Researching Julian Assange and Wikileaks

A clear understanding of the story which is currently thriving in the news and a better background check on Wikileaks is key so that our information is correct.

As the story is currently very active in the news, the obvious route is to watch the news daily and on more than one news channel. BBC, Sky and CNN are all covering the story daily so I will check up on them regularly to see the progress in the story about Julian's Assange's public exposure.

''On Sunday 28th November 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into the US Government’s foreign activities.'' - Wikileaks

From watching the latest news on television, Julian Assange is currently fighting against expedition to Sweden where he faces charges for sexual assaults. It is questioned if these assaults occured, as it is suspicious that this story gets brought up at the time of the US diplomatic cable leaks. It may be a way of oppressing Assange in the time where he continues to threaten governments confidential files. He is now currently living in England where he faces these trials, fighting against expedition; for several reasons. The reason he states is that expedition is not a fair way to conclude his actions. Potentially the US want him in their country, where it is rumoured he could face much more severe charges than those in Sweden. It is mentioned that by going to Sweden, it would be an easier task for the US government to get him on trial in their own country. Assange now threatens to leak further cables, ones including nuclear information.



I have also been checking articles online and newspapers, mainly The Times to follow further opinions and leaked stories. As the story develops I will be continuing to monitor the progress of Julian Assange.

Here is the link to a couple of BBC online articles I have been reading:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12024203
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12072504
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11946652
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11945952

Background of Wikileaks:

I have also researched Wikileaks itself, and what they are about and what type of documents they leak. By simple going onto their website ( http://213.251.145.96/ ) you can view all their information. I have also been regularly checking their status on their twitter @ http://twitter.com/wikileaks. By the news being mainly dominated by public and political opinion it is important to balance all sides of the story, and this is done by also listening to Wikileaks and Assange's opinion.

The obvious point here is that the internet is a very powerful tool, capable of a lot of things.

Contacting Mr Clarke

Through contacting Mr Clarke's PA, Debbie, we were able to get hold of an address to contact him. We then wrote up a letter to send to Mr Clarke which will go to his office in the House of Commons.

Here is the write up of this letter:

Dear Mr Clarke

We are a group of 6th Form media students from Heathside School, Weybridge.
For our media A level coursework we have been asked to film a section of a documentary. We have chosen to create a documentary on the recent Wikileaks story and how the government have been handling it. In the section we would like to include a description of what’s happening and why, and include an interview with a well respected politician such as your self.

The interview will only last 15 minutes and will include questions on what control the government have over breaches like these, we would be very happy to send you a list of the questions which we have prepared.
We feel as though you are the most relevant to our documentary as you have a lot of experience in politics and are the current Minister of Justice so have a relevance to how the government should deal with criminal offences such as Julian Assange’s.

Unfortunately this is a no budget shoot however it would help us greatly in completing our media coursework and we would be very grateful to have the participation of such a well known public figure such as yourself. The documentary will only be seen by our fellow media classmates, teacher and examiner and will not be shared publicly.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Yours sincerely


Calum Bowen, George Nicholls and Zoe Woodbridge

UPDATED: 13th Jan.

Fortunately we got a reply offering us a slot at 11:50 (his last appointment) in his surgery on the Saturday morning of January the 22nd. His surgery is placed in his constituency in Nottingham. The surgery is where local residents of his constituency come forward with questions and ideas which may be on their mind. They are held once a month, so he has a very busy schedule and we are very grateful for the 15 minute slot he has offered us.

The Plan

Now we have our idea which we are sticking with, we have created our plan for the production of our documentary.

First, here is a scan of the storyboard:

Side 1

Side 2

As you can see in our storyboard there are several spaces which are scenes yet to be decided, and are will be done with the editing so it isn't too much of a problem for us to complete. For example one blank scene in our storyboard will be the title of our documentary, yet to be confirmed.

