Vlog Script

Samantha Magney
INT. Living room

Samantha sits in chair and talks to the webcam.

SAMANTHA MAGNEY

My media product challenges and develops forms and conventions of actual documentaries in a
number of ways, such as cutaways that are relevant to the topic, the voiceover and the framing of an
interview.

My product is an expository documentary and is very similar to other expository documentaries that
you might see on BBC or channel 4. It is quite a formal piece, you can tell this by the voiceover. the
man who we got to record was very well spoken so it had that real documentary feel to it. the main
reason why we chose him was for his voice.

I think our voiceover was very informative and gave a lot of good facts that a lot of people would not
have known until watching our documentary. I think that the voice we used has quite a strong,
powerful feel to it and i would use the word dominant as in when people were watching the
documentary people were actually taking in the information. there were occasional stutters that
affected the continuity that i noticed but in my opinion i dont think it took anything away from the piece.

I think our documentary had a fair non biased look at the topic of binge drinking and the interviewees
gave fair opinions about the topic. When it came to framing the interviews we tried to be very
conventional and frame it like the interview techniques we put up on our blog. Unfortunately there was
one interview that did let us down frame-wise. We didnt have enough space in the room to frame it
properly, so it is sort of side on. We understand that this could be a problem but i would rather have
used the interview than tossed it away, he gave some good answers that i really wanted to be used in
the documentary. I think the other interviews were framedcorrectly as was the use of applying the rule
of thirds. As the director it was vital that I OK the shots before we use them and this was the only way
that I was happy to film this particular interview.

When it came to location however, we did not have a lot of options. we tried to get the permission that
we needed to film inside a bar but none of the bars we asked would allow us to film inside their pub.
We did the best we could with the locations that we could get and you can only try your hardest so i'm
not a great deal concerned about the locations used in the interviews. As the director it was a big let
down that I was unable to attain the appropraite permission to use venues for the documentary, but I
am happy with the locations that we did manage to use.

The cutaways that we filmed I think are relevant to the topic. I think we could have actually got a few
more in if we could do it all over again but like i said, we were unable to get permission from the pubs
so that was a let down. but the cutaways that we did manage to get i like and think slot nicely into the
documentary, like the hospital and the off liscense.

My last point would have to be that our documentary included a number of typical codees and
conventions that you would see in a mainstream expository documentary. There was room for
improvement yes, but having said that I am very happy with the finished product and think it was a
success as well as being a good experience to film and produce.