Interview (My Documentary)

Interview questionnaire from Varshini1999

Viability

Is the product financially viable?

From my research, I have learnt that distributing my product through TV advertisement would be financially unavailable due to the fact that it would probably take 20K as the starting budget to possibly 200K. However, there are other websites that permits us to sell our product through free social media website and that would be financially viable; for example, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. Yet, even if there are websites that permits free video streaming for instance YouTube, they will only max 15 minutes and if any higher than that you will be charged.
 

Do you have necessary skills to undertake the production process?

I have the basic knowledge to undertake the production process and with the assistance and directions of FiveStar Production Team. The skills I acquire to start the production process is very basic; being organised, how to operate a camera, take shots, edit, being efficient as well as a good communicator and other skills that are necessary and helpful to me during the production. Even if I haven’t been taught professionally, I have a decent direction of how to edit and direct based on my previous minor projects conducted. Besides, when making a movie/documentary you will always the help of teachers, family and friends, and students from previous years who have produced before and passed the stage of complications that I could potentially face.

 

Do you have the right equipment and technology available to you?

The equipment’s that are available at school are easier to get hold of and they have decent cameras and the most important- the AVID editing software. Majority of the cameras at school produce good quality videos, and the fact that I use them often I am very familiar and comfortable with the formats.  This is less time consuming at it save me from learning to use another camera and the formats. The AVID media composer is a software that is usually used by the professionals, however as it is school’s property and I am student. I am able to use it for free. I count myself as lucky as I can use it until I am fully satisfied with my movie (within in the given time) and I don’t have to pay thousands of moneys for it.

I have entry to HD cameras, tripods, lighting, sound recorders, boom pole etc. These equipment’s are the core elements of the production. This empowers me to have a fruitful result when I’m delivering my film as I have industry equipment to do as such.

What help and support will you require?

I have been using iMovie more than I have on the AVID, giving me the option to stick to what I am familiar with or to try a brand-new software I have never encountered. However, practising on the AVID will give me an insight of the professional world. Meaning that I will need support from an 13yr student or from a member of staff who knows how to use the AVID media composer.  

Despite the fact that, greater part of the production role I can fill without anyone else's input yet when it comes down to talent and sound recordist/make up I will require assistance. This is efficient as I will be able to save money and time by doing this.

Have you got enough time to produce the product?

In conclusion, I believe that it would take approximately 5 days to produce the product and the same amount of days to edit. Giving me 10 days in total to produce which is quite short but effective.  I done a great deal of research finding the best area and the perfect individuals to report about. I may be able to spare time which would me to enhance my work and perhaps add few more details till it reaches to complete my vision.

REFERENCE:

• Brown, R. (2015). What it Takes to Make Your Product Viable. [online] Mashable. Available at: http://www.mashable.com/2012/06/22/measure-product-viability-agile-time/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Production Research

Resources and Costs: Personnel, Talent, Finance, Suppliers, Facilities, Locations and Logistical Support.

Personnel: 

Bluefin Television provides an equipped 2-man crew for the lowest price of £900, and Equipped-Crew and Dry-Hire rates are negotiable depending on the following:

This isn't a great deal for me as I have a small budget and I don't get any extra funds for the additional equipments I desire. Even though they do offer discounts for travel days, it would mean that I would have to pay additional fees for that.

• Orange!, E. (2016). Bluefin Television | Camera Crew Hire. [online] Bluefintv.com. Available at: http://www.bluefintv.com/broadcast-camera-crew-hire/ [Accessed 28 Jan 2016].

Talent:
When looking for voice over artists for my documentary, I came across an artist that goes with the name Baz.J. He acquires quite an impressive portfolio and costs 10/hr, it's cheap when compared to the other artists. However, I would have to evaluate by cutting the costs of other things in order to buy a well experienced artist for my documentary.

• PeoplePerHour.com. (2016). Hire Baz J. on PeoplePerHour. [online] Available at: https://www.peopleperhour.com/freelancer/baz/voice-over-artist/1068013?referrer=freelancer [Accessed 28 Jan 2016].