The first view scenes will be the introduction to the documentary, highlighting the key issues, with factual information. Zoe will be our presenter in front of camera and our locations were decided for these scenes, in London outside parliament. For our 4th scene we are looking at the merging of two clips of footage, one being websites of the internet and government shots, both relevant to the voice over in this scene. We then addressed our interviews, with the public and their view of the WikiLeaks Story. Questions such as: Have the government got any control over the internet? and What is your view on the sexual assault charges of Julian Assange? Our other footage we will be doing is that infront on computers, for our voice over explaining the background on the WikiLeaks story.

We then came to the decision that we need a credible opinion to balance the topic. Therefore the scene of an interview with a politician and one we had in mind was Kenneth Clarke, MP of Rushcliffe and cabinet member and Lord Chancellor. As one of the most respected MP's in the British Government he was ideal for the role as a government opinion.

Locations thus far:
- London's South Bank & Parliament
- Dark Room with accessible computers (School)
- Interview room of MP

We also need to note the timing of this and respect the fact that if/when we get an interview with an MP we may have to do it straight away or wait a while. Our back up plan is to use an actor, pretending to be a member of parliament. All the filming is aimed to be achieved from the beginning of January untill the end of the month.

Change of plan

We have decided to change the topic of our documentary. Throughout the past few weeks, the groups ideas have been clashing and we haven't been happy with the initial idea of our global warming topic. As expressed previously, we thought the topic was a little too generic and not a strong enough idea for us to produce an interesting documentary on. So we started to brainstorm a collection of ideas again. We had an idea of expoliting a norm, and making a funny but also addressing an issue sort of theme in the documentary. We discussed the possibility of a documentary on 'Phobias', listing people we knew who had phobias and possibly taking time out to see them. We wrote out a rough plan of what the documentary could entail:



However, after further conversation, we scrapped this idea as we didn't have enough content for it. Zoe wanted to push forward her idea of Education and looking at the University prices inflating. Whereas Myself and Calum disliked the idea and maybe a split in the group was looming. After a couple of hours discussing, we decided to stick as a group as a split was not necessary and we had come up with an idea we all were pretty excited about.

We wanted to produce a documentary on something which was current in the news, a big story, and one which could address a wide range of audiences. The topic we chose was the Governments lack of control on the internet, and the mainstream story that is the leaking of government classified documents, WikiLeaks.

We researched the story which was ringing around the news that Julian Assange had leaked thousands of government documents of United States Embassy cables. Nothing like this had been done before and it was a very much dominant news story which threatened a big part of our society. The leaking of cables allowed anyone in the world to view this confidential files which belonged to one of the most powerful nations in the world. This has led onto several other stories, of further hackers causing chaos around the internet, effecting banking websites. Julian Assange is now also fighting the case against his sexual crimes in Sweden, where he is fighting a case against extradition to Sweden. Currently safe in England he opposes the chance of getting charged in Sweden and potential seen moving to United States from Sweden where he would face heavier charges. The story was in no doubt an interesting one, and could support our view that the government's crisis on the control over the internet.

In evaluaion, our plan was to produce a documentary about the governments control over the internet, using the Wikileaks story as our example of what threat the internet poses. Our plan was:

- Start our storyboard
- Timeline
- Plan locations
- Compose scripts
- Interview members of public
- Gather archive footage of news stories
- Politicians view, getting an interview with MP

Here is our Vlog which evaluates the situation of the change of plan and our own views:

Practise Documentary Production

To understand how a documentary is constructed, it is important for us as a group to attempt several mini documentaries which cover different documentary themes. As we have a lot of ideas collected together, our first solid task we set ourselves was to produce mini documentaries which will we have their own forms and types. So far our plan is to produce a Mockumentary which would be Observational and Poetic. A reality documentary which would go along the lines of a more serious approach, filmed in a Expository/Poetic way. These mini productions would hopefully help us give an insight in what we may think works well and what doesn't, ultimately helping us choose what we may produce for our final piece.

