Final Documentary + Thumbnail

 This is our final product for the crime documentary project.

google drive link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QlRI0qoCp60KHfI0I-a6ycOR9jBDKYwN?usp=sharing

Final Documentary

Final Thumbnail

Netlix Homepage

Critical Reflection

 This is my critical reflection for my crime documentary project.

Branding is a way media organizations differentiate themselves from competitors. Each organizations' branding is like a sort of identity that seperates them from others and it's a way for audiences to remember them by. Audiences will be able to recognize different organizations by their style and characteristics that are implemented in their products (by the way movies are directed, the different editing styles, plots, and even typographies seperate one organization from another). With multiple media organizations creating different identities and brands, this gives the audience a wide variety to choose from, and more things people can like.

When making a crime documentary, my group and I followed the genre conventions of a typical crime documentary. A few genre conventions of crime documentaries include close up or medium shots of victims during interviews, and random camera movements during some scenes to create a sense of realism to the audience. The mise en scen included could be actual crime scene footages, a recreation of the crime or event that went down, and filming the victim in the crime scene (revisitng the site post-events). Minimal background noise and creepy eerie music are used in crime documentaries, along with quick cuts between perpetrator and victim, childhood pictures of the victim or perpetrator shown and the cuts made to slowly get quicker and quicker to increase the pace of the story. For our crime documentary, we conformed to majority of the genre conventions like event recreation, filming the victim in the crime scene after the crime happened, minimal background noises and creepy music, because these are textbook conventions for documentaries. However, we subverted to a few, like making our perpetrator an inncoent sweet young girl, and our victim an older intimidating guy. We want to give our audience a reminder that things are sometimes not the way they seem, and to expect the unexpected. 

When it comes to enganging with the audiences, our primary target audience are teenagers and young adults aged 16-25 who are crime enthusiasts. Our secondary target audience are parents of high school teenagers wanting to learn from kidnappings to keep their children safe, or just people who live in the same area where the crime happened and are curious as to what went down in their neighborhood. We appealed to the target audience by filming interviews with the perpetrator, because this way they can analyze and know the behaviour and habits of a criminal. We also used real photos of the location after the crime went down to create heightened emotions such as uneasiness since they serce as hints of what may be shown later on in the documentary; it could also create a sense of sympathy in the audiences, as the real photos used could prove to them how real the situation was and how horrible things happened to those who didn't deserve it. Our product fulfilled all the uses and gratifications criteria as our crime documentary serves as a diversion (suspenseful scenes gives them a distraction from every lives by providing an intense and interesting story to follow), personal identity, since our victim is a quiet shy guy, it represents the group of men that don't usually open up in fear of getting hated for being seen as "weak" when all they are doing are showing human emotions, social relationships, as our documentary can start bonds between audiences and friends as they discuss the topic of the crime and their different ideas and opinions, and finally surveillance as this documentary raises awarenesses on kidnappings and the interviews and footage of the perpetrator within the documentary can be warning signs people can learn and recognise when it comes to detecting kidnappers and criminals. Our thumbnail attracts our audiences as the font style of the word "Christopher" is written in a bright color that pops out from the rest and is handwritten from the perpetrator herself, whilst everything else is set for a serious mood, the little heart for the i may lthe audiences with assumptions that the crime is related to love in which the audiences may decide to watch to check out what actually happened out of curiousity. Blurring the faces of the people in the background except for the man in the middle catches the audiences' attention as they will begin to question why only this one man is unblurred and what is his significance to the story.

