Planning: Documentary proposal

Here is my initial ideas of what I intend to produce for my A2 advanced portfolio. I have stated my influences and how I would organise the filming process and my idea was approved by my media teacher.

Generic Research: Beginning of researching documentaries

To begin to understand documentaries and form ideas to create my own I have begun to watch existing documentaries and found some interesting points about them.


The first one I viewed was 'Our Guy In India' shown on Channel 4.



This was interesting as it showed a number of contrasting (in content) fast paced shots in the opening sequence. This documentary has strong sense of verisimilitude and branding as the whole documentary is about india and the backing sound is indian music and title is in a indian themed font. This documentary outlines what is coming straight after the title of ‘Our guy in India’ and has background information on Guy Martin before the title appears. It has clear and constant narration throughout the whole documentary. There is also intertexuality by showing an old clip in black and white of a specific motorbike from the past which Guy later rode, also shows black and white images of the bikes whilst narrating historical information and then had an interview with a bike gang.

Generic Research: Documentary theorists

Research into key theorists and theories in documentaries:

One theorist is Bill Nichols. He wrote a book called ‘Representing Reality’ which states that documentaries act as a source of knowledge and the appeal of documentaries are the views of the world with their social issues, cultural values, current problems and possible solutions to these with real situation and different representations. Documentaries offer pleasure and appeal and use rhetorical strategies and stylistic choices which are usually unnoticed. Nichols believes there is a large clear link between documentaries and history and contributes to the formation of popular memory.

The ‘Prospect theory’ is another documentary theory which is by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. This theory outlines the way audiences have to evaluate possible losses and gains in order to form a perspective on what a certain documentary topic is portraying.

Generic Research: Academic Site

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/aesthetics-documentary

A link to an article from the Tate regarding documentaries, which is titled ‘the aesthetics of documentary’. Key points include:

• The job of the documentarist is to let reality direct the documentarist by using unobtrusive equipment, being alert to what is going on and being patient.
• Documentary is an art and is as much about shots, cuts, structure and rhythm as fiction film.
• The greatest national documentary cultures have been those of japan, America, Russia, Britain and France but Britain has been the most interesting with the relationship between reality and art and with a key figure being John Grierson.
• By 1975, the means of capturing reality, and editing it had become radically simplified and cheap and the trend grew.
• By the early 1990s television documentaries were less likely to be one offs and more likely to have run of six or twelve films with a common title such as True Stories or Wife Swap.

Production: Initial ideas

My initial thoughts for my A2 coursework was to choose to make a music video. As I previously undertook research into the pop genre for my A2 music magazine, I thought of doing a pop music video as I already understand many codes and conventions in this genre. My music video idea was to have it summer themed with young artists and happy and upbeat shots from festivals, the beach and parties. However the majority of current pop music videos have very large production budgets in order to make the video look good, so it would difficult for me to make the video look effective with limited resources.

My next thought was to make a documentary, this would allow me to showcase different shots and skills. A documentary will enable me to focus on a key interest and venture into a completely new aspect of media to me. I can learn the new generic conventions to documentaries and apply this to my idea. Some of my idea topics for documentaries include:

• Impact of social media/ the internet on the younger generation
• The change in teenage pop culture compared to past cultures
• Is print media dying out?
• Life as a student
• London Underground 

Generic Research: Night Mail

Below is my analysis of Night Mail which is a documentary from the British Documentary Film Movement.

Comparing the 'Night Mail' to current documentaries, I was able to identify many similarities and differences between them both. Some of the similarities include the use of facts and figures to inform the viewers as well as a form of entertainment. There was also a narration over the top of the shots which adds extra sound and educates the audience. These are key codes and conventions for documentaries as were portrayed back in 1936 and still used in current documentaries today. However differences between the 'Night Mail' and current documentaries include the lengths of the shots and how they are edited. The Night Mail has long takes and uses few shots whereas documentaries today use shorter takes which are edited with a quicker pace. Due to the time which this documentary was made it was created in black and white which would be different than it is currently.