Tuesday 26 April 2016
Project plan
Initially to begin with i was not too sure what i wanted to do for my final major project, given the circumstances under which i was not able to prepare properly, however, because of freelance work i occasionally do outside of university, this given me the opportunity to gain access to a few professional athletes whom i’ve met whilst freelancing, to which upon discussion with Simon, i suggested that i wanted to do a portrait documentary.
The person on which the portrait is going to be based on is a prospect boxer called Oli Edwards, whom is from the Isle of Sheppy in Kent, and is a popular boxer.
The reason that i want to do a portrait documentary, is because it is a skill of mine that i would like to try work on and improve, as working doing a documentary, the core skill that is important is trying to flesh out a good story that will encapsulate the audience from beginning to end, assisted by the use of good visual and sound. I would also like the chance to work in an actuality environment with an actual person being themselves rather than acting, filming them as they be themselves whilst constructing the images together with their commentary to create a stylistic portrait documentary like you would find on the filmmakers platform Vimeo, as this should give me more of an insight plus experience on working with normal people dealing with their everyday lives; whilst documenting it.
As this portrait documentary will have the interviewee narrating his own story, i have to make sure that an adequate amount of research, especially within the preinterviews, is carried out so that i'm able to construct a narrative structure to the story that will help me to then create answers to get my interviewee to tell me his story, or rather the story that i need in order for the narrative structure to flow nicely.
What is a portrait documentary?
A portrait documentary can be classed as an expository documentary, as it uses a combination of shots, voice-over narration and interviews to present an intimate film of an individual. (Hooper: 2011)
Hooper, Riley. "Documentaries Defined". Vimeo. N.p., 2011. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Bill Nichols in his book Introduction to documentary states that "Personal portrait documentaries take up social issues from a personal perspective. Individuals recruited to the film attest to or implicitly live out the underlying issue without even necessarily identifying it.” (Nichols, 2001:164) He then goes on to give a list of what a portrait documentary consists of, listing out that a personal portrait documentary includes: “Poetic or subjective discourse. Style counts as much as content; from is what counts - the reality of seeing the world from a distinct perspective […] Private moments […] Rights to privacy […] Psychological depth to characters […] Stress drama of experiencing a problem or situation."(Nichols, 2001:164-165)
Nichols, Bill. Introduction To Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Print.
The role that i will be playing during my final Major project will be as a creative documentary maker. This is a multi skill facet role that will include me being a: Producer, Director, cinematographer, Editor / Colourist, Sound designer. Basically a jack of all trades.
Establishing what i want to do, now i need to:
Arrange meeting with Oli to find out whether or not he has a good story
Find out when he is available - what days he is free
