Rough Documentary Outline

1. Introduction
2. Background to Greek Politics
3. Riot Catalyst - The Death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos
4. How young people reacted
5. It was not just a student revolt
6. The Reawakening of 2010
7. Where we are now
8. Conclusion

Estimated time: Six Minutes (Roughly 50 seconds per section)

Audience Research Planning

Audience Research One
The showing of a rioting clip. How does this make you feel?

• How does this clip make you feel?
• Why does it make you feel like this?
• How do you think the people in the video are feeling?
• What do you think has sparked off this feeling?
• Do you know what and where this is taking place?

Audience Research Two
General questionnaire about the riots. What do you know?

• Do you know any Greek people?
• Have you ever been to Greece?
• Were you aware of riots in Greece in 2008?
• Were you aware of the follow up riots earlier this year?
• Do you know what the event was that triggered off these riots?
• Do you understand why they took place?
• If you know people with Greek links how do you think they would have felt at the time?
• Did you realise that the main cause for the riotting was that young people felt mistreated and betrayed by their government?
• How does this make you feel?
• How would you feel if as a young person, your future prospects and the future of your country had been jeapordised by the poor actions of the government you trusted and elected into parliament?

Audience Research Three
Questionnaire about young people's documentaries. What do you want?

• Do you often watch documentaries?
• Do you enjoy watching documentaries and why?
• Which part of a documentary do you feel is most important?
• Facts
• Opinions
• Presentation
• Use of evidence
• Being an original idea
• Do you feel a documentary should be biased? Explain why.
• Is there anything that you feel could improve the content of a documentary?
• Do you feel that documentaries are aimed at audiences of young adults?
• Is there any way that documentaries could be made more relevant for a younger audience?
• Is there anything that could be included to make a younger audience member feel more in touch with the issue in the documentary?

Mood Board - Greek Rioting

In comparison to the last post, this beautiful and culturally inspiring country turns into chaos, as the pictures below show.

Mood Board - Modern Greek Life

Here I have developed my mood board further by placing images most modern Greeks associate with everyday.

Greek Riots 2010 - Research

2010

Background:

• Giorgos Papandreou comes to office with his PASOK government.
• March 5^th 2010 they passed the cost cutting, Economy Protection Bill.
• On April 23^rd requested a bailout from the EU and International Monetary Fund.

Austerity measures

Included:

• Public sector pay cuts
• Pension reductions
• New taxes on company profits
• Increase tax on luxuries
• Increased VAT

The measure aimed to save around €30 billion through to 2012.

Through doing this, the EU and IMF would agree to give Greece an immediate €45 billion loan charging interest of roughly 5%. The total package would add up to roughly €110 billion. Papandreou submitted this bill to his parliament on May 4^th. The bill was put up for a vote which would take place on May 6^th.

This would become the biggest government overhaul in a generation. However the Greek people already feeling cheated by their governments for getting them into this mess in the first place did not agree that they should be the ones who were paying for this huge debt, especially seeing as they would be the ones feeling the cuts the most in the first place. New Democracy (who had recently lost office) vowed to vote against the bill, however being in the minority it was predicted it would probably pass anyway.

Greek Riots 2008 - Research

Background Rioting

2006 –             Government attempts to reform Education system

2007 –             Student groups begin demonstrations which end in conflict with the police.

2008 –             Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens appointed.

2008

Murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos

• 
  
  Fatally shot by police officer Epaminondas Korkoneas
• 
  
  Protesting in the Eksarcheia district of Athens
• 
  
  Part of protesting group of Students
• 
  
  Led to widespread rioting and engaging of police.
• 
  
  Riots spread to Thessaloniki and then protests in the rest of Europe including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Copenhagen and Madrid.
• 
  
  Newspaper Kathimerini called the rioting ‘the worst Greece has seen since the restoration of democracy in 1974’.

Archbishop proclaimed "the youths are not enraged for no reason”

Although this was the catalyst of the rioting, there were deeper reasons lying behind the revolt. There was a widespread feeling of frustration from young Greeks about the economic and educational state of the country which is affecting the spiralling unemployment rate.

People in general also feel betrayed by the Government as the inefficiency and corruption it promotes only makes the situation worse. As it is a socialist government people feel that they should be working harder to make things better for the people, rather than for personal profit.

Communism – KKE

The Communist Party of Greece used the death of young Alexandros as a way of gaining political support. It showed the police’s role in the shooting as escalating authoritarianism, with them being used almost as soldiers to lay down their ‘marshal law’. This was a clever move by the communists, playing on the fear of ordinary Greeks who already view the police in a suspicious manner due to their corruption and ‘thuggish’ methods. The important thing to remember is that this was NOT a communist uprising.

