Project Doc: Final Documentary + Thumbnail

Here is our final documentary and thumbnails. This blogpost is written by me.

Final Crime Documentary Opening 

Here is the YouTube link for our final documentary.

Here is the Google Drive link in case there is an issue.

Final Thumbnail 

Here is the link to Google Drive in case there is an issue on the display.

Netflix Mockup

Project Doc: Critical Reflection

Here is the critical reflection for my documentary project. This blogpost is written by me (Audrey).

I will be answering these questions for my critical reflection (not by sequence):

1. How do your products represent social groups or issues? (CR 1)

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’? (CR 2)

3. How do your products engage with the audience? (CR 3)

4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions? (CR 4)

    As outlined by the brief set by our teacher, Mr. Nick, we had to create a 3 to 5 minute crime documentary opening. My team, Chelsea, Kalista, Rara, and I, had agreed to create a crime documentary with the subgenre of true-crime involving a murder. The plotline and events follows a murder of a teenage girl who is about to enter a new beginning of getting into a university with her best friend however involved in online dating which led to her uncanny death. In this critical reflection essay, I will discuss further on our product including the production stages and how we incorporated technical elements to conform and subvert conventions within the genre as it appeals to our targeted audience.
    The use of branding is crucial in order for a media text to be recognised as it strengthens the public perception of how they infer our intended messages. According to Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory, meaning isn’t simply given by the producer for the audience to accept straight away. The audience plays an active role in how they interpret, respond, and decode  to the messages. Our intended preferred reading was that we should be careful with toxic friendships. The technical elements used to convey this message was through the use of real footage such as vlogs and hand-held camera movements which connotes realism and authenticity implied from the bond between the two leads. Moreover, the overall theme of our documentary was ‘nostalgia’ which can be decoded by the audience through the use of vintage color gradings and video effects. We chose this as it is one of the recurring themes, popular amongst the young adults community which would be the demographic to our target audience. This mood conveyed was also kept consistent on the documentary’s thumbnail. Our thumbnail includes layered photobooth tabs of the same image including the two leads within a mix of effects, this would connote different realities and/or perspective from one story. This follows the theme of digitized media platforms in our documentary including social media pages, phone calls, and view of a desktop that is being portrayed in our project creating a visual similarity between the thumbnail and the documentary. This theme was chosen specifically as we targeted an audience who are knowledgeable and have access to modern media which may have personal experience evoking a connection between the narrative and reality. Another visual similarity identified for the audience to recognise is the use of typography on the thumbnail and the end of the opening scene (title card) of the documentary.

The text was purposely written in all capital letters as we found that it is one of the conventions of a crime documentary. We decided to conform to these conventions as according to Neale's Genre theory, a media text must be similar to be recognised by the target audience. In this case, from Netflix’s search page, we found so many crime documentaries with monochrome, all capital and bold text titles, this is because it is easier for the audience to spot and click on the thumbnail which increases the audiences’ engagement. To elaborate further on Neale’s Genre Theory, a media text must also be different in order to be distinguished with other products to appeal to the audience and remain interesting. Here, we subverted the usual narrative of crime documentaries by not specifying and revealing who the assailant was in our narrative. This keeps the audience guessing as the messages conveyed acts as a hermeneutic code (Barthes Narrative Theory) which raises curiosity keeping the audiences engaged throughout the narrative.
    Our own crime documentary opening research helped us to further explore the conventions of technical elements in a crime documentary helped us decide which elements to input to add suspense. Firstly, our documentary had used a fair amount of real footage and clips (CCTV/surveillance camera and archival pictures) of the events and associates, along with the documentation which connotes realism and authentication evoking a sense of trust of the audience connecting us, the producers, to the audience allowing messages to be conveyed and decoded easily. In this case, there are easter eggs included in screen-recorded scenes. Here, the use of the number ‘4’ which is commonly associated with death in the Chinese-Indonesian group which were heavily represented in our documentary. This implies that something terrible, death, had happened to the main lead (Sasha). According to Hall’s Reception Theory, the audience does not fully interpret media messages as whole, our audience are able to interpret these technical elements and decode them as we provided a meaning. 

