Mobile Home evaluation
Positive feedback
After showing our documentary to our peers, we received a lot of positive feedback suggesting that the strongest elements were the archive footage, the song choice, the intro and outro and the cutaways.
Mise-en-scene
The mise-en-scene of our interview was the key criticism we recieved; various people said it was "distracting", "irrelevant" and "did not work". If we were to shoot the interview again we would have conducted the interview in a more suitable location with an appropriate back drop related to the subject of mobile phones.
'Mobile Home'
The artwork behind the interviewee draws attention away from the interview itself and is irrelevant to the topic of the documentary.
'Sound and Vision'
The dressing room setting is appropriate for an interview on David Bowie's performances and lifestyle.
'The secret life of a manic depressive'
The setting of Carrie Fisher's home is suited to the personal topic of the interview.
Soundtrack
Despite the soundtrack (Telephone - Lady Gaga ft Beyonce) being one of the most praised aspects, the volume and audio balancing was highlighted as an issue. It was drawn to our attention that the music was in some parts louder than the interview audio. A suggested target was to fade the music in and out and correct the audio balancing. During the editing process we should have taken more care in adjusting the volume over certain footage and work on fading the music out as opposed to the abrupt cuts.
Lady Gaga - Telephone (Radio Edit) ft. Beyoncé
Editing
Another feature of our documentary that received criticism was the editing of the footage; it was described as being "very jumpy". Again, we should have spent longer during the editing process using transitions or better cuts from scene to scene. Some of the answers to the interview questions were also seemingly ambiguous leaving the viewer unsure of the question asked. To improve we could formulate full, coherent answers to the questions before conducting the interview instead of doing it on the spot.
Set Up
A key feature of the interview that we got wrong was the set up of the interviewee, interviewer and the position of the camera. In our footage the interviewee is speaking to the interviewer who is left of the camera instead of on the right. If we were to repeat the interview we would obviously position the interviewer on the right side of the camera so the interviewee is looking in the correct direction.