Conduct The Research
Research Your Practitioner
For the practitioner’s section I will be looking at advertising for cars and what it used to be like in comparison to how it is now, then on-top of that what I believe it will be like in the future.
Car advertising originated when the first ‘car’ was made, and this is by a company that still lives strong to this day, Ford. Their first commercially available car the Model T was made commercially available in 1908, and at the time this was a major step in transportation and how people lived, I have managed to find an original advert for the vehicle, and I will be looking into it and why it was good at the time.
Firstly when looking at the video it seems very old, now for this research I will be putting this aside because at the time it was filmed the quality was still very good, the content inside of this what matters most, it has to be noted that before this vehicle was introduced that the primary mode of transportation that people used was a horse and cart, so to have something that is self-propelled and that moves freely was a big jump, this is why I think there is a lot of hidden meaning behind the second shot in the advertisement. This clip shows the car going down a steep decent around the same length as the car itself, the narrator says how brilliant and ‘tough’ the car is while this is being done. This shot would have had such a major impact at the time because horses would not have been able to perform this action without causing severe injury to themselves and to the passengers. This gave a new freedom to everyone at the time that they had never experienced before and meant that they were able to go places and much quicker with this new mode of transport. Although the video is sped up it also shows the speed at which the vehicles can travel at, in the first video of the advertisement, this is different compared to a horse and cart as they can usually only travel at two different speeds, fast and slow. This advertisement/promotion of the car is remarkably like what I will be producing but only as one segment of the video (the cinematic section). This advertisement is made up of all action shots of the car overlayed with music and voice over to describe and promote the cars performance. Like new car commercials they have the vehicle performing dangerous stunts which with today’s health and safety would not be allowed (see 0:32) at the time this would have been a first for this style of video as this was a completely modern technology. And without a doubt I would say that this video has influenced car commercials since and now to this date. In car commercials as previously mentioned voice overs are still used along with cinematic shots to show off the cars style.
Now looking at newer car adverts… These advertisements already cannot have the same impact as the older ones could because cars are already around and unless they fly, which would be a major revelation. The most innovative car maker now is Tesla, they currently provide the market leading electric car experience and the technology that they embed into their car is far superior, so let us compare this to the Ford advert. Firstly, which is an obvious one, is that the camera quality is much better but again these adverts were created several years apart meaning it is not a fair comparison. The first fifty seconds of this promotional video show off how the car is made in a Tesla Gigafactory which is then followed up by shots showing off the car, mostly at high speeds as this is one of Tesla’s key features across all their vehicles. Investigating this has meant I have gained a better understanding of how car videos started out and how they have developed over time.
Research Your Competition
My final project has lots of competition that it will have to try and be better than, the reasoning for this is that it has competition from two different types of filmmaking with the first being documentary and the other being advertisements, this is because I intend my video to have different segments featuring both of these elements, I have chosen to do this because I think this will be the most impressive combining the two and usually with documentaries there is a persona that they are boring, and most of the time you don’t realise you are watching a documentary or that you are enjoying it until it’s over. There is one documentary which broke several records and got nominated for countless awards, this is of course Tiger King, the American true crime documentary following the life of zookeeper Joe Exotic, this was released on the 20th March 2020, just before England was put into its first Covid-19 lockdown which may have been a key reason for its popularity, and on the 21st of April of the same year it was announced that Tiger King has been watched by 64million households, which is a lot! This example just goes to show that documentaries are a key part of TV and film and are still watched by millions, using this information I will be able to reassure myself throughout and develop my idea as this could gain a large viewing online.
I would say my main competition, or the style of video that I am trying to replicate the most would be ‘carwow’ the YouTube channel, and this is because their videos go in-depth and highlight everything you need to know, however, to make my production even better than carwow’s I will need to do everything that they do correctly and even more. The car that I am looking at having the subject within my video at this time (this could change) is a BMW i3 which they have previously done a car review of, however this is just under eight years old (released: Dec 19th, 2013) and does not correctly stand for the changes and adaptations that have been made to the car across all those years. Another reason that carwow could be my biggest competitor is that they release their videos on YouTube which is the same platform where I will be releasing mine. The main way you find a video through the site is the ‘Recommended’ section which takes up most of the homepage.
The recommended section is specifically designed to provide you with videos that you should or might be interested in, for example I watch a lot of car videos, not only for my FMP but also because it is a style of video that I enjoy. So, YouTube takes this information and processes it through their algorithm, this means it will know what videos I may want to watch, as you can see in the picture above there is another video looking at a BMW i3 because I have recently been researching my competition and other videos/channels that I may have to compete with. carwow release a video every day, this is not always a car review and may be comparing two cars or just some car news. Now I am not saying that these videos are rushed out because they have to be so frequent whatsoever because they do not seem rushed in the slightest, however when I am thinking of what my final video may look like compared to a usual carwow review, I think it will be different in the sense that it will be less informative as the review portion of my video will only be a small section, also I won’t be copying carwow because I don’t plan to go as in-depth as they do into the specifics, for example there is a section of the video where they showcase five good and five bad things about the car, one of the highlights of the I3 is the doors open like a set of double doors would in your house for example which is nothing like a regular car, I could mention something like this rather than the amount of detail that they go into, secondly the length of the length of the ‘exterior design’ section is much longer than what I would like the entire length of my video to be so therefore I won’t be able to fit as much detail In as they do. Overall, I would say that carwow (YouTube channel) is my main and biggest competition because they provide the most similar content and are on the same platform as to where I will be posting my video.
