Rebecca Barrett - TV Production blog

For this lesson, we had to pitch and present our ideas to Helen and Laura as a group. By this point, our idea had changed from Business to a range of ideas to do with Technology and social media. After we presented our idea, Helen made a few key points about that we had an idea, but not a story to tell (which is vital to telling a good documentary). She also suggested that we narrowed down our multiple ideas into just one in order to put as much detail into one idea, as well as being able to branch off into mini topics throughout the documentary. So, after our pitch, we headed back into the base room and began brainstorming over a concrete idea we could have and develop into a story for our documentary. For our final idea, we decided on 'The Impact of Social Media on the Social Environment', this was a much better idea and enabled us to branch up to a few more points within our idea.

In our first lesson, we were introduced to different types of documentaries, their purposes, as well as our briefing for this unit. In this unit, we had to create a documentary that would be suitable and engaging towards our 'age-group' (18/21) while also creating it as if we were giving it to BBC3 for broadcast, this meant we had to be factual and engaging to the topic we were presenting, but we also had to bear in mind that it also had to be 'family-friendly'. Our overall brief - what we had to link our main subject to - was 'Living Online'. In this lecture, we were also assigned to our groups, I was put with Jazz, Alan, and Aodhan. After that, we were free to go to the base room and pick an idea between us. After we had lunch, it was only myself an Aodhan to work out an idea. We narrowed it down to two: Mental Health or Business. My idea was Mental Health as, in the last few years, suicide rates, especially in our age groups has increased quite a lot in...

For this location workshop we went to Chatham Dockyard for the day. Helen gave us the briefing, which was to record footage from a select are in order to tell the story of the history of the Dockyard., We were split into our documentary filming groups and given a certain part of the Dockyard to be allowed to film in. My group was myself, Aodhan and Jaz and we were given the lifeboat area to film.

In this lesson we learned all about how to shoot interviews, were taught multiple key things as well as terms and explanations. VOX: A type of interview commonly used when interviewing people in the streets, which is most commonly seen in news segments or surveys. Not very representative/doesn't add much to story Useful is story is engaging. I nterview tone/style: Depends on subject matter Hard exposure : Investigative Informational : Puts audience in the picture Emotional : Engaging and revealing the subjects and emotion 'Proper' interviews: Add personal experience and expertise to the film Adds colour and context Emotional engagement Evidence - personal testimony Who is needed for interviews? Experts - Scientists, doctors, lawyers - Professional opinions and relevant to subject Ordinary people - interested - relevant to subject Officials - Appointed representatives What to ask? Explore subject being tackled Get to know interviewe...

For our contextual research, we had to look at 2 different TV dramas that helped to influence our work. One TV show I decided to look at was 'The Fall', which is a British-Irish crime drama that follows a police detective as she tries to hunt down a serial killer in Belfast who lives the double life of a serial killer at night, but an honest and caring family man during the day.  I decided to choose the 'The Fall' as a show to look at as the TV series focuses on psychological horror which is the premise of my chosen scene remake from 'The Strangers'. The series is particularly clever in the way it portrays Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan’s character). Instead of being a cliché serial killer programme where it follows the serial killer through his killings, it instead does a great job at contrasting his character during his family life during the day and then his killing spree at night. An example of the contrast is also something I wanted to capture in...

In this workshop, Simon showed us different styles of editing within a film and told us that editing is unique only to film making as it is known as 'invisible art'. The three main types he spoke about were: Editing  = joining shots together to make a long sequence that shows a complete story Continuity editing Montage Editing enables emotions, drama, rhythm and action through story-telling. Up to the early 2000's, film was still being edited through splicing it together with sellotape. This was because: 'Economics of story-telling' A single cut could take several minutes Less cutting before 1990's - 'slower' pace / more editing = 'quicker' pace Linear editing: One shot is edited to be one after another to be in order, however, because of the way films were edited back then, the edits cannot be moved unless the editor wants to start again. Non-linear editing: Combined freedom of film edits and the speed of video editing French...

So, what went well in this project?   To begin with, I am extremely proud of this project, as even through all the stress and late nights working things out, I’m really happy with the final piece overall. I feel as a director I did well in getting exactly what I wanted from my actors on the filming day. And while it was very stressful arranging the actors, especially with the very last minute changes of the male actor dropping out a few days beforehand and one of my female actresses dropping out that morning, my remaining female actress, Alexandra, was very understanding with it being my first time directing. She was very kind and gave her all in her role. After filming was done we exchanged emails back a few times where we were both please with each other and both expressed interest in hoping to work with each other again. When it came to the shots I wanted, I managed to get all of the ones I wanted, as well as some fantastic choices we decided to add in. Throughout edi...