Creating Our Idea
Our Original idea was to make a short film based on one culture, social class. After struggling to progress the idea, we decided to restart and instead of focusing on one Culture we chose to use various cultures to widen our perspectives and creativity. Because we were behind, instead of creating a short film we knew it would be more successful and easier to create a documentary. We started with choosing 4 very different cultures to include in our project. The chosen cultures were Mental Health, LGBT, Religion and Race. We then chose one or two people from each culture to interview. After discussing about the different topics and our friends we soon realised that they all struggle with the typical judgement and stereotyping because of their beliefs heritage or struggles. It became inapparent that we all found this topic important to ourselves and other people. This lead to our Documentary being focused around judgement because of cultures.
Presenting our Initial Idea
To help us understand whether or not our idea would successfully impact our Audience, we created a Power Point Presentation to discuss to members of our class what we will be creating for this project. With our Target Audience being between 13 and 19, we decided to gather opinions of our idea from that age group. Luckily enough, our peers fit that role. Within the Presentation me, Josie, Tom and Ellie took turns in describing the plot, the mise en scene and how we will pull off an impactful Documentary.
Audience Reaction and Feedback
The audience of our peers and teachers were fond of the idea. Talking to my friends for feedback about what we wanted to get across made them open up about their problems with judgement with in their life's and cultures. This was very helpful to us as it helped us understand what the audience expects to see within this Documentary. In terms of constructive feedback, Lucy suggested that we should have the interviewees not only talk about their own cultures but other peoples. I really like this idea as it will prove our point on stereotypes surrounding the different cultures.
Contingency Plans
With the Coronavirus just around the corner we made sure for this project to come up with contingency and back up plans if the project becomes delayed or can no longer go ahead.
It was decided that if we go back into lockdown, our project can still be completed as a group over the app 'Teams'. This app will help us to still interview our guests but instead of filming them behind the scenes, we will also be involved by asking questions but on screen. It will be safer for everyone as it will take place online, stopping us from communicating face to face. With one of the interviewees, Connor, living in Stoke-On-Trent it was said early on that we will have to film his interview online anyway, so if this Contingency Plan does go into place, the Documentary will have more continuinity which can be used to our advantage.
Unfortunately, with how we want this Documentary to impact our Audience, we would prefer to be able to film it in a Studio as opposed to someone's bedroom. So we decided as a group that if we had the opportunity to create a different idea individually during lockdown, we would as we only want to create this project if it was to be done correctly. A project like this deserves a sensitive touch and if it was to be done wrong, and we offended people or the audience didn't understand the message, then we didn't succeed in our goal of educating people on judgement. And that is all we want.
Pre-Production Schedule
Pre-Production Schedule:
With the idea now fixed and ready to go, the next step is to create a pre-production schedule to keep us on track and to ensure we do not miss out on crucial time.
Change Of Plan
Two weeks before filming began, the United kingdom went into a National Lockdown. This meant that I couldn’t go to college for equipment, to film or to see each of my crew mates for this project. Unfortunately, things like this happen all the time during this Industry and if it wasn’t for us doing the judgement documentary as a college project, we would have postponed to a further date.
Even though we have been put into lockdown, we have still been tasked creating a ‘My Culture’ film. We all came to an agreement for all of us to drop the project as we needed the whole group to be cooperative . Thankfully the production into the documentary was not extensive as we hadn’t started filming nor organising the filming dates yet. This gave us leeway to drop the project if we wanted and to create our own individually which we did.
I decided to go with my continency plan idea of a family documentary as a replacement project. This was perfect for me as I knew I had plenty of b-roll videos and photos that I could include within this to make this task easier. With both of my parents being unable to work, they were willing to help me film any extra footage I may need for my film. My Documentary will entail a range of events, traditions and quirky moments that happen in our life’s. The aim of this film is to give an insight to the Lloyd’s. I chose to do this to show appreciation for my culture and its differences. It will also provide my family with something to look back on in awe or to help show people what represents us. The reaction I want to get from my Audience is mainly laughter. After writing down qualities of my family I soon came to realise that they are just amazingly funny and I want to share that joy with the audience. That is why with their permission I will be explaining our family through skits and jokes.
Instead of just having a montage of footage with my family, I decided that I wanted to narrate over it to explain what was going on and what each section/video meant. I have previously had experience with Narrating for my High Sheriff Documentary last year. I thoroughly enjoyed it and many people complimented my ability, so I thought I could use my strengths to my advantage by including it within this project also. When it comes to filming, I will be using my iPhone 8 as I nor do any of my family own a video camera. I will work with what I have and attempt to get the best lighting and focus that I can. However, I have recently bought the phone, and some of the b-roll footage is from an older generation with not up to standard quality. This does mean there will be a continuinity problem with the footage quality. Because I am filming on the phone, I had an idea to use the landscape shape of the phone to capture footage. This is very different but it could work better than the typical landscape as the audience I am wanting to attract are expected to watch this on the go instead of sitting down to enjoy it. I wanted the Documentary to be authentic and not seem staged and scripted.