Documentary Director - Documentary unit

Director

Barbera Kopple

Barbara kopple is an American through and through, born in Scarsdale New York, in 1946 she is no stranger to changing times. No doubt she has been recording landmark events on camera throughout her life however her first recognized piece of work was Harlan County, USA which was a documentary on the coal minors strike in Kentucky. Since then she has come out with works such as American Dream, Winter Soldier (my favourite) Fallen Champ: The Untold Story Of Mike Tyson, and Running From Crazy. Watching these stories you get a real sense of the style of filming Kopple likes to use when filming documentaries. It's a sort of fly on the wall cross guerrilla filming with all her crash zooms and holding shots on close ups and extreme close ups (as demonstrated in Winter Soldier) as well as using more mainstream documentary traits such as the filming locations with people on screen who are relevant to the topic. For example in the Mike Tyson documentary the journey isn't shadowing someone with a camera much like a lot of modern ones,it's sort of a following a trail of someone's past that they have left behind. One of the biggest reasons I like this director and chose her for my inspiration is that her signature style of filming is varied, she uses a large arsenal of techniques and filming methods that lead to very interesting documentaries and this is what I hope to do in mine.

Documentary 

Sweet Sixteen: A Transgender Story

The documentary I have chosen to draw comparisons with is the BBC Documentary Sweet Sixteen: A Transgender Story. Something I have drawn from this documentary was a few minutes in when the farther of the transgender son is being interviewed about a sad/ sensitive moment; when he was first told his son wants to become transgender. The farther is recounting something in the past and it is a close up shot to allow the audience to see in great detail the emotions he is experiencing. We will do something similar when our gay teenager Carl tells us about why he went off football including not involving any cut aways at this point as not to break the emotional tension. 

Another similarity between the two documentaries is the use of a sort of "master shot". In the transgender doc the camera keeps returning to her collection of makeup on the side in her bedroom. Which is relevant and keeps reinforcing what the documentary is about, which will also be used in our doc. We will keep cutting to the East End Phoenix team playing football which will remind the viewer that football is the topic of the doc.  

Throughout the documentary about this young person changing their gender, they use the method of spanning the documentary over a period of time. Granted this is over a period of months and ours was a period of days/ weeks, however the principle is the same. By shooting it at different times and making it chronological it creates the sense that the viewer has been on the journey with the presenter/ topic of the doc for a long time therefore forging a stronger emotional bond. 

Finally and most obviously this is not just a documentary about the journey of an individual, but the challenging of stereotypes within society. One documentary is about gender, and one is about sexuality, both incredibly closely bound subjects that have equally abusive stereotypes and treatment however our documentary touches on that slightly more than the transgender doc, however with that doc the main device that transports you along the narrative is the teenagers journey unlike ours which focuses more on the team East End Phoenix and the general topic of homophobia. 

Documentary Unit - structure

The documentary structure will follow the journey of a gay teenager who currently plays football. It will start with an introduction of him, with cut aways of him playing football etc. Once he's been introduced we will follow him like a presenter on the train and his travels with the camera hand held and he will interview our people that are being interviewed e.g campaigners etc. Once the interviews are over we will have our teenager pose a question to the audience after having spoken to the London team East End Phoenix and got their view on why there are no openly gay premiere league players.

The gay teen will have a mic or clip mic and will be presenting locations like a news reporter.

East End Phoenix is the name of the team Callum's Partner plays for and have already agreed to let us film them

Documentary Unit- update

After pooling ideas for the documentary's story/ structure we have decided to use a gay teenager as our main focus of the documentary and follow his journey trying to discover the answer as to why there are no openly gay premiere league football players. We will use him/ her as the presenter for the documentary being the face of young gay footballers venturing into the ugly side of football.

Mood board:

Documentary unit - pre- production prep

We have now decided on roles and will be filming about tackling homophobia in football focusing on why there are no premiership players that are openly gay.

Roles:

Jack

Camera Op, Co- editor, Narrator




Melisa

Editor, transcripter, script writer




Callum 

Director, Camera Op

Documentary research

I will look at 3 different BBC 3 documentaries and be discussing things they have in common, different styles they use and some of the advantages/ disadvantages of using them.

