Social media research

As we know research is very important to this project and one of our main components is creating a social media to promote our production. When thinking about a documentary and as I am an avid watcher I knew many of them didn't have a heavy social media presence. I also knew if they did they would most likely be on Instagram and even though that's where I found all these documentaries it was tough. I searched popular documentaries and there was nothing or a small amount of posts on the distributers page rather than having their own. 

Media text: Abstract (once again!)

Social media tool: Instagram 

Description of types of posts: 

Abstract focuses on exactly what you would expect it to, the different art forms the episodes focus on. They show off the artists with clips or images from the episodes as well as delving deeper into quotes from those featured. Along with this they repetitively post the same artists, but differentiate it by choosing different imagery and graphics. 

Description of how branding is developed (or not):

This most definitely helps build the brand of the documentary. They convey how important artists and their work is no matter the form. One part that confused me is that none of their season one material is on their Instagram. While this may have been due to the fact that they made the page after the release of their first season I think if they had posted content from the previous season. This would introduce people new to the page what the series focuses on and what they can expect to see in the second season. They also may have cleared the page for their second season and if they did I think that choice would only harm the continuity of the series. 

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence:

Abstract is one of our main inspirations for the portfolio project and it's also why we will most likely choose Instagram. Our "investigation" into different mediums mirrors the purpose of Abstract.  We want to showcase our episodes and their subjects and we will most likely follow their posting strategy. The photography along with graphics use keeps the page fresh and full of different-looking posts. Even with all the different images and colors it ties together with their logo that uses all these colors.  We hope to follow this as well and choose colors we think we can use to help build our brand. 

Media text: Chef's Table 

Social media tool: Instagram 

Description of types of posts:

Once again Chef's Table Instagram features posts that you would expect and as I'm writing this it's making me really hungry. The posts come in series which follow the upcoming episodes. They are essentially bursts in the feed that slowly build to clips that introduce the new episode. The posts highlight the food being created as well as the chef's who make them.

(it's a lot of examples, I know)

Description of how branding is developed (or not):

I would say they did a great job developing their brand. They clearly demonstrate the main points of the documentary which are the chef's stories and the food they create. As I previously said the series has many seasons and as you scroll through their Instagram it is made clear what they are trying to get across to you in each season. Some seasons simply focus on different chef's while season four is specifically on pastries. They use a series of posts along with grid takeovers that create a large picture across the page. 

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence:

I love the grid takeovers they used and think it would make our social media visually appealing. It makes it clear to the viewer what they are going to be watching without them having to do much reading. The stories are being told visually and make the experience of scrolling through their Instagram much better. I'm thinking we could follow their lead and do a series of posts as well since they help people to genuinely understand what they will be watching. 

Media text: Our Planet

Social media tool: Instagram 

Description of types of posts:

These types of posts differ from the two previous episodic documentaries. Instead of focusing on different episodes they focus on different animals. They also use memes to make their posts more appealing along with many videos showcasing the animals. 

Description of how branding is developed (or not):

I'm getting quite repetitive, but I promise I'm being serious they really do develop the brand well. Their focus is animals and they deliver. If I am able to make my brand this distinct it would make me feel great about the project. There's not much to say they built a strong brand through their social media. Through the use of videos, graphics, and photos the animals are shown off and intrigue those viewing their page to learn more about them. 

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence:

My goal would be to develop a strong brand like Our Planet. Their brand is clear and it's to their benefit as they can make funny posts while being educational at the same time. An interesting Instagram that still develops and coveys a brand is our main goal and hopefully, we will be able to incorporate things like humor into our social media. 

Did you notice the similarities throughout this; I did! The first similarity is the same social media platform and after doing this research I realized that Instagram is most definitely the most popular platform for documentary promotion. This is most likely because of the fact that these are non-fiction pieces so the people within them can't really be interviewed on the topic since that's the whole point of the documentary. With actors, they can participate in trends on other platforms like TikTok, but with this documentary, that type of branding just doesn't make sense. The second similarity is that they are all on Netflix. When searching for documentaries with social media as I said previously it proved to be difficult. Their similar style of branding may be due to the fact that they are all featured on Netflix. In simple terms, it's been made clear that Instagram is our best course of action and we will have updates soon on the creation of our page as we are getting started way sooner than planned. 

