Today marked the start of our third and final practical unit of year 1: Commissions. Where the previous two units have focused on fiction, for this unit, we will be producing factual documentaries and working in small groups rather than producing our own films.
In groups of 4, we are required to research, cast, script and edit a 10 minute documentary for a simulated documentary strand entitled 'Teen Spirit', which would (hypothetically) be released on BBC Three. Our ideas should aim to 'inspire and empower' our audience from a 'teens-eye-view'. Our films should also work as a standalone piece, being bold, brave and new. We will be assessed on our preparatory work, individual input to the project within the group, our evidence, and of course: the final product.
I was happy that our choice for the subject matter was quite broad. We can choose to focus on:
- Health / Wellbeing
- Family / Relationships
- Science / Technology
- Wildlife / Environment
- Community / Social Affairs
- Music / Arts / Culture
- History
These topics can cover pretty much anything within the title 'Teen Spirit' and I had one idea in particular that came to mind straight away:
- Teens with special needs: this would fall under the community/social affairs topic and my group could shoot a 'day in the life'-type documentary following a teenager with special needs. This came to mind as my mum is a teacher at a special school and we would have a chance to see the world of someone that some people may not be familiar with or understand.
This would of course depend on whether I would be able to get permissions etc to record in this scenario, but this is just an initial idea and I will think about it more so I can present my ideas in the next session.
We also watched some of last year's work, which looked very professional and well-thought out. These contained:
- Establishing shots
- GVs (General Views)
- Narration / Commentary
- Self-contained answers - the answers given did not rely on an explicitly asked question
- Compressed time
These films gave me some inspiration for the sort of things we would need to shoot and set the tone for the quality of film we will be producing.
Later on, we had a screening of 'Britain Through A Lens: The Documentary Film Mob' which is a documentary, directed by Chris Durlacher, that focuses on the rise of the 'documentarist' movement in from 1929 to the Second World War. It was interesting to see the history of the British documentary and provided an insight into the politics and reasoning behind why and how documentaries emerged as a genre in the 20th century.
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