    Our documentary revolves around South-East Asians (Chinese-Indonesian) leads. In the media world, the majority of media texts such as movies, TV programmes, documentaries, and others are commonly presented with the conformation towards Hollywood/Western traditions which dominates the entirety of narratives, reflecting a strong and dominant image of Western cultural groups. Our documentary subverts this stereotype as the portrayal of a minority group (Asians, specifically South-East Asians) becomes the central focus on the narrative. South-East Asian aren't popular to be represented in media texts, traditionally, this ethnic group are underrepresented as leading roles are less likely to be given to Asian casts with less hegemonic power. South-East Asians are commonly given background roles in the media as they don't play a significant role in media which increase awareness and avoids invisibility and ignorance of the group. However, our focus on the narrative perspective through South-East Asian would give the audience more attention to the reality which evokes a connection from the audience from our story. Moreover, this media text subverts the depiction of the group for being represented just for diversification of casts to appeal in modern media to appeal to the public's recurring interest in integrated diversity themes. This prevents the issue of tokenism from being arised from our product as our South-East Asian leads weren’t portrayed overly exoticised and used for diversifying cultural background as we focused on the complexity of the individuals. To start, the main lead (Sasha) is depicted to be friendly, genuine, and gullible which was connoted by the often use of light-coloured clothing (Mise-en-scene) which symbolises innocence. This was a juxtaposition to her best friend who was the actual killer, presented with dark clothing which symbolises her darker intentions. Lastly, the love interest was purposely intended to deceive the audience into believing that he was the killer when he’s not. This may be decoded through his name ‘Kyler’ which we intended to make it sound like ‘killer’. This was further implied by the character’s personality that is dishonest and suspicious as he serves to represent the risk of online dating for teenagers. Overall the main theme of this documentary is trust which is a common issue faced by young adults which may reinforce a connection from the audience to the narrative. The decoding of the message may relate to the Uses and Gratification Theory by Stuart Hall as the messages serves as the Personality Identity aspect of this theory which the audience may feel connected and empathise with how their group is represented and reflected reinforce identities are valued in these era of Western culture dominance.

Project Doc: Thumbnail Research + Development

Here is my research on crime-documentaries thumbnails which includes the development process of our documentary project's thumbnail. This blogpost is written by Rara, Audrey. However, we all discussed this together as a team.

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Here is the research for crime documentary thumbnails conducted and reported by Rara.

Starting off with an overall overview of what crime documentary thumbnails look like on Netflix 

Crime documentary thumbnails stick to several conventions. As it helps show what kind of audiences it's trying to target and is the key to pulling in viewers and letting them know what to expect from the documentary's theme and style. First of all we can see that most thumbnails follow the same convention which is by showcasing the face of the main character most likely the perpetrator or victim in a very close up camera angle (direct mode of address) which helps to imply how their emotions give off a sense of secrecy or intimidation. Most of these thumbnails also have a bold/dramatic typography in bright colours (white, yellow, red) in front of dark backgrounds this ensures that the viewers can easily read the text and help convey the message that the word that is emphasised is the main subject of the documentary. Most thumbnails also use a very dark colour palette with shades of grey, black, red, deep blue in order to convey mystery, danger and seriousness. 

Here are two examples that mostly peaked our interest:

Here are 2 documentaries in which the thumbnail really intrigued us which is "Ice Cold" and "What Jennifer Did". These 2 follow the typical convention of a crime documentary thumbnail, however "Ice Cold" uses a different approach which is by making it look like it came out of a newspaper and how it uses separate pieces to convey that this person's story has become well known in different news outlets and that this documentary will shine light on each person's perspective within her story allowing the viewers to not be deceived by other media outlets as they shine her on a different limelight. We liked how both documentaries have a very stylistic choice in the picture and layout which is what stood out the most for us. However we believe that creating a thumbnail similar to "Ice Cold" would be quite difficult and time consuming as for "What Jennifer Did" it wouldn't be possible for us to do as the main story of our documentary is about 2 best friends meaning we want to put 2 people as the main focus not just one. 

