Feedback: Zoe & Helen

Feedback Session

So we had our final feedback session with Zoe & Helen today and it went as well as it could of went. I felt going into it that there were definitely certain parts of our documentary narrative that needed further inspection and dissecting, as to what points and leads to follow and what ones to forget about. 

- Speaking with Zoe & Helen we were told to look more into the crash and claim schemes that was seemingly on the rise. 

- Find a strong narrative, what that would be would soon arise to us later on.

- Scrap the 'challenge' concept of taking away Alex's car, as it was a slightly weak and not very thought provoking idea to push forward our documentary. 

- Find stats proving our correlation to be correct and go from there. 

Overall the session was key in shaping our ideas once again and as this was pretty much just before we were about to get further into our ideas in terms of shooting it, there was indeed a significance to the words that were discussed. 

Pre-production: Discussing concept with Zoe & Helen

Further Development

So after our initial talks about the conceived concept we then decided how to approach the key parts to our narrative and what it would actually be about. 

We had some starting ideas to share with Zoe & Helen to get the ball rolling, speaking about the narratives structure and what it would follow. 

- Delve into the statistic side of things, see if it is all relative.

- Go after the insurance companies. 

- Looking at the potential challenges that would be created from stripping one of our group members car away from them for a set time. 

- Seeing if the statistics correlate with the prices in terms of higher premiums for younger drivers = higher cases of crashes/likelihood of crashing. 

The feedback given by Zoe & Helen was great, and extremely useful in guiding us on to the appropriate steps of forwarding our documentary. 

Documentary Review: Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams

Synopsis: A film following the lives of two inner-city Chicago boys who struggle to become college basketball players on the road to going professional. 

Dir. Steve James

Release Date: 1994

Review - 

Personally I found this documentary engaging, intimate and thought provoking, it left me questioning a lot of things, mostly negative, about the sport and the wider implications it has on young black adolescent boys. Is it fair that the system is to cherry pick and disregard the rest when necessary? Is it fair that some deemed talented enough get 'passes' all the way through their education life (education literally paid for entirely) whereas others don't as they're not deemed gifted enough (not worthy of the investment)? 

(Hoop Dreams - 1994)

What I found the beauty to be with this documentary was its narrative, the way in which it followed so intimately the lives of the two main protagonists, (William Gates, Arthur Agee) we began to feel a connection an when knock-backs were conceived by one or both, genuine fear would sink in for the viewer and the cruel realities rapidly began to appear. The director clearly wanted to show the distinct cruelties and pain that come with wanting to be an all star basketball player, the harshness of reality, as what can be inflicted psychologically on some of these extremely young kids is daunting, and possibly bringing into question whether this way of trying to raise potential 'superstars' is actually wrong? 

- What I found to be useful from watching this documentary was its narrative and structure, it was coherent, clever and wonderfully executed. It was effective and simple, like beautifully assembled building blocks unified creating a solid rock wall, in the sense that there were clear steps the story took and there was no confusion as to where we were in the timeline, we followed them growing up, year by year, consistently as well. 

- As well as this it gave me food for thought on a number of ideas to apply to my own work, e.g gathering statistics, trying to think more about our own narrative and what story to follow etc, what is the most interesting story and why? 

Overall, having viewed and thoroughly enjoyed this documentary, I can say that I have absorbed more than just the typical viewer, as it was engaging on another level due clearly to the reason of being in the midst of creating our own. 

Pre-production: Development of Concept

Development Process - 
The brief gave us an outline and a target audience for our documentary, so as a group we went off and began discussing several concepts.

- Women in the underground music industry, how they're underrepresented yet how there is a growing number of women within the specific scene.

- Boy racers

- Drugs and consequences in adolescents.

there were a few more but generally speaking we couldn't come to agree on terms with one solid concept due to there being at least one person disagreeing with it. 

Eventually after speaking to Zoe & Helen, they gave us a loose idea which we capitalised on and began to work straight away with, the concept obviously being about young drivers.