Documentary

     research file

Documentary-The story of the McRib

After overlooking how video essays are formatted and how to engage the audience during a video essay me Kenz and jack decided to do our own video essay on the story of the McRib this would follow the full story of the McRib from the beginning of its journey to were it is today this would mean me Kenz and jack would write our own scripts for ourselves to narrate over the video. I immediately dove in to researching the McRib in the past and how it has ended where it has today, we had to work with what we had this was not our first idea but we improvised as we didn't have the camera equipment we decided to blend two common types of documentary style filming participatory and a video essay our idea was that we will start the video telling the story of the McRib to immerse the audience in the story of the McRib this would follow all the way from its first release in 1984 to its journey throughout the mid 2000's and where it has ended up today. We would then move on to our participatory side of the documentary which would follow the same path as one of our original ideas which would be a bake off style type of filming we decided we would try replicate the McRib as close to the original as we possibly could.

Critical analysis-How Kanye west made “through the wire

Firstly, I thought that this would be a great choice for my critical analysis as this is a video essay which is also a participatory documentary style very similar to our style. I think it does a great job at setting the tone overall that it will follow and even tells us early on what shall be done throughout this video, The video starts with background information keeping the audience up to date so they can join in throughout the video which is something that we personally would follow in the style of, giving a backstory so that the demographic isn’t directly targeted at people who already know so much and makes it easier for people with very little knowledge on the topic to join in and give their own thoughts on the matter. Even though the video is advertised as a making off, the video does a great job to bring the audience along giving context so that when the time is finally reached to show how he made it the audience feels much more invested in the topic.

 

Throughout the video it uses many visual elements to make the story so much more immersive its very direct you know as the audience when we are moving on to a new section. The use of visual elements makes the video much more immersive, it makes it so much easier to follow the narrative as well, I think it does a great job in the storytelling part as not only is there a narrator but also the participatory side of the video, this is great as it takes us as the audience on another side of the journey. I think its also great at introducing the audience to sides of the story they might of never heard before, something that we will try follow in our own video essay but this is also very effective as it keeps the audience invested throughout the process.

Critical analysis- Nathan Fielder-The movement

This style of documentary is very similar to our first idea which would be me as the subject talking to a dating expert and then going on a date and using the tips that the dating expert gave me to use, This video overall feels very self aware of its style I think its fresh in that sense, everything suits the narrative the sudden jerky camera movements suit the awkward dry atmosphere from Nathan Fielder throughout the video , it also does a great job at setting the narrative straight away there's no time wasted, The visual elements throughout help give more detail to the point Nathan Fielder is trying to get across and also keeps the audience on track with the narrative, the use of the music throughout and then breaking the music during awkward points in the narrative makes the humor much more effective overall I think it is very effective as everything suits the narrative the camera, sound everything put together makes it much more effective

Planning

January 4th- film bake off at kenzs house everyone meets at ten

January 8th- edit together all involved in process

January 4th

We had had all planned to meet at Kenz and get the bake off underway i had turned up on time and was ready to film jack came 40 minutes later which was fine as we were still waiting for the camera equipment we had kept waiting and there was no sign of the camera equipment without the camera equipment we were limited we decided to improvise and start on a video essay on the history of the McRib we all immediately started researching on how we can implement useful information to the story we had started implementing visual styles in to the film to make the video more immersive splitting it up into sections using the visual elements to help the narrative, we had all individually wrote our own scripts for the project following the story in chronological order all of us doing our own individual research on different time periods in its journey.

January 5th

Kenz had continued to edit and we all had our own scripts ready we sent sound bites over to Kenz for him to use in the video that same day we had planned that we would go back to Kenz's house as we could make the video essay a participatory documentary as well, we would do this by trying to replicate our own version of the McRib's.

January 7th

We were back at Kenz's house Kenz had made a trip to the shop to get all the ingredients we needed to make our own McRib's we waited for jack to arrive and finally we were on with filming we still didn't have the camera equipment so we had to improvise and use Kenz's phone i filmed the full process we would follow us from having bare ingredients to replicating our own McRib and i would document that process we would finally end the project with a review.

The history of the mcrib Final evaluation

Overall I believe the process went well during the process, I feel as though we could of done a better job planning outside of the process, it wasn’t in our control that we didn’t have the camera equipment and I think we did well to think on our feet and come up with a whole new idea on the spot and for it to come out as it did, we did have many other concepts that we began development on but they weren’t further developed we had a good idea going into it what we were going to do based on our research there was a recurring theme of the participatory documentary style kept coming back I think we knew we wanted to do something together based on our original ideas we wanted to do something we could all be a part of. You can see that from our early inspirations such as a Nathan fielder style documentary or something such as the bake off, where we could all participate in on it together. I believe we could of done a better job on organization as well it was only me on time most of the day and even so it didn’t matter but we could of cracked on earlier if we were there earlier and it would of given us so much more time to think about the idea we are going to use since we don’t have a camera, it could of given us so much more time to think but nevertheless we had a concept that we came up with on the spot and given so I think we did a great job with what we were dealt we didn’t have time for any shot lists as this was on the day even having shot lists would of improved the production much more but we  simply had no time we had to crack on straight away we have shot lists but not ones relevant to the topic we ended up having to do, I take part of the blame in the reason for the unoriginization I think although I was on time and was organized I think i disrupted the flow of things since our first idea was to use me as the subject and we started going down the path of following that idea getting pre-production documents together for it, then I decided I didn’t want to do it which ultimately led to a poor finished product worse then what could have been I think from this experience I have learnt a valuable lesson is that being a good film maker means you have to be just as good with everything else outside the production process even things not involved in any part of the production process simply things such as being punctual, I was never late but I do feel as though there wouldn’t even of been need of these meet ups if I were to go with the original idea I feel as though that would of given us way more time on our schedule so from this experience I would say I have learnt to not change my mind drastically and when we have started production you have to see it through.