(me after writing the longest blog ever)

I'll be right back 

BANANA!

 This week is going to be filled with blogs so I’m going to give you the major updates for this week. We’ve changed some blog posts since we found out our social media component has to start much sooner than we anticipated. First, is the updated schedule for the week.

Next is the film schedule for the week. This week we are getting most of the filming done as the podcast is our main episode and the yearbook will get one of two episodes out of the way. 

Last, is our list of questions. The two episodes that are going to be strictly featured on social media will have similar more generic questions while the podcast episode will have more in-depth questions.

Podcast questions:

Yearbook questions:

Film questions:

Thanks for coming back!

Give me some credit!

 Just as promised I have a new and improved schedule for you guys and I'm really proud of this one. In a previous blog, I introduced our project schedule. After a class discussion, we compared our original schedule with an example and had to compare and contrast. We realized we had a fatal flaw and that was our lack of detail. Our schedule didn't list our tasks for the week it just had a single sentence that wouldn't be helpful in the long run. I spent the time fixing it along with including a blog list for each week. Of course, this is all tentative and subject to change but I feel strongly about sticking to this, so we fixed it and this is the new and improved schedule. 

Drum roll, please.......

It's slightly blurry blame blogger! Talk soon!

The most wonderful time of the year

 RESEARCH TIME! 

I would be lying if I said research was one of my favorite parts of this class, but I do love a good documentary so for this I'm compiling documentaries I have previously watched and would love to emulate in my own work. I do have a decent amount of documentaries under my belt (most of them true crime) so I think I'm pretty well equipped for the job. Let's get started.

Abstract

I've talked about this documentary time and time again because its structure is unique and in this case easy for us to replicate. We watched this documentary in class and at home as research for our previous documentary project (I'll link the previous research below). Why this documentary is important now is because of it's format. "Abstract" is an episodic documentary that highlights artists in different industries. Each episode is different from the last which is what our documentary is going to replicate. They tell the full story of the artists and highlight projects important to them, while we won't be doing exactly that we plan to pull many bits and pieces as inspiration.

Doc Talk #1 (past research)

20 Days In Mariupol

This type of documentary is not something I would normally watch as the story it's telling is recent and not complete. I was drawn to it one day while scrolling through YouTube and decided to give it a try. This project was also weighing on my mind so I thought extra research couldn't hurt. The documentary was exactly what I needed to see. It was a brand new documentary focusing on current events using brand new footage to portray the situation they were talking about. This is a new challenge we are facing for our documentary as last time we were allowed to use archived footage. When approaching a documentary I only thought of past stories to tell that would have needed heavy amounts of archived footage, so archived footage not being allowed challenged us to tell a different story. While our documentary isn't covering the atrocities of war seeing a piece of work with all new footage made me feel better about the task we are undertaking. 

Every Interview Style Explained

The video I linked above I found quite interesting. I was just scrolling through videos and decided to click on this one and I’m glad I did. It introduced me to new techniques that I have seen used before but never thought I could include. I never understood the difference until this video made it clear to me. Some techniques that intrigued me were the conversational style which I thought we could possibly incorporate in the podcast episode as well as the in the moment technique. I think if we do end up incorporating them they will make the documentary more visually interesting.

Thanks for tuning in again I’ll be back tomorrow with the new schedule as promised!

BA BADA BAAAAAA....

    I tried to create the minions noise I don't know if you got that but I hope you did. Anyway not the main point of this blog the main point is to tell you the idea we chose. If you couldn't guess we picked the idea we felt most confident with and that was option number three. We've also developed the idea further so I will explain that to you now. 

    Our project will be an episodic documentary focusing on the production of three different mediums. The episodes will consist of the creation of a podcast, yearbook, and short film. This will introduce us to three different worlds while allowing us to create something we love which is a documentary. For the 5-minute component, we plan to focus on the podcast's creation while the other episodes will be represented through the social media we choose. 

