Commission Unit- Documentary Film Making Prep.

I have recently begun my new unit on my TV Production Course. For this unit, I have been given the task of creating a 10 minute documentary film piece, either about the Canterbury Cathedral, or "My Hero." For the task, I have teamed up with my classmate Andy, and we have decided to go with the theme of "My Hero."
The reason we chose this subject was because it gives us a much bigger range of subjects to create the documentary about, and it also allows us to choose a specific subject that interests us.

I preparation for this unit, we watched and were made aware of several documentary film pieces, most specifically a documentary series about  school in Yorkshire called "Educating Yorkshire" and a documentary that chronicled the final month of the life of a man with a terrible skin condition which was called "The Boy whose Skin Fell Off."
These two documentaries, whilst being very different both upheld exactly what a documentary film piece is originally created to do; educate, entertain and inform. This is something I need to consider when creating my own documentary film piece. I don't believe it would matter how my piece looks or if it upholds the typical style of a documentary- as long as it manages to be all three of these things, it will still be classed as a documentary film piece.

Something I made sure to make careful notes on while watching these documentaries was how the camera movements worked, and how and when non-diegetic music and sounds were used, as well as voice-overs. Educating Yorkshire taught me to be extremely careful when considering the rule of the 180 degree line, in order to make it obvious which person on screen is talking to who, and The Boy whose Skin Fell Off showed me that a documentary that is more story-based and somewhat cinematic in it's presentation can be just as informative as one that is purely facts and statements one after the other.

The next step in my documentary film making process will be for me to have a discussion with my team-mate Andy about what subject we want our documentary film piece to be about, as well as discussing what kind of tone and style we want our film to have.