Callum And Kyle's A2 Documentary Project

Tuesday, 8 January 2013

Both: Copyright Disclaimer

We acknowledge that we have used copyrighted music, game footage and images in the final production of our documentary. However, in the Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. This documentary is purely for educational purposes and is not intended for direct public use.

Kyle: Auxilliary Task Product Research: Newspaper Advertisement

As previously explained, we need to heighten awareness of the documentary. One additional method we can use to do this is by advertising in appropriate magazines using newspaper advertisements. The problem with using only one type of advertising is that our main target audience may not pay attention to. In our case, it may be that not everybody buys TV listing magazines and, instead, buys newspapers daily which, in a few cases, also contain a guide for certain TV channels. This would make it an ideal place to advertise our documentary further.

The Times

The Times is a well-known British newspaper, meaning it already is well-established and sells well. Advertising in this paper as well as listing magazines would mean that our documentary would be getting more publicity. Also, unlike some TV listing magazines such as What's On TV, they do not automatically give "spotlight space" to popular soaps or programmes that are on daily, but try and give each programme equal publicity, with rarer programmes getting slightly more than the traditional daily programmes in some cases. Each featured channel also gets equal column length, giving some programmes the opportunity to "sell themselves" to those reading this section. Also featured in the section are detailed reviews by popular critics for the magazine on some of the programmes listed (mainly the unique ones), providing an opportunity for us to promote our documentary to a higher extent. This is something we should aim for when making our advertisement.

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Both: Our Documentary Questionnaire

We have created a questionnaire for our documentary. A sample questionnaire has been uploaded below.

Questionnaire

For all questions, please state why you chose your answer.

Did the hosts keep you interested the whole way through?

…............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

How was the audio? Was the narration always clear?

What did you think of the title sequence?

Did you find the on-screen graphics suitable or distracting?

Do you feel that the file footage used was appropriate to a gaming documentary?

Were the backing tracks suitable for the documentary in general?

Did the interview segment hold your interest?

Were there any parts or segments of the documentary that you found distracting?

On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being “abysmal” and 5 being “fantastic”), what would you score our documentary? (Ring around your answer)

1 2 3 4 5

Is there anything you would have liked us to have added to our documentary?

Both: Final Cut Of Documentary

This is the final cut of our documentary. The upload here on this blog has been mixed-down and reduced in quality to actually get it to upload. The version that you will receive on disc to mark will be of far better quality.

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Both: Film Schedules and Storyboards

During the filming of our project, we have been creating storyboards so that we are able to point out what we want the actors to be physically doing during the recording. We have also been planning the schedules so we are able to identify who is needed for which sections of the filming, what they are required to wear and where it would take place. We have scanned examples of us conducting these:

Example of one of the storyboards produced for paragraphs 5,6 and 7 of the script:

Example of one of the film schedule's produced for the filming of paragraph's 6 & 7 from the script:

Thursday, 29 November 2012

Both: Rough Cut Of Our Documentary, Version 1.0

Callum: Script - Final Draft

After having grossly overestimated the amount of script needed to fill five minutes, as well as battling some tone issues, various re-writes led us to our final shooting script. You will find the complete shooting script below.

1: Women. They’re strange, difficult to understand creatures. They have feelings and thoughts, but said feelings and thoughts consist almost solely of “shoes” and “boys” and, occasionally, “sex”. They look pretty, taunt us with how pretty they are and spray stingy liquid in our eyes when we get too close. Their only purpose in life: to make sandwiches and babies. Outside of that, they’re nothing. Toys to be played with. Helpless creatures with no real thoughts of their own, right?

2: (reads this paragraph whilst being poked by a ruler) Wrong. Women are strong, women are powerful, women are, in many ways, superior to their male counterparts. And, if not superior, then equal in most every way. We are not weak, we are not emotional time-bombs, and we are certainly not useless toys that men can play with. Stop that.

This is something that movies and TV are working hard to fix. In the last decade, tens, dozens, maybe even near the hundreds of strong female characters have popped up. Characters who do more than just stand around being eye candy, getting kidnapped and talking about periods. Characters who, if you get engrossed enough, can feel like real human beings.

Videogames, however, are still stuck three decades in the past.

Title Sequence (34 seconds)

2: Pop quiz! Who is the first female character in a videogame? Time's up. If you answered Ms. Thunder Thighs here (picture of Chun Li), (comical buzzing sound) you are wrong. And if you answered Ms. Wakka Wakka (picture of Ms. Pac Man), (comical buzzing sound) you are also wrong. No, the first recorded instance of a female protagonist in a videogame, a playable female protagonist in a videogame, is Ladybug.

1: Ladybug is a long forgotten 1981 arcade game that managed to pre-date Ms. Pac Man by a couple of months but had a lot in common with Ms. Puck Face by being a maze game. Maze games back then being like FPS' today. Ms. Pac Man and Lady Bug were strong female characters, even if one of them is technically an insect rather than a recognisable lady, pixels back then not being what they are today. So, why are they strong?

Well, they both instigate the plot, they both do their own thing and they both don't have their entire lives revolve around or be ruined by men. They let nothing stand in their way, they aren't slaves to their emotions and, unless you look at some horrible, drudgery corner of the Internet, they don't get their kit off for no reason. They are both strong female characters.

2: And, in fact, it'd probably be very fair to say that they are the only truly strong female characters in videogames, alongside Chell, GlaDOS, Alyx Vance and, of course, Commander Shepard. But that still only means that I can count the number of truly strong female characters on 1 hand and an extra thumb. In addition, three of those are from Valve games, two are from games with little to no story and one is part of a character creation suite where the default option is a male. That's bad.

So, this begs the question of, “Why?” Why are women so poorly treated in videogames and yet you can turn around and see 900 examples of big burly men who are always in control of the situation and know what they are doing and are never the victims of a horribly misguided rape scene? Well, there are three main reasons. Poor story writing in general, cultural differences and a misaimed target market.

Interview Segment (40 Seconds)