But here is the thumbnail that we will most likely follow

 

Typography: The title "ICE COLD" is in big, bold, all-capitals font, a clean sans-serif typeface. White text on a dark background helps significantly in readability and gives that stark, cold feeling that agrees with the theme of the documentary. The subtitle "Murder, Coffee, and Jessica Wongso" follows in smaller font, indicating its the subheading from the main title. Typography that feels razor-sharp and stark brings out how dead serious this subject matter is.

Colour palette: Its palette is mainly shades of black, white, and gray to give that cold and sombre atmosphere. The grayscale brings in the documentary and archival feeling; it is as if we are looking at memories of the past. The blood splatters in red create a striking contrast and forthwith direct one's attention to the aspect of violence or crime. The red will add a sense of urgency and danger to the whole composition, which goes in tune with the murder theme.

Lighting and Mood: The general lighting is subduing, moody, and grainy, adding to the dark forbidding tones of the documentary. In addition to the muted lighting, the use of black-and-white photography may suggest a nostalgic, reflective feel; however, blood splatters thrown into this otherwise subdued palette introduce an element of disturbance, an indication that something truly nefarious lies beneath. Choices in lighting and mood create tension on the events that are about to unravel .

Imagery: The most prominent part of the thumbnail would be the two girls with layered photographs of them. The usage of photography would depict personal memories of  when the two best friends were happy together, which would add emotional contrast to the darker elements in the thumbnail. Casual and carefree expressions in the photos, contrast with the violent connotation of blood splatter, which may indicate a tragic twist in their story. It is this conjunction of violence and innocence that stirs any viewer's mind to want to know the background information for the documentary.

This is another version of the "Ice Cold" documentary thumbnail. We as a team will mostly try to make this kind of thumbnail because it aligns with the main plot we're going for which is 2 best friends and an online boyfriend. So by showcasing pictures of the 2 best friends together it gives off the impression that they're very close but the audience will question if they're that close what could possibly go wrong. 

This thumbnail however gave us the idea of making a more digitised documentary as there aren't many that do this convention. So we mostly took ideas such as the typography and the effects from this movie. 

(An inspiration from a movie poster)

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Here is the development stage for the title written by Rara. I helped on deciding the typeface.

First we tried out different typographies trying to find which style fit best

However after trying all these different fonts Chelsea gave us the idea to use a font that mimicked your iPhone chat (from a movie called “missing” look at the research above). As we wanted to follow the theme of a more digitised documentary. However this idea of having a more modern/digitised realistic typography was made after we had several drafts of the first few drafts of thumbnails. 

5 Finalised typography 

We liked how most were easy to read and how it matched up with our iPhone chats or fonts on your phone, but what bugged us the most was how the ‘&” on the first and second examples were very off and looked too artistic. 

So here is our final typography font for our thumbnail.

We decided on this font as we wanted a modern look but also incorporating that vintage style as this font is also used a lot in Instagram so it still fits our modern digitised theme. Although the title here is only shown for display of typeface, the colour, however, will be chosen and elaborated further as we discussed furthermore within the blog post.

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Here is the development of the thumbnail written by Rara and me (Audrey).

Here is the first version and first attempt of the thumbnail design. Rara and Kalista had developed this idea which would be the original template of our thumbnail. 

Here, we tried to replicate polaroid pictures of the leading characters (Sasha and Clara; Victim and Murderer) which would connote nostalgia and intimacy. 

The use of polaroid pictures evokes vintage vibes which is a popular aesthetic, or recurring theme in modern media texts, young adults are fond of. This will allow us to attract the targeted audience which would be young adults starting from the age of 17. The polaroid pictures also symbolises treasured memories from their friendship implying a strong bond between best friends, building an emotional connection between the audiences as it evokes their sympathy. Moreover, audiences would be more intrigued to click on our show as they might wonder what could possibly have gone wrong between the characters. Their curiosity for the juxtaposition between the warmth of friendship for a crime documentary genre as it connects to a darker message, would create a palpable tension as it creates an unsettling atmosphere. 

