FMP

Ideas

Rationale - Section 1

I am very pleased that I chose to continue studying media from L2, I have learnt a lot of new skills such as foley and how to create flash banners from scratch. I have also learned how to use new programmes such as Adobe Animate, Adobe Premier pro and Adobe photoshop. I feel that my skills have developed a whole lot and although there is loads more room for improvement I am happy with the place that I am at now. When I look back at my journey from Unit 1- 7 I can see my progress in both major and minor ways. An example of a major way in which I made progress in my work is in the written part of my work. I was skimming through my work and I came to realisation that when it came to doing research for the first few units my research was very minimal and not as informative as it should be however in the last three units or so I saw a drastic change in the effort that I put into my written work (specifically the research.) An example of a minor way in which I made progress is in the quality of my practical work such as making it look more professional and using multiple camera shots.

Project Concept - Section 2

I have chosen to base my Final Major Project on the stereotypes of teenage mothers. I have chosen this subject because I fell pregnant at 15 and became a mother at age of 16 and I experienced a great deal of negativity and I was categorised into the stereotypes that people (older people especially) tend to put teenage mothers in such as not being able to finish school, being a single mother, not being able to live my life properly etc. In this project I aim to change or alter the minds of those who are stuck in their ways of thinking negatively about teenage mothers and stereotyping them and putting them into preposterous categories. I also want to show people the good and life cherishing sides of being a teenage mother and the lessons that are learned as a young mother.

To achieve the type of documentary that I am looking for I am going to carry out various types of primary research such as doing a focus group and some vox pops. The reason in which I have chosen to carry out vox pop and a focus group is so that I can get a wide range of thoughts and opinions on the subject at hand, i want to be able to use other people views and show the better side to it or even prove them wrong (if possible.) In order to complete and present my final realisation within the allocated time I do not think that i'll need any specific recourses because I am a teenage mother i can use what I have already, I think this documentary will be somewhat easy to do, it will be very natural.

Evaluation - Section 3

After each recording I do for my documentary I am going to evaluate the day by doing voice recordings, I will also write something brief to go with each recoding so that I can easily allocate what recording is what. I decided to do recordings because I am aware that the examiners like to see different methods in the ways that we document our journeys in our work, so by using both recordings and writing this will impress them.

Project action plan and timetable - Section 4

Secondary Research

The teenage pregnancy rates in the UK have dropped significantly by around half in the past two decades and are currently at their lowest levels since record-keeping began in the late 1960s. Up to today the teenage pregnancy rate continues to fall rapidly

The most common ages to give birth is between 30 and 34

Teenage Pregnancy facts/Abortion Facts

• 1 in every 25 teenage girls fall pregnant in the UK.

• There is a 63% increased risk of being born into poverty for children of teenage parents.

• 40% of teenage mothers left school with no qualifications.

• The teenage conception rate in England still remains higher than a number of other western European countries, however, and reductions at council level vary from 30% to 70%

• Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe

• Although the rate of teenage pregnancy has dropped drastically since the 1970's it is still very high

• The Labor government elected in 1997 pledged to halve the number of conceptions to girls under 18 by 2010, but by 2008 the drop was only 13%, from 2009 to 2010 it dropped again by 9.5%. although there was an overall increase in fertility. In 2014, the conception rate for girls under 18 in England had dropped to 22.9 per 1,000, approximately half the 1997 figure of 45.

• Teenage mothers stress levels can be tremendously high and can lead to mental health problems

• Teenage pregnancy is more common in economically deprived areas

• Abortion was legalised in Britain 1968, the first abortion performed was on April, 27 1968

>> This Table shows the rate of teenage pregnancy amongst the white, black and Hispanic community (race/ethnicity). Reading from left to right. The first column shows the total, the second common tis the white community, the third is black and the last is hispanic.

The numbers are birth rate per 1000 females aged between 15-19.<<

Teen Pregnancy effect on mothers and

• Teenage births are associated with lower annual income for the mother. Eighty percent of teen mothers must rely on welfare at some point.

• Intense Emotions such as confusion, fear, regret, excitement and many others

Emotionally the effects of pregnancy and becoming a mother as a teenager are very intense weather the girl decides to keep her child or not or give her baby up for adoption, all of these decisions come with consequences some times the consequences/outcome may be life long.

• Medical complications occur regularly in teenage pregnancies because the mother themselves have not fully developed yet, complications that may occur are:

• As well as physical effects of being a teenage mother it also comes with emotional effects the can have severe effects on the mother-to-be. Emotional effects can include: Depression, Family problems, worries about the future and worries about how they will cope.

