For me researching the rock/altrock/artrock genre was overall pretty fun as I got to search for deeper meanings in my favorite songs and analyse their hidden symbolism and easter eggs. The most challanging part about completing the researching was my time management because I have a bad habit of procrastinating and aswell this term my schedule was pretty packed with retaking psycology exam and school events. Next time I try to manage my time better and better focus on doing media studies tasks. I will probably add to this research as there are many things I wanted to say but couldn't right in time, also I feel like my writing is inconsistent due to the time constraits I put on myself and for some I might have wrote to much and its wordy and hard to understand whilst others are far to short.but nonetheless I hope I get a good score and was able to share my passion with anyone reading.
This blog shows the progress of our thumbnail crime documentary. This post is primarily written by Kenzo, with suggestions provided by the other group members regarding the designs.
RESEARCH
This is how the overall crime documentary cult genre thumbnail looks:
Even though the thumbnails below are not from a crime documentary, these designs most likely fit with our documentary theme:
The purpose of a thumbnail is to capture the audience's attention at first glance and convey what the media text is about. It's some kind of a guide that helps the audience decide whether they want to click/watch, especially in big, crowded platforms like Netflix or YouTube. Matching the genre convention of the thumbnail makes the content look more legitimate and professional. Having a colourful, playful thumbnail for a crime documentary would defeat the purpose of having a crime documentary, as it misleads the audience from the intended content. In conclusion, a thumbnail is a visual hook that contains information regarding the media text, and the design must match the genre to avoid audience confusion.
Here are the three chosen thumbnails that will most likely going to be a combination in our final thumbnail:
Here are the two documentary thumbnails that caught our eyes at first glance. The Blair Witch documentary follows a horror convention of dark colour scheme, which emphasises fear through the use of colour red (symbolising blood and danger) and black, representing death or mystery, creating a powerful combination that evokes dread and anticipation in the audience who views the thumbnail. The font used in the Blair Witch is slightly worn out and has an uneven serif typeface, which gives a sense of seriousness. The genre convention this thumbnail gives unsettles the audience, suggesting something hidden happens behind the picture. I think the colour scheme and the font could be applied to our final thumbnail perfectly.
For the "In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal" documentary, the thumbnail uses a typewriter-style font, which makes it journalistic and instantly gives an impression of a real-life investigation. The title highlighted the word "God" in red, which shows the danger and corruption. The colour red might also connotate blood, which may imply there might be murder or a bloodbath in the documentary. The pinned photograph connected by a red string on a detective investigation board is a common way for most crime documentaries to make the audience feel that they are piecing the evidence together as they view the thumbnail. Unlike Blair's Witch silhouette, in this thumbnail, we see the real faces of the cult leaders, which suggests that this event actually occurred in reality. We are probably going to add this to give our thumbnail a sense of realism.
For the final chosen one, we decided to take from a documentary called "Escaping Evil: My Life In A Cult" because this perfectly fits with our documentary theme. The font choice for "ESCAPING EVIL" uses a handwritten, brush-styled serif font that creates an emotional, first-person connection, unlike the other cold investigative documentaries. The font choice of "MY LIFE IN A CULT" uses a factual, clear and serious font beneath the "ESCAPING EVIL" storytelling type font. The genre convention of a group of women dressed in long robes walking to an isolated landscape connotes a secrecy with the fact that we couldn't see their faces, also showing the anonymity within the cult life. The thumbnail was taken in a wide-open, desolate environment tells the audience that it is difficult to break free from the cult.
From these three chosen thumbnails, "Blair Witch" gives a greater sense of horror and less documentary from the use of the cult symbols and the disturbing colour scheme. "In the Name of God" gives off a more investigative crime evidence and documents. Highlighting the word "God" in red draws attention to the audience that there might be religion being twisted, which could probably be a good feature for our documentary thumbnail. "Escaping Evil" gives off a documentary of the survivor's story of personal trauma.
Here are the six ideas that I have sketched:
I decided to develop idea 4 because the corkboard instantly makes the audience feel that they are part of the crime investigation. The red strings connected to pictures of people show that there may be a hidden relationship or bigger scheme behind the scenes. The censored faces or the documents imply there is some hidden information within the investigation that the audience may want to solve.
Here is my first attempt at creating the thumbnail:
This will be the starting baseline of the thumbnail. Further improvements will be added. For now, I will use idea#4 as my reference for the thumbnail.
Here is the second attempt at creating the thumbnail:
I added more writing in red to give clearer information about what the board is about to the audience. However, some of the writings were off-placed and the colour grading was not enough, so I think I might fix that in the next attempt.
Here is the third attempt at creating the thumbnail:
I removed the off-placed writing and added some new elements into the thumbnail, such as sticky notes, black highlighter, red circled marker and a few dead plants covered in blood to give a more realistic vibe to the audience. I will plan to add darker lighting on my next attempt and do the final touches on my final attempt.
Here is the final attempt at creating the thumbnail:
This is Lamiya's attempt at the thumbnail:
The final choice: We decided to go with Lamiya's thumbnail as the majority of the group agrees.
