Tuesday 26 April 2016
Carrying out this task surprisingly took longer than i had expected and was hard as well, because it involved me going over the preinterview audio a few times and writing down what Oli had said. Then pulling out the relevant pieces of the interview that structures into a story.
So that i could work through this task, i wrote out, then printed out my transcribed notes so that i could read through them quickly, as having to many tabs opened on the computer often got confusing.
From the notes that i had taken during the preinterview, alongside listening to and transcribing the audio recording that i had taken, i decided to arrange everything into a structure so that it has a logical beginning, middle and end.
During the preinterview, i had received enough information from Oli to be able to come up with a few stories within his portrait documentary. So despite having the overall documentary narrative structure, within that structure is another pre structure of its own, sort of like a story within a story to help let the audience know the journey.
The themes that i picked up on which this portrait documentary covers is - Overcoming Hardship, Bullying, Acceptance
Here’s an overview breakdown of the story in short form
Beginning - Hook / Intro
Pre childhood - Happy child, confident - friendly
Pre childhood - Grew up with mom and siblings - looked up to Dad (army officer - champion kick boxer trained by Ray Askew)
Conflict
Post childhood - mugged at knifepoint - changed to timid unhappy child
Climax
Teenager - Got bullied day after day week after week
Teenager - Self harmed to avoid bullying
Resolution
Teenager - Started training and confidence building with Ray Askew
Post teenager - Started Amateur boxing at St.Marys
Post teenager - Doing bouts and getting praised and recognition
Turned 19 - Turned pro boxer - trained harder - Gained recognition due to being pro boxer, high hopes from people
Conflict
Post 19 - Broke up with girlfriend of 3 yrs - shattered his confidence, affected his training for pro debut
Climax
Post 19 - Slacked off training - was out drinking, people loosing hope in Oli
Post 19 - Pro debut more then a bout, was his career and family on the line
Resolution End / future - Explaining life lessons learnt, how boxing has changed his life, ending on his plans for future, his quest to success
Using the Gustav Freytag formulae that i learnt about in the book Video Journalism for the web, whilst laying out the preinterview story into a narrative structure, i used the 3 act structure to set out each story into an arc, with each arc having it’s own beginning middle and end. To help break up the arc structures into different acts, i placed them into Hook/intro - Conflict - Climax - Resolution
Here’s the documentary in long form that i created with everything transcribed from the preinterview into a structured document, following the Gustav Freytag Formulae
Conclusion
Having established a narrative structure from the pre-interview , i'm now going to try and create my interview questions around the structure of this portrait, but also film some sequences as time is moving quick, and although i will need to film more material that will match the interview questions, because i have a vague idea of what i want, and the overall theme and narrative structure of the portrait, the shots will definitely come in use during the story.
