while and also quite dangerous. In the end, there were birds in the background whose sounds made the recording sound really nice so we planned to use the sounds in the background of the scene. However, ultimately we decided to change actors so unfortunately, we had to scrap this recording of Christopher’s scene with Thompson.

7th September, 2024: Day 4

 

Tripod setup with the camera and angle we planned to use.

On this day, Jocelyn and I prepared to shoot scene 2’s interview scene. At first, we tried to shoot outside on the street, however we changed our minds because it was too bright and hot outside which caused the shadows to become too harsh and the actor (Jasmine, aka. me) couldn’t open my eyes because the sun was way too bright. In addition to that, since we were shooting pretty early, there were more motorcycles than usual making it dangerous to shoot outside. Instead, we decided to change the narrative to make it so that it seems like the TV interviewer asked Harper to get an interview on the side of the road or somewhere indoor. When we recorded with the camera, we realized that the quality was way too good.

Instead, we decided to use Jocelyn’s iphone so that the quality is not as good as it would’ve been with the camera. In addition, we also thought that the shadows were still a bit too harsh. To combat this, we lightened the side of the actor’s (Jasmine) face where the shadow was cast by using my iphone’s flashlight. In the end, I think that we got our final shot and all we need to do is edit it in post production to lower the quality just a bit as well as add the live TV elements such as the logos, etc. In addition, I was sweating so much because of the heat but I think that this gave it a better effect of looking nervous for the interview so it all worked out!

8th September, 2024: Day 5

Behind the scenes pictures taken by our actor, Devasya.

This day was used to solidify and record the final cut for the recreation scene in scene 2. We used Rachelle as the actor acting as Harper as she looks similar to me, Jasmine. Following the guidelines set from the test recording we made when I acted out the scenes on day 2, the vision was made simpler. However, this didn’t make things a lot easier as recording this scene took a lot of attempts and retakes. Our cameraman and editor (Jocelyn) decided that she wanted to try out other concepts for the scenes just in case so she can pick and choose which clips would look best while just experimenting. Obviously, since the actor was also different, she naturally had to take time to adjust to the demands of the scenes and made her share of blunders. 

In hindsight, we should have photographed behind the scenes footage for Christopher’s (Devasya) scenes too. However, since we were all focused on the recording of the scenes and helping around with directing it completely passed our minds. As usual, there was the problem of motorcycles obstructing the production of the video but in the end, we managed to record a solid version to use for the opening. We were really glad that Devasya was able to help us act because it was a really last minute decision that none of us could have predicted but it ended up being all well!

11th September, 2024: Day 6

This day, our editor (Jocelyn) uploaded the interview scene with Harper onto youtube to record scene 4 where the interview scene (being on live TV) would be playing in the background. It was a bit tricky to execute this scene since the actor had to be perfectly timed with certain scenes in the interview to make it look seamless as a transition in the final version of the opening. The lighting was also a problem as we had to race against the time as if we took too long to record, it would’ve been visible that the time had changed since the lighting would be darker. We wanted the lighting of this scene to be similar to the one used in the interview scene with Harper as we wanted to make it seem like Harper just came home from the interview, becoming panicked as she is scared of being found out.

13th September, 2024: Day 7

Jocelyn’s camera set up on the staircase. I, Jasmine was tasked to look through the window in order to notify Rachelle when she should come out on time because we had to match it with Harper’s interview scene recording audio.

Here is what the entire set up looked like.

Today we reshot scenes 4 and 5 due to the unsatisfactory results of the previous attempt. The first notable improvement was the sound quality of the “TV” as instead of using the original TV audio like last time, with her help we decided to use Vina’s phone set on the max volume which made it so the audio was loud and clear, sounding like an actual TV. Another change was that the lighting was bright as this time, the weather was sunny. The last time we recorded this scene, the sun was hidden behind clouds so it was dark, causing the lighting to be different, disrupting the continuity of the scene, something we had predicted in the location scout and risk assessment. .

Ignore the weird positioning but I looked through Jocelyn’s camera to pick the most suitable picture to use for the thumbnail after taking the pictures earlier in school. I discussed it with Jocelyn and we decided to use the picture where there was only Christopher (Devasya) surrounded by a lot of classmates instead of Harper being on the thumbnail because that would just spoil the plot twist.

Reflection:

Similarly to the weekly progress blogpost, this post helped me to keep track of the work that was done in every meeting. This post also gave me the opportunity to think deeper on what could've been improved or what was good from every meeting session. Other than that, it also provides proof that we had actually done the production of the documentary opening ourselves and it will help us become more credible. One of the main problems for this blogpost was the lack of behind the scenes pictures we would sometimes take. Due to all of my team members and I being focused on the actual producing of the process, we would sometimes get too immersed and forget to take pictures from behind the scenes. This gave me a tough time because I would have to use the bare minimum of pictures for this post. I also think that it was quite tiring to write about every single session because it is just like recalling and retelling my memories from the day. In the end, I did gain the motivation to write the reflections for each session because I felt like every time I did that (retelling what happened from the day) it helped it all stick to my memories better. Next time, I will definitely remember to take more behind the scenes shot or at least have 3 people for each session because for this one, a lot of it was just Jocelyn and I, making it hard to take behind the scenes pictures because she is the cameraman while I was the actor, making us both occupied during the recording.