There is another video that I found this week about the BMW i3 when conducting research about my competition, the video was posted by the user ‘Mill-i-e’ and she appears to be around the same age as me (the video is embedded below), the video has only achieved just over 4,000 views (as of 22/03/21). What is also similar about this than how I plan for my video to be is that the production quality is very high, and you can tell this by a few different factors, the main one that stands out most to me is that the audio throughout the video is crisp and this is because she uses a lavalier/clip on microphone which does a good job of battling wind noise, and they are usually wireless which means the talent which in this case is Millie are free to move around without fear of the microphone cutting out.
The video is also fantastically filmed, and the general rules of filmmaking are taken into consideration at all/most times. Also, all of the shots are perfectly focused on the subject whether this be Milles face or a specific feature of the car, another thing you may have noticed below is that the video is uploaded in what looks like a 21:9 aspect ratio, this is the same as we see in the cinema films and also high production value TV shows, Millie may have chosen to do this to make the video seem more cinematic and in my opinion if this is the case it works perfectly, the only issue Millie has made with the aspect ratio is that the video is still uploaded in a 16:9 format and has black bars at the top and bottom to give the same effect, this still works but when uploading this to YouTube it looks strange having black bars which is just left as empty space on the page, and YouTube does support uploading in a 21:9 format so there is no reason as to why this shouldn’t be done, by watching this it helps me to identify things like the aspect ratio, in Millie’s video that I need to make decisions and develop my idea further. Millie’s video comes in at 4 minutes and 22 seconds, this is around the same length as I would like my ‘car review’ section to be, also comparing her video to the one produced by carwow, I would say that Millie goes into the same amount of depth when talking about the specification of the video as I would want to, it is simple enough for everyone to understand.
There is another key difference I found when looking at Millie’s and carwow’s videos, this is the scripting, now I could be wrong but Millie’s video above seems very scripted and I have recognised this she speaks throughout, and some of the words she includes I do not think she would necessarily say if it were not scripted for example this line; “Once they’ve got through the rigmarole of smashing their heads and dislocating their hips trying to get in” (Mill-i-e, 2020)(0:42-0:48). I would say that this sentence is very well structured and gets Millie’s point across very well however when in comparison to a carwow video it does not seem natural in the slightest. Next is a similar point of a different car in a carwow video… “Here in the back, it is just liked a normal one series so: decent headroom, decent knee room. The practicality of easy to access isofix anchor points” (Carwow, 2021). See what I mean? It seems like Matt (carwow’s car reviewer) is talking and elaborating from a bullet pointed sheet, rather than every word being scripted. Millie’s video is not all goof though, she has added a vignette effect on-top of her video which makes the video look too dark when you are talking about a light a fast subject which is the car. Millie’s video is also close competition to mine as it is clearly well thought out, the videos viewership is low however this does not mean that it is not as good. It just means that less people can find it, and sometimes that is how YouTubes algorithm works. This video has helped me to identify points that I want and do not want in my video: no vignette effect, 21:9 aspect ratio, and the under five minutes length for the review portion. Millie’s video will be competition when mine is released, but also any other video of this style and length.
Another piece of competition that I can research and investigate as competition is a short format written car review, more specifically I am referring to ones by Autocar, this another extremely current way of getting a quick taste of what it is like to own the car. At the start of the page, it says the price and what rating out of five stars they rate the car. Reviews like this one tell the reader the most key facts and typically go into more depth about the history of the car and especially with electric cars how they have improved over time with the range etc. Another good point about Autocar’s review is they have a summary section at the bottom of each page that you can skip down to if you do not wish to read the full article.
