Documentary work

Reality TV is a form of television programming that purportedly shows real life, unscripted events. This form of television is for entertainment rather than for information. 

Documentaries are types of programmes that present factual information to an audience.

Factual Programming is all about creating drama from real occurrences rather than creating a fictional account. However, work goes on behind the scenes still to make things more interesting than they seem.

Take a look - High School (1968) is an observational documentary, the conventions it subscribes to are:

Subjects act as though they are not being filmed

there are no interviews

long takes dominate

no narration

no abstract or poetic shots, all fly on the wall style 

no input from the documentary filmmaker, existence not acknowledged, no input means it remains as unbiased as possible.

What style will I go for? 

Development Process:

My first idea so far is a participatory idea, as I ride a motorbike I could act as an Uber Eats/Deliveroo/Just Eat driver for a week and try to be entirely self sufficient off of the wage. I would stop eating all food in my parents' house and buy all necessities myself in this time to see how it is to try and survive on a delivery driver's wage. 

The second idea is to, with the permission and cooperation of the police, be 'arrested' for overnight. I would go through the whole process, being handcuffed and driven to the station, booked in and then spend a night in a cell. I would examine why some people choose to be arrested because they find the conditions preferable to the ones in the outside world and what we could do to change that as it puts a cost on the taxpayer (24 hours in a cell for one person costs £418, more than a night at the Ritz). £17 an hour to keep a prisoner is a lot of money on taxpayers and should absolutely be avoided when other, more dignified, alternatives can be offered. I would want to interview both police staff and people who have themselves chosen to be arrested or have been arrested for minor crimes. The police have been emailed and will be getting back to me within five days.

The narrative element follows Jack 'The Hez' Herriott as both the subject and presenter of the documentary as he embarks upon his dating journey, he will meet with the dating coach and no matter how bad the advice is he must follow it when at the end of the documentary he goes on a date we will arrange.

Contact for the police.

I will also be working alongside another group with a different idea that I've developed, We have contacted dating coach Tomas Svitorka to teach our friend Jack Herriott how to talk to girls and how to date properly, we are then going to send him on a date and see if he can put his new skills to use.  The date will give him a final score and review on his performance.       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Contact for Tomas.                                                                                                  

After no reply from the police and Tomas ghosting me, we decided that we would use kenz's Dad Rory as our dating expert. We filmed 4 character witness interviews about the Hez to introduce him as a  hopeless romantic. Hez has decided that he doesn't want to do this documentary anymore so now we are doing 'the Cheeky Bugger bakeoff'. Danial will film himself getting us ingredients and selecting which recipes we will make. These will then be give to myself, Kenz and the Hez and we will have to attempt to bake them with no help or prior baking experience.                         

The day arrived, Me, the Hez and Kenz gathered but Danial didn't show up and was not responding to attempted contact. We had to devise a contingency plan instead. After brainstorming various ideas, we decided to create a short video essay on the history of the McRib as it is an area that I am knowledgeable in. We gathered together some research and began editing a nice video and decided to return the next day to make and try our own McRibs. 

The next day, we gathered again and got straight on with it. We'd secured a rack of ribs, buns, pickles and onions in preparation to cook. Beforehand, we continued compile together our video essay (with the Hez remotely sending voice notes of research overnight to add into the mix). 

After recording a brief script and writing for voiceovers, we made our mcribs and filmed the process. Because we needed an expert, we got Rory Day to taste our cooking and give his opinions. 

Overall, the experience was stressful and disappointing, we were let down by a variety of outside factors as well as inside. In future, we need to be more careful with who we assign responsibilities to and make sure that we have contingency plans in place. This piece was not to our usual standard but could've been had we planned out a contingency in advance.