Pre Production: Genre Research

Pre Production: Preliminary Research

Before selecting a music genre, I decided to research on different genre.

Classwork

My Team

This is my team for my music video project.

 

Weekly Progress + Plan

This is the weekly progress and my plan for my music video project.

Week 1

Brief

Here is the brief for my music video project.

Final Documentary and Thumbnail

 Here is my final product and thumbnail of my Documentary Project.

Thumbnail

Documentary

Critical Reflection (CR)

 Here is my blog post for my critical reflection.

My team and I decided to make a documentary about a school bombing entitled The Final Bell: Thirteen Seconds. This crime documentary explores what really happened behind the "gas" bombing attack, which was unexpectedly caused by a minor suspect.

Our documentary represents teenagers, teachers, and detectives through technical elements that build empathy, trust, and suspense. Teenagers are divided into suspect, victims, and a minor character. The suspect is shown with a blurry editing (seen in fig 1) and happy moments to create mystery. Victims are highlighted through close-ups and zooms to emphasise trauma. The minor character is placed in an isolated setting (seen in fig 2) to reflect loneliness and spark curiosity. Teachers are portrayed with discord music and emotional interviews that evoke sympathy. While detectives are filmed in medium shots to establish seriousness and trust which guides audiences through the case. The documentary also explores issues between the suspect and the school showing the suspect in a way that creates mixed feelings of blame and empathy while the schools reputation evoke trauma and sympathy. By using stereotypes such as CCTV footage, detectives and discord in music, the documentary ads, realism and tangent which encourages audiences to connect emotionally with the event.

Branding means the identity of a product shown through style colour and presentation. This is important because it makes the work recognisable which can build trust and attracts audiences. Our production element works together to build a strong sense of branding through consistent visuals and themes across both the thumbnail and the documentary. In our case, both of the video and thumbnail share a dark theme with handheld evidence style visuals, creating a serious tone and evoking emotions of mystery danger and realism. The use of a striking yellow font (seen in fig 3) in both products, symbolises hazard and toxic warning signs immediately connecting to the bomb theme and grabbing audience's attention. The thumbnail featuring a CCTV footage directly reinforces the documentaries realism while also emphasising it investigate nature making it authentic and eye-catching. Together these elements established a consistent identity that audiences can decode as serious danger and true to life. By combining dark visuals realism and hazard symbolism the branding helps the documentaries stand out while creating a mood of tension and importance which encourages audiences to trust the story and engage with the content.

Our products engaged with the audience by targeting teenagers to young adults (15-25) who are familiar with the school setting and interested in true crimes, plot twist, and analysis. The thumbnail place a major role in attracting this audience as it directly connects to the theme of mystery, shock, and realism. It features a CCTV classroom footage which makes the situation feel raw chaotic and authentic which sparks curiosity about what really happened to the students. The dark colours reinforce the true crime atmosphere while the yellow font (seen in fig 3) pops out to symbolise hazard and danger making the title eye catching. The use of automatic code is also important as the thumbnail hints at "thirteen seconds" leaving audiences with unanswered questions that can only be solved by watching the documentary. This encourage viewers to decode the mystery and stay engaged overall the thumbnail combines realism, tension, and symbolic colour to appeal to a young audience seeking shock value, suspense, and deeper analyses within the true crime genre.

our research strongly informed how our documentary uses and challenges conventions of the crime genre. Typical crime documentaries often include close-up shots, CCTV footage, real life evidence, and dark lowkey lighting interview settings that create us tense and eerie atmosphere. They also rely on discordant background music to build up emotion and suspense while editing usually switches between fast pace flashes glitches and flashbacks to keep audiences engaged. We conform to many of these conventions by using CCTV footage, close-up of evidence, quick edits that link interview content with real footage, making the information clear and more engaging for viewers. However, we also subverted convention in several ways. Instead of focusing on the stereotypical older male psychopath, we entered the story around a young female student making the narrative more shocking and unique. We also avoided bloody or violent imagery, since the crime involved a chemical gas bombing which gave the film a more distinct and unexpected tone. Finally, we broke away from plain white titles by using a yellow font (seen in fig 3) which symbolise hazard and danger which makes the branding more eye catching. Overall research on existing documentary shape our choices while allow allowing us to add originality.

Thumbnail (Research & Development)

This blog post contains the thumbnail research and development for our documentary project. My teammate Tisha did the research and I (Kristine) did the development.

Editing

This blog contains editing process for our documentary project. This was made by my teammate Tisha.

Behind the Scenes

This is the behind the scene of our documentary project. This blog was made by my teammate Tisha and Panji.

Filming Schedule

Here is our filming schedule that has been created by our team member Tisha.

The Final Bell : Thirteen Seconds

A Level Media Studies Documentary

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Date: Tuesday, 26 August 2025 

Location: School Field + School Hallway 

Scene / Scene Number: 

• 1 - 4 → Students in their usual day at school without the bomb
• 6 → 911 voice over phone calls
• Drone Shot of the school 

People / Actor: 

• Other students as background character

Things needed: 

• Camera
• Drone
• School bags
• Paper Plane 

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Date: Thursday, 28 August 2025

Location: Classroom

Scene / Scene Number: 

• Interviews of the student & teacher 
• Drone shot of the school 

People: 

• Main student 
• Teacher
• Students 

Things needed: ( + Prop) 

• Camera
• Phone
• Drone
• Books
• Computer
• Pen & book / Stationary → represents student 

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Date: Monday, 1 September 2025 

Location: Classroom

Scene / Scene Number: 

• Interviews of the student and detective

People: 

• Main student
• Detective 

Things needed: 

• Camera
• Phone

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(Only if the needed extra scene) 

Date: Tuesday, 2 September 2025 

Location: Classroom 

Scene / Scene Number: 

• Additional scenes (students everyday life, empty footage) 
• Interview (Retake if needed) 
• Drone shot 

People: 

• Students

Things needed: 

• Camera
• Drone
• School bags 
• Phone

Location Scout

Heres a list of possible locations that we will be filming in for our documentary project. This was done by my teammate Tisha and Kenneth.

Script

Here is our groups script that I (Kristine) created and with the help from Tisha and Panji to insert it in the template.

Storyboard

Here is our groups storyboard that was created by Tisha. 

Before the storyboard we gather everyone’s ideas and match them together to create the documentary. 

After those ideas were settled, we created a draft of the plotline which acts as a guide in creating the storyboard. 

Using this guide, we were then able to create a detail storyboard. 

This style of storyboard was good as it has details of each shot, but it was very time consuming. So we decided to do a much simpler version for the rest of our storyboard. 

Additional notes: From the storyboard, shot 17 shows real footage of a photograph that was taken before the documentary timeline. Where shot 23 and 24 are stage footage, including shot 8 and 9. 

Reflection: For me, when creating the storyboard, plotting the scenes on paper can feel a bit useless. I think this is because our first ideas could often be improved by later ones, and since it is harder to change the storyboard once it is drawn, it can be difficult to work with. However, it still plays an important role because I helps us capture our vision so that during filming, we do not forget it. Overall, since I tend to get indecisive, I decided to let my teammate who was in charge create the storyboard instead. In the end, we all needed to agree on something before adding more ideas, as it can be very hard to cooperate otherwise. Luckily, my teammate made great decisions, and I was satisfied with the choices and the storyboard she created for our documentary.