A2 Media Studies | Mock up Documentary Scene

Following up the planning an preparation of the documentary that me and Tom are going to make, we have made a mock up scene of a documentary which Channel 4 has promoted and aired on TV. We based our scene on Educating Yorkshire's 'Crunch Time' scene.  Due to limitations during the making of the documentary, we have only been able to create a 7 second clip which has two scenes based on the Educating Yorkshire scene.

As shown below, here is the mock up documentary scene which me and Tom made:

Background of the mock up scene

Although a little later than expected, me and Tom set out to film and edit the scene on November 6th and below you'll see some specifications of the mock up scene which will highlight areas such as characters, setting and camera shots:

Equipment

• Camera
• Tripod (used to stabilise the camera)

Characters

Character-wise, we used a teacher who works at Bitterne Park Secondary school (Mrs Chilcott Coombes) who was happy to let me and Tom come into her lesson and get assistance with recording the scene. The only limitation we had during the characters of the mock up scene were the students, as the three students in the class chose not to be in the frame, we decided that we would film the teacher instead.

Filming locations

The locations we used were the sports field of the secondary school and a classroom in the main secondary school.

Cinematography

For the shot in the sports field of the main school, we decided to make use of an establishing shot, just as shown in the Crunch Time scene and for the shot of the teacher we decided to use a similar shot to the one used in the scene we based our documentary mock up on, which was the use of a mid shot on the teacher. In addition to to the cinematography, we also created a storyboard which had shots from the Educating Yorkshire scene which is shown below:

Storyboard of the mock up documentary scene - Inspired by the 'Crunch Time' scene on Educating Yorkshire

Limitations

The only limitations that we had on the mock up documentary scene were the students choosing not to be in the shot if they didn't want to and me and Tom being unable to place a picture of our own at the corner of the frame, just like the Channel 4 logo in the Educating Yorkshire scene. We came up with a concept of the picture and a name of a fictional channel named '8V' which stands for '8 View' as seen below:

8V logo - Concept

Further building up on the limitations, with the students not willing to be in the frame for the mock up scene, we have considered using a class which  has people in younger years who are more willing to be in the camera frame, we will also show our digital, free-spirited and creative audience the mock up video which will allow them to reflect on what went well and what could've been better in future.

In addition to the specifications of our mock up documentary scene, the soundtrack which can be heard in the video was Olexandr Ignatov's Inspirational Piano.

Summary

Overall, despite the limitations, me and Tom were able to both learn and benefit from this mock up scene as we were able to establish some experience with the equipment needed to make a documentary as well as the planning and preparation to make a documentary scene. We learned about what we needed to put into consideration whilst making a documentary scene which included booking equipment, arranging with teachers to be in our mock up scene, storyboards required for the scene shooting and the settings of our documentary. We will benefit from this because we not only have experience of making a documentary scene, we will also be able to further improve what we either missed out on or couldn't do during the mock up scene.

We could also improve on the stability of the camera during the making of our mock up documentary scene as initially there was a slight shake on the first scene which was cut out during the editing phase of the scene, meaning that in future me and Tom can review this and ensure that we know better on how to use the equipment provided in order for the scene to be filmed.