Moodboard.

Posted by Aiman and Sabaina 

The following is a mood board comprising of all the elements that will be witnessed in our documentary. It consists of pictures of the main elements of our documentary, such as, video games, mobile Apps etc. referring to indoor activities; in addition with outdoor activities, such as football, bedmintion etc.

We made another moodboard which consists of all the locations we will be visiting for the entire shoot of our documentary. Considering, that we would have to visit a number of places to gather views  of different people in our documentary, we have a tall list of recces for the shoot. So, we made this moodboard to converge all the places that have something to do with our documentary.

A lecture by a Pakistani documentary maker.

As the time for our shoot is coming closer, the students are going through the final details and credentials of the constructions of their respected media texts in order to avoid any dilemmas during the shoot. A director/documentary maker, (name), was called to school for our assistance.

At first, he gave a little briefing on the key components that will be required during the shoot, such as camera, lights, sound, tripods etc. Later, he individually discussed the ideas with all the students.

Different models of camera suit different media texts. Not one camera can be used for all purposes, as the picture quality varies. A video camera is more suitable for shooting a documentary considering that it is a continuous tool. The camera must be adjusted according to different lights. For example, when you go beyond, suppose, working in a low light the camera starts to 'gain’, this always decreases the resolution of the footage and compromises the quality of the image. Tungsten or lights omitted from a bulb and natural light were suggested by him then fluorescent light, reason being that tube light flickers which is not noticeable to the naked eye but the flickering appears in the image captured by the camera which distorts the footage. Moreover, we were asked to avoid shooting our documentary in harsh light as it will be difficult to balance it out, and it will at some point 'burn' the object. However, we are shooting some kind of a suspense a murder scene etc. then it could be used complimenting the harshness of the ideology of the scene itself. Furthermore, a camera must be placed at the eye level of the character to make it a 'fair shot'

In the end we were told that ' a film is not complete until the director puts in his own point of view' which I believe is the most element of the entire product as this will distinguish the product from those of the other of the same nature and make it unique. 

 

Recce Sheet

Posted by : Sabaina and Aiman 

The Recce sheet of the documentary has been prepared. We visited the location where we are going to take candid shots of Ibrahim and Dawood (characters of the documentary) and the interviews of their parents.

Pictures of the location:

Planning and Construction - Script

 

                                                              Indoor alters outdoors

‘A documentary film’

Written by

Sabaina Nazir

Aiman Farrukh

Duration: 6-8 minutes
Genre: Cause and effect
 
Scene 1: Opening sequence
 
EXT & INT/DAYTIME AND NIGHTTIME.
 
Locations: gymkhana, Alfata, McDonalds, Model Town Park and generation.
Shot: long shots, close ups and mid shots
 
Camera angle/movement: pan, zoom in
 
Characters action/description: At the beginning a quote will appear as part of the introduction of the media text. Then, the camera will take shots of children at places such as, parks, cafeterias, and schools. With that, the camera will focus on teenagers using cell phones, video games and computers. After these shots the production house and the title of the documentary will appear.
Voice over: Have you ever noticed the activities of children these days? Ever wondered how much those gadgets made such a huge impact on their lives? These days if we see teenagers  they are more into indoor activities rather than going out in the son.
Scene 2:
 
INT & EXT/DAYTIME
 
Locations: Mall of Lahore, Leisure Club, McDonalds and HKB.
 
Shot: Mid close up
 
Camera angle/movement: static shot, eye level
Characters action/description: Short duration interviews of random people.
Written text/ voice over: Do you think teenagers are more into indoor activities rather than outdoors activities? In your perception, what could be the reason of this change?
 
Scene 3:
 
EXT/OUTSIDE THE HOUSE/DAYTIME
 
Locations:Dawood’s house.
 
Shot: long shot
Camera angle/movement: static shot
Voice over/written text: To get a real life example of this transformation. We tracked an 11 year old to a certain and show what he really does on grounds through out the day 

 
Characters action/description: The camera is going to enter Dawood’s house.
Scene 4:
 
EXT & INT/DAYTIME
 
LOCATIONS: THEIR HOUSE
Shot:  Close up, Long shot.
Camera angle/movement: zoom in, pan
Characters action/description: The camera will follow the character throughout the day with candid shots, putting focus on some of the objects in the house to establish the homely environment.
 
 
Scene 5:
 
INT/TV LOUNGE/DAYTIME
 
LOCATIONS: DAWOOD’S HOUSE
Shot: Mid close ups
Camera angle/movement: static shot, pan
 
Voice over/written text: Tell us about the routine of your children?
 
