Documentary film project

FIELDTRIP TO LIVERPOOL ON THE 5^TH & 6^TH MARCH 2012

For this project you will be working in groups of x 5

You will each have a specific role in the making and completion of the work and will need to undertake a different role to the role you had on the experimental project.

Think carefully about the role you will undertake – as a group try and play on your individual strengths and also take the opportunity to learn from each other.

It is important that all group members contribute equally to this project and this should be reflected in your self-evaluations.

The brief for this project is to create a 5 MINUTE DOCUMENTARY FILM ON THE THEME OF LIVERPOOL STORIES

For this project you will create a work inspired by research into documentary ideas based in Liverpool.

Your starting place for this will be articles or news items on Liverpool found within the national and local newspapers and by researching on the web.

The newspaper item can be closely adhered to, or may for a loose basis for your project.

Things to think about could include:

–       What is the key point about the news item?

–       What attracted you as a group to the item?

–       What slant/angle are you interested in pursuing from the news item?

–       What form of documentary would be most interesting and original for the chosen news item?

Think about the possible documentary approach you could take, such as:

Observational;  - the filmmaker does not intervene but uses the camera to observe the day to day life of the documentary subject – usually requires a contributor highly involved in an interesting task that has a finite time span.

Direct Cinema;  - the filmmaker is very much an active participant in the film, interrogating the subject of the film to reveal information

Educational/informative – the film usually revolves around exploring a subject in detail and presenting factual or expert information, often with multiple contributions from different contributors.

Poetic  - uses metaphor, visual lyricism and soundscape or music to portray an aspect of life – often with a universal human theme.

Investigative – usually a journalistic approach exposing information not commonly known understood

Collage;  - often combines stills, archive, found footage and moving image and juxtaposes them to shed new light on a subject area.

 Some seminal documentary filmmakers to look at include:

Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Humphrey Jennings, Basil Wright, , Chris Marker, Alan Resnais, Jean Rouch, The Maysles