Supporting Peices

I have started to look at some options for my supporting peices. I created a mind map of the options I had and decided that I would create a Billboard advert and that Sophie and I would work on a podcast together. I choose to do a billboard as I enjoy creating posters etc and it gives me a chance to work on photoshop which I enjoy doing. I also choose to do this as it is quite different from our main peice and gives me chance to show some other skills. The podast should be fun to create aswell as I have nevr done this before and is something new for me to try.

Sam

Practice

This was a short practise documentary we created to test ourselves and see how well we did. Looking now I can see some of the things that I need to improve such as the positioning of the camera. We also tried to create a shaky hand held effect but held it too still so this wasn't effective. However I am Glad we did this as now I can see what needed improvment and can do this for my final peice.

Documentary Research and Analysis

I was looking at documentaries made by well known producers and was researching them on Google. I was looking on Google and came across Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore's own website. This is great as now I can study a lot of the documentaries that they have made and get ours as close to professional as possible. It also gives me a chance to see a large range of camera effects and lighting etc. to use in my documentary. I can also maybe look at some things used that brake the usual codes and conventions of a documentary and see how they work.

Sam

Documentary Beginning

As I said in a previous post I mentioned about the beginning of our documentary showing flashing images of paparazzi. Whilst we where out at the Premiere in London we managed to get some good shots of celebrities and paparazzi taking photos of celebrities so we narrowed them down and selected some. I have not got the photo's with me at the moment as Sophie has them on her camera and is not with me at this time. I shall post them up on a later post. I am glad we managed to get photos ourselves as it shows our capability rather than just copying and pasting pictures from the Internet.

Sam

Starting to edit

We are now beginning to edit the first part of our short documentary. We have some ideas on what to do but still not sure. One idea is to to have pictures of paparazzi with flashes and short cut shots. The kind of pictures we would use would be similar to the ones below;

I got these images off of Google Images and we would like to, if possible, take our own photo's of similair pictures. If this proves to be to difficult we may use a small amount of photos found on the internet but use as few as possible.

Sam

Paparazzi Documentary Analysis

Before the interview with Darryn Lyons we needed to practise our interview techniques so we made a short clip and then analysed it. We practised, edited together footage and then presented our ideas to the class.

London Premiere Filming

Later today Sophie and I are going up to London Leicester Square to try and get some footage of the new premiere of "A Christmas Tale" starring Jim Carey. It is being held in Leicester Square at The Empire cinema. This should be a good experience and we should be able to get some good footage to go into our documentary. We are also planning on doing a few more premieres for the final project.

Sam

Interview with Darryn Lyons

Also during the half term we had organised an interview with Darryn Lyons. We asked some questions that we had prepared before, I will post these up in a later blog. During the interview we had one camera set up staying still with him to the left. And then whilst I was asking questions Sophie was filming some weird angles and extreme close ups of Darryn. She also filmed some panning shots of his desk and office etc. This will help us greatly in the making of our documentary as the questions he answered and the way that he answered them where very professional.

Sam

Trip to london

During half term Sophie and I went to London and filmed some footage of paparazzi etc. We decided to go to the Dorchester and see what we could film and whilst we where there we saw a few photographers with camera's. We asked if we could interview them but would not let us film so we just asked a few questions. As we where walking away we saw Pamela Anderson walking from the back entrance round to the front. We didn't manage to film all of this but then we hung around for a while and saw her entering into her car with all the paparazzi trying to get a photograph of her. We are going to use this in our documentary and it is really useful as it is not archive footage it is our own footage.

Sam

Practise Filming

Today Sophie and I used the equipment that we would use for our interview with Darryn Lloyns and practised so that we knew what and how to use the camera and tripod etc ready for our interview. We also got to see the camera angles that we can use and where to position it to get a good effect and documentary style. This should help maximise our time so we can get really good shots for our documentary.

Sam

Questions to Daryn Lloyns

I have drafted some questions to ask Darryn for when we have our interview with him and I am still thinking of some more, this is just a draft;
How did you get into the business?

So, how long have you been in the industry?

How did you start up the business?

What do you think of the celebrities stereo typical views on the paparazzi?

Have you had any trouble with any of the celebrities?

