Idea Presentation

You will need to present your idea to a peer and or your teacher. This is to be done in a google slide or on blog focused on visuals and an overview of what you will do.

Add to your proposal page when complete.

Presentation must include the following:

1. Influences / Inspiration

Look at a range of media producers/artists/designers working today who influence your work. State why. You should also consider the historical and cultural aspects that influence both their work and your own. You should research and list an extensive range of contemporary media influences that inspire your work such as cinema, theatre, radio, music, literature, newspapers, books, websites etc. and state why. This may also be other documentary styles, interviews, colours etc.

2.Target Audience

You should research primary & secondary data to understand target audience. Identify a specific demographic (demographics are one way in which we categorise audiences based on easy to measure factors such as age/ gender/ ethnicity and understand why you are aiming it at a particular audience. You can include surveys, focus groups etc. This is primary research as you carry out the research yourself.

Secondary research is where you look at research done by other people and summarise new information. Good sources of secondary research can be UK Tribes, Young and Rubicam, for general audience but you could also find research for you particular audience (for example Gen Z) and learn about how to appeal to them/ what they like.

3. Aims & Objectives / Skills plan
Overall objectives and aims of the project, break down soft and hard skills to develop and how they will help produce the final product.

Start by stating what the specific aims of your documentary are – to inform/ educate on a particular topic, to persuade the audience of something, to entertain them, to make them think critically about an issue etc BUT also talk about how you aim to follow the conventions of documentaries.

Then think about the hard and soft skills you are hoping to develop.

Select 2 – 3 hard skills (eg camera work – variety of shots/ movement/ manual focus etc, editing – transitions/ visual effects/ pacing, etc audio – recording/ editing/ sound design/ foley/ etc, pre-production – storyboarding/ digital storyboarding/ animatics, location recces and risk assessment etc). Explain why you have selected these skills

Select 2 – 3 Soft skills (eg time management, organisation, meeting deadlines, leadership, teamwork, communication etc). Explain why you have selected these skills.

For each soft skill you have selected to develop explain how you will develop this skill, what apps/ tool/ systems you will use and why. For example, to improve meeting deadline you could set up a calendar on your phone with key deadlines and reminders (day before), plan out how you will use your study with specific tasks plotted in. use a Gantt Chart to plan out your time, check Teams regularly etc

4. Action Research Plan (practical tests)

This is basically practical experiments into technologies, software, kit and techniques you want to test and develop. Learn, practice and develop these documenting the success and failure of these as you develop your idea(s). This might be useful as a proof of concept - proving what you say you want to do will work. Or as a testing for yourself - do you really want to do this? Try it out.

List 3-5 specific action research tasks you will do and why. For each hard skill you have selected to develop explain what you will need to do to improve that skill. Find material online (such as YouTube Tutorial, websites etc) that you will use to help improve your knowledge and what practical testing you will do to develop those skills.

5. Final plan

You will need to pitch the idea. What’s the narrative? Character list? Genre? Audience? Be clear as to what you want to make. Use critical/contextual perspectives, eg an element of narrative or representational theory. Bring in context, eg how your work fits/answers/extends/develops/contrasts with existing work.

6. Role

What is your role? Give details. Will it rely on others? If so, how? Who have you looked at that does it already?

If you decide to use a PowerPoint ensure there’s no more than one line of text per slide – we don’t want to hear you read your proposal, but talk through why you decided to do what you want to do, and

key areas you will need to research. Find a project that enthuses you and your enthusiasm will come across.

Reflection

Reflect and write up on your feedback from a peer discussion and your teacher. Reflect on areas you will improve and how you will interpret the feedback. What and why will you change or adapt your idea? What and how will you start your research and pre production.

Why did you choose the final idea (compare it to the other ideas you came up with and why this is the best one)
How does your idea fit with what you have learnt so far about documentaries? How will it use the skills you have developed?
What are the strengths of your idea (what is good about it eg topic is interest/ relevant to TA, practical details, easy to use documentary conventions, very visual etc)
What are the weakness of your idea (what might be tricky/ problematic)
What have you learnt through feedback and how will you adapt your idea in relation to this feedback.
Were there any problems so far and how did you solve them?