Our Project - Schizophrenia

We chose to do schizophrenia for three main reasons:

1. This illness is much more known to other people as they can use adjectives to describe the mental illnes, for example, 'crazy, sick or mad'. Such adjectives signify how schizophrenia is perceived in the eyes of the public and for us doing this documentary, we wanted people to learn that people who suffer from schizophrenia are just as normal as everyone.
3. I have studied schizophrenia in my psychology lessons, so getting involved with such an amazing project to work with enables me to help people who suffer from schizophrenia to be able to come out of their shell and become much more involved in everyday activities
5. In addition, schizophrenia is the main mental illnesses that affect young adults mostly than any other age group. So doing this project with a schizophrenic at the age of seventeen makes the documentary more relaistic and follows the conventions of when the early symptoms of schizophrenia start to occur.

Research into magazines

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Research into magazines

View more presentations from Miriam_Gwokyalya.

Research Into Interviews

Our documentary will consist of a interviews of Naomi's parents, teachers, relatives and friends. they will be talking about Naomis journey with schizophrenia.

Frey and Oishi (1995) define it as "a purposeful conversation in which one person asks prepared questions (interviewer) and another answers them (respondent)"

So, interviews are very powerful in providing information on a particular topic or particular area to the interviewer and to the audience. Interviews have two structures; structured or unstructured. Structured interviews are where the interviewer has a set of questions and they cannot exceed those number of questions. On the other hand, unstructured interviews is where the interviewer starts off with a particular topic and then a discussion or conversation emerges.

In our documentary, we will have both a structured interview and unstructured interview. the reason for this, is because we want the participant to feel comfortable when answring the questions but at the same time we dont want it to go off the topic.

Advantages of carrying out an unstructured interview means that there is freedom of the participant to answer anyhow they prefer giving them a sense of control which means rich data will be gathered. However, it is time consuming for the sake that it asks open questions meaning that it can cause confusion or lack of understanding of the question. 

Radio Trailer Script

Kerry: “Sometimes everything seems so normal but then the unexpected happens and an illness comes to torment you in the worst possible way. 


David: I used to hear voices regularly, telling me I was ugly, telling me I could not do things, telling me I couldnt pass things, telling me to hurt myself, slit my wrists, cut my throat, I used to think everybody was talking about me, calling me name....hallucinations, regular. 

Kerry: "ITV’s Special Cases follows a young man’s journey in his fight against a life threatening illness of schizophrenia this Wednesday at 9.00pm"

Radio Trailer research

As well as produce the actual documentary, we had to produce a radio advert. To do this we started to look at different types of adverts and come up with a simple code and conventions that they all face.

We came to the conclusion that all radio adverts:

Had extracts from the actual documentary

Voice over from the documentary – often clips of the voice over in the documentary but others that added still to be done using the same voice. Often the voice over would be questions causing an enigma code so that the listeners would have to watch the documentary to find out the answer.

The time of the documentary

The channel that is it going to be on

Radio adverts of often kept short and quick so the audience isn’t bored it last no longer the 50 seconds

There is often music in the background that will either feature on the documentary or have a relevant to the subject.

Research into documentaries

TYPE 1 DOCUMENTARY: 9/11 Falling Man

Channel: Channel four

Type Of Documentary: The voice over in the documentary is of a male to show control and authority about the seriousness of the situation, however the voice also sympathises with the victims. It narrates about different actions happening in different parts of the twin towers and giving reassurance to the families of the victims and to the audience. over a serious situation

It can also be perceived as a drama documentary as reconstructions were used for the man falling down the building to show the impact it had on the world. Some of the reconstructions were based on the information that was gave by the victims who had been through this traumatic event.
Narrative structure
The narrative structure was symmetrical with the videos and interviews that had been constructed. It was a linear structured documentary in order for the audience to keep up with what had happened and to be able to sympathise with the victims.

Camera work  

• Close ups of the towers were used to show were the damage had occured and where the plane had panned through the buildings.
• Hand held camera work of was used to show the plane going through the twin towers and people's reactions of the distratrous damages.  
• Zooming in was used in interviews when the victims were talking about their families and how they were trapped in the buildings and could not escape. During the interviews, photographs of the families were shown in a zooming shot to show the contrast from the photographs to actual reality. Also the emotions on the people’s faces to show that they were there and still feel for the event.
• Mid-shot and close up was used in the interviews to show the emotions on the faces of the people that were actually there.

Mise-en-scene
The interviews were all placed on a blurry background to take the audience's attention from the surrounding to the person doing the interview. In addition, it shows the importance and seriousness of the issue being discussed and to be able to pay respect to those killed during the 9/11. 
The clothes that the people being interviewed all wore suits to show respect to the topic. There was also a fire man to survive who had this fire mans suit on.
Sound

• non deigetic sounds and helicopters going round getting louder and building up the tensions at the beginning of the documentary.
• Voice over of actually conversation’s that different people made from inside the building and outside.
• Diegetic sound of the explosions going off inside in the twin towers.
• Non diegetic sound of music playing in between the documentary. The music is of piano instrumental which is very sad and slow refecting how the people being interview feel.

TYPE 1 DOCUMENTARY: Twin Babies with joined head

Channel: Channel Five

Synopsis Of The Documentary: Twin baby girls, Trishna and Krishna were left at a orphanage however they weren't normal babies, their skulls were fused together. They were taken at the Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne. Trishna looked healthy and well being while Krishna suffered long term damages like Hypertension, pneumonia and an enlarged heart.

The twins made it through the laborious fight but there was a dilemma left – to save one twin or to let both of them die. However Moira (the mother) decided to go on with the operation although she knew the consequences of both of them dying or becoming disabled. However the twins survived four operation in a year and now they face their biggest operation ever- the separation and this can cost them lives.

