Sabrina's Documentary Diary

My video was too big to upload directly to my Tumblr blog, so I uploaded it first onto my Vimeo channel, applying all the necessary filters and ratings. I then uploaded the video onto my YouTube channel, where it will reach a more mainstream audience than on Vimeo, and provide an opportunity to spark debate on whether Page 3 benefits or dehumanises women.

Once I’d obtained the link for my documentary on YouTube, I pasted the link into a new Tumblr blog post and uploaded it, bypassing the 100MB limit imposed by Tumblr for uploading videos directly.

I trimmed down more of the interview shots to keep the documentary within the 5-minute limit, and added cutaways in the form of still images, with slight motion added, to vary the scenes.

I then opened After Effects and created the concluding animation of my documentary, using the newspaper graphic I had created in Photoshop yesterday, adding the title of my documentary to the masthead one word at a time.

Once I’d rendered the animation, which contained a large amount of frames and thus took seven minutes to render, I imported it into the motion videos bin into my Premiere project and added it to the end of the timeline, carefully synchronising the words appearing on the screen with my voiceover.

I added credits using the title tool, controlling the speed at which they scrolled by dragging them in the timeline. Since the background of the credits was red and the normal film background was black, I had to create a red colour matte to avoid sudden colour change.

I re-recorded the parts of the voiceover which had popping in them, and adjusted the volume so it peaked at the optimum levels (up to 12 dB is ideal).

Considering the lack of sound in my documentary, I added background chanting to the beginning of the film, and keyboard typing sounds for the title cards which separate the interview shots.

I collected a voice recorder and microphone and re-recorded the first part of my voiceover, since the first version had pops in it, then I wrote the conclusion to my voiceover on my script and printed it out to put into my project folder.

I recorded the final parts after lunch and downloaded them from the card onto my hard drive (I deleted one of the recordings because I made a mistake while speaking).

Now I could trim the long interview videos down to short vox pops to keep the documentary within the 5 minute limit. I cut out any hesitations or repetitions and stringed all the videos and title cards together, adding in fade-ins and fade-outs to smooth the transitions.

I created a mock newspaper page in Photoshop for the closing of my documentary; I will write ‘Free from Page 3’ (the title of my documentary) onto the red masthead, in the style of that of The Sun and many other tabloids.

I imported some archive footage which I had downloaded from YouTube the night before into my project and began to replace some of the still images with the movies which related to the subject matter. For example, I replaced the image of Jessica Ennis with her Olympic gold medal with the ceremony celebrating her winning the gold at the Olympics. This is in response to the feedback I received in the previous lesson, where I had too much still images.

I re-imported the shots from Viv’s interview into my timeline and cut out the padding from each shot, replacing it with title cards showing the questions I asked her during the interview.

To make it easier to pick out quotes from the interview, I listened back to each shot carefully, and typed up every word in a transcript, highlighting important words and phrases. These will be illustrated with relevant images/videos weaved into the timeline as cutaways.

I collected a voice recorder and microphone, printed the first page of my script out and recorded the part which had not been recorded in a quiet room, this time keeping the cover on the microphone to avoid the popping and sibilant problem I had encountered the last time I recorded.

I watched a couple of videos on YouTube about Jessica Ennis (winning the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics) and the No More Page 3 campaign – I will be using these for shots in my film, so I will need to download them to my film’s assets folder.

I copied the shots of the college and the interview I had carried out with Viv before half-term onto my USB drive, as I had left them on the computer that I work on for editing and couldn’t find them when I was working on another computer.

While I was inserting a shot of the outside of the college, I noticed that it stretched outside of the film’s frame size, so I had to shrink it a little to fit the composition and apply a Ken Burns to give the impression of the camera moving, when it was actually standing still.

I created a montage of Page 3 images, initially using Photoshop, but then I realised I was using too many still images in my film, so I decided to create a moving montage using After Effects to pull each picture onto the screen.

I collected a voice recorder and microphone, wrote up the second part of my voiceover in my notebook and recorded it in a quiet room. Once recorded, I downloaded the sound file to my documentary assets folder and imported it into the voice recordings bin in my project, then added it to the timeline.

I collected more images to add to my timeline and applied Ken Burns effects to every one of them.

  I wrote up more of my voiceover script, collecting images that will correspond with the part I am voicing. My tutor has advised me to vary my shots and avoid too many still images to better attract the audience’s attention.

When I listened back to my recorded voiceover, I noticed pops and sibilants on the audio, because I had taken the cover off the microphone while I was recording. I may need to re-do the recordings.

My tutor advised me to collect some books from the library on media theory and pick out the parts on representation of women in the mainstream media to add to my bibliography. There may be some secondary research on Page 3, which I will only find with the assistance of the Media librarian.

I will need to bring in my own headphones to work quietly and listen more carefully to the audio as I sync up the images and shots with the voiceover.

I created a new sequence for the interviews and put each one of them together on the timeline; I will cut out the most relevant parts as I edit.

I began to add in some of the images I had collected from the past few weeks into my project in Premiere. Since I’d already imported my voiceover from the week before, I could easily trim the duration of the display of the images to fit the length of the recordings.

I filmed some exterior shots of the college for when I will be introducing interviewees and vox pops from students and teachers at the college.

I organised an interview with Viv, a photographer and feminist, to collect her opinions on Page 3 and the degrading effects it has on women and men who view the images.

Once I’d collected both the shots and recordings, I downloaded them onto my desktop and stored them into my project’s assets folder, sorting them by type, then imported them into the project.

I had a short discussion with my tutors about the structure of my film, filling out a checklist of work completed for my blog and a draft shot list of footage required to add to my project.

Opening the project I had created last week, I began to create a title card for my documentary, styling it like the Sun masthead by colouring the background red and using bold, white text in Arial Black for the title. I then created another title with my name – this will help examiners determine who shot and edited the film when it is presented for assessment and grading.

I began to fill in a recce report for my production, collecting information for the weather for the week ahead and directions from my home to the college, assessing health and safety risks which could possibly be encountered during shooting and recording, and requirements for light and sound.

I wrote up a draft voiceover script in my notebook, based on an article I wrote about Page 3 and the research I carried out in writing it, then collected a voice recorder and microphone to record the first two paragraphs. These will be inserted into the film using images of Page 3 and cover pages for The Sun as visuals, which I began collecting more of and organising the assets for the documentary into separate folders.

My tutor gave me some suggestions on books to read for research relating to my subject matter. Ideally, however, I should start shooting and editing as soon as possible, since there is only one month left until the deadline for this assignment.

For the morning session, I watched a 50-minute documentary on the cosmetic surgery industry in Lebanon, told via the intertwining stories of three women, young and old, who are aspiring to have face-lifts and various other surgical operations in an attempt to emulate the styles of their favourite celebrities. The documentary raised the point of why go to hospital when there is nothing wrong with you? Are hospitals being put under work and financial pressure to help people – especially young women who are vulnerable to being influenced negatively by unrealistic body images in the media – improve their aesthetic appearances and help them to look good?

For the afternoon session, I had my third lecture for the module – this time on the pornography debate. Several arguments were raised during this discussion: is pornography degrading to women and thus should be outlawed? Or is in fact liberating, allowing women to have their own sexual fantasies and helping them to experiment with different sexual experiences?