PLAN

Documentary Plan

-          Starts off with some shots of the surrounding area, such as houses and fields and ending with a shot of a skate park.

-          Clip shows some of things the rider does before he goes riding. (Drumming, editing, eating, reading, etc.)

-          The video cuts to the rider opening their garage from the outside and riding their bike out.

-          Goes into the interview. The rider is answering questions that the interviewer is asking.

-          While he is talking the video cuts to shots of him riding that are hopefully relevant to what he is saying.

-          Need to get a good balance between the shots of the person talking and shots of them riding.

-          Then the music becomes more exciting and there is better riding now happening on the screen.

-          After some of these some more interview questions are asked.

How will I get Audience Feedback

I have had a couple of thoughts on how I can get audience feedback once I have finished my documentary. One of these is to upload the video onto the video sharing website 'Youtube'. This way comments can be enabled and I can get feedback from anybody who watches the video. From this I can then edit the video more and re-upload it.

Another way is to ask for feedback from other students doing the same unit. This way I will get feedback from people who may not actually be interested in the subject and will be more interested in how the film was made. Their feedback should then be more technical as they won't be focusing on the content as much.

First Diary Entry

So far I have decided only as few things about my documentary.

1. It will be about BMXING and 1 rider in particular. I am going to base my documentary around the life of one rider, and I am going to use James Bartlett as my rider.

2. The location of the documentary is going to the riders house and the local skatepark, where he rides most often. This is because I will be able to see what he does everyday and be able to film this so the audience can see a day in the life of the rider.

3. A brief idea of how the video is going to be laid out. The video will start off with some shots of the local area with some soft music, then it will cut to James opening his garage and riding off. I will then move into his house where we will conduct an interview. While he is talking I am hoping to get the right balance between clips of him talking and then clips on top while he is talking. This should make the documentary more interesting as the viewer can see what he does.

History of Documentaries

Documentaries first began when films were invented by the Lumiere brothers in 1895. The camera they used could only hold 50 feet of film stock and their films were short, unedited clips capturing life around them. Their most famous clip was called 'Un Train Arrivee' filmed in 1895. The clip simply shows a train pulling into a station, but people could see a moving image for the first time.

Documentaries as we know them today began with 'Nanook of The North' made by Robert Flaherty in 1922. This was the first feature length factual film ever made. Flaherty had staged most of the scenes for the camera to try and make it more interesting and exciting for the audience. Documentaries became bigger and bigger, the documentary 'Nightmail' made in 1936 began as an informational film about a mail train from London to Edinburgh but the filming emphasised the different elements of film such as movement, rhythm, light and sound. Critics accused Grierson of celebrating machinery more than human beings in this film.

As technology became more and more advanced, the quality of the documentaries being produced increased as well. Cameras became able to hold more and more film and started to capture better images by taking more frame per second.

Audience Theories

Some of the audience theories linked with a documentary are:

Hypodermic Needle Theory: This is the idea that the media and literally injecting a certain idea into the viewers head. This means they can almost control what the viewer thinks and believes about the subject in hand. They are able to manipulate the viewers to believe exactly what they want to them to believe by the way they portray something.

Uses And Gratification Theory: This is the idea that the media create the need they then fulfill. For example a documentary might make someone so interested in a certain topic that they then want to find out more and watch more documentaries. A documentary maker might be able to make a whole series by using this theory. One way it could be done is leave an almost cliff hanger at the end of one episode and if the viewer was interested they will almost certainly want to watch the next episode.

BMX Research

I have decided to make a BMX documentary for my video unit in Media Studies and this post is about some research I have found on BMXING;

History: BMXING was created by a group of kids during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They modified their existing bikes to replicated motorbikes and the newly popular motocross vehicles. The new sport was born in California named dubbed bicycle motocross but was shortened to BMX shortly after.

Competitions: The sport has moved away from motorcycle racing as this is what it was imitating when it was first invented and has now moved into different forms of competition. The X Games put on by ESPN is an annual extreme sports competition. It includes BMX contests such as racing, vert and street as well as Big Air and Best Trick. When the sport isn't being partaken in for competition reasons it is mainly split into 3 categories. Dirt, Park and Street, although a lot of people enjoy partaking in at least 2 or 3 anyway. Dirt BMXING is all about doing dirt jumps instead of being at a skatepark. There are normally bigger jumps and trails. This means you would be following a set course instead of going round a skatepark. Park BMXING is all about riding at skateparks. There are normally a mixture of ramps, boxes and rails at skateparks and allows people to learn certain tricks using these facilities. Finally street BMXING is as the name suggests riding your bike on certain parts in the street. This could be anything from a gap, ledge, hand rail, stair set, pretty much anything that can be found to do a trick from.

Global Recognition: The sport was never received globally as it was mainly seen as just youth riding around on small bikes. A lot of people grew to hate people who rode BMX and labelled them as a nuisance.BMXING received a huge honor in 2003 when the international olympic committee voted for the sports to be included in the next olympic games. It started in the 2008 olympics but was mainly racing with jumps included, but it is hoped that this will move on in the near future.