STAGE 2 DIGITAL MEDIA INDIVIDUAL MEDIA PROJECT

REPORT

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this project is to use the knowledge of video/movie creating that has been gained from other projects or personal experience to create and produce a short documentary film on a chosen topic. Behind the ink is a short documentary about tattoos and the social impacts that come with it. The documentary focuses on giving people with tattoos a chance to speak out on their experiences and thoughts about the social impacts of tattoos. For my video, I have conducted interviews with people with tattoos and also an expert in the tattoo industry. The outcome that I expected of this project is to produce a high quality film that successfully explains the topic and the message that I am trying to promote. Not only do I want my topic to be clear to the viewers but to also be aesthetically appealing. The appearance of the video is highly important because it is a factor that will influence viewers to watch this video and continue to watch to the end.

Throughout this project, I have gained awareness on tattoos and the social impacts of it and have also developed a lot of knowledge on it from reading several credible sources and studies. I have gained an understanding of tattoos and the social impacts of it and the stereotypes towards tattoos. Knowledge of this helped me in planning, recording and creating a documentary based on it as the knowledge helped create questions for interview participants, and plan out the video. The skills I have acquired and developed are my communication skills (from contacting tattoos studios for experts and interviewing the expert for my video), recording skills, and video editing skills.

For the documentary I chose the style of an expository documentary. I chose to go with the expository documentary style because it was most appropriate for my topic. As my topic is tattoos, it would be best for the documentary to directly speak to the viewers, in my documentary I planned to have interview participants and an expert to be in my documentary speaking to the viewers about their experiences and how they feel about the social impacts of it. Speaking directly to the viewers could possibly persuade them to believe that the stereotypes of people with tattoos are not justified, and that they are all ordinary people. The pitch of this documentary is to show viewers how people with tattoos get treated differently because of their tattoos, and for them to see their perspective on the social impacts of it. My audience is both people who are interested in tattoos and people who are against them from teenager ages and up.

Process

Research : There was no trouble in finding a topic since I already had one in mind and that was tattoos and the social impacts. Tattoos was my option because I have planned to get a tattoo in the future, and felt that doing this as my topic would expand my knowledge on it, and I would gain knowledge on the problems that I could face from getting them. This topic involves easily finding interview participants and getting in contact with an expert that's available.

The four basic types of documentary are expository, observational , participatory and dramatic. Expository documentaries rely on verbal commentary as it speaks directly to the viewer, they tend to have a linear flow to them with a beginning, middle and end. Images and other recordings are often used in the documentaries to advance the argument. Observational documentaries consists of the filmmaker being an observer of the subject's daily life and circumstances and documenting them with the camera, allowing viewers to reach their own conclusions of the documentary. Participatory documentaries is where the filmmaker tends to become the subject of the documentary as they are engaging with the situation they are documenting asking questions and sharing experiences. Lastly, a dramatic documentary is documentary based on true events that is presented in a dramatised form. It

Stage 2 Digital Media

conveys its information by presenting a dramatic portrayal of a true subject, most often because that true subject no longer exists.

Before planning my documentary I did some research on tattoos and social impacts by reading sources and studies based on it. The sources that I analysed were; 'Tattoos: the road to acceptance in western society' , ' Tattoo subculture: creating a personal identity in the context of social stigma', 'The artification of tattoos: transformations within a cultural field', 'Why are health care managers biased against hiring service providers with tattoos?' and ' Tattooing: Stereotyping and social acceptance.' Along with analysing written sources I have also looked online for video examples based on a similar topic to give me inspiration on how I could plan my video.

Pre-production: To prepare for my video I needed to find an expert to interview for my documentary (tattoo artist). To find an expert I searched online for local tattoo stores to call. Before choosing one I made sure that they had majority of good reviews as I wanted a reliable and recommended tattoo artist. Finding the right tattoo store was a challenge for me as many tattoo stores declined to participate as they were either too busy or were not comfortable with being filmed and interviewed. However, after continuously calling up different tattoo stores one of them finally accepted to participate and they told me to go in on the 29th of August at 3:30PM. The tattoo shop is called Ink Supremacy in Mawson Lake. Planning for this video can be found in appendix 2. I created a synopsis (refer to appendix 1) before planning anything so that I had a guide to go by, then I created a shot list and a story board. My shot list consisted of a master shot, 2shot - medium shot, wide shots and close ups (refer to appendix 3). My storyboard started off with visuals of the environment for the intro, then when onto the interview participants and then the expert (refer to appendix 4). Before filming I also went on Youtube to pick out different background music that I would possibly use for my video and also used Photoshop to create titles, captions and the outro for the video. I also had to create a brief script for my introduction.

Production: When I went in the tattoo shop to do the interview all the staff there were extremely friendly and supportive. The tattoo artist that offered to participate as the expert in my documentary was Trent Dowell. Recording the interview was a success and he also gave me permission to film his office area where his drawings and equipment is, and the other staff working also allowed me to film around the shop and also film them tattooing their customers. A problem that occurred when I interviewed Trent was that the lighting there was bad and uneven, it was dim and kept flaring. To overcome this I tried my best to adjust the brightness of the video since the original was extremely bad. As the expert interview was the most important aspect of the video, I was very relieved to have gotten that done and over with. I then worked on interviewing the participants Anastasia and David who both had tattoos. A problem that came up when interviewing Anastasia was that she struggled to think of what to say when I filmed. To overcome this I had to pause the recording and help her figure out what to say and how to word it properly then recorded everything again. When she finished her interview I took some shots of her tattoos zooming in close up so that I could use it as B-roll in my documentary. Another problem that occurred was when I was recording David, there was a lot of noise in the background of the room we planned to film in so we had to go into the room next to it which was more smaller and quiet. After the interview I took shots of his tattoos for B-roll. After the interviews I recorded my green-screen introduction following the script I wrote when I prepared for my documentary.