The social groups in our documentary are teenages, students, and people of all genders. The preferred reading on them are anti-social students being shown as the victim, proving that they aren't always the perpetrator, and popular, friendly girls are secretly deranged. They are shown by having the anti-social character in hoodies and long pants covering their entire body, and the popular girls in light coloured clothings that pop out and feminine make up and hairstyle. The issues that are included in our documentary include kidnapping and stalking, the preferred reading about tehm are that the stalking and kidnappings are the perpretrator's out of control actions, revealing their obsessive personality and how dangerous it is towards the victim both mentally and physically. It is protrayed by scenes that depicted kidnapping or stalking shot in dark lighting and either had no music to create suspense and/pr eerie music to create a sense of fear within the audience. The scenes also cut to real life photos of the location of the crime after it happened, solidifying the preferred reading about them as there are real life proof being shown. Our documentary uses stereotypes, however we chose to subvert them instead. The sterotype that seniors in high school are bigger and stronger, and that juniors are inferior, weak, and often intimidated by them, to add to that, girls are usually the victim, and quiet people are usually the mysterious perpretrators. We subverted the stereotypes and instead made the popular girl act as the perpetrator and the victim being an antisocial guy. This would make our crime documentary stand out from the others that conforms to the stereotypes and spread awareness about the possibilites of this happened. It shows the audience that anything could happen and to expect the unexpected. 

Thumbnail Research + Development

Thumbnail Research and Development: (written by Rachelle)

I had searched for crime documentaries on Netflix to look at their thumbnails as reference. A common convention that I noticed is the usage of medium to close-up shots of key figures such as the perpetrator or victim. These types of thumbnails made me question what those people did and their part in the story (e.g. "what crimes did they commit?", "what happened to them?", etc). I think that using thumbnails like this would help engage audiences more as it evokes an emotional connection. Another convention that I noticed is the use of dark color schemes. They typically use black, blue, and green color schemes. I noticed that these colors create an eerie and ominous atmosphere and create suspense as the audience feel that the documentary will reveal unsettling information, especially with the dark lighting used in most of them. Some documentaries use images of crime elements as thumbnails, such as the crime scene, weapon, etc. This feature gives the audience a hint of the crime, but doesn't reveal too much that they know exactly what the crime is. This follows the hermeneutic code cultivated by Barthes which refers to any element in a media product that isn’t fully explained, existing as an enigma for readers. This increases their engagement as it makes them question the context of the media product shown.

I made a few thumbnail sketches based on these conventions and showed them to my teammates to discuss which one we think would convey our message the most effectively. We want our audience to feel drawn to our thumbnail and feel uneasy about it, yet also curious about what our documentary is about. 

Hand holding door handle — Image of crime element

• A hand holding a door handle as a thumbnail would connote an invasion of privacy, this would evoke anxiety within the audience. This would make them question what was behind the door, who's holding the door, etc. However, door handle images are very commonly used in crime documentaries (as seen on the 'Worst Roommate Ever' thumbnail on my research above), so our thumbnail wouldn't really stand out from the others.

Silhouette figure behind window at night — Shot of key-figure

• Using a silhouette figure behind a window would create a very ominous and eerie atmosphere when audiences stumble across it. This thumbnail would definitely give the context of stalking to be connoted by the audience. The imagery of someone watching you from outside the window (the thumbnail is shot to look like the audience are actually looking out the window), is very disturbing, so this would very likely intrigue the viewers, specifically our target audience.

• After some thinking, I decided not to use this since taking outdoor pictures at night would be very difficult to do as we (me and my teammates) don’t have the proper lighting equipment to shoot these types of pictures, and none of our houses has windows that are clear enough and/or the windows are on the 3rd floor of the house. 

Picture of perpetrator during the interview — Shot of key-figure

• This is a very commonly used thumbnail in crime documentaries (as seen on the research I did). Pictures of perpetrators as thumbnails, usually medium to close-up shots, catch the audience’s attention as it creates an immediate connection between the two, making the audience question the perpetrator’s personality and what crimes they did. However, showing the perpetrator upfront will bring down the mystery. Especially since we don’t want to completely reveal the perpetrator in our documentary, this thumbnail will not be suitable. 

• I discussed with my teammates and we came to a conclusion that this thumbnail would be too cliché as it is too oftenly used in crime documentaries, we want our thumbnail to stand out.

Basement — Image of crime element 

• Basements are often associated with captivity, this fits our kidnapping theme very well. The picture of the basement will be shot from a higher angle, this creates suspense as it makes the audience feel more vulnerable, as if they’re looking at something sinister down the basement. This creates fear and anxiety within the audience, but also makes them curious as to what lies in that basement and what crimes have happened there.

