Documentary Stuff And Things - Research and Planning

Of course, we weren't going to gain a great understanding of the conventions of modern documentaries from only watching one. In fact, "One Day in September" was very different from any documentaries we'd seen in the past, but it was because it was so different that it would be easy for us to pick out any similarities we saw while comparing it to other documentaries. We all went away and watched a variety of different documentaries - mostly nature documentaries, since they were the most widely available and easiest to find, but there were a few variations of subject (Farai, a member of my group, watched a wide array of astronomy documentaries, for example - his blog is located at http://www.blaquamana2.blogspot.com/ ) - and looked closely at how they presented information in an educational, yet entertaining manner.

The main point of this was to see how we could incorporate the basic ideas seen in most good documentaries and apply it to our own. While all the documentaries we saw focussed on vastly different subjects, they all incorporated the same basic principles such as voiceovers and visual elements that we thought would be easy to replicate at a basic level, once we fully understood them. Camera angles, voiceovers, text - all were vastly different from the conventions of music videos that we'd studied, so research into the basic documentary theories (as well as a lot of planning) was necessary in order to produce a half decent documentary.

The planning process took quite a while, but eventually we had a basic idea of what we wanted to do, as well as a rough script and a shooting schedule. We all did small, rough plans, covering different parts of the documentary, before eventually having the final plan written up in one book to keep things organised.

With the research and planning stages done, it was just a matter of shooting and editing the footage together. We were still doing a lot of work in lessons, so we decided to shoot the documentary outside of lessons, where we wouldn't be constrained by time restrictions. At least, not as constrained as if we had an hour to walk to the town centre, shoot the footage we needed, and walk back before the lesson ended.

The other members of my group decided to do it as soon as possible, so we would have all the time we needed to edit the video and get it in before the deadline - however, this meant that for the most part, I would not be on location to assist with the shooting, due to differences in timetables. However, as I mentioned before, this wasn't a great catastrophe, as it had been said from the start that I had had a large part in the production of the music video, and therefore it would make sense for someone else to have a go at directing when it came to the documentary.