Documentary Ideas

Once in our groups, we were able to think of ideas for our main documentary project. To do this we discussed different journalists, their style of documentary and which kinds of topics we would like to have in our project.

TOPIC
Our group came to the decision that we wanted to do a more serious project; we didn't want to do a mockumentary as this may not be taken as seriously. For us, this also ruled out reality television documentaries as we felt that again, this would not be taken as seriously and was specific to a certain audience. That left us with topics that were quite current or that had an effect on a larger audience.George then came up with the idea of having global warming as a topic as this was both current news and effected the whole of the world giving us a larger audience.



This meant that we were now able to research other documentaries about global warming to see the kinds of information given in them.

STYLE
Our group also had to think of a style of documentary. I suggested doing a participatory documentary as, after researching different journalists, I feel that the most engaging were those that participated in the documentary and experienced events first hand. I was inspired by the documentary 'Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden' in which Morgan Spurlock searches for Osama Bin Laden. I thought that this documentary was engaging because, at the beginning, the audience sees Morgan training to go to Iraq. This also meant that the mood of the documentary was lightened slightly which again I felt was more engaging for the audience. This led me to think of the idea of having to train to go to the Antartic in order to research global warming first hand.This also meant that we could use a number of different technologies.



CONTENT
Some of the content we decided on having in our documentary extract can be seen below. We came up with these ideas together as a group and discussed both the reality of what we would be able to do and what would make the documentary most engaging to the audience.

News Montages - this would involve having a number of news stories that were linked to global warming with a voice over explaining what the documentary would be about.



Green Screen - we will use this to have a short (no more than 10 seconds!) clip of us in the Antartic to show the audience what was coming up in the documentary. (We will only use this technique if it looks realistic so have planned to try out the green screen effect before putting it into our documentary.



Night Vision Effect - we will have a shot of me in a tent saying that the trip is both physically and emotionally challenging and use imovie to add a night vision effect.



LOCATIONS
The Gym - we will try to find a gym that will give us permission to film. This will be the location in which our group 'trains' to go to the Antartic by using the equipment available.



Brooklands College - we may use this location as Air Cadets is held here. This means that we can pretend that we are at an army training base as they will be wearing the correct uniform and we can pretend to train with them.



My House - my house will be used for the green screen if we decide that it looks realistic. We will also use my house for the shots inside the tent by changing the lighting and making it seem like the tent is in windy arctic conditions.

Brooklands Museum - we will try to get permisson from Brooklands Museum to film on one of the planes that they have. This would be our end shot as we sit in the air plane ready for take off speaking to the camera and expressing our fears and concerns about the journey ahead.



EQUIPMENT
-Cameras (2)
-Green Screen
-Ski Equipment
-Mountain Gear
-Torch
-Tent
-Training wear