Our first Mini Documentary we created was on an observational styled documentary. The documentary is on Rachael Coburn, a school girl, who has to live with the fact that she is pregnant in a very demanding period of her life, a late student. Aswell as observational, it was also a poetic genre, one which we have been interested in. Here was our final piece, which took us around a week to film and edit:



After filming this documentary, we swiftly moved onto our next idea, following the themes of a more expository form of documentary. We stressed the different types of interviews as this was a keen part of the documentary we had planned to use for our final piece.



The creation of these two pieces has allowed us to gain further understanding on these types of documentaries. I thought observational showed a topic which the general public can relate to, and become more interested in, whereas the expository may only target a specific audience of interest, depending on your topic. We enjoyed making the observational as it all happens on a journey and enables the producers to become more creative. As a group we have now become more interested in the expository type of documentary, by shedding light on a certain topic in the current news. With this in mind we had started to think twice about our original idea of global warming, as we thought it was a little too generic and not as dark as we had now wanted.

By producing these supporting pieces of documentary, it has allowed us to look at our weaknesses also, thinking more about the use of music and possibly the addition of voice overs, especially in an expository genre where they are seen more frequently.

Planning our documentary... further

CONTENT:

News flash headlines, showing how the climate is effecting people around the world. Having more recent archives would be important for this. This would work well in the introduction, highlighting how big global warming has reached out around the world.

Green screen, to show us being in Antarctica, and if it looked good, we would use in final, aslong as we have the correct lighting. It would be a short clip, to show whats coming up next in the programme, no longer than 10 seconds.

Night vision effect, would be used inside a tent, as if we are actually in Antarctica. This will be used to show how challenging and demanding the environment is.

Further content notes:

• Us training for the Antarctica, getting fit, and having the right equipment.
• Voice overs of natural disasters occuring (Poetic approach)
• Filming from inside a plane as we are about to take off (We thought about contacting a local museum who have planes etc)

Location:

The gym - To show us training in preparation of our trip to Antarctica, as-long as we can get permission from local gyms to film. We want to include a slight bit of humour in this scene.

Brooklands College - Here an army cadet base is held. As they where the correct uniform of the military, this would be another ideal place for us to show our training in prep. for our travels.

School drama studio - This would be the best place for us to film our green screen scene, as it has good lighting for us to use, which is very important when using a green/blue screen.

Brooklands Museum - If possible, we would like to use one of their planes to show us about to take off for our trip to Antarctica. We would use this shot at the end of our documentary piece, portraying our excitement and fears of whats to come ahead.

Equipment:

- Cameras (2)

- Green Screen

- Ski equipment

- Mountain gear

- Torch

- Tent

- Training wear

Green Screen:

Green Screen?

We wanted to try and get as technical as possible with our documentary. So I came up with the idea of adding in a green screen into our idea of Antarctica. We have all the equipment to do so, therefore we thought that we would give it ago. By adding in a green screen, it will allow us to be very creative with our documentary.

We had a basic go at using a blue screen. It was only a sheet of fabric as we were doing a very rough test as our first attempt. With green screens, you have to take into consideration, the location you are filming in. You must have correct lighting and obviously a good screen. In this case our screen was too thin, colour wasn't what we wanted but with what we had, we made the most of it.

Here is two examples of our first attempt.



Edited in Final Cut Pro





Edited in Sony Vegas


As you can see, their are several issues with these clips. The wind was blowing and creasing our screen in the background, but due to lighting we had to film outside. The lighting from the sun also effected its colour, as every now and then the sun was brighter. Obviously from this we know that filming in a studio is the only suitable option, however as a test it came out better than expected. From this, we have have become a lot more clearer on the factors which we will need to consider when filming on a green screen. For example, we didn't have enough space, as you can see by the first video. And you can also notice on the second video, Calum (in green) was wearing colours which clashed with the screen, therefore him being 'invisible' at points. Although, this was a pretty successful effort as we had learnt a lot!