Documentary Inspiration

In order to make my documentary I decided to watch a few different documentaries so that i could get a few ideas of the style that i would like to use in my documentary. I watched a few Reggie Yates documentaries such as Extreme UK Gay And Under Attack, Britain's Teen Gangs and Yates in a Texan jail. I noticed that he always uses a "raw" style when he does his documentaries, they're not too cinematic which allows the audience to really get into his documentaries with him, it allows the audience to feel as if they are in his shoes, it also lets the audience see the emotional and horrible parts of whatever topic his documentaries are based on and the good and uplifting parts. As well as getting inspiration for style from Yates' documentaries I also got ideas of how I want my documentry to look, i analysed the way in which his documentaries are recorded and at what times he chose to use his voice overs, background music etc. Again I liked the way it was put together and I will be putting my documentary together in a similar way to Yates.

Thoughts and feelings of teenage mothers

"I hate that people label me as a statistic because i am a teen mum. This was my choice"

"I have been a mother for three weeks and i am a teenager, i am considering adoption because it seems easier"

"As a teenager mother i am not going to defend it, my pregnancy wasn't intentional, but i wouldn't trade it for anything in the world"

"being a teenage mother is the worst no body wants to love you except your baby"

"I hate always wondering if i am a good mother"

"Being a teen mum has made me want to finish my education even more, it makes me want to have a successful future"

"I hate when boys assume that just because i am a teenage mother i have sex with anyone"

"I am a teenage mum, sometimes i want to drop out of school so i can spend more time with my baby"

"I am a third generation teen mother and i have made an oath that i am going to finish my education completely. Unlike my grandma and mother who didn't and blamed having a baby on the reason why they didn't Finish school/college

Planning & Film & Research

Mood Board

The picture above is my mood board, this mood board is based upon the places in which i am most likely to feature in m documentary (some of these pictures are not the exact places that i will be they are just outlines.)

There are three main places in which i want to recored and those places are: in my house, South Thames College and on the street. The reason in which i have chosen to use these places are because i want a very raw and realistic documentary and these three places that i spend most my time. I wanted to choose places that i would feel comfortable to film and as a result of choosing these three main places i will feel very comfortable filming.

Character Mood Board

Above is a mood board based on my character. The middle picture is a representative of my interviewee and her child. My interviewee was a teenage mother and she experienced and learnt a lot as a teenage mother. The pictures that i have included in my mood board reflect on her journey of finding out when she was pregnant all the way down to her present situation. The pictures featured in the mood board paint a rough image of what my interviewee has experienced as a teen mum.

Lighting And Props

As i have mentioned already i am doing a documentary and i intend to make it as real/raw as i possibly can the reason being is because i want the audience to feel like they are in my shoes. With that being said i have chosen to use natural lighting through out my documentary,

I have chosen not to props for the simple fact that i think it will make my documentary look too structured and as i mentioned before i want my documentary to have a hard hitting rawness to it and one of the ways i think will put the "rawness" across in my documentary is to not use props and be as casual as I possibly can.

Pre-Production

Story Board

Shotlist/location report

Poster

Above is the poster that i have chosen to use for my documentary.

i was struggling to choose the poster i was going to use for my documentary but after talking to my teacher (Emma) i chose to use a picture of me and my son. Initially i said using a picture of my self and my son would be boring and also was struggling because i didn't k ow what type of posters would be used for documentaries but Emma suggested that i should go and look at my research and get some inspiration so i did, immediately after i thought that it would be a good idea if i used a picture of me and my son as i wanted everything about my doc to be raw and what could be better more raw than a selfie taken by myself of me and my son.

I felt that using a picture of me (as a teen) and my son would be appropriate because my doc is based on teenage mothers.

I chose to edit my picture on photoshop and make my background "cartoonish" because as teenager you are still somewhat a child you still have childish attributes and ways and you have not fully began adulthood yet. So for me making my background a bit messy and cartoon like adds a element of childishness. However i chose to leave me and my son neutral , with no filter just plain. the reason in which i decided to do this is because although as a teen you are still a child your responsibility doubles and being a mother becomes real life and certain attributes and ways that you have when you are a teenager have to be put behind you and the focus on your future and your child should be your main priority so making my background childish shows that i have left my childish way behind me.

I chose to use a picture of me and my son on a train because evidently we were going on a journey so i juxtaposed the train journey into real life. being a mother is a life long journey and is even more interesting and long in a sense when you are a teenager.