How do you deal with the complicated rules in place, like, Sienna miller under anti- harassment laws not to photograph her at home or pursue her for pictures?

Have you got any funny stories to tell us?

The public are also quite debated about the paparazzi, how do you feel about this?

What is your revenue stream?

Is there anything threatening your industry?

As I said there is still some more to think of but they are in progress.

Sam

Interview with Darryn Lloyns

I have written up a letter to Darryn Lloyns asking if it possible to get an interview with him to ask all about his career in photography and his buisness. Darryn is a famous photographer who specialises in photographing celebrities. He now no longer takes photo's himself but has a company and employs people to do it for him. He is away in france at the moment but when he gets back he is free to have a slot with him to ask information for our documentary.

sam

Darryn Lyons

Darryn Lyons is a well known photographer. His website includes over 5 million celebrity images ranging from the first intimate pictures pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, to the explosive holiday snaps of of prince William and Kate Middleton. After his photos of princess Diana holidaying with Dodi Fayed earned him the title Mr. Paparazzi. He now no longer takes photo's himself as he is too busy behind the scenes of his business. His business is one of the largest celebrity photographic agencies, called MrPaparazzi.com. He says that celebrities use the media when they can to sell a CD or a book, but scream for privacy when it suits. He quotes "I got into the showbiz world, chewed up and spat out."

Perez Hilton

Mario Armando Lavandeira (born in march 23, 1978), better known as Perez Hilton, is an American blogger and television personality. His blog, Perezhilton.com is known for posts for covering gossip items about musicians, actors and celebrities. He is also known for posting tabloid photographs over which he has added his own captions or "doodles".
Hilton's angle on celebrity gossip includes an unapologetic desire to mingle with and be part of celebrity culture. He purports to have befriended Paris Hilton. He rarely reports on stories or reports showing Paris Hilton in a bad way. Bloggers, journalists and photographers alike have charged that Hilton Posts paparazzi photographs and other copyrighted content from their sites. Hilton defends his use of this material but claiming it falls under the fair use exception to the copyright act. Following Michael Jackson's death Hilton posted an article about the stars illness, claiming it was a publicity. Hilton's original post featured sarcastic comments such as "get your money back ticket holders!!!" and also "Jacko pulled a similar stunt when he was getting ready for his big HBO specialise '95 when he "collapsed" at rehearsal!" Hilton has received backlash for the incident, becoming entangled in a Twitter argument with Pete Wentz about the situation.

Sources;
Wikipedia
perezhilton.com

Research

I watched a Louis Theroux documentary on hypnosis and studied the way the documentary was shot and looked like. I evaluated all the camera angles and the techniques that where used to try and make our documentary look as professional as possible. A typical shot used was a hand held shot. This made it look as though they had just found someone they wanted to interview and quickly had to get footage of them. Another one was a hidden camera to try and get secret film. I am hoping to put some of the things I learned from watching the documentary to put into my documentary.

Sam

Story Board

Today I created a story board for our group. It shows the shots that we will be taking and what sound effects will be in the shot, what the image should look like etc. This will give us an idea on what to do when it comes to filming so it is all a lot more organized and not a sudden rush. This will then give us time to make it look a lot better and focus on small details to get it perfect. I will be posting what my storyboard looks like on my blog soon.
Sam

Change in Groups

The start of the new accedemic year has meant that some people have either left college or changed their minds. This has made a big change to most of the groups in our class. We have lost one member of our group now making it a pair. This has had a big impact so we now have to do a lot more work each and can make it harder for us.

Sam

Documentary Analysis

Today we looked at previous years documentaries and analysed them to see how effective they where. I looked at the good points and the bad points of them, so the do's and donts. One documentary had all different sound levels which disrupted the continuity, so now I know to try and keep it level. One documentary showed people from our sixth form as people that do Parkour, however they do not actually do parkour it is just a carachter that they are playing for the documentary. Now that we have looked at these previous pieces we can take points from them and use them in our documentary.
Sam

Research

We have looked at many documentaries to have a see the camera angles, lighting etc used so that we can use similar techniques in our own documentary. I have also looked at some documentary film makers such as Louis Theroux, Nick Broomfeild and Michael Moore. I have also looked at some websites including "Screen Online" http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1299759/.

Sam