Planning our documentary.

Now that I have studied the ins and outs of documentary, I'm a lot more aware of the styles and types which work well together. Me and my group (Consisting of Zoe and Calum) have now decided to start early planning for our documentary. By doing this we started off brainstorming quick ideas of what we wanted in our documentary, to see if we had some good suggestions!

Me, Zoe and Calum

As we had a lot of ideas collected together, our first solid task we set ourselves was to produce mini documentaries which will we have their own forms and types. So far our plan is to produce a Mockumentary which would be Observational and Poetic. A reality documentary which would go along the lines of a more serious approach, filmed in a Expository/Poetic way. These mini productions would hopefully help us give an insight in what we may think works well and what doesn't, ultimately helping us choose what we may produce for our final piece.



Although we planned the mini documentaries, we also came up with what we thought could be a really strong idea. We chose a topic which we would be interested in doing. This topic was specifically on global warming and the ever changing climate we live in. From this basic idea, we then thought, how could we make this into a documentary? We ending up listing several general techniques we could use. We thought of ways in which we could be relevant to this topic. Our final idea was to create a documentary on Antarctica. With the documentary being limited to around 3 minutes long, we had to have a well constructed plan. It was as follows:

- As an intro? News flash headlines, showing how the climate is effecting people around the world. Having recent archives would be important for this.
- Us training for the Antarctica, getting fit, and having the right equipment.
- Voice overs of natural disasters occuring (Poetic approach)
- Using a green screen to show a background of Antarctica like we are there. (short clip, i.e Coming up... then us in Antarctica)
- Filming from inside a plane as we are about to take off (We thought about contacting a local museum who have planes etc)

Word Cloud representing Documentary

This is a world cloud I created to show some of the key words which I have discovered through my research. They all link in and are relevant to Documentaries.

Research and Planning - Forms & Modes of Documentary

Now I have done my research into documentary makers themselves, I think its a good idea to get more knowledge about the forms and types of documentary and to know more about the reasoning in using them.

From my first introduction post I posted about the four main (most common) documentary modes.
-Observational
-Reflexive

-Poetic
-Expository

After some more research I also stumbled across more types of documentary which have been developed. These were:
-Interactive

-Participatory
-Performative

Modes of documentary... Explained:

Observational: Observational films attempt to observe aspects of the world as events unfold. They are sometimes made to make the viewer even think that there is a film crew there at an event. Unlike the subjective content of poetic documentary, or the rhetorical insistence of expositional documentary, observational documentaries tend to simply observe, allowing viewers to reach whatever conclusions they may deduce. The camera, while moving with subjects and staying in the action, remains as unobtrusive as possible, mutely recording events as they happen. Pure observational documentarians proceeded under some bylaws: no music, no interviews, no scene arrangement of any kind, and no narration. The fly-on-the-wall perspective is championed, while editing processes utilize long takes and few cuts.

Reflexive: The reflexive mode considers the quality of documentary itself, de-mystifying its processes and considering its implications. In Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1992), for example, he features footage of his brother and wife in the process of shooting footage and editing, respectively. The goal in including these images was, “to aid the audience in their understanding of the process of construction in film so that they could develop a sophisticated and critical attitude.” (Ruby 2005) Mitchell Block’s ... No lies (1974,) functioned in a notably different manner, as it reflexively and critically questioned the observational mode, commenting on observational techniques and their capacity for capturing authentic truths. In this way, the reflexive mode of documentary often functions as its own regulatory board, policing ethical and technical boundaries within documentary film itself.

Expository: Expository mode assembles fragments of today into a more rhetorical than a poetic one. The expository mode addresses the spectator directly, with titles or voices that propose a perspective, advance an argument or recount history. These types of documentary facilitate a generalization and large-scale argumentation. They often display a sense of bias towards their subject matter, commonly involved with political, social, environmental matters.