PM Kostas Karamanlis of ‘New Democracy’ declared the passing of 7 new laws to help out those businesses who had suffered loss or damage during the riots. The measures also aided those businesses who were unaffected, which was seen to aid the people and offer jobs to level out the rate of unemployment.

The Greek public saw this as at last a small positive move by the government, however they were not told how much these laws would affect the already spiralling debt.

My Big Fat Greek Mood Board

For my mood board I have decided to use videos of pictures which display certain characteristics that I wish my piece of work to carry. Below is a very stereotypical version of Greece, something anyone from this country may expect to find when visiting as a tourist. However, when you compare it to my other videos posted it you will find that life in Greece is not all as nice and relaxed as you would imagine.

In many respects this is a true representation of the country. Ordinarily life goes on relatively quietly and peacefully until something goes wrong. The Greeks are a very passionate breed and if they do not like something then they will not hesitate to tell you about it. Years of oppression from other cultures has left them demanding only perfection from their own government, however the government themselves had other ideas. Below I have displayed the kinds of images for my mood board that I want to portray through my own piece of work. Do not get me wrong, such images do not appear very often in Greek society, but when they do they are devastating. Some people may find the images a little disturbing.

All of the images posted give me great inspiration to carry on with this documentary. As a viewer from another culture, you should be asking questions all the time, and I believe that these images will both shock and intrigue a British viewer, and it will therefore be my job as the person documenting to answer these questions through my filming.

Documentary Thoughts - One

I have found a two part documentary already made on YouTube with a lot of the material I need already on it. I have posted both below and will use the content as part of my research into the Greek riots for my documentary. This is not how I wish to present the documentary itself, but it does give a good idea about how some of the content might work in my own peice. The first part of the episode is posted at the top, the second at the bottom. I will post my notes on the events when I next have the time.

Part One

Part Two

U-Turn!

I have now returned to my original idea of the documentary. I am aware that I have concentrated the majority of my research thus far on the idea of doing a music video based on mise en scene and representation, however I believe this will also come in useful as I work on a documentary as I can apply what I have learned here and be more creative on the documentary because of this.

My original reason for wanting to do the music video was that I believed it would be too much of a strain on my other A Levels if I was to do the documentary, however I now realise that it would probably take up as much, or even more time than I had thought. Also, because of the huge amount of scope I have in the making of the music video I am finding it very hard to come up with one definitive idea of what to do.

I have already outlined my idea for a documentary earlier in the blog. I want to create a documentary based around the history behind the greek riots, showing the lack of knowledge people have here in the UK of what it is actually about and explaining through a young Greek man's eyes how he feels. As he is young the audience will hopefully through this feel some connection with the character and thus will listen more to what he has to say and will feel the emotions he is feeling. I guess this adds another dimension to the documentary rather than just basing it on plain facts.

I have a very clear image in my head about what I want to and how I can do it. In some ways it was a very good thing that I did the research into the music videos before I decided to swap, as I want to make the documentary something a little more in touch with a modern audience than what an ordinary documentary would do e.g. using a young presenter who is talking about a passion rather than a subject/ bringing in modern influences such as music which young people can relate with to etc. Also I feel that because it is a subject I feel so strongly about, I would come up with a very good peice of work, whereas the fact that I am struggling to come up with an idea for the music video means that I probably am not best suited to creating one.

I have really run out of time to keep switching ideas now, so this one is going to have to stick!

Ευχή μου τύχη!

This Years Coursework Objectives

For this years coursework I have set myself ten objectives to fulfill throughout the year:

1. I will be more creative when coming up with an idea.
2. I will try and develop ideas as far as possible.
3. I will take into account my research when creating the piece of work.
4. I will take into account other people's advice and input when asked.
5. I will put more effort into the planning and research on my blog.
6. I will look into my subject area as far as I possibly can before filming.
7. I will try out more creative camera angles when shooting.
8. I will only use people who I think are good for the part needed.
9. I will put my time outside of sixth from to good use when filming.
10. I will not take any decisions relating to the final product lightly.

Music Video Thoughts - Three

I was searching YouTube for some new music and I came across two more videos which I really liked. I have posted them up on here so that I can refer back to them in the future should I want to. Sorry, they are both in Greek again guys, but sadly thats just the kind of music that I listen to! Below each of the videos I have posted what I like about each one and why.