Below is the reason why we changed the thumbnail idea. This is taken from Lamiya's Post
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The first thumbnail, which was designed by my teammate Kenzo, used a detective board style with notes, photographs, red string and sketches. This is a clear reference to how investigations are often shown in crime media, and it does link to the crime genre. However, when I looked at it in the context of our documentary, I felt that the colours and busy layout made it come across in a lighter and almost playful way. The handwritten notes and doodle like sketches gave it a slightly casual look, which didn’t fully match the dark and disturbing subject matter of our documentary about a cult that does shady things and also kidnaps people. It also looked quite packed with different details, which can sometimes be harder for audiences to read quickly, especially when thumbnails need to be clear even at a smaller size.
first draft
Because of that, I decided to redesign the thumbnail myself. For the final version, I kept the design much darker and simpler, drawing inspiration from Netflix crime documentaries, which often use bold and minimal images that immediately grab attention. I placed the cult leader as the main figure in the centre of the thumbnail, with shadows covering her face. This makes her identity mysterious and creates suspense, as the audience is encouraged to ask “who is she?” and “what is she hiding?” I also added eerie hand drawn sketches that my teammate Kenzo drew layered faintly over the background. This detail connects to the idea of madness and obsession, but in a way that feels unsettling rather than playful. The darker tones and high contrast give the whole image a more professional and cinematic feel.
Final draft
When the two thumbnails are compared side by side, their differences show how the project developed. The first one communicates the theme of crime through investigation imagery, but it gives off a lighter tone. The new one focuses on mystery and fear, using simplicity and darkness to create suspense. Both designs have clear links to crime conventions, but the second matches more closely with the style and atmosphere of our documentary. This shows how our thumbnail design developed from being genre linked where it's just being creative with it to becoming genre accurate and emotionally effective towards the audience.
This blogpost shows the editting process. The blog was made by Maha
To edit this documentary, Im using capcut and I bought the pro version. To help me editing in more advanced way and access all effect and tools.
1)
This is our first version of editing, using all of the footage we got.
The feedback I got from the teacher is to add more effect like the glitch, and resolution on the body cam to make it a little bit blur and low resolution to add the realism. Also adding few sound effect that could help to add suspense into the scene, also by removing things that are not important, like too long question from the interviewer, and also the time when the interviewee think and waste a few second. And by adding more footage while the interviewee are still talking, so its not boring for the audience to watch.
I got inspired by seeing some documentaries which about crime, thriller, they're showing lot of sound effect to add suspense and other stuff that conform to a crime, thriller documentary, and one of them is
Far War Cry opening scene, which also about a cult.
This in a new version with more improvements, as I got the feedback already. It is better because I try to put more of the footage and photos showing the cult to make it more interesting, rather than showing lots of the interview scene. Also I gave the effect on the body cam scene which is lowering the resolution and giving static glitch effect, as we want the audience to understand and know that its in the jungle, and its hard to get signals. I also removed the scene where the interviewee were asked a long question and just go straight into the point, because if I leave it like that, audience might get bored of just hearing that long question. Also I put Zoom in some photos and videos, to add suspense and make the audience focus only on that photo.
2)
This video shows where the subtitles are not consistent ,where it all have different size, our feedback to is to change the size and make it all the same, additionally change how the text popped out, where first one we use the typing effect, but Mr. Nick suggest to just put all the sentence without giving the effect of typing, to make audience easier to read and not making the audience in hurry to watch it.
I was inspired by looking at the Netflix documentary where the subtitles are clear and don't use any excessive effect, and just keep it simple for the audience to easily read it.
This how it looks, all of the text are already in same size, I also use a simple type face similar to Netflix, and eras the typing effect which now its much easier to ready and doesn't need to be hurry when reading it. This will help the audience to understand the meaning of the documentary better and doesn't miss information because its hard to read the subtitles.
3)
So this is the scene where the drone scene suddenly be shown out of nowhere after Zalfas Interview which is not match to Zalfas Interview or the plot of the documentary, Mr. Nick also said that it doesn't make sense and the context about the drone.In the drone shot, it shows that the drone suddenly crash because it hit the tree,but audience wouldn't know why did the drone hit the tree what is the problem actually until the drone was hit by a tree ans then fell down and stay still on the ground.
I was inspired by the other interviewee from Ambamovic and Fred,where every time they speak there is their own footage that is the eveidence of what they are saying and talking about,for example Ambamovic talking about the cult and the insider,then we showed the insider camera footage.
This is after we add 1 more interviewee which is the Hacker/Drone operator that worked together to investigate the cult with Ambamovic.In this interview the hacker explain in detailed about why do they flew a drone into the cult head quarters,and why do they crash into a tree is clearly explain in the interview,which now audience could understand about the drone scene.We also add hermeneutic code,which is from how we show the hacker with effected sound and we doesnt show the face, and only dark.In this new interview too,we add several camera angles which is from the side and infront of the interviewee,to make more variation and show to show important information when we shoot it straight infront of the drone operator.
This is the storyboard and plan for my documentary
This is our first version of the storyboard.
Revision for the final documentary video: After multiple trial and error with shooting, we decided to start with the 1st interview with the operator at the beginning of the scene. The reason we did this is that we want to immediately hook the audience with the dialogue that raises questions in them, rather than an immediate answer, while also making the viewer connect faster to the information and feel more real and personal, rather than another crime story. There were not many changes for the cult scene, as it went perfectly well from shots 1 to 3, aside from just adding the interview dialogue and scenes in between them.
Everything went according to plan until shots 5 and 6, where there were slight changes to the character's outfit and the lighting of the drone operator interview scene. After shot 7B, we added a new interview scene of a local citizen who witnessed the cult's actions. This gives the audience more information and a deeper storyline regarding the cult than leaving simple questions unanswered. In between the interview, we also combined some shots of the cult HQ and flyers to match the dialogue and give a more realistic sense. In the end, we added a medium shot of the journalist from his camera getting dragged by the cult members and extra footage of the drone getting jammed with pictures that may answer the viewer's question before ending it with an outro.