Although, our biggest concern here is that it does not look real which subverts the whole point of the subgenre of true-crime in documentaries inhibiting authenticity implied in our narratives. It is important to show realism as it is impactful to attract an audience, creating an emotional trust which would increase the engagement between them and our documentary.

From this, to further ensure that the thumbnail connects to our documentary and is in one theme with it, we decided to explore and experiment further to create more versions and options for our thumbnail.

Here is another version created by me (Audrey).

Many of us had been drawn into this thumbnail as it was simple but impactful. The use of the filter and layering of vintage photo effects would have a similar effect with polaroid pictures which I had described earlier in the previous design. I had taken inspiration from the polaroid picture and input it here to connote nostalgia. 

The layout conforms to the generic thumbnails of a crime documentary as from our research, we had found several documentaries’ thumbnails to be of a simple template, prioritising and focusing on a picture of (important) leads and the title itself. The reason for that is because it draws more attention from the audience to the leads who are keys to the events in the narratives. This simple layout was easy and quick to make.

I had tried to insert a Netflix logo on the top right corner as how crime documentaries are displayed on the official Netflix site.

By doing so, this would make it seem like a real, professionally-made documentary which is why I had decided to include this Netflix logo for the final design later on.

Regardless, I had tried developing a few more variations from this design.

#1

 

For the variations, I had experimented on a typeface which is discussed in the section above, however throughout the process, we hadn't decided on a fixed typeface for our title. We had developed this blogpost section beforehand. We all really loved this typeface but however our target audience were young adults and our documentary included clips of screen recordings such as calls and social media pages. This would disrupt the constant theme of digitalised media in our documentary and may also not appeal to our target audience as the typeface looks like a typewriter. It connotes nostalgia but this feeling may be evoked for older audiences as typewriters aren't common in this era. However, we kept it just to experiment before deciding on a fixed typeface.

This first variation would follow the theme of the documentary as it highlights ‘digital prints’ of the two leads. I imputed a glitched effect which connotes uncertainty and unsettling mood as it highlights malfunction and disruption which the audience may decode that there is something going on negatively between the two leads.

#2

For this case, the overall comments on implications within the connotations were the same as the typewriter typeface. Our documentary presented a more modern era (digital) of mass media which means that this ‘ripped paper’ effect isn’t really going to stand out to audiences who are most commonly associated with technologies in this era. This was also a trial which explains why the effects aren’t properly organised to fit into.

#3

This was a more simple approach that I did within the variations. I personally enjoyed this but it seems that something was missing, and I couldn’t identify what. My teammates also weren't interested in this design so we decided to discard the idea.

We came up with a couple more ideas.

The red backdrop was a default setting as I only focused on developing the main elements. This was inspired by the picture below that was suggested by Chelsea.

Here is another variation to the layout design. I had input the title to view how the thumbnail would look as a whole. I discarded the glitch effect on the background because I thought it was a bit too much for the audience which would prevent them from clicking as it may look unappealing and unprofessional. I added a shadow which may possibly connotes something darker within which may create suspense.

This was a creative idea to showcase the whole digital media theme that we had incorporated in our documentary. There were also several documentary thumbnails that used this element, a desktop or layout from computers/PC. However, it just does not look real overall and the platform that we used is also limited so we discarded this design as well.

Rara made this design and we were quite fond of the black and white theme but however it does not represent our documentary accurately as the colour grading here isn’t used throughout. This would not make a clear connection between the thumbnail and the documentary itself.

Here is another layout for the thumbnail that I had developed from the photobooth tab layout. 

This idea was overall our favourite as everyone in our team likes how our 2 main characters were put together showcasing their bond. And we wanted to have our thumbnail to fit our main theme of our documentary (digital media/online) which is why the picture was shown in Macbook’s photobooth tab. The shadows added gave the same connotations from our experiment before.