Characters action/description: [Interview of his parents]
Scene 6:
INT/BEDROOM/DAYTIME
 
LOCATIONS: DAWOOD’S HOUSE
Shot: Mid shot, mid close up
Camera angle/movement: pan, zoom
Voice over/written text: What is the attraction of these gadgets that have encouraged you to replace the physical activates with those of the indoor activities?
 
Characters action/description: [Interview of Dawood]
 
 
Scene 7
 
INT/BEDROOM & TV lounge/ DAYTIME
 
LOCATIONS: DAWOOD’S HOUSE
Shot: mid shots
Camera angle/movement: pan, static shot, 5 rule shot.
Voice over/written text: What were the activities you and your age fellows were involved in at the same age as your children?
 
Characters action/description: Interview of their parents again, asking them about their activities when they were of the same age as their child. Also capturing dawood’s activities in the middle. The gadgets he plays on.
 
 
Scene 8
 
INT/GARDEN, BEDROOM & TV LOUNGE/ DAYTIME
 
LOCATIONS: DAWOOD’S HOUSE
 
Shot: Mid shots, 5 rule shots and close-ups
Camera angle/movement: high and low angles.
Voice over/written text: Study shows that out of 2,000 parents of children aged 3-16, more than half of youngsters have a handheld games console.
Characters action/description: Dawood playing on Wii
 
Scene 9
 
INT/DAYTIME
 
LOCATIONS: TUTTI FRUTTI, EXPRESSO, GENERATION, McDonalds & ALFATAH.
Shot: Mid shots
 
Camera angle/movement: Static shot
 
Characters action/description: A number of interviewees will answer the question by saying ‘YES’ with the help of fast editing and a still shot will be placed immediately after the interviews of a playground which will slowly fade out. We are going to give them a sheet of paper, which will have the word ‘YES’ written on it.
 
Voice over/written text: 
Majority say’s 
Do people agree?
 
Ending credits: Narrator and Cast names

To Do list of planning

Posted by : Aiman and Sabaina

The tasks have been set! This is the list of the things we have to do before starting with the shoot of our documentary. These assigments will mark an end to the 'planning and construction' of our documentary. Below is a picture of the order of all tasks which we will be following

Story and Plot

PLOT AND STORY:

In today's class we were given an introductory lesson about script writing. During the lecture we were explained about the a PLOT and a STORY, also the difference between them.

A story could be defined as a series of events which have a beginning, middle and an end, this is the basic structure of a story. Whereas, a plot answers 5 main questions being, what, how, why, when and where. A plot defines event with  more detail, however, a story is written with brevity. This should be known that a plot is based on a story. It emphasizes the concept of the story in detail. An example of these two terms could be:

Story: Aiman and Sabaina went for lunch after which they watched a movie together.

Plot: Aiman and Sabaina decided to go for lunch at a restaurant. Later, as they had nothing to do, they watched a movie together.

I did a detailed assignment on these two terms on a cartoon film Beauty and The Beast by Disney Channel, which was later checked by my media studies teacher. It is as follows:

Beauty and the Beast:

STORY: 

Beauty and the Beast is a tale of a beautiful young woman who gets imprisoned by a Beast in a mysterious castle in an attempt to free her father from the Beast. Days pass by and she finds herself the support of enchanted friends who work their way to develop a connection between Belle and the Beast. With time, the two get to know each other due to which a very soft and romantic relationship takes birth between them, which leads to a happy ending in which the Beast gets his normal life back, by breaking the spell casted on him many years ago, because of Belle.

PLOT: 

Beauty and the Beast is the tale of a beautiful young woman named Belle who lives in a small French town. One day her father goes on a business expedition and promises to return in a few days. However, many days go by and her father does not return home due to which she decides to go after him. During her search for her father Belle makes her way in a mysterious castle in the woods. There she meets a strange Beast, formerly a Prince who was cursed by an Enchantress into a beast due to prince’s arrogant nature. The only way he could get his real appearance back was to earn love of another person before the final petal of the magical rose fell. Belle finds her father imprisoned in the castle by the beast. The Beast demands her to live forever in the castle with him if she wants her father to be free. Belle accepts the demand and gets trapped in the castle for eternity. As the days pass by Belle finds support of some enchanted people living in the castle. In the beginning the beast and Belle find many disagreements among themselves. However, with the passage of time they get to know each other better and develop a very strong and romantic relationship between them which later becomes the source of the Beast’s survival.

Film Treatment

Posted by : Aiman and Sabaina

The title of the documentary is ‘INDOORS ALTER OUTDOORS’. The title itself signifies the story of the documentary on which our research and ideology is based on. The documentary backs up the claim that indoor activities has taken over those of outdoors. Children and teenagers nowadays are witnessed more attached with video games such as PS3, Xbox, Wii and Kinect etc., which has resulted in less interest towards the outdoor activities such as  Hopscotch, cycling, Doug the ball etc. This recent trend has been provoked with the help of the new improved technologies introduced in the market in the recent years and their further development into new features, capturing the interest of the youth.

