The aim of this module was to work in groups to prepare and put together our research and planning for our documentary to be filmed next semester. The first task required of us was to come up with a production name to identify our group. With the name Red Bus Productions finalized we were then able to discuss initial ideas and assign roles to each member of the group.Within the group i undertook the role of 'researcher' which involved me looking into current documentaries similar to our own and looking at different locations appropriate for shooting our documentary. As a group we came up with a list of initial ideas that we felt would make a new and exciting upcoming documentary. Some of our first ideas included cross dressing, abortion, phobias and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). After extensive research on each topic and having looked at similar documentaries and possible shooting locations we felt that none of these were original enough to pursue. All of these issues had been widely covered before and didn't give us the opportunity to create something new and unseen that would grab the audiences attention. Whilst browsing the internet we came across a site counting down the date to September 2012 and decided to research this topic in more depth. We found many different sites each claiming the belief that the world will end in a specific way on 21st December 2012. Feeling that this would make an interesting and original subject for our documentary we added it to our list of current possibilities. To help us choose we decided to ask the public what documentary topic they would be most interested in seeing. This was done by creating a poll on our company yola website where people were able to vote.
Having counted the public votes and after researching the topic extensively we finalized our documentary idea as The 2012 theories. Each group member went away and looked at a different theory from a different group of people an we then came together to share our ideas. Our main focus' were on the Mayan calendar, nuclear war and natural disaster theories. Each group member worked on an individual page on our yola website where we could bring together our research and ideas. With the subject decided on we individually watched a number of different documentaries to get ideas for the style that we might like to use. I watched and reviewed two documentaries, Primal fears - BBC exploration and Channel 4s 'Help me and my child'. Both followed a simular structure, following different people to gather information and portray real life stories. It was important that i also looked at different styles of documentaries such as docu-fiction, docu-drama, observational documentaries and reality entertainment to get an idea of different ways we could structure our own.
As our chosen subject is looking at the future it was decided that the documentary would be an observational documentary following a number of different groups of people and gathering different and contrasting information on their individual theories. Our documentary is designed to target a wide audience, the majority being aged 20-65 so it was particularly important that we kept that in mind when looking at styles. In terms of race and gender it is unlikely that our documentary will target one more than another. Being a world phenomenon this will directly affect everybody around the world, not just one specific place.
Though each group member was assigned an individual role we tended to mostly work together and share the work load around. With the deadline in mind regular weekly meetings took place where we could discuss the latest ideas and progress on our individual yola tabs. We also set ourselves targets to have finished by the end of each week. This enabled us to make sure we were on target to getting everything done in time and it was not left to the last minute. At week 8 we decided to attempt to get in contact with a few people we found online with different theories about the 2012 conspiracy. We received an email back from an Australian man who is currently writing a book about 2012, giving us permission to film a skype video call to include in our documentary. We also contacted a family whose beliefs are so strong that they are leaving the country to make a new home in the jungle, the only place they believe to be safe. We are currently waiting on a reply from them.
Part of our task was to work as a group to present our production plans in a ten to fifteen minute presentation. We were to detail the main project and its supporting materials. I personally felt the group worked very efficiently in piecing together the presentation. We spoke a lot about making it exciting and attention grabbing, something that the audience would remember and came up with several ideas in making it interactive. We knew the presentation needed to be visually attractive to keep people interested so we brainstormed a list of decoration ideas we could use including balloons, party poppers and world decorations. These were to work alongside our power point. My main role in creating the presentation was to research film festivals that our finished documentary could be entered in to. Within this i included locations, guidelines, entry requirements, competition and entry fees. I personally learnt a lot from researching this particular area, it particularly made me think about what we needed to create in order to stand out from other documentaries. The whole group created a number of things to help make the presentation interactive, the most successful part being the fortune cookies each containing a different conspiracy theory. This got the audience talking about the different theories and kept them interested as we went on to explain each one and what it meant. The poster, trailer and flash animation provided just a small insight into some of the material we plan to use and improve on to promote our final piece. As a whole the final presentation appeared to be reasonably successful though we were criticized for overloading the audience with too much information, some of which was not entirely relevant. We could have improved the presentation by taking out some of the information about supporting events such as film festivals and spending more time focusing on the aim of the documentary itself. I could have improved my own contribution to the presentation by cutting down on some of my information and speaking more confidently. I have always found presenting in front of a crowd extremely difficult and felt that this time i let my nerves distract me from what i was trying to achieve. I hope to overcome this problem in time by learning the techniques to stay calm in a nerve wracking situation and building my confidence up. As in individual working as part of a group i definitely felt that at times there was some friction which could have affected the way in which we worked together. In life you will always come across situations that you not entirely comfortable with, luckily we were all able to continue pulling together despite personal problems and certain issues. If i had the opportunity to improve on any of my contribution to the project i would have spent more time researching and exploring different ideas to put on my yola page. It would also have been beneficial to myself as well as my group if i had not left some of the work so last minute, but these are all problems that can be learnt from and over come in semester two.
