Documentary Project Tutorial

Today we shared our ideas for the documentary project with Debbie, receiving feedback prior to pitching two ideas in next week's session. From our second group meeting on Monday we had chosen our 3-4 strongest ideas, and so we explained our ideas for each. Below I have listed the feedback we received:

Alzheimer's Music Groups

• Sensitive topic - will have to be aware of informed consent by families.
• A lot of content for 10-minute film, will have to pick one angle or aspect of the story and focus
• Avoid becoming promotional video for the charity - who has editorial control?
• Make contact with them immediately
• Sort out actualities of filming - when do they meet and for how long, when can we film?

Library Cuts

• Passionate volunteers make good subjects for the film - get story from them
• Try and find the users of the library - any old people that can't access books if it shuts?
• People might have competing agendas - move away from journalistic documentary and more about the people and story
• Think about how a poetic segment involving reading passages would sit with the rest of the film
• Ask pre-interview questions - tease out character and background
• Maybe use book illustrations and covers for some interesting visuals
• Look around a library to see what would be good to film

The Write Way

• The idea is more specific and contained
• Use the poetry to generate ideas for visual content
• Watch 'Feltham Sings'

Disconnected Youth

• Idea is currently too big and broad
• Very relevant and topical idea
• What part of the story are we trying to tell - and through who's eyes?
• Have to have a balanced political view - complex
• Perhaps work with youth group and schools - or people just turning 18 and looking to vote
• Interview at different ages to get different views?

After sharing these ideas we also explained our idea for a film about someone's last photograph.

Last Photographs

• At what age do we ask them - needs more focus at the moment
• Different ages with different viewpoints - similar to '7 Up' series
• Maybe ask someone in each decade the same questions?
• Opportunity for a collage of images - similar to 'Tarnation'
• Test it out on a small group or individual first to check whether it works
• Think about keeping it from being static
• Play with funny and cheesy ideas - maybe using cut-outs or green-screen to make last photographs
• Lends itself to poetic well

Taking these comments on board we will now focus our efforts on making contacts for the 'Library Cuts' story, as well as 'The Write Way' and Alzheimer's groups - whilst testing to see if the photograph film could be feasible as our project. With the 'Disconnected Youth' story we currently don't have an angle specific enough to be able to approach such a broad and complex subject, and so we will exclude this and focus on the others - our current favourite being the 'Library Cuts' story.