Conventions of a Film/Documentary Postcard

Conventions of a film festival postcard from FaaizaFeroz

Documentary/Film Postcard Analysis - The Offering

This postcard was produced to represent this short film called "The Offering". It denotes a man staring into the distance with a car behind him in the woods. However, it connotes to a man in an ambiguous surrounding, staring at something in both fear and shock. This provokes the intended audience to question what he is looking at, what he is doing there and what is about to happen to him.

In terms of mise en scene, the man is dressed in a large, dark blue coat suggesting that he is in a cold place. The setting is the woods and it is dark creating a spooky and eerie atmosphere. The prop used is the object on the tree stump as well as the car with its headlights on. This postcard uses non-verbal contact as the man is indirectly addressing the camera. The lighting is low-key and the main source of light appears to only be coming from the headlights of the car.

The picture of the scene is a mid-shot showing just enough, but not giving too much away at the same time. The picture also looks realistic and not artificial as well as it being taken at a hard focus.

All of the writing is in white, so that it contrasts against the background and can be easily ready by possible viewers of this short film. The most significant words on the postcards are in bold to stand out against the rest of the text. Also, the font is clear and easy to read. The designer of the film postcard has made sure to include all of the essential information about the movie such as: the title (The Offering), the company who directed the film (Bitter River Film & Media), what awards it has been nominated for or won, where the viewer can vote for them and the basic plot of the short film.

Documentary/Film Postcard Analysis - Mulberry Child

This postcard was produced to represent this short film called "Mulberry Child". It denotes a little girl looking at and holding the arm of an old woman as she walks.However, it connotes to a little girl helping someone of relation to her (possibly her mother) and the little girl looks as if she is in fear that this is the last time she would see her mother whilst, her mother is looking down at her smiling. This provokes the intended audience to question what their relationship is, the story behind the mother's past and her daughter's future.

In terms of mise en scene, the mother is wearing an oversized blue top and black trousers and her daughter is wearing a plaid, brown top and dark brown trousers. The setting is a vast empty field and it has been edited to look very dull and almost grey, which could represent the mother trying to leave her past behind so that she can build a future for herself and her daughter. The prop used is the walking stick used by the mother showing that she is quite elderly, as well as the basket that the little girl is carrying for her mother. This postcard uses non-verbal contact as the mother and her daughter are indirectly addressing the camera. The daughter is looking up at her mother, but her mother is looking down and smiling. The lighting is high-key and seems to be coming from a natural source (the sun).

The picture of the scene is a full figure shot showing a clear image of the daughter and her mother however, the background is completely empty, so not much is given away to the intended audience. The picture also looks realistic and not artificial as well as it being taken at a hard focus. Although, the background had been taken blurred out so the viewer is focused on the mother and daughter on the postcard and no attention is being drawn away by something else.

The writing is in red and white, so that it contrasts against the background and can be easily read by possible viewers of this short film. The most significant words on the postcards are in bold to stand out against the rest of the text. Also, the font is clear and easy to read. The designer of the film postcard has made sure to include all of the essential information about the movie such as: the title (Mulberry Child), the company who directed the film (American Dream Productions), what film festival it has been selected to be viewed at, who the short film has been narrated by (Jacqueline Bisset) and a rhetorical question to provoke the intended audience to start thinking about what the short film could be about.

The intended genre for this film is a documentary/biography that includes drama as well.

Documentary/Film Postcard Analysis

This postcard was produced to represent this short film called "Barking Water". It denotes a two people travelling in a car in a journey. However, it connotes to two people trying to reach somewhere and are racing against time.

In terms of mise en scene, the characters are edited to look cartoon-like. The woman appears to be leaning back on the man for support however, the man is looking away. This suggests that the man and the woman used to have some kind of connection that may not be there anymore. The colour scheme is brown, green and yellow which are all colours associated with nature. The postcard uses non-verbal contact as neither character is directly addressing the camera.

Looking at the aspect of typography, all of the text is in white to stand out against the background. Although, the title is in a brown, bold font to contrast against the rest of the text. Also, all the awards and official selections for this short film has been listed on the postcard.

The intended genre of this short film is drama and the intended audience are people who are interested in stories that evoke emotion from them.

Overall, I think that this postcard communicates effectively with the intended audience.