Finance:
In dollars, the lowest budget to start with for a documentary film-making is "$1000 per finished minute", however, it differs time to time.
The website I came across recommended using $2000-$3000/finished minute. Even a ‘simple film’ may cost a lot more because it can require many elements. There are four main points which can influence the cost of a film, these are:

• The level of quality desired.
• The scope and scale of your story: how many locations, how many events, how many people?
• The quantity of third party material required.
• The level of editorial control you need.

• WIND & SKY PRODUCTIONS. (2016). How Much Does a Documentary Cost to Make?. [online] Available at: http://windsky.com.au/how-much-does-a-documentary-cost/ [Accessed 7 May 2016].

Suppliers:
When searching for production equipment that I could hire, I came across the Canon XF305 Self Shooter Kit provided by ‘mediadog’.  From the list they offer this was the cheapest bundle, stating with a modest price of £120 (day rate) and £365 (weekly rate). The kit includes:

• Canon XF305 Camera.

• Tripod. 

• 2 x Radio Mics.

• Add lights from £28.

• Mediadoghire.com. (2016). Shooting Kits. [online] Available at: http://www.mediadoghire.com/kitdeals [Accessed 28 Jan 2016].

Facilities:

The Beacon School acquires a media suite where I can utilize the AVID Software to edit my documentary, voice recording booth to do any voice overs. Equipment’s available for me to use without spending unnecessary money on expensive gears. The school can prove me with cameras, tripod, voice recorder, boom pole, wind shield, mic, green screen and man more. This is effective as it helps individuals or students like me who acquire poor financial supply.  

Locations:

The location I will be mostly be filming in is the Banstead High Street and Nork Park. The reason for me to choose these particular locations is because it is where ‘most’ teenagers hang around and get rowdy. The images of the park naturally gives that feel and the purpose of filming in the high street is because I can get the chance interview the adults and their thoughts about the issue I’m focusing on.












Logistical Support:

A few companies that I came across stated that they will supply security for the equipments, arrange transportation as well as housing, delivering vehicle, client security etc. This is crucial and helpful when filming a high budget film, however, for what I have and can produce this isn’t ideal and not urgently necessary.

Placement

Either if you’re planning to run a blog, business or class, webcasting is an incredible approach to get your point across. Occupied audiences appreciate webcasts in light of the fact that they can listen or watch while doing their work, and preparing through video webcasts permits individuals to "see and do" alongside a presenter. Webcasting can be expensive, with costs running up into the thousands, however do-it-yourself webcasts are conceivable with negligible gear and facilitating costs.

When talking about streaming vs on-demand, stream additionally gives the choice of facilitating the stream, once finished, on their server and permitting audience to play the webcast at whatever point they like. On-demand normally costs additional for the server space it utilizes. Stream-only webcast hosting gives only the services required to convey the stream to the audience while it is live.

On the off chance that you require a professional production company to come in and do your webcast, be set up to spend a great deal of cash. These companies once in a while put their costs out in the open, particularly in light of the fact that the expenses differ generally relying upon each webcast's requirements. Be that as it may, it is assessed that every professional video webcast costs around 2,000, to 7,000 dollars. Audio webcasts are significantly less costly and range from 500 to 2,000 dollars, as indicated by estimates.

This research has been very useful to my documentary, for instance, my target audience is 13-65 and based on stats the younger generations tend to watch videos online than on TV. Meaning that there won’t be any reason for me to spend additional money to distribute to TV. In addition to this, Office of National Statistics states that 87.9 of the adults in the UK in the last 3 months, used the internet when compared with 86.2 in 2015. 99.2% of adults in the age range of 16-24 were recent internets users, in contrast with 38.7% of adults ages 75 and over. This is effective as it informs me and ensures me that I can bravely distribute my documentary by using current trending social media websites.

REFERENCE:

• Williams, S. (2016). What is the Cost for Webcasting? | eHow. [online] eHow. Available at: http://www.ehow.com/about_6648368_cost-webcasting_.html [Accessed 26 Jan 2016].
• Ons.gov.uk. (2016). Internet users in the UK- Office for National Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2016 [Accessed 26 Jan 2016].

Market Research

Product market; Competition; Competitor Analysis; Advertising Placement; Advertising Effectiveness.