Now, on par with carwow, the BBC released a documentary through their technology division about electric cars which came in at around 25 minutes long in 2019, and within this they ask the same question I had already thought about asking whether now is the right time to purchase an EV, and I believe that my video will still succeed because this video was made around two years ago and the EV industry and the way that they are produced has changed dramatically too. In this documentary they also do what I have thought about in my concept where they go to the root and see what it takes to produce an electric vehicle, and the impact it has on our environment, in the description of the video it reads “We look at performance, range, cost, practicality, charging, and whether the cars offer the environmental gains their manufacturers promise.” (Autocar, 2021). This video is still competition because it is basically the same format but just over double the length of what I wish mine to be, the reason I have identified this and why I want mine to be much shorter is because a key thing to look into is watch time and this is the amount of time a viewer watches your video without closing it down or clicking onto another, with a 25 minute video I don’t believe that a large percentage of the audience will watch the full video, whereas with a five minute video I believe it will be much larger than this Click documentary. This documentary will have been originally aired on one of the BBC TV channels and subsequently uploaded to YouTube later. I have also previously spoken about the inclusion of cinematic shots to show off the car, this Documentary features them, but the majority of these videos have been supplied from the manufacture and aren’t in the environments you would typically see the cars, they are also interwoven throughout which at first I thought could be distracting, however at this long length style of documentary I don’t think it is, this has supported my idea of segmenting the video and having the cinematic shots grouped together.
Research Your Target Audience
There are three main factors when determining your target audience, and I will use all three of these when finding out what mine is, these are: demographic, geographic and psychographic. First, we must make sure the video is hitting the right group of people that we want it to, other than me self-promoting my video all the views will come from the YouTube recommended page as shown in the previous section, a question you should ask is “how do they feel about it” and this is not a controllable variable. But luckily enough for me YouTube should match this video to people who are interested in electric vehicles. So, from this I would assume that the viewer is already interested in EV’s, another thing to ask yourself is “what problems does it solve for the consumer” now if the video is found via a search engine, then my video should be perfect, as it will help the viewer make the decision as to whether they should purchase an electric vehicle or not. So as the video is planned now it should be more than suitable in answering any questions that the viewer may have about the specifications of EV’s. The next thing to look at it is why have they chosen to watch my video over another short documentary about electric vehicles and the way they are produced. On YouTube a thumbnail is the picture that is displayed to represent your video before someone has clicked on it, see recommended page above. So, for me to win this battle over any potential competition, I will need to have and create a good thumbnail, other creators on the platform use bright colours and bold text as a way of getting more viewers. So far, we have determined that the viewer will have to find the video themselves online and be interested in the subject or want to know and learn more about the subject for them to want to click it.
Looking deeper now into demographics which means a certain percentage of a group of people. Now some products, for example beauty products are more likely to be bought by women (but can also be bought by men), however with documentaries and more specifically about motoring, now because electric vehicles are very new, I will be looking at statistics that refer to new car purchases only as the used car market has not caught up fully yet. Surprisingly (in my opinion) according to motor1.com “Overall though men are still buying more cars than women, but there is a 71 percent more chance of a women buying a new car online as opposed to a male.” (Motor1, 2019). This means that men must be buying more used cars, using this data it is more likely that a woman will buy an electric car than a man! By using this information, it may mean that my video is targeted more towards women than men…
Location: through past research I have found out that electric vehicles are more efficient in town/city driving than they are on long journeys at high speeds, on a motorway for example, so instead of setting a geographic audience and saying ‘South West, UK’ for example, instead I would say that electric cars, and because of the way that they are designed and made at the moment are better suited for short journeys and city driving. I would also say that electric car manufactures know this too, looking at Kia’s ‘Stop Wondering. Start Driving – The Kia Eco Range’ commercial that they aired in the last few months of 2020, all the vehicles are shown to be driving in city conditions and not testing themselves on long journeys, this way they can advertise them and promote them for use within cities and not receive an as big backlash when people find out that they wont be able to achieve their claimed range on motorway/long journeys.
Lastly the age, this video is going to be intended for people who can buy an electric car and I am going to assume that no teenager at seventeen has the money, one to buy an EV and secondly the money to insure it. This is a fair assumption to make in the UK, therefore I will be extending my target audience further from the legal driving age, which is seventeen, to twenty. This seems like a more sensible age to buy an electric car. Now there is no set age to which you stop buying cars, however the technology and more importantly the video highlighting the technology could be too complex for an older audience. This does vary from person to person however I will set the limit as fifty as I do not believe anyone over this age will have an advanced interest in modern technology or electric vehicles.
So, looking at the research I have completed surrounding targeted audiences the one I have created for the short documentary I plan to produce is: Someone who is already interested in electric vehicles, women but also men, people who live in cities and the ages between 20-50. In this section I have also conducted some primary research within my age group (15-18yrs), and I asked them who would be interested in a documentary of this kind. Just over half of the responses replied saying that they would not be interested, but this is expected and in line with the other statistics. In summary, someone who is already interested in electric vehicles, women but also men, people who live in cities and age between 20-50.
Research any Legal and Ethical Issues Related to Your Idea
There are legal issues in any film or TV show being created, the main legal concern I have is people stealing the work that I have put my challenging work into, and it being stolen and reuploaded, or someone else following a remarkably similar format and replicating my video as their own. This concerns me because my FMP will be a piece of work that I will have worked on for several months and I do not want that to feel like it was a waste of time, I also hope that after I have finished this unit to feel proud of what I have produced and carried out. To combat this, I plan to have a watermark in the bottom left corner of my video that is slightly transparent, this means that if someone does choose to download and reupload the video themselves that it will always have my name embedded on it and I should still receive credit for it, doing this should also deter people from re-uploading it anyway and I hope this is something that does not happen.
