Sophie Emmerson TV Production Blog

The observational documentary that I have decided to analyse is episode one of 'The Imagineering Story' on Disney Plus. I chose this documentary as Disney is a particular passion of mine and it's a subject that I am interested to find out more about. The documentary begins with very positive music that is rather uplifting and has fast pace to it. This instantly creates a happy tone to the documentary without any information being revealed yet. This is accompanied by some GV footage of different creative materials such as fabrics and mood boards that just add that creative feel to the film; this instantly drew me in to carry on watching as it felt up lifting. A narration with a happy tone then begins and outlines what the documentary will entail. The use of music really made me feel positive, even throughout the whole documentary by using just a simple uplifting instrumental it made me view it in a positive mood and had a very successful impact on the emotions on me as th...

I decided to analyse Channel 4's documentary "Are We Winning the Battle Against Coronavirus." The first reason that this documentary stood out to me is because it is set so close to home. Not only does it focus on COVID-19 like the documentary that we wish to create, but it also is set in Kent and filmed in Maidstone Hospital which is a five minute walk from my house. Before I even began to watch the documentary I knew it would be influential due to it being filmed in the area where I live, just as our documentary is, which already had a big emotional impact on me. The documentary begins with a handheld shot of doctors and nurses on the frontline in hospital putting on protective equipment ready to fight against the virus, whilst a dramatic instrumental music begins to build. This alone starts the documentary off with a tense atmosphere and creates a stressful tone for the audience. All shots used for the opening sequence are hand held and this is a typical conven...

Hosting a Good Interview: Today we had a zoom session with Beth Turrel on contributors and how to host a good interview in order to extract clear information from the interviewer, but while also being respectful and sensitive to the topic that we are interviewing about. I have never interviewed anybody before so I felt a bit apprehensive about it and how to correctly interview someone whilst also thinking about the setup of shots.  Beth Turrel gave us some of her top tips, these included: -Don't get too immersed into the interview and the emotions behind it, however if there are any moments during an interview where we start to feel that we are getting invested too much into what the interviewee is saying, then these are the moments to use in the edit. -You don't always have to use the visual interview on screen, sometimes it is more interesting to have the interview audio and then other footage to represent what is being said. -If we are interviewing contributors ...

Making this documentary was completely different to how I ever imagined it would be. I never thought I would be able to say that I made a film during a pandemic and I'm proud to say that my group and I managed it. The process did not go how I first expected it to but thanks to the internet and online resources we were able to make it happen. Coming up with Ideas: When starting the project the first task we had was to come up with the idea. I have normally never found it too challenging to come up with an idea before but in this case I did find it quite tricky as it had to be something that we all as a group were passionate about. It also had to be something that fit with the brief " 2020 Vision " (UCA, 2020:9) and as well as this something that personally related to us. We began to brainstorm different ideas and hall list what we personally thought affected us and our generation. The ideas that stood out the most to me and my group were all mental health based; so we...

The production paperwork was something that I was responsible for completing due to being the producer of our film. It was a challenge due to us having so many contributors as well as being in lockdown, and I have definitely learnt from it. The first part of the paperwork that I completed was the storyboards. Once we had come up with our idea and noted down a plan for the structure and type of shots that we wanted I was able to create the storyboards. Our researcher Evie had finished the poem for our contributors to read out so I needed to start thinking about who was going to read it out, how many lines each contributor would read and in which order they would read them. I broke our film down into two halves: - The first half as interviews and context on the topic as well as GV footage and B roll. -The second half as the poem that we created. This enabled me to create the story boards for each section. I created a first draft of them in order to work out the order of contributor...