The street/neighborhood — Image of crime element

• Showing the street/neighborhood as the thumbnail creates a sense of familiarity and relatability, highlighting the fact that these crimes can happen anywhere, even in familiar spaces. However, I feel like a picture of only the street/neighborhood would be bland as it doesn’t really correlate to any of the crimes in our documentary. This wouldn’t be engaging enough for our audiences due to the lack of “eerie elements”, which may lead to less views.

Victim in crowd with face blurred and red circle around the face —Shot of key-figure 

• This thumbnail would display the theme of stalking very well as the blurred face creates a sense of curiosity within the audience, guessing who the victim is. The red circle highlights the fact that the victim is being ‘targeted’, this connotes the vulnerability of the victim, even in crowds. This further highlights the fact that stalkers can identify and isolate their victims, even in public spaces/crowds.

• After further discussion with my teammates, we thought that blurring out the victim’s face would create the unwanted connotation that the victim is dead (he’s not). So, we tried to think of a different thumbnail that revolves around this idea of putting a red circle around the face as it is a dramatic effect and would attract the audience’s attention.

Close up of the victim’s eyes – Shot of key-figure

• Jasmine gave me the idea of using the victim’s eyes as a thumbnail so that it immediately evokes a sense of uneasiness. The extreme close up shot of the eyes of the victim (being wide-eyed) could convey a sense of fear towards the audience. Wide eyes connote a person being scared or panicked. In addition, we could possibly add the detail of the criminal being reflected in the victim’s eyes through edit to give the audience a little peek as to what the victim is scared of. This would use the Hermeneutic code by Barthes to make the audience ask questions as to what the criminal did to make the victim become scared.

Victim and perpetrator in a class picture with everyone else’s face blurred and red circle around Harper (perpetrator) and Christopher’s (victim) faces – Shot of key-figure

• While discussing the thumbnails with my teammates and teacher, I suddenly had an idea, which is to use a class picture with the victim and perpetrator where their faces are circled red and everyone else’s faces are blurred out. I thought that this would be good as it would add a sense of realism as the picture would seem to come from real life, reminding the audience that the crime actually happened in real life. This may hook the audience who will become more interested. In addition, it would fit the narrative as Harper mentioned that Christopher wasn’t close to her and they only met through clubs. Using this idea can help the audience see that the crime wasn’t predictable and before it, they seemed like just regular students that attended the same school. 

Medium shot of victim in a classroom picture with classmates around him with their faces blurred out – Shot of key-figure

• I tried to think of other ideas that could combine both 6th and 8th thumbnail ideas and had come up with this. I had decided not to choose the class picture with Harper and Christopher as the main focus as we don’t want to reveal who the perpetrator is yet so putting the focus on those two would make it obvious. Moreover, since putting red circles around the victim’s face would make it seem like he didn’t survive the crime and died, I decided to scratch that idea.

After further discussions with my teammates, we decided to use the medium shot of the victim in a classroom picture with classmates around him with their faces blurred out as a thumbnail since we thought that this would convey our message/dominant reading that says “anyone can be a victim”. On the first look, people would assume that Christopher was the perpetrator when he’s not, this means that anyone, no matter their race, behavior, and appearance can still fall victim to these types of crimes, which is why we would like to spread awareness regarding personal safety to our audiences, so that they can always be aware of their surroundings, to prevent themselves from falling victim to these crimes. 

Thumbnail Research and Development (Typography R&D) – Rachelle

I had done some observations with the usual typographies used in crime documentaries (I looked back at the thumbnail picture research screenshots on Netflix), and I realized that the font used is typically always bold yet clean.

I went on Google Docs and scrolled through the font options to search for fonts that would fit our documentary. Here are some of the best fonts I found. 