'Otan Se Eiha Protodei' by Professional Sinnerz

Although I am not the greatest fan of this song (in fact I think it is awful!!!), I do find the video itself interesting. I find the use of the overhead camera angle and the almost stop motion aspects really unusual, and yet somewhat effective. I think this shows a lot of creativity from the director of the video as I have never seen it done in any video before and is something I can take inspiration from in terms of trying lots of different effect, camera angles especially.

'Erota H Polemo' by Anna Vissi feat. Goin' Through

Again what I love about this video is the simplicity of it all. Like with the song by Mihalis Hatzigiannis I posted previously in 'Music Videos Thoughts - One' I feel that all of the shots in this video are all very simple and yet put together very well. Although they are similar in that respect, you have to say that the two are completely different in all other respects aside from the fact they both feature the singers and not much else. Something else I really love about this video is the way they layer and edit the mise en scene using digital software, something that I will be able to do this year through the use of after effects on the school computers. The video I think also has a very dark quality to it with its use of mainly reds and blacks, combining well with the music itself which I believe is very important when making the video. You want to create a peice to fit the music, not create the peice and just sticking a randomly chosen song on top.

Coursework Action Plan

After a lot of thought I have decided to create a music video rather than a documentary. I had to think long and hard about this decision, however I have to be content in my choice. I have taken this decision for a number of reasons, the foremost being that making a documentary on the idea which I had wanted to would take a huge amount of planning and work outside of the class, and with pressure being added in other subjects I don't feel I could produce my best work in this direction no matter how hard I tried. I had always felt that the music video option was attractive from the very off anyway and have already started my planning in this area anyway so I have no problems in continuing down this route.

It is required in the specification that we provide an action plan for how we want this years project to pan out. This is the main subject of this post and I now know that I am going to have to relate my action plan to a music video. I will split the production of the video up into the following stages:

Original Ideas

Firstly of course, I need to come up with some original ideas of what kind of characteristics I want the video to have. Mise en scene, genre, the actual song and the actors who I want to have in the video are all part of this section. This is a very reflective part of the course which means I am going to be looking both back to the previous project and seeing what worked and what didn't work so well back then, and also forward to the new ideas I can use to improve on what I have already done. This should be a very short exercise as this is the most basic of all the planning stages. I will research more music and videos and post up ideas on the blog as and when they come to me.

Mood Board

The next step will be to create a mood board. This could be done in a variety of different ways both digitally and non. The most usual way of creating a mood board is done by producing a compilation of images that are put together and linked through a particular theme. This is the way I produced my mood board last year. I may do this again, or I may try something completely different. It was recommended we used different (and more creative) digital means to do this, such as possibly creating a short video of images, either still, moving or both to portray our feelings. Another idea could be to produce our own series of photographs that show how want the feeling of our pieces to turn out in a similar way. This would add both more a personal touch to the early stages of the project, as well as showing that we are confident in exploring other media technologies too.

Script

Once I have used my research and mood board to come up with a good idea which I am confident in and want to pursue with in the project, the next step will be to script down how I imagine it will run. This will most probably be through writing as I will experiment using more media technologies with the storyboard rather than the script. I will explain my ideas for this in the storyboard section below.

Storyboard

As said in the post above, storyboarding could be a very interesting part of planning the music video. Of course there is the traditional way of sketching how you want the video to turn out, including captions at the bottom telling of aspects such as camera angles, or if it not clear; what is actually happening. However it has been suggested that I try a more creative and interesting way of producing this. I could still produce the sketches and upload them into a kind of slideshow video that can be placed on the blog, or even create films using digital drawings or actors to represent what will happen in the film. A traditional storyboard is fine, however I want to utilise my resources to the best of my ability this year and it may spice up my blog a bit if I were to do so.

Audience Research
*Section revisited after change to Documentary*
For my audience research I plan to do a number of different things. The most simple of these will be a short questionnaire to hand out to people about documentaries in general, with the emphasis on how to make them more interesting and relevant to a younger audience. On a more topic based method of research I want to conduct two further pieces of research. The first will be to ask what people about the Greek riots in 2008 and 2010 and see what they know about them, if anything. This will be recorded in some way, most probably through audio. For the final piece of audience research I will show a sample of people a clip of the riots and ask them to give me their feelings towards the piece of video and why they feel like that.