Conventions of a Film/Documentary Website

Website conventions from FaaizaFeroz

Examples of Film/Documentary Websites

Examples of websites from FaaizaFeroz

Conventions of A Documentary

Documentary Film Analysis: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

                                           


The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a participatory documentary directed by Seth Gordon in 2007. The purpose of this documentary is to follow Steve Wiebe on his journey to attempt to break world record in Donkey Kong, which was set by the legendary Billy Mitchell in the early 1980s.

The documentary begins with fragments of interviews and it has been edited to show who is talking and what their position is.

The screen then fades to black and a quote appears. This influences the intended audience to question what their universe is truly about. The music in the background is slow paced and futuristic.

The camera then cuts to gamers describing what gaming is to them and how it affects their lives.

For example: "I don't drink, I don't smoke and I don't do drugs. I play video games. And that by far is a more superior addiction".

The "Top 5 Games of All Time" have been included in the documentary to show the intended audience what the most popular games of all time are. The background is associated with space to keep with the futuristic/gaming theme.

Small montages of people playing the top 5 video games have been shown to add authenticity to the previous shot. E.g. Pac-man

The documentary also includes archival footage from the 1980s.

A time lapse of the video arcade has been included to show just how many people pass in and out of the arcade every day. Down below is one of the contenders attempting to break the world record for Donkey Kong.

The next shot is an establishing shot of where the next scene takes place - Hollywood, Florida.

Clear and concise information on the world record for Donkey Kong has been provided through the use of information graphics.

Documentary Film Analysis: Free To Play

Free To Play is participatory documentary created by the Valve corporation in 2014. It is about the DOTA 2 Championship which took place in Cologne, Germany. The purpose of the film is to follow three professional video game players as they overcome personal adversity, family pressures and the realities of life to compete in a million dollar tournament that could change their lives forever.

The documentary begins with an establishing shot and also explains the subject of the short film to the intended audience. Each establishing shot further lures the intended audience in as they get closer and closer to the location of the competition, as well as being able to see the competition in action itself. However, to keep the audience's interest, the shots vary quite frequently and the timing of the footage is sped up in particular places of the film. This helps to build the excitement in each individual watching. 

A brief dialogue is provided on each video gamer that is being observed, so that the intended audience receives a brief profile on each one of them. Each video gamer is diverse in their own way as the first video gamer is from Asia, the second from Europe and the third from North America. An equal level of information has been given from each video gamer and they all share their stories from each of their perspectives, making the documentary unique. This is also done so that there is no bias shown specifically to one video gamer.

The documentary has been edited in such a way that each segment from each video gamer is one after the other. This is done so that the intended audience can form their own opinions on each video gamer, without learning the entire story of one of them before being introduced to the next one. This aids in not creating any bias in the documentary.

After each of them have shown their gaming setups to the audience the camera cuts to the last video gamer's (Clinton "Fear" Loomis') face. It is a close up of him putting on his headphones, signifying that the competition is about to begin.

Tension is built throughout the documentary as an emotional connection is formed between the audience and each individual video gamer. This leads to the intended audience actually caring about whether each player succeeds or loses in the tournament. However, this also builds conflict as each player is on a separate team and, only one can become victorious in the end. The emotional connection is formed through the interviews, which are done by people who have known the gamers the longest (e.g. their brother or their best friend). The interviewee aids in giving history to each gamer by showing the intended audience archival footage or photographs that are edited in during their interview.

The intended audience is able to form a professional as well as personal connection with the players as not only interviews from family members or friends are shown, but interviews from experts in the industry are shown as well. These experts help to provide a professional background for each video gamer.

Apart from information on the gamers, information on the actual competition itself is provided too. This is done through information graphics which are clear and concise. They show comparisons to what the differences are, in the competition, even to the uninformed viewer. The information graphics are edited in such a way that as the dialogue is describing each one, they are being shown to the audience, making it less tedious for them to understand the information.

Contrary to the quick and concise narrations through the documentary, the timing of everything is clearly shown with text. This enables the viewer to know exactly what is happening on each day of the tournament.

Intrigue and tension is also built through showing what is happening in each gamer's life outside the tournament and how they are fairing inside the tournament.

The archived footage shown is the gameplay of events that take place throughout the tournament. Along with it, is a CGI video, which creates a more dramatic version of the game to give the idea that you are seeing it from a "gamer's perspective". The first image shown below is the gameplay and the next image following is the remake in CGI form.

Finally after the competition is over, the intended audience is shown the aftermath of the video gamers. This is done through: establishing where they are now with an opening shot, observations of their life as well as a personal interview and a final closing statement from each video gamer.