Risk assesment

Evaluation

In this part of my work I will evaluate my work as a whole and go through my journey of making my documentary

Week one planning

In the first week of preparing for my final major project I decided that I would gather all the necessary research that I needed in order to put my Doc together and to get a wider understanding of the subject that I was focusing on, although I was a teenage mother myself I still thought that I should broaden my horizons to the subject as a whole and really go into deep depth and enlighten myself to things about teenage pregnancy/mothers that I didn’t know such as the science around it and statistics.

I initially planned to carry out vox pops and interview teenage mothers; I also planned to look at other teenage mothers stories on the internet.

As far as sticking to my plan I would say I stuck to it slightly as I didn’t complete all of the tasks I set for myself or I didn’t complete them as I would have imagined, nonetheless I still completed the majority of what I initially planned. I didn’t carry out the vox pops to the public because the places in which I wanted to record I was told I wasn’t allowed to record in without permission and getting the permission from the right person/people would/could take up to 6-8 weeks and I didn’t have enough time to wait especially because the vox pops was for the first part of my research and also because I wanted to get the first week done and out the way so I decided to leave the vox pops and proceed with the rest of the tasks that I had set for myself, so I decided to move on to doing my interviews with different teenage mothers, again this didn’t go to plan as I was let down by all three mothers that I originally planned to interview (this was foolish of me as I made a self oath not to depend on anyone for my documentary because the chances of being let down are 50/50.) After two tasks not going to plan I was determined to make sure that my other tasks that I had planned would go through successfully and they did. I found various stories of teenage mothers on the internet and I also found different statistics that were related to teenage mothers/pregnancy, i used some of this information in my Documentary.

Week 2 planning

In the second week of preparing for my Documentary I decided that I was solely going to be focusing on the negative stereotypes that teenage mothers are put into. I planned to watch some movies that feature teenage mothers and analyse the way they are portrayed. I also planned to use some of the stereotypes that I was put into.

Again I had the same problem I had in week one, one of my tasks was not completed, however this time the task wasn’t completed because of. I decided to not watch any movies and use the knowledge that I already have as I thought I knew more than enough when it came to the different ways different teenage mothers carry themselves and the different (negative) stereotypes they are put into.

Week 3 planning

In the third week of preparing for my Documentary I decided to focus on the positive sides of teenage pregnancy so that I could compare them to the negative sides that I would have gathered the week before

In this week I decided to use my knowledge that I have because I can literally think of a million and one things to say that are good about being a teenage mum. Although i had all the positive points to compare to I originally planned to compare the positive points to the negative points that I gathered the week before and compare them to the vox pops that I should have gathered in week one but as I mentioned before (in week 1) I wasn’t able to get the vox pops that I intended so i had to make do with what I already had.

Week 4 Production

Week four was the first week of production. In week four the tasks I set myself to complete were to complete most my voice over’s, interview a teenage mother and upload my vox pops from week 1. As far as completing these tasks I would say I improvised in order to at least do what I had versioned in my head.

I managed to complete my voice over’s however I didn’t manage to interview a teenage mother because again I was let down so instead I decided rise a debate between three staff members at a college in Wandsworth, although the debate wasn’t as effective as a teenage mother, I felt that it was very drawing and as an member of the audience the debate made you want to watch more, It was also interesting to get three middle aged staff members to have a back and forth about such a sensitive subject, I was very happy with the debate.

Week 5 production

In the second week of production I planned to get some shots of my son, myself and the two of us playing together.

In this week I actually completed specifically what I set for myself, I managed to get some natural shots of myself and my son and the both of us together. I was happy with the majority of them however there was a few that I was not particularly happy with because I genuinely didn’t like the way I looked on the camera.

Week 6 and 7 production

In the third week of production I planned to add the finishing touches to my documentary, such as inserting my voice over’s, adding the pictures that I would put over my facts and do my editing, just making my documentary look as good as I can make it.

In this week I did stick to what I had set out for myself however I wasn’t very happy with the way some parts turned out such as the “facts section” of my doc and I also thought that some of my voice over’s sounded different to others but by this time I thought it was too late to be too late to rerecord some of my voice over’s, nevertheless I still took the risk and rerecorded the ones I thought didn’t come out very well, however I thought they came out even worse because I had a cold at the time, so I just used the original ones.

As I mentioned above I also used this week for editing. I think that some of my edits were brilliant like at the beginning and when I had the Montague of people talking but that’s about it. I wasn’t happy with the rest of my editing I thought it looked very cheesy but my class mates disagreed they said my doc looked like something that would appear on BBC which you will hear in my review (which was the look I was going for) but truthfully I didn’t think that my Doc imitated anything that would appear on BBC at all, but that’s just my opinion.

week 8

This is the week that I am at currently; this is the week that I dedicate to evaluating my work and talking about what i thought about my work.