Developing from the idea before, I inserted the pictures and divided them into different tabs. This was an idea we got inspired from a documentary on Netflix. The different pieces of each cat connotes that each of the cats side have its own perspective, so with this we want our audience to know that our 2 main characters have its own perspectives that clash with one another even though they are so called ‘best friends’ we want to build an image that there's something else going on in their friendship. Hence why we believe this element fits best not only for our plot but for our overall theme as again our documentary is focusing on a digitised approach. 

(An inspiration we took from another crime documentary thumbnail)

Here is a variation of layout derived from the photobooth tab previously. This approach was designed and written by Rara and Audrey.

Step 1

It still gave a sense of suspense with the black background (connotes: mystery, death and evil) I also changed the glitch effect to white with a different design. I added a shadow to further emphasise the title to make it stand out but it doesn’t look good.

Step 2 

So initially we didn't have a subheading as you can see from the draft above we added one on the spot because again our whole plot is about a horror that was unveiled through online suspicions and evidence. 

Step 3

Then I asked for feedback for this thumbnail and Chelsea and Audrey said that the word ‘him’ was not noticeable enough. I also tried to move the text lower but then it just seems more out of place. So I tried removing the subheading from the draft but it doesn't give enough context for the audience to know what's the main plot so we decided to use the subheading.

Step 4

We then included the subheading but again having the text in a the lower portion side of the thumbnail makes it look more off and not aligned with the rest of the images/elements. 

Step 5

We thought that the shadow was a bit much and that it actually makes the image look weird. Our worry was that the title could not be seen and viewed by the audience which prevented them from being interested to click on our thumbnail and engage further with our documentary. So, we tried to discard the shadow and see the results without it.

Step 6

We figured that it was still off as the audience could not read the title well from the colour. But, to conform to thumbnails of crime documentaries, it’s only acceptable and professional to use monochrome colours, or red. So, we decided to highlight the word ‘him’ to create a confusion to the audience which acts as a hermeneutic code as we don’t reveal the ‘him’ directly in the thumbnail but to falsely and purposely give a hint on the murderer/assailant. This would also keep the audience engaged and may be interested to click on the thumbnail. However, our intentions were discouraged as the red text does not make the word stand out but rather making it more difficult to read which is why we had to change it.

Step 7 (FINAL)

Here we only changed the size of the font in order for it to pop up more and can be easily read by the audience. We also decided to leave the word ‘him’ white because we changed the filter for the back picture so the white text can be more easily visible which solves all the problems we had regarding the thumbnail and leaves us the final design.

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𝑺𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝑹𝒆𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏:

This thumbnail research is really beneficial for me and my teammates as we further explored the conventions within the genre. We are able to identify key elements needed for a generic crime documentary in order for audiences to understand and recognise the genre of our media text (Genre Theory Stuart Hall). 

Problem (P): It was a real huge problem to manage our time as we created this research and development. Me and Rara had struggle to make the thumbnail fitting to our documentary as we aren't completely finish with the editing of the thumbnail by the time we created this development. 

Solution (S): We had forced ourself to work overnight to finish everything completely. Next time, we need to focus on our time management to allocate and complete our tasks efficiently.

Project Doc: Title Development

Here is the development for our documentary's title. This blogpost is written by Rara.

Genre: Crime Documentary 

Sub genre: Murder 

Documentary name: 

1. "Digital Deceit: Betrayal in the Click"

2. "Web of Lies: A Friend's Fatal Secret"

3. "The Perfect Match: A Deadly Friendship"

4. "Swipe Right, Murder Left"

5. "Fatal Connections: Trust Turned Deadly"

6. "Best Friend, Worst Nightmare"

7. "Online Obsession: The Dark Side of Love and Loyalty"

8. "Virtual Vows, Real Revenge"

9. "The Double Life: Love, Lies, and Murder"

10. "The Friend Trap: Murder Behind the Screen"

11. "Fallacy"

12. "Deception"

13. "Obscura"

14. "Me, Her, & Him" 

I highlighted the words that I believe will be the most catchy for our documentary and we all finally decided on "Me, Her, & Him". As we want it to still appeal to our target audience however add a twist as they wouldn't know who's the killer. CONNOTATIONS: MYSTERY, DECEPTION, CONFLICT, LOVE, DRAMA.