Another legal issue that I could face is a backlash from the manufactures in the car dealership interviews segment of the video, the best way to combat this is to use contributor release forms and have anyone involved sign it, depending on the wording of the release forms this could erase the possibility of a backlash entirely. A notable moment where they cleverly used release forms were in the Borat movies, anyone that they pulled a ‘prank’ on was asked to sign a release form that said that they cannot sue the filmmakers under any grounds if the contributor signed the form, you can read more about this here: The Standard Consent Agreement That Protects Sacha Baron Cohen – Fredrikson & Byron · Fredrikson & Byron, P.A. (fredlaw.com). The third and final legal issue I think I could face is when filming the cinematics of the electric vehicle it is safest to film from the rear of another vehicle with the boot open and looking into this… it is legal if nothing sticks out further than six inches from the rear of the car, also all passengers must be always restrained using seatbelts on public roads. So now that I have identified these legal issues I may face, I also know how to work around them and do things better and safer. I will also need to fill out location releases.
The main ethical issue I will be looking at when filming my documentary will be the men/women divide in the industry, as within car dealerships the salesperson(s) are typically men, in my video I would like it to be equal, so for every man I interview I would like to interview a woman too, however I do not think that this will be possible because of the lack of women in this industry and the only way of doing this would be to request to interview a woman instead of a man which may seem or come across offensive, a good way that I will look to show this is by during the cinematic shots, to have my mother driving the vehicle instead of my father, this means that I would be filming a woman driving the car for a good segment of the video and may mean the video is a lot less male dominated. GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation is a new law in the UK designed to protect anyone from having their data shared in ways that they have not agreed to. An example where GDPR could be breached is if someone is included in the film when they do not want to be, or inside a car dealership filming documents with sensitive information on them to make sure my video does not breach these GDPR laws I will check every shot when filming it to make sure no sensitive information is included and then again when I am editing to be especially sure.
Informed consent is where you make sure every person involved has been told every detail, this means making sure they know where the video will be used, and for what purpose. Referring to the Borat films again, the best example is where Rudy Giuliani is flirting with the interviewer, completely unaware that he is being set up, I cannot guarantee this, but I am almost certain that he was not informed he was being set up otherwise his actions would have been different, as he would not have wanted this published.
By letting every involved person know everything it means that they can make a much better and more educated decision as to whether they would like to be a part of the production or not. By not doing this you would end up not being transparent with the ‘talent’ in the video and doing this is morally wrong as it can mis-be people.
Research Concepts, Ideas and Topics Related to your Idea.
Climate Change and Battery Productions
This will be a related concept because my video will be starting a conversation as to whether you should or should not be buying one yourself, I have decided to take this route because it is a way to stop or hold back climate change. Although my video is not necessarily about climate change and will not talk about it directly. The reason as to why electric cars were ever invented was because of this, and to help reduce emissions, which is one of the main selling points. Another big discussion in the electric car environment is the battery production and the gasses that they produced when manufacturing the vehicle, and if this works out more than what the production is for a gas vehicle it would make electric cars less of a practical choice. Now, it is known that to produce these large ability batteries comes at some cost which always works out more than what emissions are created to produce a gas car. If we take an example electric car the ‘Nissan Leaf’ which was one of the first commercially available electric cars on the market in the UK, this is a good example to use because it will have developed, and the car will have got more efficient over time as the technology has progressed and moved forward, and “A new Nissan Leaf EV pays back emissions from the battery production after less than two years – and emits three times less CO2 in its lifetime than the average new conventional car in the UK” (CarbonBreif, 2019). This is good because it shows that the Nissan Leaf especially is a particularly good and manages to pay itself back and beat the emissions of a gas car. This may not be the same with every electric car produced but it is likely that over its lifetime it will pay itself back whether it is in less/more than two years. Climate change is driving force behind my documentary but as previously mentioned I still want to develop my idea in a way that touches on climate change but does not go too in-depth as people already have pre-formed opinions about the topic.
Louis Theroux Documentaries
He is an English/American journalist and what I am specifically referring to is him as a person and the documentaries he makes. He never does not entertain an audience, and he does this by constantly asking questions, his documentaries are usually feeling like they are free flowing when really, he is constantly asking and interviewing different people to get to know them and their opinions that they have on the topic of the interview. Technically when watching Louis’ documentaries, they are not well or technically filmed like a Netflix show would be, what really matters here is the content that he includes and educates the viewers about. To date he has published around fifty documentaries with thirty-three being BBC Two Specials, coving a very vast and wide variety of topics. I want the style of parts of the documentary to be inspired by Louis because the way that he asks questions and gets to the ‘nitty gritty’ and lets people know what they really want to, this is a technique that I want to use when doing interviews about the impact that gas and electric cars have on the environment, and as representatives of the brands their opinions on the topic. It appears to me that the Louis Theroux documentaries are not scripted, and that he asks whatever questions that come to his head at the time, but this is much easier for him as he has lots of experience in the field and will know what questions to ask and when to ask them. Whereas in my documentary the questions will be scripted this will also help me to ask the same questions to multiple people and get correct answers.
