Commission Unit- Preparing to pitch our documentary idea

Today I have been made aware it will soon be time for myself and Andy to pitch the premise of our documentary film piece. Therefore we feel it would be important for us to make sure we finalize our research into what the no-to movement is, as well as finalize how we want to portray the no-to movement.

Obviously since we are using the no-to movement in our documentary about "my hero", it will be very important for us to make sure we give a good impression about the group, even though their tactics about fighting against a corrupt government and police force are "very unorthodox and somewhat disruptive."

It is also going to be important for us to make sure we present our idea in a way which makes it seems entertaining as well as informative. some ways in which we could achieve this is by finding out interesting things the no-to group a has been involved with, as well as what we hope to make apparent and learn about the group in the documentary.

Commission Unit- Contacting the NoTo Mob

Today i have spent a lot of my time working on contacting the group we found, The NoTo Mob. An email i have sent reads:

"Hello,

We are writing as students from the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester. We have been given the task of creating a documentary film piece as part of our commission unit, and we are writing today to ask if you would allow us to make our documentary film piece on the work of the NoToMob and their activities in Medway. Off the record the work of the NoToMob is something that we find very interesting and we think it sends a positive message to correctly deal with corrupt money-driven system.

The brief for our unit is called My Hero, where we have to produce a documentary relating to a person or group of people that inspire others. After seeing your work online and word of mouth, what you do for the community is something that we think would be suitable for this brief. If you could provide us with more information about your group and its philosophy, we could potentially arrange interviews with a member or members of your movement and give you the opportunity to spread the message of your movement in front of a camera. If you do not feel comfortable appearing in front of a camera, we would be more than happy to accept a written statement, providing that you give permission for us to broadcast it as part of our documentary.

If you are not willing to appear on our documentary or provide a written statement, could you please give us some further information on what kind of direction we could take in finding out more on your movement.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you, we have a contact number if you would rather a verbal chat instead of e-mail, 07787697290

Mark Cooper and Andrew Cox"

In the email, we made sure to provide as much information about ourselves as possible, our intention with the creation of the documentary film piece, as well as what we wanted from them exactly. We also made sure to provide them with suitable contact details so that a member of the NoTo Mob would be able to contact us easily.

I am hoping that we receive a response from the NoTo Mob as soon as possible, so that we can begin preparing the questions we want to ask them.

Commission Unit- Exploring potential filming styles.

Recently we have been exploring the various different potential styles that we could film our documentary film piece in, and also what kind of tone our film piece could have. 

Something we have discovered from watching such documentary film pieces as "the boy whose skin fell off" and the "educating Yorkshire" and "7up" series is that the sudden change from guerrilla film-making to film that has been recorded using a tripod and steady cam can be quite off putting for the viewer.

Guerrilla film making has a very rugged, almost shaky look to it and so it can sometimes seem like a lot of action is happening on the screen even when it isn't due to the erratic camera movements. This of course would make no sense in slow paced scenes and sit-down interview segments, but would be perfect for scenes where there is a lot going on, such as action scenes (like if we were to attend a no-to movement rally where there would be a lot going on).

Guerrilla film making would also be very convenient for us in terms of having to carry equipment as we would not have to worry about carrying a tripod around with us when we are out and about filming. This means we could potentially take other pieces of equipment instead, such as light reflectors or sound equipment.

Commission Unit- Collecting Contact Details for Medway Council

I have spent today briefly collecting some much needed contact details in preparation for our documentary film piece about the No-To Movement. An important entity we wish to get some information and opinions about the movement from is the Medway council. As the organization that runs Medway and ultimately established the very thing the No-To Movement is against, it would be a very interesting part of our documentary if we could get an interview with one of their council members.

If an interview is not possible, we could also read out a written statement, which should suffice as long as it was written by and comes directly from somebody from the Medway Council.

It was actually quite easy to find contact details for the Medway Council online, and after a quick Google search, I found this site.

The site features many different ways in which we can contact the Medway Council. including email addresses, telephone numbers and the site also has a rather convenient map which shows where the council offices are located if we should want to visit them in person at some point in order to either receive a statement or film an interview sequence.

The next step in this project will be for me to come up with a list of questions we want to ask Medway Council about the No-To Movement and then use all the given methods of contact to try and get as much information from the council as possible. If we can get an interview, that would be perfect, but if we only manage to get a written statement, that will also do just fine.

Commission Unit- Where is it legal to Photograph/Video?

