Documentary Pitch and Feedback

Yesterday we pitched our two strongest documentary ideas to the group for feedback. Earlier in the week we met to create a presentation detailing our film proposals, which I structured similarly to the ones we created for last year's documentary project.

On the first slide we gave a brief description of the film's topic and our approach to the subject in terms of style and tone. For example, we identified the library film as a 'passion-piece' with a focus on personal and emotional connection to literature. On the next slide we created a collage of images referring to films we would take influence from and locations for filming. We then broke down our ideas for the piece's structure and content - what would be seen and heard and what kind of questions we would ask contributors in interviews. As the final slide for each idea we shared our considerations for each idea, the pro's and con's, such as having to rely on getting access to locations but at the same time being well suited to the poetic form.

During the pitch we elaborated on our stylistic influences for each film, such as the sound design in 'Blight' for the library film and the use of photo collage in 'Tarnation'. We also shared where we are at in terms of finding contributors for each film, to which I spoke about the difficulty of getting responses for the library film and the progress Jamie has had with speaking to his grandparents about the photograph documentary. One of the main pieces of feedback we and many other groups received was to include this detail in our pitches, which I will consider in the future.

Although we seem to be further with the library cuts film, when asking the group which of the two they preferred, the vast majority went for the photograph idea. We talked about our plans for the poetic film to have a slow zoom out from a photograph layered with other images, but it was recommended that we should embrace the simplicity of it and just use the single shot. A couple of films were suggested for us to watch as research with a similar approach such as 'Eric's Secret' which we watched last year, and one of which, 'Gargantuan', we watched at the end of the seminar.

After the feedback from the group we decided to shift our focus on to the photograph film, which we discussed with Debbie after the pitches. The main areas I wasn't sure about for that film was the structure of the second piece and also, as producer, how to try and find contributors and memories to share. We were strongly advised to keep the poetic piece simple but then for the longer film try and focus on separate portraits of 2-3 people - telling a story of a life through images. She also identified places such as gyms, social clubs and the SAGA radio channel as ways of finding contributors.

Following today's session and feedback I'll have to shift my research focus from the libraries to finding contributors for the photograph. We were told that for the first film it would be fine for us to use an older relative share their memories, so I will contact my grandparents over the weekend and try and see if they have any photographs that might lead to their contribution.