    This idea encompassed every idea we had which made choosing it even easier. We were able to create a brand new documentary while including the journalism aspect my partner Maria loved so much in the first idea. While I was not very fond of the idea its inclusion in this light makes it much more interesting to me and something I'm excited to create. 

    Thanks for tuning in the new and improved schedule is coming just as promised, but it makes more sense at the end of this week's blogging series.

(me leaving the other ideas behind)

Tick tock on the clock

 Since we have started the project a timeline is crucial so I would like to introduce you to ours and why it looks like this. 

You may be like this schedule is kind of plain but that’s because we are going to create a more detailed plan for each week. A sort of checklist to keep us on track along with showing you what we need to accomplish. Originally we had a more fast paced schedule but slowed it down in specific sections like filming and editing. We felt that giving ourselves more time would allow us to make the right decisions and get feedback from our teacher and peers. Along with creating a checklist we will also create a more detailed cohesive timeline once we solidified our idea. This blog is a little short but that’s because there is much bigger things to come. I’ll be back soon with research and more…

Ideas...Ideas...

I swear I'm not an indecisive person I just seem to strive for perfection when it comes to this class. Combining two brains leaves a lot of room for ideas and in our case, we have 3 ideas that are all over the scale. 

First Idea: The Circuit 

Our high school newspaper is like a machine and releases a newspaper every quarter. This documentary would follow each job within the class and the process of creating our school's paper. For our previous documentary research, we watched Abstract: The Art of Design. This documentary follows the lives of different artists in each episode. We would essentially mirror this format and follow roles like the teacher and the editor-in-chief. My fear about doing this production is that it might be boring and not interesting enough to create engaging episodes. 

Second Idea: Student Hobbies

Our idea for this documentary came from our friends and all the interesting hobbies they have. Due to complications that may arise when trying to film in school for The Circuit idea we thought moving out of school would make our lives a lot easier. We would focus on students like our friend Chiara who sings and hosts events along with our friends Josh and Sai who have an informational sports podcast. This would highlight how important students' lives are out of school and how doing things they enjoy can better their lives. 

Third Idea: Behind the scenes 

This is my favorite idea of the three we are presenting here. This documentary would focus on the creation of different productions like a podcast, short film, and documentary. I like to call it a documentary about a documentary (but not actually about a documentary). This would introduce us to ideas we never thought about exploring in a storytelling aspect. We would tell the story of different groups and their process in creating their production. This would allow us to create a completely new production with plenty of B-roll opportunities. As I said before this is my favorite idea as well as one that's feasible for us to complete. 

Overall, I'm really excited to get started and I'll be back in a couple of days to show you our timeline for the project. This year I want to actually utilize my timeline and create checklists to go alongside them to hold myself accountable. This is gonna be great I can feel it. 

The beginning of the end...portfolio time

 It hasn't been too long, but I know you've missed me. I'm equal parts excited and really scared for the portfolio project. While it’s something we’ve been building up to all year I still feel nervous looking at the overall project. Will my ideas be good enough? Will I be able to execute them? Time will tell but I should probably tell you what I’ve been doing since you last heard from me. 

To learn about the distribution process we created teasers and trailers along with a distribution plan for stories written by the creative writing class. I really enjoyed this project as it pushed me away from my own ideas and made me use someone else’s story. I also worked with a new group of people so I was able to experience a different dynamic than I’m used to. I can’t say it was my favorite experience but it showed me the reality of making a project work in the real world. We based our project around a story titled Viper which followed a young girl faced with the difficult decision of becoming a spy. Personally, I love a female lead so getting to create a promotional product wasn’t difficult and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll include the link below in case you want to watch it. 

VIPER

While I did enjoy making the project I enjoyed making the documentary so much more. It felt like a challenge I had never faced and something I wanted to tackle. So when talks began about the portfolio project and which package we were going with it was undoubtedly the documentary. You may see I said we that’s because for this project I’ll be working with Maria my best friend. I worked with her on the documentary project and we plan to continue our collaboration through the portfolio project. We truly put blood, sweat, and tears into the first documentary and I know with the amount of time we have to complete this we could create something 10x better. 

I’m so excited to see where this project goes. Talk soon.