I chose to be the Director of our production company Quick Thinking Productions because I enjoy documentaries as well as wanting to challenge myself, by trying a role I had never taken in previous projects. It is my duty to lead the crew creatively and in a way that would portray the genre and style of documentary we aimed for. I was also in charge of editing half of the RAW images for the trailer because I had a strong idea of what I wanted them to look like in postproduction because of the idea I had for the documentary. I was also in charge of completing the Risk Assessment forms and getting them approved. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the day of filming on location at the Carter’s fair but I gave the crew clear guidelines to follow of what kind of photographic shots and sound I wanted from the shoot as well as what kind of questions we wanted to ask the primary. I felt as if I should have been at the shoot however there was no way I could have been there due to work commitments, however I made sure I was present during editing as well as doing some myself. At group meetings I took notes on issues raised, aims for the next meeting as well as tasks completed, but I should have written them straight onto the website rather than leaving it to the last few weeks to do which caused a lot of stress. I will learn from this and make sure I start things earlier in semester two, time management has been a big issue in the group.

The first thing I did as a Director was to organise various group meetings to discuss each others ideas for the documentary as well as set everyone tasks to research into their ideas. As a group we all tried to look into as many ideas as possible to give us a wide variety to choose from and enabling us to find a strong final idea.

When researching for the documentary I looked into different films to gain inspiration as well as to learn about techniques that they used that worked or didn’t work. One of the documentaries I watched was the film Mugabe and The White African which I found very inspiring, it used a variety of decisive moment hidden camera as well as the Observational mode in the film. I found this an exciting and interesting way of exploring subjects in a documentary especially in difficult and dangerous situations. Another documentary that I found greatly inspiring was Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children, which is based again in Africa, investigating how the government treat their people and how it should be illegal, both of these documentaries are extremely powerful and have strong messages, which is why I would really like to create a documentary that really gets people thinking and makes the viewer empathise with the primary and get to know them.

My four ideas on my main page are based around people and their everyday lives, they all have a story to tell and I feel it is important to explore and investigate different issues in society. Viewers can relate to these issues and engage with the documentary, which would make it a success.

One of my main ideas is based around displaced Zimbabweans and following their stories from when they first arrive in the country and have to completely start a fresh, struggling to find jobs, schools for their children, making friends with people and getting residence in the United Kingdom. This idea is close to my heart as I am a displaced Zimbabwean myself and would really like to convey the journey from starting a new life in a new country with one suitcase. I would have liked to show two sides of displaced Zimbabweans, a family that have just arrived and a family that have managed to start a new life in the country and show their journeys and struggles simultaneously and then let them meet at the end of the film to complete the narrative arch. I think that this idea would be quite hard to achieve, as we would need to find primaries that have recently entered the country as well as find people willing to be filmed through their struggles. As well as this we would need to film in Zimbabwe to portray to the viewer the situation these families are getting away from.  

Other ideas were based around a primary or two primaries that wanted to perform to an audience or give something back to their communities. Juicy Smiles would have been an interesting film to create using a variety of decisive moment filming possibly with Go Cams as well as DSLR’s in order for the public be unaware of them. Swing Ninja’s however would have been based on a journey and following the band around on a tour and filming both their backstage lives, arguments, issues as well as their performances and their fans responses. I think that both of these ideas are achievable and would have been interesting to document however they may have proven difficult to form enough material that would keep the viewer interested.

Finally my last idea was based on an untimely event that occurred in Rottingdean, near the city of Brighton. Connar Saunders was unfortunately and sadly attacked and passed away which hit the community hard and caused an instant reaction, we would have followed his family as well as a number of the reactions and charities that have been created in his name since his death. This documentary could have been observational as well as Participatory in that we as crew could join in helping to fundraise as well as help to produce one of the music albums that a local studio is creating in Rottingdean with various artists. However, as this is a past event it may prove difficult to find archive footage or find a way to portray to the audience what Connar’s life was like before his death.

As the director it has been my job to have an idea of what kind of genre and mode we wanted the film to be in, so I have looked into many different documentaries and short Storyville type films. I watched them to gain an understanding of how the different genres and modes can be used successfully. This helped when it came to planning and editing the trailer for the documentary.

Building our social networking sites Facebook and Twitter as well as the video hosting sites Youtube and Vimeo was another one of my jobs, to promote our film and reach a wider audience. I also contributed to the workbook by researching into Professional Practice and adding what I learnt to the TAB on the website. The research I conducted aided our project because we were able to understand the rules and regulations we had to follow to be as professional as possible.

My role in the presentation was to cover the Professional Practice TAB and to inform the rest of my group of what the practices were and how they affect our documentary so that we all felt confident in the slide. I feel that I could have added more information to the slide regarding the rules and regulations relating to us however I was nervous to add too much to the slide as I was wary of the time restriction as well as overloading the powerpoint with text.

To conclude, despite a few problems with the group at the beginning of the module we all worked towards trying to make sure that all members were pulling their weight and we ended up working well together. Making decisions together and helping each other with tasks proved a positive way of working together. One member of the group was difficult to contact and was not able to attend group meetings all of the time but as a group we made sure to keep him in the loop and try to remind him of tasks he had to complete. I feel that our group relationship will grow stronger through the second semester, providing that one of the members tries to make group meetings more often and makes sure to check what their set tasks are rather than relying on the rest of the group to tell them.