Documentary

"Camera?" "Check!"

"Microphone?" "Check!"

"Lights?" "What lights?"

Yeap, that's right! We are doing a documentary for our LAST assignment! Well, its very new to us for this assignment, we have to do everything ourselves from choosing people to be interviewed to editing.

So, before that, we have to do some research on what is documentary all about. Documentary constitute

 non-fictional motion pictures, mostly on some aspect of reality or recording a historical moment. 

Documentary should be interpreted into three categories, which is 

• Actual (A) – in other words something that would have happened whether or not the camera was there?
• Creative (C) – in other words affected by practical decisions made by the director/camera operator, and which had the effect of making the sequence more entertaining
• Interpretive (I) – in other words affected by practical decisions made by the camera operator/director that might affect an audience's understanding of what they were seeing.

So, how do we start shooting a documentary film? 

This guy here will talk about what are the basic equipments you should have when we start a documentary, it's a very short video so if you have time and you do not know what to prepare, here's a good way to help you get started.

There are mainly 7 types of documentary you can choose from, which is, 

• Docusoap,  A docusoap is a hybrid genre, it is observational. It is a long runningdocumentary series which follows an individual or group of people. 
• Reality TV, Reality TV is factual TV. It progressed between 1989 and 1999.This type of TV gives you useful information in the form of entertainment.This is a mix of authentic material with serious information and commercialcontent. They have a use of camcorder, observation, surveillance and commentary.
• A fly on the wall, A fly on the wall is when the camera is unseen or the people ignore it. Thereforethe cameras record the events which are unrolled.An example of this would be Big Brother, as the cameras are hidden which makesthe people in the house act as if they were not there.
• A mixed documentary, A mixed documentary is a combination of interviews, observation, actualityfootage, archive material and narration.The narrator links the story together, it also advances the narrative.A lot of the time newer documentaries are mixed.
• Self-reflective,This type of documentary is when the camera follows a person or groupof people around. The person/people know that that camera is thereand they stop to talk to it.
• Docudrama, A docudrama is a reconstruction or re-enactment of something which hasactually happened.They show events which have happened at the time.
• Fully Narrated, This documentary is when the narrator narrates the whole way through thedocumentary.It is used to convey the exposition, and used to make sense of what they see.They dominate what is happening.An example of this would be Human Planet.

Other than that, we also watched some documentary films in youtube, to learn how they shoot or interview. I  must say that there are many ideas to shoot a documentary and we really did learn a lot from it.

So, the next step was to interview people, and we found two people, a photographer and an artist, who have a similarity motif in their works, that is to promote our own beautiful Malaysia.

Let me introduce to you, Mr. Yap Kim Boon and Mr. Chok Yen Hau

Yap Kim Boon

Chok Yen Hau

They are pretty well known both in their respective field and I must say they both showed a lot of determination in what they believe in. #RESPECT

some of the works of Chok Yen Hau

The works of Yap Kim Boon

Our documentary films

The trailer

Doing a documentary stuff is no easy stuff, we have spent countless days and nights just to edit the video, and finally! The final outcome of the video!

And FINALLY......

FAREWELL.