Investigation and Analysis

What is the project?

This years project is all about the culture in Sunderland, or in the North East as a whole. The aim for this project, as stated by Sunderland Culture, is to showcase products from up and coming local media companies or content creators. They aim to showcase content that clearly illustrates talent in the local area.

The client for this project is Sunderland Culture, which is a local organization in the area that frequently showcases culture around Sunderland, including places like the Winter Gardens and the Fire Station. As said before, they are aiming to showcase local talent from up and coming media content creators, and to showcase these in a media exhibition entitled 'Bright Lights: Northern Talent' The exhibition will be held across Sunderland Cultures venues all over the North East.

The project can either be a short 15 minute documentary, or a short film focused on the North east, or even a minimum of 5 pieces of print media that showcase the local area. For my project I have chosen to film a 15 minute documentary that gives local talented people a chance to showcase their talents to show that there is in fact talent in the North East.

 Constraints of the project

As this project runs across the entire academic year, I do not believe time will be much of a problem for my ideas. However, there may be limited access to resources due to others filming projects at the same time, as there was with previous projects, but in previous projects I did not find this to be much of a problem. I do not believe I will encounter many problems during this project, save for perhaps some scheduling issues, but those can be easily overcome with some rescheduling. As for any other issues or constraints, I believe these will be easily overcome during the project. Other constraints could be related to equipment, where the cameras or tripods could be broken, or perhaps the battery on the cameras could be dead, so I will have to take these into account when I start filming for my project. I will also have to take into account the personnel issues, such as if one of the contributors are ill or unable to get to location for the day of filming.

Client Research: Sunderland Culture

Sunderland Culture is a local organization based in Sunderland that aim to bring Sunderland's cultural assets and activities. They state on their website that they 'realize the ambition of a city brimming with creative potential'. They operate locally, in places such as the National Glass Centre, the Winter Gardens and The Fire station.

The organization gains the investment of the 3 main funders of art provision in the city: Sunderland City Council, University of Sunderland and Music, Arts and Culture Trust.

In March 2018, Sunderland Culture launched the Twenty Four Seven program, a seven year £60 million project running until 2024. It has been built from the excitement, drive and imagination of the people from the community, as well as sectors and organizations across the city who contributed to this program.

Sunderland Culture have frequent opportunities for the community to partake in, including classes and courses for children, art exhibitions and things such as glass making demonstrations. The organization is able to do this with the funding they receive from other companies and organizations.

They also offer grants to independent creative practitioners and businesses to help them grow their creative business. The grants they give out are funded by the CLLD (Sunderland Community Led Local Development Program) which is a five year program aimed at aiding the local economy in delivering jobs. As well as grants, they also offer volunteer positions with their organization.

The organization have held events in the past related to art and the identities around the area, as well as events celebrating  peoples talent: such as the open exhibition they held in Washington.

Another example of events they hold to celebrate talent is the Bright Lights exhibition, which is the event this project is centered around, as it aims to showcase young talent in the area.

The exhibition will be curated by Celebrate Different Collective, who are a group of young people aged 13-25 from across Sunderland. Bright Lights is an exciting opportunity for young people to submit their own artwork for display in the Arts Centre in Washington.

Subject Area Research

For my project I aim to seek out local talent around the North East area and to film this, alongside some interviews. For this to happen first I would need to seek out talent in the area, which I will be able to do during my subject area research.

Talent in the North East is not a particularly well known thing, or at least not known to me. However, I do know that there are a lot of very talented people in the area, a few of which I know personally. 

Talent is described as a natural aptitude or skill, but overall talent is a lot of things. It can mean different things for different people: but mostly it is as described. There are a lot of talents in the world, such as music, coding and magic, to name a few.

Many people often get to showcase these talents to their friends or family, or even to the public, but overall, my aim is to give talented people a chance to showcase their talents in my project.

Existing Product Research

There are not that many products that I can find that clearly showcase the North East, but there are a few that I know of. 

