Seminar 3 - Planning a Documentary

Documentary Planning

We went through possible ways to plan a documentary and various conventions commonly used in them, to give us an idea as where to start for the planning of our own.

How to find contributors:

• Social Media - Facebook, Twitter, Forums etc.
• Organisations - Companies, businesses etc.
• Scout areas ('s) - Go to the location you want and find them yourself.
• Advertise - Put up advertisements around specific locations asking for contributors.
• Connections related to subject matter - for example the head of a charity or a consumer of a product.

We then discussed potential issues that could arise when filming and planning the documentary:

• Ethical issues - Age of contributors, their mental health, misrepresentation etc.
• Timing - Sticking to time schedule and getting everything done with time to edit.
• Reliability - Can you rely on the contributors you've chosen and what happens if they don't show.
• Professionalism - Plan effectively to be professional, ask well thought out questions, don't be late etc.

Next we discussed how and why we need to research around the area we are looking at and what ways we can become experts in that area:

• Internet
• Archives - Newspapers/Museums
• Offices
• Library/University
• Council

With all the technical and practical advice discussed, we moved on to the narrative of the film and the different styles we could adapt when creating our own:

• Observational - Just follows subject around, no real interaction or set up scenes.
• Investigative - Exposes something to public view.
• Asking a question - Similar to investigative
• Painting a portrait - Focused on one subject and gives overall view of that person/place.
• Informative - Like a Public Service Announcement, normally a voice over piece that just tells the audience information.

After reflecting on these styles of documentary, we looked at how to decide the number of contributors we would want for our film to make it still easy to follow, but not too boring and monotone with just the one voice throughout.

• Think about the main narrative and who will tell it in a way that is interesting and doesn't misrepresent anything.
• If there are any sub stories, think how you would tell them and by who.
• If this is the case, what is the weighting of each story in terms of narrative, themes and time?
• Do any of the stories interweave and how will you get them to do this smoothly.

Finally we looked at the kind of questions we will want to ask our contributors and what the best way of getting really good answers from them is.

• Ask open questions and not closed ones to allow them to elaborate on anything possible that's interesting.
• Ask empathetic questions.
• Try and link questions on from one another so the interview flows smoothly and make them comfortable.
• Build up a relationship with the contributor(s) to once again make them comfortable which will encourage them to give more thorough answers.
• When you make the questions, think of what underlying themes you are attempting to connote in the film, and link the questions to that as much as possible.
• Surprise them with a question they won't be expecting so they really think about their answer and hopefully subsequent answers.

After we discussed all these topics we had a screening session of 4 short documentary films: The Solitary Life of Cranes (2008) by Eva Weber, End of the World (2010) by ?, Everyday Something (2002) by Carol Morley and Plank (2009) by Billy Pols. They were a mixture of investigative, observational, dramatic reconstruction and painting a portrait documentaries and the one I enjoyed the most was Plank by Billy Pols.

Link to the video here.

The reason I enjoyed this one the most was because I can adapt some of the conventions and techniques used in it for my groups documentary as we are also doing a ‘painting a portrait’ style documentary focused around 1 contributor. The techniques used in this documentary are very effective in portraying the underlying theme of sport and activity in the film and the way this is done is through the predominant use of tracking shots, hand held and motion within scenes. Although our documentary doesn’t have this theme, we want to adapt some of the techniques used such as tracking shots and over the shoulder shots just so we can make the documentary more personal and make it feel as though we are in the subjects’ position. We also don’t want the audience to get bored by loads of static shots and talking heads so we will use a lot of cut –aways when the subject is talking.

Also, although it is not my area in this project, the sound design and use of music in Plank is very effective at backing up the underlying themes of youth and skateboarding culture throughout. It also evokes an emotional response in the audience on more serious parts of the film which is very powerful at making the audience empathise with the contributor which is what we are going to be attempting in our film.