Weight Cut - Can i lose 10% of my body weight overnight?

In the opening couple of minutes after explaining what the documentary is about, there is an establishing shot as shown below. When i first saw this it reminded me of the title sequence at the start of the 2002 film Panic Room. 

As you can see there is a resemblance between the two shots however the documentary uses this "graphics hidden in the shot" style of throughout the entire piece whereas in Panic Room it is only used for the introduction of the lead actors and the title of the film.

The use of graphics throughout the documentary is an interesting approach to giving narrative and extra information that the audience are not being shown/ told, however there is a risk that the person watching will be distracted by reading the graphic they they do not pay attention the the interview/ GV etc. which may be more important than the graphic.

Young and Sterile: My Choice

This documentary focuses on young men and women who are permanently sterilising themselves due to them not wanting to have any children, however the question being posed is should they be aloud to do this so early on in their lives and should the NHS be supporting it? This is very much like our documentary in the sense that it touches sensitive subjects and is trying to find the answer to a "why question"  e.g. why are these people doing this to their body. Compared to our documentary which is posing the questio "why are thier no openly gay premiere league football players". They also make use of a presenter for the documentary, which seems quite a BB3 trait. This is a good approach if your documentary is very interview heavy, however if it is more of an observatory camera style e.g. fly on the wall a voice of god approach is more appropriate. 

documentary - morning lecture

3 lessons you have learnt so far about setting up your film in terms of:

• Casting - ask long time before the shoot, meeting face to face before shoot, get a contract
• Locations - make this one of your first factors, be clear about what your filming, phone call
• Scheduling - establish clear shot list, establish secured dates for filming, establish shoot times
• Organisation - make sure all actors know where and when, make sure travel is covered, 
• Paperwork - child actor permissions, public insurance

Research

• Begin researching online and relevant journals, publications and newspapers.
• Acquaint yourself with the broader picture and background to your story 
• Establish key contacts
• Never make a call to any of these contacts until you understand the basis of the story you wish to tell and have an appreciation of the remit 

Relevant background info

• Legislation/ regulations
• Organisations and experts
• Existing research - up to date as possible, if unpublished, better - exclusive
• Case studies
• Previous coverage on TV/ archive as appropriate 

Factual Films require a "journalists nose"

• What makes your story interesting
• What is your angle

Research prior to pitching

• Enough to answer the basic questions about the story and to form your proposal
• Who/what/where/when/how
• Find your USP (Unique serving point)

Pitch

• Email Helen with summery of my pitch idea (working title, topline, and one paragraph synopsis) by 3 pm 21st of march

Ethics and representation

It is not just a topic for a project, consider how it will affect people with disabilities etc.

Disability

Income/ class

Values/ culture

Ethnicity 

Race

Sexuality

Issues e.g. crime

Tokenism

Youth, middle aged, old aged

Representation

• A fair representation of the wider context
• Fairly treated and represented honestly
• Avoid stereotypes and reinforcing prejudice
• Avoid lazy journalism
• Treat people with respect

Finding characters/ case studies

• people who best illustrate your story and who are the best talkers/ characters
• Via relevant organisations - usually the press office
• Via experts - e.g doctors, police etc

Contextual Studies - sex and sexuality

Sexuality - The expression of sexual identity through internal feelings and external behaviour. Can
also refer to sexual activity (in particular visual representation)

Sexuality in the media - visual presentations of sexual expression (eroticism, pornography). Identity representations of sexual expression (LGBT, asexualisation, pansexualisation)

Eroticism - aesthetic depiction of sexuality; may not involve nudity

Pornography - explicit depiction of sexuality; usually via nudity and  graphic sexual activity

Media Censorship

• Depictions of sex and sexuality in media traditionally mediated by external censors
• UK - broadcasting legislation, watchdogs (Ofcom)
• US - FCC (Federal Communications Commission)

Sexual representation in TV and Film historically tightly controlled until the 70's liberalisation, when we saw the first portrayals of nudity and gay characters.

4 typical sexual stereotypes:

• Libertine
  
• Camp/ gay
  
• "Butch"
  
• Asexual
  

Queer Theory - Queer Theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women's studies. Queer theoryincludes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself. ...Queer theory "focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire."