Pre-Production: Archive Research

Archive footage or stock footage is the material obtained from a film library or archive centre and is placed into a documentary to show the audience historical events or to add detail without the need for additional filming. This is something that could bring a lot of context and background to our documentary and make it feel all the more professional. Archive footage is difficult to get hold of and permission/access for. For educational purposes, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I would rather use archive film rather than still images as I feel images can sometimes distract form he piece and take the audience out of it. However, it is something that may be essential, especially if there is cover limited videos footage around. Given the subject matter, images may be useful in showing other police cases where evidence has failed like with pictures of the individuals involved or details regarding the case. Depending on how it is approached of course it can still be very effective. Archive footage is very useful for historical documentaries; whilst this isn't a historical documentary, we will be going back to the very first case where digital evidence was used in a court of justice.

If the footage fails, something that is commonly done is visual re-enactments. These are artificially produced scenes of an event which has been reconstructed and acted out on a film based on information of the event. If I wasn't able to use the footage of the video below, for example, we could attempt to re-create it and make it seem retro with editing in the post with color grading, distortion effects and framing etc. 

Typically, reconstructions give the viewer a sense of realism, as if the event really happened in front of them like it is actual footage. "They often indicate that the footage is not real by using techniques such as blurring, distortion, lighting effects, changes in camera level, and color enhancement within the footage." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film_techniques#Archival_footage)



Because this video is old and has such low quality, the aspect ratio is square (4:3). I learned about the aspect ratio and retro/vintage effect from the As Live unit when creating VT's (see Blog: https://georgewing42.blogspot.com/2018/03/as-live-production-vt-style-research.html). It may be effective to edit the archive footage onto an old television for it to be unique, fit in seamlessly and also show that it is self-aware, emphasizing the era it was produced (i.e. the revolution of computing/computer evidence).

Now our idea has developed more, I believe it will be better to include archive footage around digital evidence like news reports etc. We can also include archive footage of the people we are talking to and their lives. For example, with Eddie, we can include footage of his wedding with his wife etc. 

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