Today I have spent the majority of my time researching the rules and regulations in the UK about what and where is legal to film in the city where we plan to film our documentary film piece. This is an important part of the entire film making process, as it will allow me to know my rights when the day of filming comes. It will also allow me to avoid having my documentary taken to court or being reported to the police for infringing somebodies right to have their property or identity kept private.
The rules on filming in public areas are pretty straight-forward, but filming on private land and capturing people in the background of shots is where the situation becomes more complicated. When it comes to filming our documentary film piece, we can easily avoid this problem by simply making sure not to capture the image of anything that we are not allowed to.
When it becomes important for us to interview people, or show a specific place or person in the film however, I could create permission slips which detail the name and purpose of our documentary. The person appearing in the documentary could then sign the slip, or a person who owns an area or building could sign the slip giving us permission to have them in our film.
In these forms it will be important to make sure that the people appearing in the film, or the people giving us permission to have their building shown in our documentary know that our documentary will be broadcast using social media, namely Youtube, Blogger and potentially facebook and twitter.

Today I researched using the internet and various websites came in useful. However, it may be worth me finding some kind of books about photography and videography law.

Commission Unit- Development of Ideas and Research

After discussing the documentaries we watched on Monday and generating some potential ideas we could create a documentary film piece about, myself and my class-mate Andy Cox eventually decided to settle with the theme of "My Hero", and we decided we would like to create our documentary about the "No To Mob", a group of individuals that have banded together to fight against unfair parking fines and massive CCTV invasions of privacy across the UK.
We decided to create our documentary about this subject, mostly due to the fact that there is a massive amount of information for us to work with on the subject, and the "No To Mob" is quite an accessible group of people, meaning that they should be quite easy to contact in order to request a statement and more information about their group directly from them, meaning their would be no bias about their work, or crossed wires, as information about them would be received directly from the horses mouth so to speak.

A couple of ideas Andy and I originally had to make out documentary film piece about included:

Julian Assange

Julian Assange
Julian Assange is famous for being the founder of the website Wikileaks, where secret and leaked government agreements and documents are regularly published and made easilly accessible to the public.
Julian is evidently a firm believer that information shouldn't be with-held from the public, and also seems to be a believer that the government should be a transparent entity that shouldn't keep secrets from the public. He is often seen as a hero due to the fact that he actually risked his life (potential assassination) and freedom in order to set up the wikileaks website, and a lot of people look up to the work he does and generally look up to him as a person.
The main reason Andy and myself decided not to go ahead with making our documentary about Julian Assange was mostly due to accessibility issues. It would not be an easy task to get a hold of Julian or any of the wikileaks team in order to get a statement about themselves and their work, and so the majority of the information we would be collecting about them and their organization would be second hand and relayed information, which could potentially be biased, or even falsified, which when creating a factual piece of film like a documentary is never a good thing.

The Anonymous Logo

 Anonymous (Group)
Creating a documentary about Anonymous would actually be quite unusual in the way that it would not be specifically about one particular individual, and would instead be about an entire organization based in multiple areas around the world.
Much like Julian Assange, Anonymous is a group of people that believe in a transparent government. They wish to bring about peace and prosperity, and believe that the world's government's are somehow controlling our every moves and basically keeping us as slaves in order to fulfill some kind of massive agenda.
The benefits of creating a documentary about Anonymous would be that rallys by the organization occur quite frequently throughout the country, and when and where they will happen are easily accessible through online media such as Facebook and Twitter and such.
A problem with Anonymous however, is that they can sometimes be quite unrelenting with their techniques to  bring about peace, and have been known to "hack" online websites and media that they oppose. Although this would allow for an interesting twist in our documentary, and allow us to ask if Anonymous truly are the "Good guys" they seem to be at first glance, it would also be going against our project brief, which is to create a documentary film piece about "My Hero."
Below is a video from my home-town in Nottingham of the group "Anonymous" helping a homeless man:

I think me and Andy have made the right decision in creating a documentary film piece about the No-To mob, as they are accessible, meaning we will have no problem contacting them for statements and quotes and such, their ways of working are very interesting, and I believe their is a lot of relevant information we can talk about in the documentary.

My next step will be to continue researching into exactly what the No-To Movement does, and how they can be contacted. It may also be an idea for me to begin gathering contacts and preparing questions. Some contacts I may wish to make are:

• Medway Council (to get their view-point on the group.)
• A member of leader within the No-To Movement group. (To get a better idea of what they do.)
• A person who has been affected in some way by the group. (Either in a positive way, or maybe even a negative way to add an interesting slant on the subject.)

I may also begin to create some kind of permission forms which everybody that appears in the film-piece will have to sign to give us consent to broadcast their image on the internet. This will ensure that the identity of those that don't want their image to be publicized, and also to ensure that at no point will me and Andy end up in court having to defend our documentary.

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.