Product Market:

Product research is a helpful technique that informs us with the audience’s thoughts and opinions.  It’s about identifying key issues and avoid expensive mistakes. Market research is what already exist and how I compete with it. The purpose of product marketing is to comprehend your client’s need and opinions as well as making your items open for your customers. You can also use Q&A’s, graphs and surveys to help enhance your product and fully understand customers, fulfil their needs as it makes them upbeat. The same goes for when deciding the name of film. Product market is vital on the grounds as it allows you to locate an exceptional selling point.

Film Names:

·        Hoop Dreams

·        Incognito

·        Gone With the Wind

·        Sheer

·        DiscrimiNation

Which name would attract you to see the documentary more?

Film Names	Tally
Hoop Dreams	0
Incognito	II
Gone With the Wind	I
Sheer	I
DiscrimiNation	III

After conducting a vote for which name would attract the audience to see the documentary more, majority of the audience preferred the name ‘DiscrimiNation’. Majority of the people chose my film titles out of the 3 that was already film titles for a discrimination based documentary.

 Smart marketers employ some form of competitive research in an effort to better understand what products and services, pricing models and value propositions they are up against. How this might look:

Competition:

I need to comprehend my rivals and enhance my work in order to fight against them and stay in the game. Shows like ‘Educating Essex’ (Channel 4) gives me an insight of teenagers and what goes in their mind. It’s in a documentary style so it allows us to get close to kids in school and understand how they see the world. By doing this it allows the audience relate to the individuals they are documenting about. I shall try and follow the same footsteps, but of course with a different approach.

Things we do that they don’t	We will be showing the regional outlook rather than a national outlook. This would mean that my documentary would be more in detail and in depth as we know the place where we are going to shoot inside out. And based on the fact that our film is going to be produced from a small budget we will be having the privilege to explore our locations for a lengthier duration than professional directors would normally would. This is due to the fact that we have a limited amount of locations that we will or could use in our film based.
Things we do better than them	The things that we would do better than professionals is that we would portray teenagers in a more naturalistic way, based on the fact that we are in that specific age group and we understand/relate more to the “generic conventions” that people tend to follow.
Things we do equally well	We will be portraying the typical phases of what teenagers go through, but expressing it in a different style. The visual of our film will be the same as it would acquire the typical generic conventions that documentaries tend to obtain. Meaning that even though our film will be based on a small budget, and that we will be using cameras that do not purchase the same qualities as a camera from a higher budget film/documentary, we would still be sharing the same outlook.
Things they do better than us	They probably have more experience so they would naturally know more about the cinematography field. And they will utilize special techniques that we haven’t been exposed to.
Things they do that we don’t	Budget is the major difference between a professional and an amateur director. We wouldn’t have the same privilege or the options that a professional director would have for his/her film. Budget affects everything when making a movie. For instance, crew, we wouldn’t be able to have the same crew as they would for a feature film based on the fact that our film is based on a low budget meaning that we would not be needing any of the higher technicians. Locations, settings, based on our budget we don’t have the privilege to explore. We would just have to adjust with what is available and suitable for my documentary.

Advertising Placement:

Sports Direct is a brand that most teenagers are into. However, as it is a well-known brand I would need to get special permission and have to expand my budget in order to pay for it to be in my documentary. Therefore, in order to solve the problem I would opt out for a local product that fits my budget. This is effective as it would be recognised by everyone in Banstead, making my documentary popular. Areas in Banstead that is small and won’t be affected from the product placement, for instance the lavender fields and the J. Golding local shop. In addition to this, in order to publicise my documentary I can air it on a public service broadcasting channel, which is free and easy to access.

Advertising Effectiveness:

Nielsen Advertising Effectiveness

I am directing a documentary that is based on discrimination, and in order for my film to be recognised I am studying the effectiveness of advertising as it is a key element for films that come under any types of genre to be recognised by people who are attracted to specific genres. The Nielsen Advertising Effectiveness theory states that the way to succeed is known “who it’s reaching, how it’s resonating, and consumers’ reaction—across screens.” Films that fall under the genre of documentary, social-realism tend to be less favourable or don’t really get recognised due to its popularity within the viewers, new comers (talents), and budget and sometimes due to seasonal film genres. Making my popular can be done by utilizing social media, as it has the ability to reach out to a vast number of people, and the fact that it is free helps me save money.

Audience Research

The Socio-Economics from Varshini1999

Evaluating the Controlled Observation

Evaluating the Controlled Observation from Varshini1999