Poetic: The poetic mode of documentary film tends toward subjective interpretations of its subject(s). Light on rhetoric, documentaries in the poetic mode forsake traditional narrative content: individual characters and events remain undeveloped, in favor of creating a particular mood or tone. This is particularly noticeable in the editing of poetic documentaries, where continuity is of virtually no consequence at all. Rather, poetic editing explores “associations and patterns that involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions.”

Performative: The performative mode, often regarded as the most 'honest' of the documentary forms, places emphasis on the film making process itself, often chronicling the documentarist's subjective journey, often including the failures and struggles that may occur during the filming process as part of the final product. The performative documentary maker is no longer the invisible hand and voice behind the camera, but the subject of the films he/she makes.

Participatory: The participatory mode is very similar to the performative. It looks at the participation of the film maker , in addition to the social actors. This films give us the sense of what it is like for the film maker to be in a given situation, and how a situation alters as a result. There is also normally a common encounter between the film maker and the subject; the interview. Interviewing allows the to address people who appear in the film formally, rather than address the audience through commentary.

(The crux of the difference between participatory and performative seems to lie in the fact that where the participatory mode engages the filmmaker to the story but attempts to constructs truths that should be self-evident to anyone, the performative mode engages the filmmaker to the story but constructs subjective truths that are significant to the filmmaker him or herself.)

Interactive: It arose from the availability of same mobile equipment & desire to make
filmmakers perspective more evident. This mode wants to engage with individuals more directly while not reverting to classic exposition interview styles. It allows filmmaker to account for past events via witnesses and experts whom viewer can also see. Archival footage becomes appended to these commentaries to avoid hazards of re-enactment & monolithic claims of voice of god commentary

In class we were asked to create a powerpoint presentation to present to the class. We were allowed to choose a topic of our choice, either a documentary maker or a type of documentary. This is the presentation I put together of Observational documentaries, featuring two other documentary film makers, Chris Terrill and Ross Kemp.

Observational Documentaries - Presentation


I have made a short video of documentaries, a brief montage of what I have researched so far. I have covered all the forms of documentary and included a few examples of these forms. Edited using Sony Vegas Pro 8.0. (You may need to sign into a non-UK youtube account to view, due to copyright regulations on Channel 4)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMs3ekr2Nwc

or you can view it here:

Research and Planning - Documentary Makers

Now that I have a some background knowledge of the core elements, research would be the next vital step into making my documentary. To start off with my research, it was relevant to look at some documentary producers.

Michael Moore - Michael is an American film maker who is known to be very capatalist in his documentaries. He is very much a left wing political commentator who shows strong opinions in his films. As a self-described liberal he has criticized globalization, large corporations, assualt weapon ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George Bush and the American health care sytem in his written and cinematic works.

Michael Moore at the 66th Venice Film Festival

Some of his most popular documentaries are Farenheit 9/11, Sicko and Bowling for Columbine.

• Focuses on the events of 9/11 and its aftermath
• Very capitalist and against George Bush
• Includes the unjust attack on the middle east
• Film holds the highest box office receipts of a political film

This short video clip is taken from a section of his documentary. Here it shows the clear example of his expository form of documentary. He mocks George Bush in an ironic manner making him out to look like a bad leader. This is a good example of the controversy it caused towards G.Bush, especially at the time of when he was still president of the U.S. His voice over technique allows him to talk about what is happening and being able to see the evidence on screen at the same time. This contrasts the reflexive approach of a documentary.

.

• Explores the causes of the Columbine High School massacre from Moore's point of view
• Also goes into violence and gun crime/ownership
• ''Free gun for opening a bank account''
• Won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
  
  

In this viewing of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine he is seen receiving a fire arm at a bank. Here he is trying to find out information in order to show how ridiculous the whole 'free gun when open an account' policy is. This extract shows an observational and partially reflexive technique of documentary.