Where Did Christopher Go? – Impact

• When I was scrolling through the font options, this font (Impact) immediately caught my eye. This font is bold and direct, which makes it a great tool to grab the audience’s attention. Additionally, the font is very intense, which paints the theme of stalking and kidnapping well, as tension is created using this font. Despite this, Impact may be too bold of a font to be used on the thumbnail as it would take the attention away from the picture, and that’s not what we want. There may be a detraction in the emotional impact of our thumbnail image as the font may come across as too aggressive. 

Where Did Christopher Go? – Cinzel

• This font gives off a formal look, this connotes that the documentary is professional. Audiences would be attracted to this font if they are looking for a high-quality, serious documentary. In addition, they may also feel as if the documentary has an important message to convey as they may feel like the documentary will discuss investigative and/or intellectual crimes, due to the professional font used. However, the Cinzel font isn’t really eye-catching and may lessen the intensity of the thumbnail, which goes against our kidnapping and stalking theme, or even crimes in general. I personally also think that this font gives off historical vibes, which doesn’t fit our documentary as it features modern high school students.

Where Did Christopher Go? – Times New Roman

• The Times New Roman font is neutral, which gives the audiences a serious tone yet doesn’t distract them from the thumbnail image either. This font is also formal and very readable, creating a sense of professionalism. However, this font is frequently used in many different contexts (not just documentaries), so it may not create any impact to the audience and may just come across as bland. Additionally, it doesn’t implement any sense of fear or anxiety into the audience, which takes away the purpose of our thumbnail.

Where did Christopher go? – Julius sans one

• I personally find this font really unique and decorative as I don’t see this font being used often. Due to the font’s uniqueness (as it looks different from everyday fonts), the curiosity within the readers could be evoked due to the sense of unfamiliarity. This font gives off mysterious vibes to the audience, which may make them question the hidden truths and unresolved issues, increasing audience engagement. This font is also eye-catching and isn’t bland, yet still clean and readable, increasing the chances of audiences being intrigued by the title yet also not having their attentions completely distracted by it so that they can still feel the emotional impact from the thumbnail image.  

After some discussions with my teammates, we decided to use Julius Sans One as the font for our thumbnail typography. This is because we want to catch the reader's attention and differentiate our crime documentary from others, but not too much (which is why i chose a clean and readable font) that it takes their attention away from the thumbnail image, following the genre theory cultivated by Steve Neale, which states that a media product must be different enough to stand out from other products, yet similar enough to fit into a category. 

This is the process of developing the thumbnail which is done by Cheryl with the help of Jocelyn near the end. 

From photo 1 to photo 2:

to:

When looking at photo 1, I realized that the lighting was too bright and clear in which these mise-en-scene

connotes a more upbeat and positive atmosphere. This opposes the mood we are trying to set which is gloomy

and mysterious, as per conforming to the genre conventions of crime documentary thumbnails according to the

research. 

From photo 2 to photo 3:

to:

Here I experimented with the black and white filter and further darkened it to the point that it kind of looks

unclear with the aim to create effects such as uneasiness and disorientation towards the audiences as what they

are seeing is unclear and this would increase a sense of curiosity and suspense. However, something about the

result of this picture after the changes doesn’t settle on me and I was unsure of my decisions that I made alone

thus far as well, therefore I asked my friend Rachelle who did the research for the thumbnail development on

which one she thinks looks better and matches more with the mood of our opening. This is what she said,

resulting in me going back to the 2nd photo. 

Improvements of photo 2:

From

To

Here I used Adobe Lightroom to color grade the picture to make it more cool toned as in crime documentaries,

the blue hue may connote a sad, tragic, and serious mood, which is what we’re going for from the opening as

well so this thumbnail would act as a hint for that. In addition to that, since I am planning to use red as the color

of the font that we chose for the typography of the name later on, making the picture cool tone will help pop out

the color more since they contrast each other, therefore enhancing the visual effects. 

