Group Project - Getting Ideas

Today we all had to discuss what topic we wanted to centre our group project on. The group project had to be a factual documentary where all three of us had to share equal measures in all aspects of making the documentary. The people in my group consist of Daniel Crosfield and Monish Kelly. So what subject were we going to choose? It was a tough ordeal and took us a lot of time to finalise our decision.



We came up with a few ideas first. Our first idea was based on documenting staff working at a local zoo, giving an overview of the day to say life and events within the zoo. It wasn’t a bad idea, but we thought it didn’t have much of a hook that would grab audience’s attention.



We then channelled our thoughts to a second idea, one of which we gained two possible subjects for our documentary. We thought about doing a documentary to do with local crime, making a documentary local and topical, would boost the interest of the program for viewers. We targeted either youth crime or anti-social behaviour when the night clubs close.



On thinking through this second, idea we came across many flaws in executing this as our subject. The first would be the hunt for contributors, we couldn’t guarantee contributors and they would have to be found on the spot. If we documented an interview with no video evidence of them committing a crime, the information they provide may not be true. Also contributors may not be willing to be documented, as this documentary could be perceived as a “name and shame” scenario. Also for youth, parent’s permission would be required, to acquire consent, and parents wouldn’t necessarily want their children being portrayed as a criminal.



Another idea we stumbled upon was a sports themed idea, the local football team, Weston-super-Mare FC, battling relegation at the bottom of their league, is gave a good hook for viewers, but players would not be willing to take part in an interview focusing on how bad they are playing, as opposed to documenting them battling for the top-spot in their league.



Then the Idea that we chose after much discussion, came with many additions that shine above are other ideas, such as: a good hook, universal age interest, local (UK), moving and willing contributors were much easier to come by.



The idea was to film a World War II documentary, comprised of interviews visiting the memories of WWII survivors, consisting of people that were among the many forces that fought during the time, and also the voices of civilians that lived through that time. This is a good idea as all ages are interested in WWII, contributors are more willing to be interviewed, and other factors that we will highlight in our development of the idea, and the pitch coming in the near future.