Nick Broomfield - Nicholas "Nick" Broomfield born in 1948 is an English documentary film-maker. Broomfield films with a minimum of crew, just himself and one or two camera operators, which gives his documentaries a distinctive style. In his documentaries he has many different types of producing his documentary. He has used all types of documentary over the years but is noticed for his observational technique of documentary. He has received many awards of his career, one award being a BAFTA. Some of his most recent documentaries are Life and Death of a serial killer and Ghosts.

Two of his documentaries, Aileen: Life and Death Of A Serial Killer and Biggie and Tupac are good examples of Nick's work:

• Poetic, observational and reflexive documentary
• Views the life of Aileen and her mental state and her questionable sentence to death
• A research into how Aileen experienced her life in prison
• Lots of interviews and old news reports involved
  

This is the trailer Aileen: life and death of a serial killer where they have used her voice as she is being interviewed by Nick the day before her execution. It ultimately portrays that the documentary is quite observational as the events occur however it is also very hybrid as it is constructed in a poetic way.

• Poetic documentary
• It is an investigation of the the two rapper icons, Biggie Small and Tupca, which some people claim their deaths were orchestrated by Death Row Records and a planned murder in a corrupt police force
• Interviews and lots of past events from news, still pictures etc

This trailer of the documentary shows the styles they have used in this documentary. As you can see there is a mix of interviews, old clips and pictures. It is a very controversial documentary as apparently it tells the 'real' truth of their deaths and not the ones which were publicly announced.


Louis Theroux - Louis is a British-American broadcaster, best known for his Gonzo style journalism. His documentaries are sometimes sarcastic, exaggerated, funny and profaned. This style is written subjectively, often including the reporter as part of the story via first person narrative. He has won British Academy Television awards for his documentaries.

His most famous work is his documentary series 'Weird Weekends' and 'When Louis Met...' and other documentaries produced for BBC 2 specials such as 'A place for Paedophiles'.

Louis Theroux's weird weekends is a documentary series which was shown on BBC2 from 1998 to 2000 separated into 3 series. In these documentaries Louis gives a small insight into the lives of different types of people who have extremist beliefs or live in a culture which is stereotyped badly; Individuals who would not normally come into contact with what we know as 'normal' existence.

His documentaries in Series 1:

• Born Again Christians
• U.F.O Hunters
• Porn Stars
• Survivalists
• Weird Christmas

Series 2:

• Infomercials
• Swingers
• Black Nationalism
• Demolition Derby
• Off Off Broadway
• Wrestling

Series 3:

• Hypnotists
• Indian Gurus
• Thai Brides
• Boer Separatists
• Gangsta Rap
• Body Building

As you can see from this list, Louis has had a wide range of documentaries on numerous amounts of topics. Some have shocked people, others have simply made people laugh. These documentaries cover all forms of documentary however most of them are always reflexive.

Here are some clips from a few of his series:







These are just a few examples of Louis' work, but as you may notice they are very hard to belief, quite interesting, opinionated documentaries. Louis almost wants to find out and explore around these peoples worlds in order to make out what they're like and to see if it can be believable or not. These weird weekends are prime examples of his Gonzo style journalism.

Introduction to Documentaries

In this blog I will be updating my research, planning and overall progress of the A2 course which is studying an advanced portfolio. For A2 level we will be looking at documentaries, exploring different forms of documentary, finding their purposes and ultimately creating a documentary extract.

What is the purpose of a Documentary?

• To record, reveal and preserve
• To persuade and promot
• To analyse or interrogate
• To express views or opinions

There are four types/forms of a documentary, and give a slight insight into how a genre may be constructed, there four types:

• Reflexive
• Poetic
• Observational
• Expository

Reflexive: In which the film maker acknologes their presence - In front of the camera and give some narrative guidance.
Poetic: In which an artistic narrative is consructed - sometimes topic is more human interest rather then current affairs.
Observational: Being there as events unfold - These documentaries follow people or events and document their journey.
Expository: An analysis and exposition of a person or topic - For example, Michael Moore exposes society to forms of political corruption.