From

To

Firstly, I chose to blur the faces of the people in the background to draw the audience’s attention right to the

man in the middle in which this would leave them questioning his significance in the story. They may also have

questions on why the people in the background are blurred out and what relationship they may have with the man

in the middle. Overall, it is to increase audience engagement through hermeneutic code. The first picture was my

first try in blurring their faces and I didn’t really like how opaque it was and how unnatural it looked, so I tried to

blur all of them at once with the idea that I can put the name of the crime documentary over it easily as well so

that it’s easy and clear to read. However, again, It didn’t settle right with me thus I asked my teammates on which

one they preferred. They chose the first one and gave a suggestion on toning down the opaqueness by quite a lot

in which I did, resulting in the third picture. I ended the modification there as I am already satisfied with how it

looks. 

Final Draft

Moving on to putting the title onto the thumbnail, we had Jasmine (our actor for Harper) write out Christopher's

name in her handwriting digitally, and then we had it turned into text. On our first try, I (Jocelyn) accidentally

left the text going over the subject (it was originally meant to go behind the subject), but we ended up liking this

version so I just moved it up to make sure Devasya’s (the subject) face isn’t covered by the text.

In the second draft, I rearranged the order of the texts and put it just above Christopher’s actor, the man in the

middle, so that it slightly covers him but not entirely. Putting the text too close to the top of the frame looks really

bad and just tears the proportionate of the thumbnail apart.

On the final draft, our teammate Jasmine suggested we try tuning the saturation up so that it would look brighter.

I couldn’t decide between this and the second draft, as I think both look good, however the “Christopher” text

might be a little too bright in this draft, so we ultimately decided on the second draft instead.

Editing

 This will be where I keep track of my progress in editing our crime documentary

Issues:

- All of our clips start with our clapperboards to show the scene number and number of takes, which would help

us a lot when it came to editing, as we could find our best clips and put it in editing really quickly. However,

when I input all the clips into my editing software (Microsoft Clipchamp), none of the clapperboards were shown

in the thumbnail (one did, but that’s one out of hundreds of other clips) so it was harder for me to see which clips

were which. 

- Editing app (microsoft clipchamp) lags out often, it takes longer to make changes to the edit. Fortunately for the

most part, the app runs smoothly and all goes well, but sometimes there’s a chance the software lags out and

makes the editing process slower.

- Premiere pro and davinci isn’t loading on my laptop and i dont have the time to wait for it to load/work

(playing it safe because the deadline is too short, i'd rather not risk experimenting with a new app and failing on the day before the project is due.)

Process

Scene 1 (All background audios are found and researched by my teammates Jasmine and Rachelle)

Sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UTRApG_9kY&list=PL_jsUlLsYUHrVuGhz-91VNcx-KGTIioPv&index=6 - Gathering Darkness by Kevin Macleod

I first tried an audio from youtube called “Gathering Darkness” by Kevin Macleod, but I felt like it was more like

a creepy lullaby than it was an introduction to a crime documentary. Rather than feeling like a retelling of a

horrible crime, it sounded more like a cinematic to a short horror film, which makes the audience lose the idea

that this documentary was about a terrible crime that had happened, and instead get the idea that this is just a

creepy story being told. We don’t want this effect as obviously we don’t want the audience to be out of touch

with a real life crime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zvQoPyY2XE “Dark tension rising music” by Mattia Cupelli

The second audio I tried was “Dark tension rising music” by Mattia Cupelli on youtube. I think this audio induces

more anxiety and tension than it did the last, as it wasn’t as loud and overexaggerated as Gathering Darkness by

Kevin Macleod. I matched the text for the intro to our documentary to come in at the beat dropping on 0:11

seconds into the youtube video, I had also cut off a few seconds in the start as the text in our intro only appears

for a total of 10 seconds, and audio’s intro on youtube was too long.

Video:

The part of the scene where Devasya (our actor for Christopher) walks through the streets to revisit Harper’s

house, the scene of the crime, I wanted to put a time and date in the bottom left corner of the screen pointing out

that Christopher is with a camera crew to film a documentary, after the crime has happened. 

This was the first font I chose, at first glance I thought it fit the scene and it looked like code on a computer, the

way I wanted it to look like. However, after I looked over the editing, I realized it was too bubbly and just didn’t

look right.

