Lost Team Member

The team member I initially started out to work with has now dropped this subject, and I feel with the rest of my subjects I wont have enough time to complete the whole project on my own, so I have integrated with another group who are also doing documentaries and we are going to sit and discuss possible adaptions of both of our ideas brought together.

Research & Planning: Research Task

Within this task i'm am going to research newly released documentaries within 2011, I will set out research targets to make sure the research I do within this task will be advantageous to me and not a waste of time. 

• Most successful at Box office
• Topic
• Audience 

Most Successful at Box Office 

1. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never- Follows Justin Bieber with some footage of performances from his 2010 concert tour.
2. African Cats- A nature documentary centered on two cat families and how they teach their cubs the ways of the wild.
3. Born to Be Wild - The insight on life for animals within the wild. 

Topic- 

1. Celebrity, Justin Bieber
2. Nature/Wildlife- Cat families 
3. Nature/Wildlife- Way of life for animals with the wild. 

Audience-

1. Teenage girls, younger generation, more into pop music, also older generation might watch due to the nature of his songs 'love' 
2. People who are interested in animals, which can vary in age group and gender etc. 
3. People who are interested in animals, which can vary in age group and gender etc. 

This tells me basing it on someone extremely popular within the media industry will be the best way to get audience approval, due to the like ability of the subject so the audience will be instantly attracted. Also basing it on a subject instead of aiming it at an age group can draw a wider audience out as its not suited to one specific audience but the subject you may choose may appeal to a number of people of all ages, gender etc. 

Research & Planning: Documentary Ideas

In this task we set out to list a number of ideas we would like to base our documentary on, there were 3 categories, these were:

• Conspiracy- Illuminati, 9/11, Moon Landing, Madeline Mcann
• Real life events- Joss (friend), 2012 World Ending, Riots
• Celebrities- Tyler the Creator OFWGKTA, Stephen Hawking

The ideas that I was drawn to was: 

• Illuminati, as a lot of conspiracy about the illuminati has come within the music industry, I would like to do an in depth study on what really is happening with the Music industry and what it has got to do with the Illuminati. 

• Riots, the london riots was a very big deal, due to the catastrophe and the fatal damage it caused to peoples lives, I feel this would be a very interesting topic and also may have the opportunity to interview people who were caught up in the riots, and the reasons behind why the joined. 

• Tyler the Creator, the creator of OFWKTA a group of singer/rappers. Within the documentary I would be exploring how there rise from underground music to mainstream came about. 

Research & Planning: Research Task

In this task I made myself research targets to research categories within documentaries, which ill enable me to know what an audience want and like, which if I use this information to my advantage could make my documentary successful. The targets were-

• Most Popular Documentaries
• Documentary that was most successful at the Box Office
• Research techniques used in Documentaries

Most popular documentaries (2010)

v  Inside Job rated 8/10- a closer look at what brought about the financial meltdown.

v  Senna rated 8.7/10- a documentary on Brazilian Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna, who won the F1 world championship three times before his death at age 34.

v  Catfish rated 7.1/10- in late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel's brother...

v  Jackass 3D rated 7.1/10- Johnny Knoxville and company return for the third installment of their TV show spin-off, where dangerous stunts and explicit public displays rule.

              Ratings by users on IMDB official website.

Most Successful at box office

Fahrenheit 9/11- Made $119M at box office, released of 2004; the documentary was about Michael Moore's view on what happened to the United States after September 11; and how the Bush Administration allegedly used the tragic event to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Techniques Used in Documentaries

There are various techniques used in documentary, one of which is the voice-over. This is when there is a commentary by the filmmaker, spoken while the camera is filming or added to the soundtrack during the production, this is also known as a narrative.

Depending on the type of documentary there is a lot of archived footage, where materials obtained a film library that is previously recorded to shows historical events and is then added to the documentary, also reconstructions are added to documentaries to shows previous events that happened that shows an extremely close representation of the events that are reconstructed.

An exposition is often used at the beginning of a documentary and introduces the important themes of the film. It is important because it creates the viewers first impression and introduces the viewer to the content. This can be an important technique in documentaries as it may decide whether the viewer will continue to watch it, this is usually done by specially chosen dramatic segments of the documentary to catch the viewers attention. Also the way that they are montages makes the viewer to believe a certain theme presented by the documentary and this presents its view much more persuasively to the viewer.