Past BMW i3 Commercial
This is the car that I plan to use and review in the documentary. Even though this is not fully confirmed it is still highly likely that this will be the case, and if this falls through and does not work out, I have backup plans in place. My video will also be compared to a car commercial at times while also touching on a documentary. This is a related idea to what I want to achieve, the i3 is a constantly evolving car and keeps updating as technology improves, however BMW do not create a new advertisement every time it changes, as a commercial mostly shows off the design of the car and not technical features, which would mean creating new ones when the designs do not really change would not be a very cost-effective option. This advertisement also has a storyline behind it, a husband or boyfriend has forgotten to get a balloon for his wife’s birthday. So, he sends the route to his car and drives to collect one. This interpretation that I have gained by looking at this advert makes me want to include a storyline in my cinematic shots of the vehicle, so as well as them looking nice they can also have some meaning behind them, which overall I think will make my video more interesting and have a longer watch time.
Research the Technical Requirements of the Project
Lots of technology will be required for my FMP to make it successful and to operate it all on my own will be an excessively big task, at times I will ask for assistance from my friends to help take some of the strain off from myself. The main piece of technology that I will use throughout is my phone, I believe that most people do not realise the practicality of the mobile phone. Yes, it can make calls and they can communicate between each other, but they can also do so much more, for example looking at storyboards or scripts when on a shoot if you do not or have forgotten to bring the physical copies with you. Another key reason that they are helpful is that my phone has a good camera and if needed I can use it as a substitute for a DSLR. I know that my phone camera is comparable to a DSLR because in the documentary we filmed it on a weekend, and I was unable to gain access to a DSLR camera in such a brief period, so instead I used a tripod that I had lying around at home paired with my mobile phone that is constantly in my pocket. The only issue I had was that I had to record audio separately into my laptop using an external microphone as the one that is inbuilt on my phone would have been inaudible on such a windy day. Please listen to the audio below.
Speaking of microphones, in my FMP I will be using several different ones, there are two main circumstances where I may need to record audio in a specific way, the first one being for the cinematic/promotional section of my video and recording the lack of engine noise, more specifically I want to add in the sound of the electric motors whirring as the vehicle travels along the road, I think this will add to the previously mentioned futuristic theme of the video as this isn’t a sound people are used to. To do this I will use a shotgun microphone with a dead cat covering it so that it does not attract much wind noise. I will then mount this to the outside of the car to best capture the sounds using suction mounts, running the cable inside of the car into a digital recorder. The other scenario will be when I am interviewing different people, and for this I intend to use a clip on/tie microphone as my primary sound capture device, and secondly as a backup to use a shotgun microphone, mounted overhead to capture both mine and the interviewee’s voices. For convenience I will use the wireless tie mics as it will minimise complications.
Firstly, before I record with the EV I will practice these techniques with another car, because when it comes to the time to film with the actual car, I will have a limited amount of time with the EV, and I want everything to run as smoothly as possible and this will be done before April 30. More specifically the test shots I will complete are a practice/replica interview, this will give me a clever idea of where I need to place lights around the subject, what microphones I really need and what other backup plans I can have in place to ensure it runs as smoothly as possible, personally at home I have four different lights I can use in the interview. This includes two large 20”x28” soft box white lights, these are good for lighting backgrounds, or to light persons, the only issue with this is the lights are of a 5500K colour temperature and because they are bulbs this means they aren’t adjustable, for example if I am interviewing someone with warm lights in their living room having a white light wouldn’t seem like a good option, that is why for my FMP I have invested in two compact video lights, these don’t provide a wide coverage like the soft box lights do. However, I would say that they are just as bright, the other advantage that they have is that they have an adjustable colour temperature, on top of this they also can change to an RGB multicoloured mode to give more colour to a scene.
I will also as previously mentioned do a replica cinematic shot with an alternate vehicle before the big day. I will then edit these both together to create an example of what these two interview and cinematic shots can look like. On top of this I will then edit together the introduction/title sequence. This will create what will be around 50%-60% of the whole video with the rest being the ‘review’ section, which would not make sense to use an example of the incorrect vehicle.