It is going to give evidence of the stance mentioned earlier. The target audience is going to be the youth itself considering it is based on them and one of the most widespread hobbies of theirs; on the other hand, the documentary is also targeted at parents as they will be witnessing one of the most ongoing activities highlighted in this documentary regarding their children which will help us acquire their attention.

The documentary consists of 3 acts that are going to blend in with each other and create the entire story.

ACT 1: This is going to introductory. The theme of the documentary is going to be established in this particular part. The camera will to take short clips of a number of areas showing candid shots of children carrying out their activities. These clips are to be combined with the help of fast editing showing children at different times and at different areas. This step makes the audience clear about the age group that the documentary focuses on. The narration, on the other hand, will back up all the clips that are going to be incorporated in the documentary. It will give a general introduction of the activities of the children and then come to the topic that has been extracted from their lives. It will include facts about the activities of children and lay more emphasis on the shift in trend. These facts will be backed up with the help of short duration interviews of random people from the part where they agree that this habit has become wide among the youth of today. The interviews are going to be captured with mid shots as they will be speaking to the audience. While the interviewees speak out their perceptions, their voices are going to be played at the back of clips showing children playing with gadgets giving proof of the stance. This particular act highlights the establishing part of the documentary.

ACT 2: The editing going to be at a normal velocity in this case. The narrator is going take the audience towards an 11 year old (Dawood) and  who will act as an example of the theme of the documentary. He will be filmed with the help of candid shots while carrying out his day to day routine during which the camera will be following them playing with different gadgets as to prove the point of the invasion of indoor activities on them. He will be interviewed as well in which he will be questioned about his attraction towards the video games etc. Different camera angles of the camera are going to be used in this particular act. The use of angles will be used while filming Dawood at the time when he will be playing some console of his, this will show the concentration level and the attraction of theirs from different angles such as high angle to show the console and the low angle to show their expressions, close ups of his face and hands that all comes under the 5-shots rule while playing etc. The camera follows him throughout the day with the help of panning and tracking in or out. His parents will be included in the video and with the help of L cut and 180 degree camera angles as with this the feel and emotions of both the parties will be sent out to the audience. Interviews will be taken from his parents also, asking them about the problems they have regarding this particular habit that has become common; the parents will also be questioned about the activities they were dwelled in at their times and the changes they see from their time onwards to till date. This will make the documentary more informative and the parents whom we were aiming our documentary at will feel closer to the topic considering their childhood has also been incorporated in our documentary.

ACT 3: This part brings the documentary to its ending. After the clips of Dawood the narrator supports the theme of the documentary and brings back the audience from the his footage. With this, the narrator raises the question ‘Do people agree?’ and a number of interviewees will answer the question by saying ‘YES, No or Maybe’ with the help of fast editing and a still shot will be placed immediately after the interviews of a playground which will slowly fade out.

The lights in the documentary will mostly be natural light. This is because we will be interviewing random people outdoors and so natural light will be the only light at times of outdoor interviews. However, the lights that will be used for interviews recorded indoors will be made up i.e. using a background light and also a key light in order to give a very homely feel at the faces of the interviewees, diffusers will be brought if required in order to tone down the key lights. There will not be a complete usage of high key or low key lights but a moderate approach will be taken in practice.

The editing is going to be simple; we are not going to use any special editing technique just the simple editing tools and transactions such as fade in and  fade out etc. in order prevent our documentary from giving a very ‘artificial’ feel to the audience. The background music is going to be soft and playful, in accordance to the theme of our documentary.  The sounds are going to be synchronized in the interviews. Moreover, a lot of Depth of field shots and point of view shots will help show the perceptions of the people in our documentary.  

The colors and props are going to be according to the theme of the documentary. The colors that we are going to use in our media text will be those which give lively effect not serious or dark effect. Characters would be wearing their normal clothes as to show that we have taken candid shots without any interference from our side.

Furthermore, the duration will be kept up to 5 to 6 minutes. This is will be easy for people to watch considering it’s hard to for them to take a lot of time out of their busy routines. Moreover, stretching out the documentary further on brings with it the risk of being monotonous at some point that could become a cause of the audience losing interest during the video.

Over all the feel of our documentary is going to be very light .The overall feel of the documentary is going to be very light, which the young children's around 12 to older people in 60's can enjoy it, keeping in consideration the stance of our product. Considering that we are aiming at children, teenagers and parents it would be wise to adapt a calming and soothing approach throughout the entire video.