Unforseen Events

Following researching my second idea I had decided that I would stick with the boxing idea and I finalised this decision. I thought about various boxers I could use and luckily enough I have a childhood friend who has just recently turned Professional and moved to Manchester to train with Ricky Hatton. I contacted my friend Ryan and he agreed to be the subject in my documentary.

 

 

The planned shoot was set to take place on the week beginning the 20th November when Ryan was back in  Belfast for a weeks holiday and my team member and I had everything in order to begin shooting The weekend before shooting I was made aware that Ryan could no longer be the subject in the documentary. Following this news I was slightly anxious as I had an exact view in my mind as to how the documentary would look with archive footage and so on. I began thinking of other ideas which included; Palm-reading and Sign language. I am aware that things like this happen all of the time and its a part of working in the industry.

Second idea research

My second idea came to mind when I started thinking about hands as a physical feature of a human and in terms of everyday life and working life I began thinking about what types of careers that people do which rely predominantly on their hands. The first hobby/career and sport which came to mind was boxing, mainly as it has one of the most obvious links with hands. A boxer has to use hands in a physical way to protect themselves against the opponent and gain points by using the hands in a physical way to overcome and succeed .

I looked at various boxing documentaries in order to give myself more of an idea of what I could possibly be filming. One which stood out in relation to the style that I would like to portray is 'The boxer from somewhere else' (2012) By Jamie Steedman. This is the story of Ken Buchanan.('Undisputed, Undefeated, Lightweight Boxing Champion of the World') This story is narrated by the boxer himself and it uses a range of archive footage of previous fights that Ken had overcome. It is mainly interview based but uses striking visual images which add to its cinematic value. I plan to use this as influence for my own documentary.

Getting away from the 'TV style' documentary

In the documentary class it became apparent that the main challenge was to stray away from a typical Television documentary similar to the ones I have mentioned in the previous posts. We were advised to try and make our documentaries as cinematic and as visually appealing and creative as possible. In our classes we watched various cinematic documentaries on of my favourites being Film-maker Werner Herzog documentary made in the Antarctica, which captures the continent's beauty and investigates the characters living there. When I watched some of the visually stunning scenes it made me aware of what can actually be done creatively and even though it is essentially documenting reality, things can be staged in a way that's picturesque and very beautiful to look at.

Pre-prodction and research for my own Documentary idea

Initially when I was given the theme 'Hands' for my Short Documentary various ideas came to mind.
The first of many was the idea of shooting a day in the life of a nail bar in the city centre of Belfast. This idea is quite straight forward when  thinking about hands in relation to beauty and self grooming although I thought of portraying something broader than that and exploring the growing beauty industry and why we as women choose to spend so much money and time beautifying ourselves. For this nail bar idea I imagined it as a 'fly on the wall' documentary something like Channel four's 'The Fried chicken shop' which shows the general public and customers who choose to eat in this takeaway 'A unique portrait of contemporary life, illustrated by fried chicken, the staff who serve it and the customers who buy it' (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fried-chicken-shop)

 

 

 

Although I was fond of this idea I was going to do more thinking planning and research to see what else I could come up with.

 

Introduction

Similar to the majority of people, I have always enjoyed watching television, films, and documentaries. However my growing interest in documentaries became noticeable in my early teens. I have always had a keen interest in 'real life' and getting an insight into the world we live in. The fact that I tend to enjoy watching real life scenarios in documentaries correlates to the fact that my preferred genre of film is realism. I tend to stray away from the fantasist or escapism/ Science- fiction genre of film, However I do like to watch different genres of films on occasion my preference is social realism.

I have strong preference for the hard hitting documentaries that channel 4 is known for, for example 'The 12 year old lifer' An extraordinary film which portrayed the life of a 12 year old boy in Indiana who helped his friend murder his step father. The piece documented the life he was adjusting to in prison and the trial he was facing.

Although these types of documentaries might be ignored by other mainstream television companies. I admire Channel 4 for making ground breaking documentaries and treating subjects with honesty and portraying life in the raw. These types of documentaries give people a voice who are marginalised sections of society for example . 'The undateables' a documentary series that followed people with disabilities who were searching for love.

Another interesting Chanel 4 documentary that I particularly enjoy is Gogglebox. It is a documentary series which gives us an insight of the public and their living rooms and their reactions to the weekly programmes whilst watching TV. This gives us an insight into how the 'ordinary' people respond to different programmes and replicate each other. These people are not Television critics but we are taken into their living room to watch their reactions to popular shows that week, for example 'UTV's X-factor and Downtown Abbey' It probably sounds quite boring, watching people watch television? But I think that it is a fantastic show, its the first of its kind and its filled with great characters who are normal members of the public and I think lots of people can relate to them.