Research Costs/Budgets/Production Issues
When completing the FMP, I have tried to keep the cost as minimal as possible, this is for two reasons with the first one being that I would have to fund the entire project out of my own pocket and due to coronavirus, this method of funding is limited, the second being one of my own personal views. You should not need a massive budget to create a good film, but at the same time I understand why big companies like Netflix spend billions each year when producing their own Netflix originals and they do this because this is what people expect from such a large company. “Streaming giant Netflix has doubled its U.K. production budget to $1 billion, following the global success of shows including “The Crown” and “Sex Education.”” (Yahoo!finance, 2020).
And things like locations, actors, and crew all add up. But when producing an FMP for a college course I do not think a production budget is necessary. Instead of purchasing/hiring expendable items for my FMP I will be purchasing items for my FMP that I can then use throughout my time filmmaking, I will list these all in a spreadsheet and upload this to my blog (it will be updated throughout).
If I were given a budget for this production, I would spend it and develop my idea by adding more characters/cars. Throughout the research and the concept stages of the FMP the main cost I have aimed and hopefully will avoid is the hire of the EV. This is a cost that I should not have to pay for, for the company (BMW as of 24/03/21) it is free promotion to anyone that watches the video, and within the video the car will be put in a good light also in a ‘promotional’ sense. So far specifically for my FMP I have bought two items. The first being a pair of compact video lights and the second a condenser microphone which I discovered when completing the ‘which microphone’ worksheet for the visual investigation would be good for voice overs.
The main issue I may face with the production is that I cannot get a certain segment filmed in time, right now I plan to conduct interviews at car dealerships, but if for example all the dealerships turn this opportunity down then I would be left without a major part of my video. But I remain confident that this will not be an issue as it is free promotion for them and has benefits for me. I am sure that if they denied doing a face-to-face interview that they could also be up for one over a zoom call which would also work but would need clever editing to make it more interesting to the viewer.
Research Current Covid Related Industry Practice/Regulations/Adaptations for your Chosen Production Area
For my FMP I have designed it to be as independent and for me to be able to produce it entirely on my own, so that if the Coronavirus rules do not ease in the way that they are planned to I should still be able to film the majority and to a high standard. At the moment there is guidance from the government and from an organization called the BFC (British Film Commission) in a 59 pages document which outlines which precautions should be being taken. The document is called. ‘Working Safely During COVID-19 in Film and High-end TV Drama Production’.
This document includes things such as recommendations to get Covid tested before shoots and when to and when not wearing masks should be excused. It also goes very in-depth, even mentioning when driving in groups within a vehicle to have the windows lowered, and they also suggest using wireless focus systems so that people can be more distant from each other. While filming for my FMP I will have no more than two people in close contact at a specific point in time, and while close masks will be worn. In certain segments of the video, I plan to have my family helping me, like when I am filming the car scene. As I cannot drive at my age, let alone two vehicles at once. Another point where I may have someone help me externally is when I am filming the review section of the car, this will be mostly to have another input because it is always nice to get a second opinion instead of just your own, they may also help with sound when I am doing the video as it will be a struggle to do them both simultaneously. Before I come into close contact with someone else who I am not already, I could suggest that well take lateral flow covid tests, although these are not 100% correct it will be a good sign and will mean we can run more safely, and we could then wear masks less when it is more convenient not to. If I do have someone externally help me it will be another student, whether it be from Exeter College, or local to home (North Devon) so the lateral flow tests will be easily accessible.
I have been told by BMW that they are able to loan me a car for the project from the 12th of April, but this is only provided that the current roadmap to exit coronavirus stays in place and follows the orders and the dates that have been set. At the moment this is still looking good but could also change at any time, I do have backup plans in place if this is the case to use alternative vehicles but in doing so more covid cleaning/sanitizing will need to be put in place as this is something BMW will do on collection and delivery of collecting the car. At the moment I have not had to make any adaptations to my concept or the way I plan to operate because of coronavirus, as I am producing this independently, however if this changes then I will make sure to mention it on my blog.
Extra
Most of the research that has been completed has been secondary research, this means I have analysed and interpreted a wide range of sources that I have gathered online. This is good but on-top of this I would also like to do some of my own research just in case these sources turned out to be unreliable or inaccurate. I decided to post to my Instagram story asking whether any of my followers “would be interested in watching a short documentary about electric vehicles.” I did this using the interactive poll feature, so people can just click their chosen answer and it automatically submits the result, after clicking your chosen option it shows a percentage of how many people have selected either of the two options. These polls expire after a 24hr period. Over this period, I collected 16 results, with seven of them agreeing and saying that they would watch the documentary and the majority with a total of nine saying that they would not be interested. This is disappointing but looking back at my research into target audiences this is also expected, I would hope that if I pushed this to my target audience a lot higher percentage of people would agree and be interested in watching it.