Documentary Film Analysis - Atari: Game Over

Documentary Film Analysis – Atari: Game Over

Atari: Game Over is a participatory documentary that was directed by Zak Penn and released in 2014. The purpose of this film is to uncover all the Atari 2600 game cartridges of “E.T. Extra Terrestrial” that were tossed into a landfill in the 1980s. The point of the film is to discover what happened to this specific game and why it was so unsuccessful. Another reason is also to find out why it provoked a collapse in the game industry. The impact of Atari: Game Over is to help the intended audience learn a lot more about the ex-directors of Atari, former employees of the company and analysists with sufficient experience to adopt a to the authentic effect of “E.T. Extra Terrestrial. The reasons of the collapse in the game industry were superficially covered in documentaries such as Indie Game: The Movie, but Penn deepens on them.

In terms of camera shots there are various establishing shots and close up shots. The establishing shots are mostly of the landfill site where all the Atari 2600 game cartridges were buried and the official Atari headquarters. Archival footage is used from the early 1980s and they are all in black and white. The footage is of the landfills before they were uncovered. The reason that they are in black and white is to show the time lapse of how long ago they were buried. It could also represent the collapse that Atari caused in the game industry. The close-up shots are of the different areas in the landfill where the cartridges were buried, the layout plans of the landfill, the footage of all of the games that Atari produced, images of Atari’s game consoles and children actually playing the Atari games. The interviews are done with the interviewee as the main subject and the background out of focus. The interviewee also talks through the footage playing.

Location-wise, the documentary is filmed at the landfill site and in offices where the interviews take place, as well as the Atari headquarters. Penn did not use multiple locations to film, as he wanted to focus more on the intended aim of the documentary and not on the aesthetics.

The interviewees were not afraid to express their true thoughts on Atari as a company itself. Many strong opinions were voiced and the inside story of what really happens inside their headquarters was finally revealed. This could be one of the main reasons for the collapse in the game industry. Howard Scott Warshaw said many thought-provoking things during the viewing of the Atari Headquarters. He was also very sarcastic, clearly suggesting that he completely blames Atari for producing “the worst game ever”. For example: ‘This is a great lesson for people on their first day of work. If people are doing drugs bring your own so you fit in’ and ‘The company motto was we take fun seriously but it should have been we take fun intravenously”.

During the editing process, the names of each person as well as their job appears, so that the intended audience sees them talking to clearly show everyone involved in this plan to discover what happened to all the game cartridges and whoever played a significant role in the company, Atari. There is a montage of pictures showing the evolution of technology. The point created by the technology shown is that the younger the generation, the more modern the technology they use. A short clip of Indiana Jones is shown to tell the intended audience whom Joe Lewandowski compares to. Time lapses are included of the landfill site showing days passing by after all the cartridges were buried.

For sound, futuristic upbeat music and music from video games Atari’s video games are used keeping in theme with the documentary.

Further Research into Participatory Documentaries

Since we have not fully decided what mode of documentary we are going to produce, Adrian, Yousef and I decided to take a further look at the 3 modes of documentaries that we would possibly like to choose. These 3 modes are: Participatory, Expository and Observational. The documentary mode that I researched further is the Participatory mode.

Types of Documentaries

Types of documentaries from FaaizaFeroz

Brainstorm on Chosen Idea - Video Games

We chose the topic of video games as it is an area that most people would overlook as something unimportant. However, video games can be highly influential and affect the day-to-day lives of gamers and the people around them. We looked at the social impacts that video games cause, such as: how the media represents video games, external impacts of video games like the addiction that they cause and internal impacts of video games like positive or negative social interactions. We decided to highlight the positive social impacts of video games in our documentary. We also came up with possible titles for our documentary. Adrian, Yousef and I came up with the ideas and I displayed them on paper.

Brainstorm on Ideas for a Documentary

We explored different topics which all had either a social or political message. The ideas that we brainstormed were: Inequality, the environment, depression, video games, cyber-bullying and judgment (how people view themselves and each other). The aspect that we chose to research further and choose as the subject of our documentary is video games. Adrian, Yousef and I came up with the ideas and I displayed them all on paper.

Introduction

The production team includes myself, Adrian and Yousef. We are making a documentary on the social impacts of video games. The areas we are exploring are: how the media represent video games, the external impacts such as the addiction that they cause and the internal impacts such as the social interactions created between a gamer and other gamers or people. The documentary will be either be expository, observational or participatory.