Sound:

As i wanted my documentary to come across raw and not cinematic i chose to use just a mic and a camera. I didn't have any problems with the sound or the quality of the way anything sounded that i recorded on the cameras i used. However I did have a problem with my voice over's (not all of them) some of the voice overs i recorded had poor quality either they were to quiet or there was too much of an echo but after i had completed my Documentary i released that I was not putting the mic on the m audio properly the last few times i was using it, to avoid this the next time i use the m audio when recording Foley or voice overs i need to check thoroughly that everything is put into place and that everything is on properly. I used music some of the time in my Doc just for extra effect. in the beginning i had problems in trying to find the right balance to put the music at because of the issues i had with my voice overs but after fiddling with the volume for a while on both my voice over's and background music I found the right levels so that both the music and voice over's could be heard at the same time.

Lighting:

As i mentioned above i chose to not use any special lighting, i chose to use natural lighting because as i have mentioned i did nor want to have a cinematic look to my doc. I also chose not to use artificial lights because I knew i was going to be recording in different places that would have tremendously different lighting and it would be difficult to maintain the same lighting throughout the whole of my Doc,

Camera Angles/shot types:

I didn't really use a wide range of shot types and i only used a few camera angles in my documentary. The reason in which i didn't use lots of different shot types is because I didn't think it was necessary for me to do because my Doc in non-fiction and i didn't want to much to be going on, on screen. I think my decision to not use so many camera shots and angles was a good decision because it made my Doc look plain which is just the way i wanted it to look.

Narrative:

The fact that i done a documentary i had to use a lot of narrative because documentaries are meant to be factual and very informative and to have a good one you need to talk a lot so as a result i had a lot of narrative included in my documentary, not only by me but by other people.

Active and costume:

I didn't include any costume in my documentary because I simply wanted to be myself just like most presenters do.

Below is the link o the feedback given to me by my class mates and teacher.

https://studentsouththamesac-my.sharepoint.com/personal/emma_ashton_south-thames_ac_uk/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Femma%5Fashton%5Fsouth%2Dthames%5Fac%5Fuk%2FDocuments%2FUAL%20L3%20MEDIA%20YR1%20%2D%20DIPLOMA%2FFMP%20%2D%20FEEDBACK%20YR1&FolderCTID=0x012000BC6ECF2B0229074091F80B12A9D22303

Listening back to the feedback my class mates gave me I felt a bit more positive about my documentary because they gave me such positive feedback and i received very little criticism and as i mentioned above someone compared it to a BBC documentary which was my aim initially, that made me feel slightly better but again i didn't feel as if it was up to my standard.

Positively though i met some of the targets that i set for myself such as making a documentary that people can relate to like the boy that said he could relate to it because his parents were teenagers when they had him. I also liked the fact that people said they enjoyed it because it is an interesting subject that not very many people talk about and in that case i felt that my idea was very original and unique although my teacher suggested i should do it!

My overall reveiw

All in all I wasn't entirely satisfied with my completed documentary because I felt as if I could have showed my face in it more, I wanted to have someone allocated to follow me around so that my documentary could be more intimate, however this didn't go to plan because the person I asked to film me let me down at the last minute, as i said before I thought that it was foolish of me to depend on someone because I have done so previously for other college work and I was let down and at the back of my mind I had a feeling that things weren't going to go to plan, nonetheless the next time I do a project for college I will not be depending on anyone (although I said that the last time!) Another reason in which I wasn't very fond of my completed documentary was because I didn't feel as if it had a Reggie Yates BBC feel, to me it didn't tick all my boxes and although other people’s opinions matter mine matters the most to me. In addition to not having someone recording me it made additional problems such as me not being able to participate in the debate that I raised in the last part of my doc, it would have been much more interesting if I had the chance to voice my opinion considering the fact that I am a teenage mother. It also would have looked better as the recording in this debate was very shaky as you can see in my video above.

Moving on from the negative there were some parts of my documentary that I did really like such as the beginning of it, I thought that the way I opened my documentary instantly would grab attention of anyone who watches it and it also gave of the impression that my doc would be based on children. Another part I also liked was when i had a Montague of people saying what they thought about teenage pregnancy, it looked very professional and it also added a bit of humor.

All in all would give myself a 7/10 just because of the simple fact that i have it in me to produce better work than what i have.