This was the second font I chose, one of the other reasons I didn’t like the first typeface was because I didn’t like

how the zeros in the text had a dot in the center of it. This typeface with just a strike through the zeros looked a lot

better on screen and the overall look of the typeface didn’t seem too bubbly.

Scene 2.2 (Harper places her bag on a chair)

My team and I tried out a different angle to see if it would look better. 

Originally I preferred this first angle better, because it showed Rachelle (as Harper’s reenactment actor) walking

into the frame and placing her bag on the chair. Post-filming however, when I played through the various clips we

shot for this scene, I realized the lighting wasn’t on our side when it came to this angle. The backlight from the

window was too bright and made the rest of the scene look darker, and it just didn’t make sense to use this.

I looked around for that other angle we tried out, and using this clip just made more sense. The backlight wasn’t

against us, and the overall scene isn’t too bright or too dim (both pictures of the scenes aren’t color graded, these

are the raw clips). I decided on using this version of the angle instead.

Harper’s main interview

The interview footage is taken from a news report that was live days after the “kidnapping”. I struggled to find a

news template that looks good when edited onto the raw recording - I don’t have the Capcut application so I

decided to find templates online in google. The problem with this however, is that the template would be still

pictures and not animated.

This is one of the few templates I chose. Though it’s mostly because it looks bad and I could’ve chosen a better

template for an example, I noticed the news template that are just still pictures would just look awkward on screen.

One of my teammates, Cheryl, has capcut and knows her way around it. However, we saw that all the news

templates in capcut were short in duration, and the interview video is a total of 1 minute and 50 seconds

(most of the templates in capcut were barely reaching 20 seconds). Picture below is taken from Cheryl’s capcut

app.

This was the first template that was chosen. I commented on it and mentioned that the white borders above and

below the screen didn’t look good, and ended up making the size of the frame look so squished. Another issue we

had on this one was that this was the longest news template Cheryl had found on capcut, and it was only a minute

long.

In the end, we ended up scrapping this as we were in a pinch for time so we ended up not using any news logo.

Using this template would also obstruct too much of the clip so it would be a bit distracting.

 

The next thing to fix was the problem with the color. I’m not sure why but I’ve tried to import the file for Harper’s

interview multiple times already but the color keeps on becoming super desaturated and yellow-ish. I tried to

color grade to make the colors pop out better like the original video clip.

I accidentally made it a bit too cool-toned which will be bad for continuity since the color of the clip needs to be

the same as the one playing on the TV interview clip.

I got rid of most of the cool tones so I think this is the best I could get to make it as similar as possible to the

original. I do think that the pink tones from the original clip have disappeared and the contrast also increased

quite a bit. Thankfully, it still looks natural.

Scene 4

For the scene where Harper walks down the staircase, we started shooting the scene at around 6 pm, which was

an hour too late. The sun had started to go down and it ended up looking like there was a time skip from day to

night. We planned another shoot and started recording hours earlier, however before we did another shoot, I tried

to fix the lighting myself but the color grading ended up ruining the overall look of the scene.

First shooting:

Second shooting:

I’m glad we had a reshoot for scene 4, there was a window behind where my camera was placed at (refer to the

pictures on Behind the Scene photos on Day 7), and the difference in time of day made Rachelle (our teammate

and actor for Harper’s reenactment scenes) appear in a different shade and color, whilst the background stayed

the same. The colors just looked off on the first shoot, Rachelle was in a darker blue tone as it was darker outside,

and in the second shoot she was filmed on a different day but roughly the same time that the previous reenactment

scene was shot at.

Ending Scene:

Jasmine and I discussed the title card and previously, we thought that it would be good to make the thumbnail

and the title card have the same image, but after reviewing other crime documentary openings, this would not

fit the genre at all. Instead, Jasmine went ahead and made some backgrounds that we could use for the title card.

There are two mock ups, one with the blood splatter effect and one without. We decided that it would be a good

idea to use a picture of the neighborhood as the background as it would almost answer the question of where

Christopher went.

With the blood splatter.

Without the blood splatter. We decided to use this one so it wouldn’t look too crowded.