Revisit Ideas

After completing all this, it is important that I revisit all of my ideas and take into account what I have learned through people's opinions and my own activities as well. I need to come up with a product that is both appreciated by myself and my audience which is why the audience research is extremely important. With all of these things taken into account I should be able to improve on my original idea and make it worth the effort. If people do not like my finished product, then the main reason would probably be that I have stuck to my guns too much and have not taken the new ideas into account. I could reproduce elements such as the script and the storyboard with the changes applied to prove that I have taken this into into account.


Production
This is of course the most fun part of the project and the part which I can be most creative whilst concentrating on. One thing I could do for this is go out and film different shots of what I want to do before hand then post them up on the blog, asking for comments from people and asking whether they think these ideas would work. That way I can get a good idea of whether or not I am heading in the right direction in terms of how I am getting on with the video.
 Editing
Although I can plan a lot of this before hand, I really like playing with different effects for the video so that it works well with what I have actually shot. This means using different colour contrasts, editing things in and out of the video, adding different motions between shots etc. I can have a rough idea about which shots go in which order to help me with this stage, but apart from that I think that most of it can be done more successfully through careful improvisation.


Evaluation
I know that I did lose a lot of marks last year because of my poor evaluation. This year maybe instead of just writing down the answers to what was required in the specification I could record myself answering the questions and post that on the blog instead. I could also produce a kind of directors commentary to help me fulfil the criteria, something that is a bit more exciting than just reading a written answer. The step up to A2 from AS is a big one and I am sure that they will be looking for me to be a lot more creative in my approach to all aspects of the blog, especially in something as important as the conclusion.

Everything written above will of course be subject to change depending on where I choose to take the project and how it fits into my research and planning.

Ideas for Other Briefs

Documentary

My main idea for a doc/mockumentary would be investigating the recent riots in Athens and Thessaloniki, using research techniques and people I know from the country to try and get an insight of how people feel. It would include historical facts relating to how the situation arose and also using modern ideas of how things are progressing e.g Protest music videos, popular youth culture etc.

Children's Television Drama

The Twins - Stories following the Lima Twins on their adventures using colourful backgrounds and moral story lines to both entertain children and initiate learning. Much like the Hoobs the characters will travel around Canada in their camper van talking to children and telling them stories in a fun and productive way.

 

Questions asked by Ideas Partner

Where will both the stories be set?
What will the plot be?
How will it be laid out?
What techniques will you use to communicate with your audience? 

Music Video Thoughts - Two

'Boro Kai Ego' by Goin' Through feat. NEVMA

This is another one of my favourite music videos. It is a completely different style of music to the last one posted and is a much more modern video, and I feel it shows a lot more advanced techniques than before. The main thing I love about this video would again be the mise en scene, with such a bright and fast tempo song being accompanied by a similar video full of life and tempo itself. Another thing I love about this video is the snazzy, artistic way in which it has been made with the majority of the background of the video being made up of computer animated effects, with the foreground being made realistic by keeping the artists as real people. It seems like these are the kind of effects I may be able to play around with in After Effects this year and through being quite an artistic person myself, the appeal is quite strong. Obviously it would be stupid to expect to produce anything this advanced at this early stage, but it is worth taking inspiration from and discussing at the very least.

I may well post other videos and songs up by Goin' Through as they have many interesting ways of producing videos down to some of the political and contreversial natures of their songs. In a lot of ways the main singer, NiVo is the Greek equivalent of Eminem through the messages he portrays in his songs, and with the current political crisis in Greece, it makes things all the more interesting in regards to his music videos.

Music Video Thoughts - One

'Heria Psila' by Mihalis Hatzigiannis

This has been one of my favourite music videos for a long time now, and it isn't just because I love the song. I find this video very visually pleasing purely down to how simple and yet effective it is. The plain black and white backgrounds I feel contrast beautifully with the costumes that the singer wears onscreen and make I feel make the video easy to watch. The majority of the video is in black and white (a technique I previously said I admired during the AS project)  and although there are flashes of colour towards the end, so the video does not get boring, the colour schemes I feel are generally very plain but effective. The song is quite a soft one and I think the mise en scene used enhances this. Although soft, the song is also quite fast paced, something which is matched by the video as the shots appear at a similar pace to the music and use a variety of different camera shots, although predominantly they show the same kind of scene. It is this simplicity that I really love about this video and it makes it a real joy to watch every time I see it.

The video sort of reminds me of Beryonce's video for 'Single Ladies' in regards to its mise en scene and formatting, which was released in 2008 and won three MTV awards for best Choreography, best editing and video of the year. The video also won video of the year in the 2009 BET and MOBO awards proving just how popular it was. Purely the fact that Hatzigiannis' video reminds me of it must mean it cannot be a bad video by any stretch of the imagination. I have included Beyonce's video below as a comparison.