Evaluate and Interpret the Research
Starting with the practitioner’s section, within this I researched previous car advertisements and the differences that they have to modern day advertisements. This gave me an insight into what the first car videos looked like and how they have evolved over time, the only issue with this is that my video will border between an advertisement and a short documentary so throughout the research section I struggled to compare my concept to either one or the other styles of filmmaking (documentary or advertising) so you will notice I chop and change between. When looking at the original advertisement for the Ford Model T it was interesting to work out the way that they had ordered shots and why they may have included them. For example, where the car manoeuvres down the side of the slope and how they may have included this because a horse and cart would not have been able to perform such a stunt. This will have given the shot some meaning and although the video did not have a narrative like they do today it still will have had a major impact and an influence on purchases of the car. Now looking at the Tesla promotional video which did have a narrative which was of the car being constructed and then finally showing the car drifting in the snow. Personally, although this is cool to watch, it would not have had a major impact on the viewer as the original car advert would have, but even mentioning this is still a splendid video to compare to. This initial research was unbelievably valuable, going back to the roots of where this style of video originated helps give me a better understanding as a video creator about the developments that have been made over time and meaning behind shots, this means specifically when filming and editing my FMP I will be thinking more carefully about what shots I do and do not include, and carefully constructing my video so that it has meaning behind it as this is what I believe retains viewers.
The majority and the widest research I did was for the ‘Research Your Competition’ section. This is because I think that this would have been most valuable for me. I started off by looking at YouTube very generally as this is where the final video will be uploaded to and where people will be able to discover the video, and more specifically at the channel carwow because they team up with car manufactures and post in-depth car reviews to their YouTube channel to help viewers decide whether it is the right vehicle for them. The reason I did both is because this shows me what other videos I will be competing with and how my video will potentially be able to compete with them, afterwards I decided to look at another video like what I will be producing, by a much smaller creator compared to carwow, as this will give me a clever idea about how mine will perform. It benefited me to look at a smaller creator and gives me inspiration on how to develop my idea further. Previously before watching this video, I had briefly thought about what aspect ratio (shape of the video) my video may be, however this made me think about it and informed my decision on which to choose, which I have now decided is most likely to be 21:9 but I will discuss this further in the next section of the FMP. Looking at these two also gave me an insight to scripting and how videos seem or do not seem scripted, and this has made me think about whether and how much scripting I want to put into my production. I then went on to look at a written car review as well as in video formats as the previous ones, this helped me to understand the differences between written and video reviews and going more in-depth about the amount of information you can pack into written compared to video. To finish this section off I looked at a full length (close to thirty minutes) documentary which is remarkably like the one I aim to produce by the BBC, this allows me to pinch and take inspiration from things that I think they did right but also to stay away from things that I believe that they did not do so well. I also believe that this BBC video will go a lot more in-depth into the details than mine will and this is solely because of the length and because I do not wish for mine to be, to also see how this BBC documentary shot their interviews and the format worked professionally research and more specifically using a range of sources has helped me to understand which items in my video and the way it is presented and how this could or could not help to improve my own. By looking into more than one different source means that I can compare these between each other and make my video the perfect compromise, overall, out of all the research sections listed on this page I would say that this one has been the most helpful to me and will help me most to develop my work further.
Creating or discovering your target audience is another majorly principal factor when creating a film, this is because it means us as creators can adapt our content to the correct audience. Throughout this section I did some extensive research to try and decide what this should be, first I looked at finding some questions you should ask yourself to try and determine what audience would best suit the content, but this does not mean only people that fit in this category can watch this video as it is only a ‘target.’ I researched gender, age, location, and interests to help decide what this was eventually I concluded that my target audience would be mostly of the female gender, this is because they are more likely to purchase a new car online, and with most car sales moving online and electric cars being a ‘new’ technology. I thought this was a particularly good statistic to base my gender profile on. Moving onto age which I based on what I thought was applicable which ended up being between 20 and 50. I see this as a good target age range because it is unlikely that young people will purchase an electric car as their first car and that people over the age of fifty will find the technology as interesting. This section allowed me to explore which audience and the specifics of what they could and could not like within the video. It means I am now more accessible to include things I may not have before as they would not have been understood by older generations, I also touched on the YouTube thumbnail and how this could attract an audience. This section of research will benefit the final video I produce as its mean’s I can tailor my video to an audience.
Another important aspect of filmmaking to investigate is taking consideration when looking into ethical and legal issues and in this section, I analysed and gave examples of different laws or issues that could arise before, during and after filming. I investigated each of these and gave examples of how they could be worked around or resolved. Some of the legal information was hard to interpret but I got there in the end and now understand it fully, it is important that this is researched beforehand because otherwise you could run in to trouble with the media afterwards. I also investigated ‘informed consent’ which is where you make sure that everyone involved in the production knows exactly what the intended use case and result should be. This was the section of research I found least useful, but it still helps me to develop my understanding of the subject and to know what I should avoid.
