Ancillary Text - Radio Advert For Documentary

Ancillary Text - Radio Advert For 18 And Driving

As part of my project, I have had to do two ancillary texts as well as the 5 minute extract from my documentary. One of these ancillary texts was to create a radio advert for my documentary. Below you can hear the radio advert that I have made, and I have put it in contexts of how it may appear if on a radio show:

Southend Radio 105.1 - Playing 18 And Driving Advert

The Making of The Radio Advert

The radio advert was relatively easy to make, especially when using a mac. I used GarageBand on a mac to produce the radio advert.

I started off with a clip of the car crash sound that you hear at the beginning of the clip. After adding in some screams, and other sound effects including crying at the end, I quickly had the background audio to which I was going to record over with my voice.

Surprisingly the most trick thing of the whole advert was getting my voice to sound right with the audio clip in the background. When i first started recording and overlaying my voice, the two clips just didn't go together. It just sounded so obvious that I was recording in a studio and with a high quality microphone.

However after playing around with setting and voice changers, I was able to make my voice fit in more, and sound as if i was also at the accident as it happens in the audio behind.

Once I created my advert, the rest was relatively simple, I exported it, and then went away and recorded some clips from my local radio station (Southend Radio). I then imported the clips into GarageBand, and slotted in my advert so make it sound as if my advert had been aired on the radio.

Research Cinema Scene

Progress Update: Cinema Scene

Progress Update : Cinema Scene

After spending the weekend filming everything for what I am calling the "Cinema Scene", I have finally finished editing that scene. I am pleased with they way it looks and after completing it I showed it to two members of my focus group to see what they had though of what i had produced. The feedback was really positive, and helpful. They both liked it, and Mike suggested that when i go out on location and shoot, I could cut some one the footage I get whilst out on location, in with this cinema scene. I think its a brilliant idea, and one I am defiantly going to experiment with!

The Filming and Editing Process

The Filming and Editing Process

The editing process for my Documentary is extremely long winded and it take and extremely long time to film and piece together a shot which may only be used for a maximum of 10 seconds. Below i am going to explain the process I have been using to film and edit my documentary.

The Filming

When creating my documentary I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted my footage to look as professional as possible. I started looking and researching other documentaries, and as well as watching and listening to what was being said, I also payed careful attention to the techniques being used in portraying what was being said.

I picked up on a number of things from this research, but one of the things that I took most from the research was the fact that AUDIO is just as important as VIDEO.

For filming, I am using a HD SLR Camera with a variety of Lenses. The advantages of this is that when you get the shot right, the output is crisp and professional looking. However the disadvantages are that is takes time to set up the shot due to the fact that the camera has no auto-focus and is a SLR camera. The fact that there is no auto-focus means that I have to manual focus ever shot. This poses a large problem however I have found a number of ways to overcome it, which i will talk about more in my directors cut.
You will see in my documentory that i have also taken note of the effectiveness of using the Rule Of Thirds. I have found that this rule really does make a difference on how professional your footage looks, and have been using it frequently in my documentary.

What makes the filming even more complicated is the fact that because I was

both my video and audio footage to be sharp and professional, I am not using the audio from the camera. Instead I am using a external lapel microphone which records onto an external hard drive. Using a lapel microphone brings a number of benefits to my documentary.

Firstly, Using a lapel microphone means that I am able to obtain high quality audio due to the fact that the audio is taken from a microphone which is only a few inches from the mouth.

The other great advantage of using a lapel mic over the internal microphone of the camera is that no matter where you are in relation to the camera, the audio is always the same quality and level. This has proved great in some of my shots as it means I am able to walk up or into the shot whilst talking and even be extremely far away from the camera, as I will still have perfectly clear audio.

On the other hand however, this perfect audio quality does come at a cost in the editing process.

The Editing
Because of the complex way I have chosen to record my video and audio, it means that a lot more time is needed in the editing process.
The first phases that I have to go through is uploading from the camera and hard drive all the audio and video footage. Once this has been completed, I then concentrate on editing and cleaning up the audio to make it even clearer. To do this, I import the audio into Garage Band(mac) and then tweak both the Equalizer and Speech Enhancer setting until the audio is crisp and free of any background noise.
(As show in image on the left)

Once the audio clip is all cleaned up, it is then exported into an MP3 format. This process is repeated to all the audio that is recorded.


Once all the audio has been exported, it is then time to add the audio to the video. Using IMovie I import all the video footage into an event. Then for each clip of video that has been recorded, I have to find the corresponding audio file (which was just exported) and overlay that audio file on top of the audio from the camera. By doing this and movie the audio about, I am able to perfectly sync the two audio tracks (1:Original Audio recorded from the camera mic, 2: The Lapel Mic) and then mute original audio from the camera. This is time consuming as it is often hard to get the two tracks in dead sync with eachother, but with time it is possiable.
Once I have added in and synced the audio, I then treat the video with some lighting effects so make it more effective, and then finally export the file.
This step is repeated until all the video files have been audio syned and exported.

Then finally I import all the new video files into IMovie, and am finally able to edit the files together knowing that they have both perfect sound and video quality.

I'm sure after reading this, you can now see how for just a 10 second clip in the final documentary, it takes hours to film and edit...but I feel that it is worth it for the end result!

Progress: Cinema Research Scene

Cinema Research Scene:

So, it's taken most of the weekend, but i have finally finished filming the cinema research scene of my documentary. Research plays a key role in my documentary as I believe it is a thoroughly important aspect of a documentary. I want to put the point across that I have "Done my homework" on road safety and I believe this scene helps to show this.

Below is a screenshot of me exporting a clip from the scene. The editing process is extremely long because of the way I have chosen to shoot my documentary (This will be explain in a post later on this week about editing).

I have a lot of editing to-do now...wish me luck!!

Progress Update

Below is a quick video of me talking about my progress so far, and what I have in store for tomorrow.

Documentary - Research Thoughts (1:22 Preview Clip)

Below is the first piece of filming i have done for my documentary, and it will be edited and used in my documentary in a research section of the documentary:

Script For 18 And Driving

Below is a small part of the script for my documentary "18 And Driving". The script has already played a key role in my documentary, and later on in this post I will explain how new and advancing technology has enabled me to really use my script to its full potential.

As you will see from the script below, I used the script more as a running order rather than for what I would say word for word. Although i did have most of my lines in the script, I used it to set out the way I want things to go:

18AndDrivingDocumentaryScript

How technology enabled me to make full use of my script

On of the absolute god gifts I have access to thought the production of my documentary is the Apple Ipad. The Ipad has enabled me to really use my script to the full potential, and it real is clear my BBC programmes have equipped their presenters with one even when they are live on TV (BBC F1 - Jake Humphrey). The Ipad enabled me to have my script in-front of me just seconds before I went in-front of the camera...it was even used as an auto-cue in one of the shots. It also means that because it is connected to the internet, no matter where i am shooting, I always have the latest version of my script with me.

The Ipad has also opened up the opportunities that are there for me, for example...it will be extremely useful, during an interview to play a video to the person i am interviewing on the Ipad to have them comment about what they see. These sorts of things are invaluable!!