Planning my Documentary

To start planning for my documentary, I first have to come up with the theme, genre and content for the documentary. My final major project is based around the creation of a YouTube channel, and the start of my YouTube group, but I have already created a short documentary based around the formation of my group, and so I want to take a different perspective. I want to choose a specific subject to talk about and investigate, and then link it to my group in some way. I am only creating a short 5-10 minute documentary, and so the topic has to be something where I can talk and discuss the topic for 2-3 minutes, and then the rest of the documentary can include content such as interviews, b-roll and cinematic shots.

Recently, we passed the 1 year mark since the UK went into the first of the three nationwide lock downs. This started to make me think about everything that had happened in this time, as well as thinking about some of the events and activities we can all look forward to going back to. I think that this could be a good topic to talk about in a documentary, the topic being memories. There are lots to talk about surrounding the topic of memories, such as how they are formed, the positives and negatives of memories, how people record and remember memories and how memories come in and out of peoples minds. With the topic of memories, I can also talk about the memories of my group Ravin' Gavin, as well as how I will use these memories in the future. There is lots to talk about within the topic of memories, and I think it is a great topic for a short documentary.

Topics/ Segments I could talk about/ create for a short documentary based around memories'

- What are memories

- Why memories are important

- How memories are created

- Negatives and positives of memories

- What reminds us of memories ( Locations, Music, People, Objects, etc.)

- How to record memories ( Writing, Music, Video, photos, etc)

- Memories segment where I talk about specific memories, both my own and other peoples.

- What to do with memories and how to keep them and grow from them

I am aiming to create a documentary with a consistent theme throughout. I think my theme will include a few different documentary types, including voice over or voice of god as well as the director talking to the camera and being the host of the documentary. Within this specific documentary I will not be including interviews, as I want this documentary to be more poetic than expository, so that I can be more creative. I want my style of documentary to be poetic style, so that the audience has the power to perceive the information differently, so that they can decide what to take from my documentaries. I want to be more thought provoking than informational. I also want to have an upbeat and inspirational vibe to the video, as this is more my style. With all of these styles and content decisions in mind, it was time to create a brief timeline of the documentary.

To start of a documentary, there are many different techniques. The documentaries I have researched from YouTube, especially Idubbz' documentaries, start off with previous content of the theme of the documentary, including old footage, and an interview. I think this will be how I start my documentary off as well, especially because the documentary is about memories. Old clips containing various memories, perhaps with an old, distort filter over the top will fit very well. I think the clips can last for around 20-30 seconds, depending on how good the clips I find are.

After this introduction, I can possibly go 2 different directions. I can either start to describe what memories are, are the other factors of memories, or I can take a different approach to the documentary, and not have specific segments, with titles, and the documentary can have a swift flow within in, where the different parts of memories are talked about and Segway into each other naturally, and I think I will take the latter option, of having a swift movement throughout the layout for the documentary. This way, I think the documentary will have a more professional feel to it, and this is a more typical documentary set-up, whereas different segments would feel more like an educational video.

The first 20-30 seconds will be old memories, played on an old VHS tape or cassette, to give the memories an old heritage vibe, and when the VHS tape stops, I will move onto the next part of the documentary. I will have the old memories come and go between each other, making sure to include the year of the clips in some capacity, and once they have all been shown, I will skip to the current year, where the next segment I will explain what memories are, and ask some rhetorical questions, to get the audience thinking and involved within the documentary, as a way to create excitement and intrigue. Questions such as "why do certain memories stand out" and "what can we do with memories" will form the rest of the documentary. The second segment will likely last around 1 minute, and will be b-roll shots of landscapes, nature and myself, not talking though, as there will be a voice of god narration. I will use b-roll footage, as well as possibly using animated pictures that popup when I am talking about specific subjects or words.

The next segment will be me directly talking to the camera, and I will have a camera man. In this section I will talk about some of my past memories, including a memory from Wimbleball Lake, when I first passed my driving test, and went to the lake with my friends. This is an easy to access location, as well as the location being quite cinematic, and so I think it is a good location, as well as a short, happy memory. This segment is suppose to show the audience the purpose of the documentary, of which is to start thinking about your own memories, and later on in the documentaries, I will talk about how to store memories, and what to do with memories. This segment will also allow me to demonstrate a new method of documentary recording, of which is the director of the documentary talking to the audience directly. This segment will be around 2 minutes.

So far I have reviewed old memories, explained what I will be doing in the documentary and explained what memories are, as well as explaining and showing one of mine. The next step is to quickly go over other types of memories and how people develop them, such as explaining how memories can form, such as the most common methods including locations, songs, people and objects. I think that this segment will be a short animation, to showcase that I have this skill. This segment again will be around 2 minutes long, and will explain the common ways people develop memories.

So far the film will be around 5 minutes long, and I don't want it to be much longer, and so I think there is only enough time for 2 more segments. The next segment will be explaining what you can do with memories, how to use them, as well as how to record and remember them in a positive way. This segment will again be b-roll footage of landscapes, nature and footage of me, but with a voice of god narration. This segment will act as a closer for the documentary, after already describing the main focus, as well as examples of the focus and how to recognize the focus, in this segment I talk about what to do with the focus. All that is left to do is conclude the documentary.

The conclusion will be around 1 minute long, and will aim to quickly recap the documentary, as well as having an inspirational ending, to do with future memories, and having fun recording them. The footage used will be a mix of cinematic b-roll, as well as potentially using old memories again as filler. I will now put a simplified list of segments within the documentary.

1. Introduction scene involving previous memories

2. Current year explaining what memories are

3. Directly talking to camera about Wimbleball Lake memory

4. Animation to explain types of memories, how they form and popular methods that create memories

5. Like segment 2, but explaining what to do with memories, how to record them, and how to grow from them/ feel happy from them.

6. Conclusion and inspirational ending.

I will now be creating a location recce for the documentary, of which I will be recording at 3 different locations, as well as a risk assessment form.

Location Recce;

Risk Assessment;