Shot Angles:
Close up used during the interviews to make the audience aware of the devasting news the family had to go through.

Mid shot is used when

TYPE 1 DOCUMENTARY: Woman With Remarkable Body
 
Joy Westall was diagnosed with Dystonia when she was really young which affected her adult development. She got married and had a baby girl, Amy however Amy also developed signs of dystonia and by eleven years old Amy had clear signs of the illness. Specialist had reassured her that the illness was not hereditary ironically they changed their minds that it could be passed on through genes when Amy was showing clear
signs of dystonia.

In 2003, both the mother and daughter underwent an operation at Kings college hospital where the procedure is really risky and dangerous. The operation involved inserting 2 electrodes into the brain with a battery pack located under the skin of the chest. The operation was a success and now Amy attends dance classes, swimming and learning how to drive.

TYPE 1 DOCUMENTARY: Born with phocomelia

Born with a rare chromosomal disorder called phocomelia which is not unlike thalidomide, Alison Lapper did not have any arms and had only very short legs. She refers to her condition as: "limb deficiency". She is a remarkable lady in many respects. She has coped with her disability, put herself through university, raised a perfectly healthy son, established a successful career as a talented artist and won the respect of very many people.
She began life, from a very early age, at Chailey Heritage School, a residential home for the severely disabled, where she would stay until she was 18 years old. At the time, Chailey Heritage was regarded as a centre of excellence for the care of the seriously handicapped. It was here that she met the boy who would become her life-long friend, Pete Hull.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74vTftboC_A



In this documentary, they summarise what schizophrenia is all about with short interviews about how this patients got diagnoised with schizophrenia and what their voices were saying. In this documentary it follows the conventions of a documentary:

• It has a voice over educating the audience at the same time listening to what these patients of schizophrenia have to say about their illness. The voice over is very clear and very fluent. For example when the talking about the voices the man was experiencing "the voices got louder and louder everyday".
• In the documentaries there were snap shots of Kim Stille as a child, and during those snapshots, Kim stille was talking about how schizophrenia started off during his childhood. This shots were used to make the documentary

What are documentaries

What is a documentary?
Documentaries reflect realism as they focus on people's lives or certain events that have happened or which are going to happen where the audience is able to make a valid opinion about what they are viewing on the screen.

Facts about documentaries

Documentaries use different techniques to show the information they want the audience to actively watch as they record it as the actual events are occuring using visual aids AND reconstructions that are staged for the camera enabling the audience to understand what is going on.

Most documentaries are very factual and the main convention is the use of graphics revealing the name and other important information to help the audience understand who they are and what is their role in the documentary.
Most documentary crews are a small sample compared to film crews because they only consist of just one or two cameras and a sound person.

Lighting

• Natural lighting is used whether the actually light of the filming or the studio lights made to look natural.
• Reconstruction can often be darker light to show it is a reconstruction.

Camera work

• -Hand held camera work is used to made it look ‘authentic’ and ‘real’. They use their body as support if needed

Editing

• Fade out-when an image gradually fades to darkness
• Fade in – when an image gradually fade in.
• Dissolve- the end of the shot overlapping with the next shot.
• Wipe- when a shot is replaced with the new shot by using a line.
• Editing is a way of interpreting and event and how it is placed and other together for the audience to see.

Sound

• Most of the sound is diegetic from the source and the other is non diegectic, music over the top of interviews to promote to the audience what the documentary is all about.
• The documentary genre give the audience a change to illustrate the ‘truth’ about things which the audience can then make there decision on it.

Expository

• Uses ‘voice of god’ narrative to directly speak to the viewers often anchoring the images or texts shown on the screen.
• This type of doc is often trying to expose a problem or a certain area.

Interactive

• Acknowledges that the camera crew are there ie Cribs
• Made easier as of the lightweight portable equipment that they are able to move around.
• Made to look honest as they aren’t hiding the camera crew they are letting you know that they are there. But can sometimes be seen as manipulation to the audience.

Drama- documentary

• Reconstructions to show things that didn’t have footage of or things that were in the past where there wasn’t camera to take footage of. The older reconstructions are not always correct as don’t know what happened exactly.
• Mostly used in investigation doc and dramatised docs.
• Most people are unsure about drama- doc as if the reconstructions aren’t based on transcripts then they may have a bias interpretation of the events that happened.
• Factual reconstruction are used in Crime watch used to keep the viewer more entertain that they don’t just hear about it but get to see it.
• Docudrama- fictional story that uses techniques of the doc to show it claim of realism.
• Dramadoc- reconstructions of actual evens using fictional cinema,

Current affairs-

• Journalist led programmes the focus on the news and political subjects.
• Often arguing about different cases the journalist has reported on

Documentary dilemmas

• Most documentaries are edited so they cant make sure that the doc is suggest is either informing or entraining the audience.
• Paula Rabinowitz – three was relationship with doc the subject, the programme and the audience.
• ‘its not so much what you get in the shooting but what you do with it afterwards’ Paul Watson doc marker
• Most editing is done to juxtapose the images and the sound.
• The BBC and ITC have the final say in the edit of the programmes.

 
Documentary techniques

• Compilation film- this is a technique where the documentary is made up of archive footage and images.
• Interview - interviews where the interviewee talks about events and opinions about the subject or event. 
• Documentaries often tell stories in a narrative form as they do this using voice over, interviews, footage, music to interest the audience.

Narration-

·         Narration is used to help reveal the plot information.

·         Most common is the ‘voice of god’ where you never see the person behind the voice.

·         Most of the narration is done with someone with an ‘authoritative voice’ often to go with the subject they are dealing with.

·         Voice over tend to be males because of the authoritative voice that they have, but are starting to introduce females voices.