Evaluation

For my practical production, I worked on my own and produced a wildlife documentary called ‘Park Life’. The documentary aims to educate and inform the audience about what animals inhabit our parks, at the same time showing that you do not have to go to the ends of the Earth just to see some spectacular wildlife, as it can be right at your backdoors. The words ‘Park’ and ‘Life’ demonstrate to my target audience, who are people that are generally interested in wildlife, that the documentary is exploring ‘life’, which represents the plants and animals, in ‘parks’.

To succeed in producing a professional wildlife documentary I carried out research into wildlife documentaries such as ‘Autumnwatch’, ‘The Blue Planet’, ‘Wild Events’ and picked up techniques such as voiceover, facts and figures, parallel sound, diegetic and non-diegetic sound, split screen, freeze frame. Also I learnt about the camerawork, such as long shots, medium shots, low angle shots, tracking shots, pans, tilts, zoom etc. and how different angles and shots can give different representations to the audience. After learning theses techniques I went on and applied theses to my own documentary.

I had great enthusiasm when we finally got the chance to start filming, as I personally am interested in nature and animals and could not wait to see what kind of footage I could gain. My big disadvantage, compared to professional documentary makers, was that I was on my own; therefore I could not gain a variety of different angled shots, whereas professionals have more than one cameraman working at the same time. One cinematography technique that I used was zoom in, which is often used by wildlife documentaries in order to make the audience feel as though they are right next to the animal themselves.

When it came to editing my documentary, I used ‘Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0’. Personally I found this time the hardest as I did not have the variety in angles and so I found it hard to construct my documentary, however I did have a large amount of footage meaning that I at least had a wide choice to choose from. After studying “Man with a Movie Camera” (1929), I learnt of soviet montage sequence and decided to apply this technique to the title sequence of my documentary. Also by using mise-en-scene, I put together some of the best shots in the documentary to engage the audience early on. Also the use of having a cross dissolve effect in between each shot allows the sequence to flow. In addition, I applied parallel music and used Terry Devine King’s ‘Nature Trail 3’ as the theme tune for my documentary.

Throughout my documentary, I used a mix of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. The diegetic sound that I used included things such as Mr.Monro’s voiceover, to anchor meaning to the mise-en-scene. Music soundtracks, such as ‘Sly Spy’ by Igor Dvorkin/Duncan Pittoch and Paul Mottram’s ‘Drifting’ to make the documentary more engaging towards the audience. I also used sound dubs on bird songs such as the European Robin and the Green Woodpecker to emphasize their calls and demonstrate to the audience how beautiful bird calls can be. I combined this with non-diegetic sound such as the ‘natural sounds of the park’ to make the audience feel as though they are in the park themselves and to make the documentary more professional and authentic.

From the wildlife documentaries that I studied, I picked up on the fact that they have different styles of presenting a wildlife documentary. ‘The Blue Planet’ just shows animals and have Sir David Attenborough doing a voiceover, whereas ‘Wild Events’, the presenter Jake Willers is presenting the documentary with the camera interchanging between him and the animals.

I chose to do a David Attenborough style documentary. From ‘The Blue Planet’, I learnt that when watching an animal the narration provided by the voiceover explains the animal’s behaviour. This is something which I applied to my documentary. For example, when we see a noisy flock of Starling’s feeding from the bin bags, the narrator says ‘Here is a flock of noisy Starlings squabbling with each other over the best spots to feed as they pick away this bin bag’. Here I am explaining that the Starlings behaviour whilst the audience can see this visually. The voiceover is anchoring the meaning of the mise-en-scene. This is effective as it engages the audience and educates them about the animals and their behaviour whilst being entertained, whereas if it were to be just facts and figures, it would be too formal and uninteresting. This conforms to Michael Rabbiger’s idea that documentaries should include contextual information, but not too much or too little.

From my Module 2 studies of documentaries, I learnt about how a low angle shot, such as the one used in “Bowling For Columbine” (2002), where we see a ‘low angle shot of Michael Moore triumphant over the villain Charlton Heston’ in his view towards gun control, can portray heroism, power or superiority to the audience. From this, I applied it to my own documentary but with a different purpose in mind. Because a low angle shot can be used to show superiority and power, I used this as a way of glorifying the park and make it look more than just a place with trees and bushes. I also combined it with pans and ‘went across a tree with the sun’s ray’s shining through’. Although parks are set aside for our recreational and ornamental purposes, this shows the audience how beautiful the park can really be.

My documentary will be broadcasted at 6.30pm on BBC2, a public service broadcaster. I chose the BBC as it is a terrestrial channel and therefore I can reach a larger audience, furthermore, because the BBC is very successful when it comes to making documentaries such as ‘Autumnwatch’ and ‘Nature Calendar’. I chose the time slot for the programme to be at 6.30pm as this is when documentaries such as ‘Nature Calendar’ are shown. At the same time I am avoiding a clash with the BBC six o’clock news.

To conclude, ‘Park Life’ does educate and inform people about Parks and by using techniques such as low angle shots to glorify the park. Also I have gone through all the animals in the park, showing what wildlife inhabits the park, whilst using a linear narrative, starting from the morning to night in winter time and then waking up to the ‘life giving season of Spring’.

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