Post production: The most time consuming part of this whole project was the editing. When I imported all the recordings I had to adjust the colour, brightness and contrast to make it look more appealing. I struggled in making all the recordings have the same colour, brightness and contrast as some of them were recording outside in the sunlight and inside a room. To overcome this I went through and adjusted them individually and kept replaying the whole video to make sure it was even. I started off my editing by reviewing all the interviews and cutting the important parts that I wanted in the video.

Stage 2 Digital Media

After I cut all parts of the interviews I needed, I started to work on the intro. The intro is the first thing a viewer will see and whether they continue to watch it or not depends on if the intro is appealing and interesting enough to engage them. I cut my b-roll to fit the music and flow in beat with the background music. With the interviews I put it in the order of Anastasia , David and then the expert as the experts interview was the longest. I added in the captions after and b-roll at the necessary moments to add some depth into the documentary and other visuals. In between each part I added a cross-dissolve or cross-blur transition as I wanted the video to be simple and flow as adding the other dramatic transitions would complicate and be too much for my documentary. After editing and assembling all the videos, I worked on my outro by adding a credits section and also the tattoo shop's logo to give credits to them and also help promote their business. I added in my introduction last because it was the most quick and easy part of editing the whole video, as the introduction was filmed in front a green screen, I used a photo from online of a mandala design as the background of the introduction.

Evaluation

The main concept of my documentary was to highlight tattoos and give people with tattoos the chance to speak out on their thoughts and opinions and the troubled experiences they have from workplaces, and other people around them. Looking at my synopsis compared to my final product, I am pleased with the results and believe that they follow the synopsis. People with tattoos and an expert did get the opportunity to express how they feel about the social impacts in this video. The goal was not aimed to particularly persuade viewers to be more accepting of tattoos but it had the hope of helping viewers understand that tattoos aren't a form of intimidation, and subsequently their opinions of tattoos after the video could either be the same or could be more accepting. This project has improved my recording, and video editing skills. My past experience involved these skills on a project that limited the school grounds. This documentary has allowed me to go outside the school grounds, which gave me more experience within the subject field. This project has also made me more familiar with the iMovie software as each time I use it I am always finding a new feature that I was unaware of which could be helpful for me in the future. Not only have I improved my recording and video editing skills but it has also unexpectedly developed my confidence and communication as this documentary involved getting in contact with interview participants and also a qualified expert in the subject field. Overall, I am pleased with the results of this documentary however, in the future I would make sure to use one camera only to film the whole thing so that the quality is the same throughout, as a different camera was used to record the expert interview which had a big impact on the appearance of the video.

Word count 1991 words

STAGE 2 DIGITAL MEDIA STORYBOARD

The storyboard that I have constructed here will show that for the start I want some visuals of the environment around the tattoo shop, this will get viewers engaged and settled in and would also present an aesthetically pleasing intro for my documentary. After the next 3 shots will be of people I'm interviewing, specifically people who have tattoos (Could be strangers., friends or famiry). Next I plan to take more shots of the city and environment around the tattoo studio, which will lead to a shot of the tattoo studio entrance, this w.111 put a spotlight on the tattoo studio and will sort of promote the place to the viewers. The last part of the story board will be first an interview of a tattoo artist from that place and (hopefully and interview of someone getting a tattoo and then the persons opinion on their experience).

Research

Sources:

Source #1 Title: Tattoos: The Road to Acceptance in Western Society Published: N/A Author: Savannah Ramion Date viewed: 16 August 2017 URL: http://www.indstate.edu/sites/defaull/files/media/Documents/PDF/honors-thesis-SavannahRamion.pdf

Source #2 Title: Tattoo Subculture: Creating a personal identity in the context of social stigma Published: November 2013 Author: Naomi Joy Tabassum Date viewed: 23 August 2017 URL:httos'//search proauest .c_om/ooenview/e4bd1461547c40a85b91b19b62032182/1? oo -or im: ite =M r.hn l,1rR.r.hl = 1 A7 !'in R.rti"" 5'.

Source #3 Title: The Artification of Tattoo: Transformations within a Cultural Field Published: 18 July 2013 Author: Mary Kosut Date viewed: 23 August 2017 URL: http:/liournals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1749975513494877

Source #4 Title: Why are health care managers biased against hiring service providers with tattoos? Published: 21 April 2017 Author: Aaron D. Arndt, Gayle Mcc ombs, Susan Lynn Tolle & Christina Cox Date viewed: 27 September 2017 URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wsmq20

Source #5 Title: Tattooing: Stereotyping and Social Acceptance Published : March 2014 Author: Sandra Johnston Date viewed: 27 September 2017 URL: http://esource.dbs.ie/bitstream/handle/10788/2249/baiohnston s 2014 orlf?!':P.rn11,nr.P=1