Andrei Allen UCA Broadcast Media Blog

Pitching session

This blog post is showing the outline for the documentary that we used as our pitch proposal on the 17th of march, in which we had an opportunity to pitch our documentary to a panel of the course leaders and receive feedback about our ideas, but also on our presentation approach at explaining our ideas.

The panel member were:

Fergus Malone

Helen Cusrton

Sam Bickley

 What is the name of the documentary/ideas?

Apprentice at work, Cathedral Apprentices, Ancestry craftsmen, Historical artefacts of the tomb, The historical artefacts stories, Stories behind some of the glass artwork, Encouraging young artists to become interested in the stained glass artwork. 

Style & Genre

On first introduction to Heather Newton, the head of the stonemasonry conservation at Canterbury Cathedral, when we discussed about possible styles for this documentary, one thing that she specifically mentioned is that she doesn’t want this documentary to be another fly on the wall, historical paint drying documentary, she would like for it to be creative, to show the lives/characteristics of the workers whom are involved in the conservation project.

To help us achieve this here are the styles we're going to go for: 

Historical style of coverage, possibly narrator driven: giving a brief account of the history of the cathedral.

Eyewitness style of coverage, character driven: experiencing a day in the life of an apprentice stonemason. So it will involve a lot of interaction between the apprentices and the experienced stone craftsman at the cathedral workshop, as they carry out their daily task’s. Hopefully if possible, if we know their schedule/timetable and what they’re working towards, we can show a complete process of the stone being imported from the cathedrals stone mason yard, to the cathedrals workshop, then it being worked upon, and then placed on the cathedral.

The genre of this documentary is factual, and also would appear under lifestyle, as not only is it informing us of how the cathedral stone conservation is happening, but also of the people responsible for the work and there lifestyle as an individual, sort of the characters that are helping to keep the story of the cathedral alive.    

What is the pitch?

Ideas

1. In this exclusive documentary of Canterbury Cathedral, we see the astonishing work created by apprentices and craftsmen and the fascinating stories behind the stonemasonry, artifacts and stained glass windows.

 2. Stonemasonry, historical artifacts and stained glass are all the exquisite elements that make Cantebury Cathedral the place for tourists and craftsmen. In this exciting documentary we see behind the scenes of the work that gets put into creating the astounding pieces of art.

 3. Canterbury Cathedral, built over thousands of years ago is an unbelievable historical piece of architecture. In this documentary we will look at the troubles the cathedral faces to repair itself and the people behind the works. We will also have a sneak peek into the historical artifacts which are held in the cathedral’s secret tomb.
 
A brief outline of the story we wish to tell? 

Brief history on Canterbury cathedral The work that’s being done to conserve the stone The day to day work of the stonemasonry apprentices Who creates the stained glass and the process? The work that is created and where the stories come from behind each piece of work. Where the historical artefacts come from behind each piece and the story behind them. 

 What is the USP?

Our unique selling point is, you’re getting exclusive inside story on the work of the stonemasons at the Canterbury Cathedral.
An insight into the Cathedral and the work that goes on in each section. 

Who are our audience?

Because our documentary is for canterbury cathedrals youtube channel, our audience is mainly be web based, such as tourist, historians; young enthusiastic stonemasons, experienced stonemasons and visitors of the cathedral website/youtube channel.


 Demographics & Psychographics.

Demographics:Our audience will be a range of ages between the younger audience around 18-26 and 27-80. This is because there are young people that are looking for a career in stained glass and in stonemasonry. There is also a high stereotypical amount of older people who are interested in the cathedral. The gender for our audience can be male and female. The class for our audience could be a range of working class/middle class to upper class 

Psychographics:The older audience could be of a religious background and interested in the affairs of the cathedral, they could also be interested in the stonemasonry craft. The younger audience could could be currently attending college doing a course of similar nature looking for options to go into after study, or could currently be involved in this industry and are interested in what's happening within other job sectors of the industry.


Who are  target market audience? 

To help identify our audience, I used some SEO techniques to see what information I could pull from the internet in regards to stonemasonry, to see how many searches it gets, where the searches are coming from, and what other keywords are associated with stonemasonry and Canterbury Cathedral, as these keywords would determine how a user is directed towards the video, via the keyword association, as this would be used as a secondary means for advertising. Even though the list of keywords might seem laborious, this is very important as stated earlier to see where the possible entry points to this video are coming from, then if we wanted to, could focus on purchasing exclusive advertising rights to these words so that the documentary would show up on the first page of most search engines when typed in. 

(Show SEO research) 

http://aallenuca.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/commissions-unit-seo-marketing-research.html 

The Cathedral Youtube channel has 44 subscribers Their Twitter account has 772 followers and the page is very active, receiving on average 10-twitter post/ re-tweets a day from either themselves or followers. Their Facebook info page has 5600 likes, and 79,000 people have visited the location; with tourists posting frequently on the reviews section at the bottom of the page. 





Feedback

When we was called back for a review on our pitch, we received alright feedback, we was given feedback on the name to go for, for the documentary, but also presentation skills to work up on as well; plus which ideas of ours to pursue and which ones not too.

On going back to receive the feedback, i prepared a brief paragraph to further explain what i meant earlier about how Heather wanted us to produce the documentary, as i felt that how it was described was a bit clouded and the correct words was not chosen to fully put the point across

"To further elaborate on what heather meant by the standard fly on the wall paint during documentary, is that she didn't want it to really focus on the historical classical content of the work, but more on the characteristics of the apprentices, trying to cover the event in an artistic way, to show everybody out their that the stonemasons are not boring intellectual merchant machine like people; but are funny, sociable, likeable people. Because when you look on the cathedrals YouTube channel, the coverage of most of their content mainly focuses on the subject matter and not the actual people themselves."


So overall the pitch went decent, better than i thought it would of, considering the amount of time that had gone into preparing the pitch. From the feedback received from this sessions, i'm going to use it to refine our pitch and story even more, to hopefully create a decent strong storyline to our documentary.