The Northern Echo is a regional daily morning newspaper, as well as a news site on social media. It is focused on news and happenings around the North East, and is a great way for local people to receive news and keep up to date with what is going on. It often updates people on crime, local events and much more.

The font on the Northern Echo website could be classed as serif, as it is simple but still looks somewhat fancy. The colors of the website are quite simple too, indicating that the website shows balance, as according to the color emotion guide.

As well as crime and events, the Northern Echo often keeps people updated about the Government and political news.

As well as the Northern Echo, another North East 'product' is the Northern Football League. The League was founded in 1889 and is the second oldest league in the world. They constantly have games all over the North East, over a variety of days and times. The League has local football clubs play against each other, similar to the Premier League for the world.

The font on the Northern Football League website is quite simple, indicating it is a sans font. The colour is also quite a simple black and white, indicating balance. The green indicates that it is also peaceful, according to the color emotion guide.

Although Little Mix were formed in London, two of the four members, Perrie Edwards and Jade Thirlwall, were born in South Shields in the North East. This shows that there is talent in the North East, regardless of whether they have moved away or not. Jade often visits her hometown, and sometimes watches the local football matches while she is there.

After looking into some existing products in the North East, I did some research into existing documentaries to better understand how they are made. I used my documentary type research from last year to brush up on the different types of documentary film and then I proceeded to do some research on existing documentaries.

The Social Dilemma

The documentary starts off with staff members from different social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. They are all in an interview setting, a mix of mid shots and closeups- talking about the media platforms and their thoughts on them. Throughout the interviews the lighting of each shot remains the same, to ensure there are no unnecessary shadows casted on the interviewees faces The interviewer begins to slowly ask all of the interviewees 'What is the problem'- referring to the problem with the tech industry. The documentary cuts to using footage to showcase how people are stuck to their technologies- including news reports about the dilemma  about cell phones and how apps like snapchat induce body dysmorphia.

The documentary continues to show Tristan Harris- a former design ethicist for Google. He talks about how badly technology is affecting our lives- and how he wants the tech industry to bring ethical designs to their products. He mentions how he felt addicted to Gmail- a project which he worked on- and how found it bizarre on how the app could be so addictive.

The documentary is mostly set up as interviews with former employees of corporations. They used a close up front shot- which then transferred into a close up side shot of the interviewee. The rest of the documentary is made up of shots following people around- as if a scripted movie.

Throughout this documentary- especially during the interviews- there is background music- which was also played at the start of the documentary when we were being introduced to the idea.

Coded Bias

Like with other documentaries I have seen- this documentary starts off with music- which is accompanied by a robotic voice- an artificial intelligence.

It continues to use footage of researcher Joy Buolamwini talking over footage of herself at the media lab she went to. She talks about how she was inspired to make a mirror to inspire her when she looked into it- aiming to have an image of a lion projected onto her face in the mirror- or of people who inspired her. She goes on to say how it did not work too well with her own face- but whenever she covered her face with a white mask the mirror detected it as her face.

The documentary cuts to footage from Hollywood  movies- in which most of our ideas of A.I come from- as we are not entirely familiar with the thought of artificial intelligence in the real world- instead thinking of movies and TV shows that we watch that include artificial intelligence- such as The Terminator- or Commander Data from Star Trek Next Generation. During this footage- there is a voiceover from Meredith Broussard (the author of the book Artificial Unintelligence) talking about what we know as A.I as robots that slowly become more sentient that take over the world- when really artificial intelligence is already further along than we thought.

Throughout the documentary- similar to The Social Dilemma- there are variations of interview shots and footage of following people around- along side some old footage- such as the chess match with man vs machine.

Each documentary includes a multitude of different shot types, such as closeup, mid range shot and full body shot. These products have given me more knowledge of shot types, as well as how to properly light a scene to ensure the subject of the shot could be fully seen.

I will use some of these shot types in my own documentary project, as well as using the different lighting techniques that were shown.