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𝑺𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝑹𝒆𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏:

We didn't really spent much time on creating this blog post as we already had a few set list of documentary titles in mind. Me and my teammates were actively engaged and participated in giving ideas and thoughts for the title of our documentary. We had collaborated to analyse the deep implications and connotations for each title idea in order for it to reflect the message of the documentary in order for it to be conveyed well to the target audience.

Problem (P): The one problem is that we couldn't decide on a fixed title. We wanted our documentary's name to be short and simple for the audience to remember. So we chose 'Deception', but it sounded rather like a movie than a documentary. We also didn't want our title to be long to remain catchy and memorisable. 

Solution (S): It makes it easier for us to list down our ideas to be selected as the fixed title. We are also capable of researching and finding the fitting title to convey messages and themes decoded on our media project.

Overall, I really enjoyed this progress as we dig deeper onto the implications of our crime documentary.

Project Doc: Editing

Here is the editing process of our documentary. Chelsea was the editor for our team as she was the only one with the access to our file. This blogpost is written by her.

To edit the crime documentary video, I used CapCut that is compatible for Macbook, this is a free editing app for PC designed for beginners (like me) and experienced creators which offers a variety of tools for both basic and advanced editing tasks to create high quality and visually appealing videos. CapCut also has an online version that is meant for novice editors and doesn't require downloads or installations; nevertheless, I got the installed version on purpose in order to edit offline and organise my files better. Below are the process of my editing sequence in this presentation file: 

EDITING by chelsea tirta

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𝑺𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝑹𝒆𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏:

The editing was done completely by Chelsea however she relied on our thoughts and ideas which we initiatively given as a group giving each other some feedbacks in order to strive for best possible grades. 

Problem (P): We aren't expertised on editing with digital platforms on computers which was a difficult situation for all of us. We are familiar with the mobile version of the application, Capcut, and found out that it has a desktop/PC version of it. We decided to download it as a group. However, the main problem is that the file can only be accessed by one person, which is Chelsea, as she created the file. This was difficult for us to collaborate as we must rely on face-to-face meetings which were really difficult to manage. We all had our separate schedule and the only time we meet, which would be in Media class, we were assigned to learn or do something else which means the editing process must be done outside school hours. There were also many features and elements of the platform which needed payment for, this decreases and limits the technical elements we can integrate to our project which may minimize the expectations from the results.

Solution (S): This forces the responsibility of editing to be given almost the entirety to Chelsea as she was the owner of the file with only her laptop as the only way accessing it. We made a last-minute plan to edit the whole documentary in Rara's house before the submission. This was a bit hectic because we were all still busy and we had minimised the time for editing as we needed further discussion. But, we all collectively decided to host an online meeting on the night and pull an all-nighter to work on our project, with our own efforts, we are able to complete it.

Action Plan: I think we should've one this method (online meetings) a bit sooner so that we wouldn't have to cram everything in a few nights. We need to have better coordination and planning in the future so that we aren't late to submit our project as a team and achieve the best results. We need to incorporate a sense of discipline for our next project (Comp 3).

Project Doc: Behind the Scenes

 Here is the behind the scenes throughout the production progress for my documentary project.

EMBED LINKS INTERROGATION

INTERROGATION by chelsea tirta BEACH

BEACH by chelsea tirta ONLINE

ONLINE by chelsea tirta

CRIME SCENE by raraa

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𝑺𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝑹𝒆𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏:

I have to thank Chelsea and Rara to create this Canva file that she shared with us to make it easier for us to display and show the production stage's behind-the-scenes. Here, I had helped took pictures and put/compile them in a Google Drive file we made along as sharing it to the group chat we had that allows easy collaboration. It was easy to create this behind-the-scene blog post as we incorporated the pictures and what happened during the production. I think it's better to create a weekly/daily journal to track down what we did to further elaborate and analyse our techniques and strategies during the production.