story boards

Final documentary

Evaluation

Evaluation

For our task me and my group were told to create a 9 minute documentary on whatever subject we wished to base it on, after much deliberation we decided on the topic of the supernatural because of rumours of high ghostly activity in Henley and even in the college.

First came the pre-production stage, I found this stage extremely useful because it helped me decide how we would carry out the eventual filming and editing of the documentary. In the research phase we discovered a lot of things about Henley’s super natural past from the book “The story of Henley College” by Gemma Allen, the book showed us the history of the Rotherfield building in Henley and how it was used to house wounded soldiers, some of which died leaving a possible supernatural presence. In the pre-production stage me and my group created mood boards which helped us decide what we would put in our documentary, although we encountered some problems with some of the things we wanted to use, for example we had the idea to use a “Ouija board” which is a board on which you can supposedly contact spirits from a paranormal world however we were unable to get hold of one so we had to use other things to help fill up time in our documentary. After we had decided what we wanted to put in our documentary we then needed to script it which we found very difficult seeing as our documentary would mainly be built on interviews and going somewhere with a camera and really just seeing what would happen, so we scripted the bits that we could such as the introduction and the questions from the interviews and then later on developed a more detailed, professional looking script. We then had to story board which I found very difficult because again we were not entirely sure what would be in store for us which meant that story boarding was based on guessing what would happen and then tweaking it later on to make it more accurate.

The next stage was filming, me and my group had scheduled various interviews with different people that we used three cameras to capture so that we could keep the slightly longer interviews interesting by often changing the camera angle without having to keep moving the camera, however we did encounter problems with this when we lost one of our cameras footage but it was not a huge problem as we still had two different cameras footage to use which still managed to keep the final product interesting. Filming in Rotherfield basement was a challenge because it was unscripted, we were not entirely sure what would happen and so we ended up very unorganised however we fixed this by removing the sound and using a voiceover instead in the editing phase. By the time we had finished filming we had too much footage and had to cut it down a lot, once we had finished cutting down footage we ended up with not enough time and so had to make up the time using archive footage. Finally we added music that we spent a long time choosing to fit the mood of the documentary.

Overall I think our documentary is a success and I am very happy with the end product, I believe me and my group showed versatility considering the problems we faced and we left with a good end product.

Filming shedual

Week	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Week 1	PRE-production				filming
Week 2		PRE- Production
Week 3			PRE- production
Week 4		PRE- production
Week 5		Filming			PRE - production
Week 6	filming			filming
Week 7		filming
Week 8				filming
Week 9	Editing
Week 10		Editing			editing
Week 11
Week 12	PRE-production		Editing		Editing

Script

Is The Henley College Haunted?

Elliot. Annie. Josh. Jack.

Nine minute documentary

INT. Basement. –Day

Fade in: Close up. Mid shot. Tracking shot.

Elliot:

“The earth contains many secrets, how did we get here? Why are we here? What happens at the very end of our existence? Which begs the final question…What happens to us after we die?”

“Normal people claim to have seen ghost’s and even be haunted by the dead, is it possible that we can return as supernatural entities from a paranormal spirit world?”

“Science suggests this is impossible; however they are some bumps in the night that just can’t be explained by science.”

“In this documentary we plan on going deeper, further into the paranormal and we may even experience it first-hand.”

Dark Lighting.

EXT. Henley College swimming pool. –Day

Fade in:

Footage of the empty ditched swimming pool.

Voice over – Elliot.

INT. 1^st Interview. Sarah & Annie – Day

Annie – Interviewer

Sarah – Interviewee

Three camera shot types;

Over shoulder. Mid shot. Close up.

Interview takes place in the staff room in the Henley College, in front of the fire place.

Annie –

“I’m with Sarah Ives-Rider who is a teacher here at the Henley College, to talk to her about her personal experiences on the paranormal”

“So Sarah, what exactly happened that time when you experienced a paranormal?”

Sarah – explains

“Did you feel uncomfortable?”

“Had you experienced something like this before”

Sarah – Explains

“Did you believe in ghosts before this?”

Sarah – Explains

Bright lighting. Shot reverse shot.

-   There will be footage of a young girl’s bedroom playing whilst the interview is still rolling, and also other research pictures of the Henley College will be shown at the same time too.

EXT. St. Mary’s Church Henley on Thames – DAY

Footage with no sound will be playing throughout this sequence.

Through the use of hand held camera, close ups, mid shots, tracking shots and many others.

Shot types of the Graves, the outside and the inside of the church too.

During the time it is playing, Elliot will be doing a voice over discussing the background history of the church’ and how people have claimed that it is haunted.

INT. 2^nd Interview. Annie. Josh.

(Non Believer)

Annie and Josh are sitting on the stairs of the Rother field basement.

There is little lighting. Mid shot.

Annie:

“I’m here with Josh, to talk to him about his sceptical views”

“So what is your stance on the super natural?”

-   Josh answers

-    

“Could there be anything questionably paranormal that you have come across in life?”

-   Josh answers

“Do you believe in life after death? And if not what do you think happens to us after we die?”

-   Josh answer

(End of interview)

Elliot Six second voice over introducing what is ‘coming next’.

Footage of trees is being shown.

INT. Rother field Basement. – DAY

Fade in;

Lighting is dark

Elliot. Josh. Annie. Jack - all in the Rother field basement.

Variety of camera shot types;

Hand held

Close ups

Zooms

Pan

Tracking shot

Lighting is dark and dull.

Props; Candles and torches

Non diegetic music is playing constantly.

CREDITS

Interviewer

Annie

Narrator

Elliot

Camera Man

Jack

Interviewee

Josh

‘Special thanks to Sarah Ives-Rider who takes part in an exclusive interview.  (The twist) 

Project proposal

Documentary Proposal

1.	Topic The paranormal in Henley-on-Thames
2.	Important questions that need an answer (three or more) 1)    Do you believe in ghosts? 2)    Is Henley College haunted? 3)
3.	Three talking heads (who I will interview formally) Annie, Jack, Josh, Sarah and I. We will also interview an outside believer, and non-believer.
4.	Voice-over narration (what I will say about the topic through a narrator) I am the narrator for our documentary.
5.	On-location footage (what I will show while narrating) Grounds of Henley College and around the area. Setting up. Walking to places, different sites The abandoned swimming pool
6.	The Twist(something cool to impress audience) Sighting of a ghost, or paranormal experience.
7.	How I plan to “get it done”. Set myself and my group deadlines, when are we going to finish filming by? When are we starting editing and when does editing need to be finished? If each of us have separate jobs we can efficiently split up tasks and have more time on our own task in order to reach distinction level.

Budget sheet