On the ‘research concepts, ideas and topics related to your idea’ section I started off by researching climate change and battery productions, out of the three different topics I researched this is the most important to me. The reasoning for this is very similar to the first bit of research I did initially about the Ford Model T, this is because it is similarly about understanding the origins of the topic before you expand your research further, this helped me learn more about a potential counter argument that viewers could raise after watching the video, so instead of this being the case I will instead address this within the video itself, in case you are unsure as to what I am referring to this is the section about an EV being able to pay back the emissions it used to produce the vehicle by not producing them when it is driving. And this takes around two years according to the research I looked at. Although this research is very rough and will depend on milage and the EV the research was using, it is still a good baseline to refer to as it will not be too dissimilar in comparison to other cars. I then moved on and looked at a concept like what I want my video to feel like which is a Louis Theroux documentary within this I said how I liked the way that the documentary flows and how he is constantly asking questions that people want to know the answers to. I also referred to when I was talking about scripting previously and mentioned that his documentaries do not seem scripted. Researching a similar concept as well as subject means that I can make my documentary feel more interesting as well as having the correct content. Another area I thought is important to look at is an earlier commercial/advertisement for the EV I am looking as basing my video around. This was good too because as previously mentioned my video will be a cross between a promotional video but also a documentary. When researching different concepts an idea I found it especially useful, I talked about earlier how researching the context and the Ford Model T helped me, I think of this research stage as the midpoint as it helps me to understand what my idea really needs to be about and the surrounding topics. This stage of research has been extremely helpful to me and has helped me to specifically understand what is needed and it will support my idea.
For the technical requirements section of research I looked through the previous projects I had worked on in and outside of college this year and what worked well and more importantly what didn’t work so well, so that I know what I need to put in place to make my FMP better the other units, in this section I outlined what would be needed to produce my FMP to a high standard, inside of this I referred to my documentary I had previously produced and spoke about which microphones I used and how I operated them effectively and finally which ones I am most likely to use for my FMP. The second thing I talked about technically that will need a lot of thought in my FMP is lighting and the different lights I will use to light various parts of the video, and about adding colour to a scene to make it more interesting.
For the costs section I have tried to keep this as brief as possible as personally at college this is the least important section. I did also mention that if I had as bigger budget that I would spend but that I do not think that it can decide whether a video is good or not. Also that I will try and keep the spend for my FMP as minimal as possible as it will all be coming out of my own pocket, not spending lots on my FMP is not because I do not have the money to spend but more so that I believe I do not need to spend it to create a good video, also because I am using a branded vehicle and talking about it in a good light it means that it is also free promotion for the vehicle and the brand. I then created a spreadsheet listing all the different costs, links to the products and the category they come under. This was good to research because it helped me to understand how to manage it and be sensible with my spending.
The next section was all about the coronavirus that we have all come to know and love, and how to work and stay safe during the production, I looked at guidance on the BFC (British Film Commission) website about how to stay safe filming during the pandemic, I also suggested that everyone involved could take a Coronavirus Lateral Flow Test, of which the results are returned in just half an hour, as a precaution to help stop the spread, to finish this off I then gave some more information about the covid precautions that could be in place when filming the vehicle, if this wasn’t a section of research required I would not have realised what steps need to be taken to ensure covid isn’t transmitted while filming and also how to film safely during a pandemic, this wasn’t necessarily helpful to me but it is of the upmost importance to keep everyone safe.
To finish the research section off I conducted some primary research using a group of people asking if they would watch the planned film and you can review the results above. This was helpful because it meant I could understand if my age group I set at the target audience stage was accurate and if other ages would be interested in watching it, this was remarkably interesting to gather some of my own research that I could analyse, it is also important for me to understand how to gather data quickly and accurately. Research is a key part of creating quality content and it has been unbelievably valuable to me throughout this production.
Throughout the time I have spent working on this section I have also added to the: research bibliography, production journal and production costs.
References:
Vintage Movie Channel (2016) Ford Model T. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9DUVvsyxqc&ab_channel=VintageMovieChannel (Accessed: 23/03/21).
Tesla (2020) Model Y Deliveries Begin!. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijcAwrWMi0g&ab_channel=Tesla (Accessed: 23/03/21).
YouTube (2021) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ (Accessed: 22/03/21)
carwow (2021) Carwow- YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUhFaUpnq31m6TNX2VKVSVA (Accessed: 22/03/21)
Mill-i-e (2020) BMW i3 Electric Vehicle. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8KKyMkRZxg&t=48s&ab_channel=Mill-i-e (Accessed: 22/03/21).
Carwow (2021) BMW 128ti 2021 review – the best FWD hot hatch you can buy?. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws8LEPPNo28&ab_channel=carwow (Accessed: 22/03/21).
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British Film Commision (2021) Working Safely During COVID-19 in Film and High-end TV Drama Production. Available at: http://britishfilmcommission.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/British-Film-Commission-Working-Safely-During-COVID-19-in-Film-and-High-end-TV-Drama-Production-V.5.2-19-03-21.pdf (Accessed: 25/03/21)
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Bradley Smart 