'Single Ladies' by Beyonce

A2 Productions - Documentary

We used the last few weeks of last year looking at how to make a documentary and had two people from within the television industry visit the schools media students to explain what makes a good documentary and tips on how to make one of our own. We followed this up by making our own short documentary, giving us a good starting point to work from in regards to this production type.

I have always been a fan of historical documentaries anyways from quite a young age and therefore the idea of creating my own about something I am interested in myself is very appealing to me. I have had ideas over the summer about what to do if I was to progress with this kind of production, with University options being thought about here too. With Greek history and language being something I am extremely interested in taking further, I was thinking of doing some kind of documentary on the riotting that has taken place all over Greece as it is a pretty recent news topic and one which I am interested in and would be willing to do deeper research into. This is a very real possibility this year.

A2 Productions - Music Video

We also had a look at a couple of examples of music videos during class today and discussed how they often use stories as their main feature. From what we watched the main example of this was how Katy Perry's music video for her song 'Hot and Cold' used the story of how when her fiance makes a run from their wedding day, she goes slightly mad and chases him down in revenge. We also watched a music video from a band who filmed themselves doing stunts on treadmills all in one take, which although was entertaining and different to begin with, would perhaps be less effective the third or fourth time you watched the clip.

From the research I did into music videos I did over the summer, I have found several kinds of videos which I think are very interesting and would consider doing them, however I will post them with explanations why later on in the blog. Creating a music video is one of the most popular choices amongst the class, and it is clear why as it allows you to be very creative in what you produce. This is the main reason why I would be interested in making a music video.

A2 Productions - Children's TV Drama

In lesson today we watched two examples of children's TV drama to introduce us to the topic. We watched short clips of the shows Button Moon and Rainbow showing just how effective the simplest of children's programming can be. Underlying messages such as not running away from parents were evident in episodes and allowed young people to learn whilst watching. It was also evident that each of them had very memorable theme tunes, allowing a sense of security and familiarity for the children to enjoy. It is clear that from the amount of the long running programmes that this is a very effective way of producing effective programming with a very low budget. Programmes such as Sesame Street, The Wombles and the Teletubbies are examples of this, where human like creatures often make up the cast, as they are loveable, yet  familiar to the children at the same time.

After doing only this small amount of research I think I would defiantly attempt this kind of programming as i believe my crazy sense of humour would fit the bill for how programme would work. I also think that it is such a simple thing to do that it would be very enjoyable to make.

AS Course Reflection

For my AS Media Studies coursework I was involved in a variety of activities including research, planning and editting. Below I have written some reflections of what I did regarding each of these things last year and how I believe they progressed.

Research

There was a lot of research that I did regarding last years project and it took a lot of thought and work to make it happen. I used an audience survey to ask what people thought about my original written idea and how they thought I could improve it. I got responses from a wide range of people from all ages and genders which really helped me progress into making the actual film as I was able to see what was popular about my idea and what was not so popular. Not all of the comments were positive, however I could see this as a good thing as it meant I could view points of view and play with ideas that I would not have been able to come up with myself.

Planning
Planning what the story was going to be and how to film it also took a lot of work. I went through a whole host of film trailers and openings and analysed them closely, looking at how I could use some of the techniques as they had done in my own work. It was mostly aspects such as mise en scene which I took note of here. In more hands on planning, I also had to look for specific locations to film and also produce a storyboard to follow the script which I had already produced and modified.
When reflecting on all of these things, I probably should have posted more planning ideas and information on my blog than that which I actually did and with hindsight I believe this may have improved my mark slightly. I will most definately aim to improve on this part of the portfolio during the A2 course.

Editing
After actually filming the peice of work (which was plagued with bad fortune ruining the original idea) we continued the project by editing it, which I thought went a lot better than expected. Aside from the changing of much of the actual filmed work from the script, meaning I was unable to continue using certain effects (such as the music I was origianally going to etc) from which I had planned, the editing was a fairly smooth process. After learning how to use new softwars such as iMovie and Photoshop for the Mac, this part of the project was relatively easy and I am eagerly awaiting using more new software such as After Effects this year to create a really good peice of work.

Overall I was quite pleased to have earned a high B, but was a little dissapointed in just missing out on an A. However, this year I hope to learn from my mistakes and make sure I produce a peice of work that matches both the examiners and my own expectations.

For further detail, visit my AS blog at http://manousos.wordpress.com/.