Production Report

For my Advanced Production I am creating an extract from a new documentary programme for television. I have a personal interest in the creative arts and architecture. I have seen a range of documentaries on artist’s lives & architecture by Simon Schama during my lower sixth fine art course. This was the first time I saw a documentary about artists & architecture. I want to create my own architectural documentary series based on the history and different styles of western architecture in Cambridge with a five minute extract giving an experience of my new style of documentary. I feel this would be to some extent breaking the traditional conventions of documentaries because the expected audience of a documentary like this would be older people!
I aim to create a modern documentary using two stereotypically attractive female presenters as they experience revolutionary architectural projects for the first time. I feel that this will not only give me a documentary but a reality TV show experience, more like a mainstream television show. This will give me a new crossover genre in an attempt to capture a new documentary audience for architecture of a younger target audience of seventeen to twenty using mainstream techniques.
Stereotypically documentaries are considered to be for older generations but why is this? Documentaries can be slow paced and monotonous with long camera shots, interviews and voiceovers. In the genre that I am exploring these are the dominant methods, and can be very effective. This is why I am interested in creating my own documentary film using my experience of other genres and the target age group with myself fitting into that (17-20) bracket.
I am going to use and experiment with editorial techniques which I touched on last year in my foundation project when I created an opening sequence to a thriller movie. I intend to present the subject matter quickly with regular cuts and different footage to have a more appealing documentary.
In my new architectural documentary it will be a fast straight forward guide to western architecture showing examples of different periods in the documentary footage. There will be a brief summary on each of the architectural styles shown providing the viewer with their own knowledge on architecture and the methods used in each of these styles. I feel that this will be a productive way to put across a heavy amount of detail in a summarised form which can be used by the viewer when looking at different architectural styles.

I will use voiceover as an integral part of putting across brief information about architecture in an interesting way but I am sure that I will have something to live up to with documentary voices such as David Attenborough who I regard as ‘the voice of nature’.
I want to produce a guide to architecture using the styles of architecture to show examples of buildings in Cambridge which can be related to any city in the world. I plan to create a documentary series this provides the opportunity to show different architectural developments in each individual documentary throughout the television series. The three main western architectural movements are Classical, Baroque and Modern which all styles of architecture fit into; each of which will be featured in the entire documentary series. Cambridge and Paris both have these types of architecture. I have researched these topics
Using teachers, book extracts, websites and architecture guides. I plan on looking at; Pembroke College Chapel, The Fitzwilliam, Trinity Library for Classical architecture. King’s College Chapel for Gothic: The Law Faculty building, the History Library and the Mathematics Centre for Modern. This will give me a range of buildings in Cambridge to film which in turn will give me a lot of footage. This will help editing as more footage will aid the achievement of creating a fast paced production, targeted at an undergraduate audience.
With the filming I did in a previous thriller movie production I have experienced using a dolly as a means to an end of effective moving image, as walking with the camera can become blurry. I found if you hold the camera with your arms at a ninety degree angle with the camera held in one hand with the strap wrapped around the camera and in the other hand the strap gripped tightly keeping the camera level it just about achieves an effective ‘invisible’ dolly.
How do I attract the audience? Well I was intending on involving new media technology in my documentary to reach the target audience. Using website information to promote a website it is also a good idea to use some form of mobile phone interaction to promote the idea of using convergence technologies. So it is possible to plan an interaction where the viewer can theoretically become a moving spectator with a mobile phone where you could visit the documentary website and text in to the show from wherever you are.This would specifically target the traveller, the student or gap year younger traveller. I feel that this could be a successful new way of reaching the target audience.
I have also come up with the idea of a downloadable graphic character for your mobile phone that can give you a guide to a city in Europe, this is a form of new media technology that will be advertised on the documentary for holiday makers and tourists to use for a small fee much the same as an internet download of a music track from your mobile phone GPRS. On a school photography trip to Paris I asked a few members of the travelling party to film sites in the form of a documentary. I gave them some simple instructions on using voiceovers, presenting the documentary and first person responses. As this was the first time most of the students have been to Paris I thought that I would achieve a reality TV show experience and genuine reactions which in turn will help me reach my target audience.
The filming process started with planning a route through Cambridge that I did on Google Earth to find the locations. I then went out one morning and filmed all of the buildings by foot which took a short four hours providing with 12 minutes of footage for editing. I used a tripod for most of the filming as using the handheld camera by hand creates a lot of camera shake when playing the footage back to the viewer. On the morning of filming weather proved to be an irritant with the noise of the wind being picked up by the camera microphone and later on it started to rain. I intended to film the footage after college in the early evening but found that the image is too dark making the footage obscure so I took a morning off to go to the different university buildings to film.

Pembroke College, Cambridge (Research)

Pembroke College is a college of the University of Cambridge, home to over six hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest of the colleges. Physically, it is one of the larger colleges in the university, and contains buildings from almost every century since its founding, as well as extensive and immaculately maintained gardens. Pembroke College home of the first chapel designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The college library, one of the finest in the university, with a Victorian neo-gothic clock tower.

Notre Dame, Paris (Research)

Notre Dame de Paris ('Our Lady of Paris' in French) is a Gothic cathedral on the eastern half of Paris, with its main entrance to the west. It is the cathedral of Paris and the seat of the Archbishop of Paris. Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. It was restored and saved from destruction by Viollet-le-Duc, one of France's most famous architects. Notre Dame de Paris was one of the first Gothic cathedrals, and its construction spanned the Gothic period. Its sculptures and stained glass show the heavy influence of naturalism, unlike that of earlier Romanesque architecture.

Notre Dame de Paris was among the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttress [arched exterior supports]. After the construction began and the thinner walls (popularized in the Gothic style) grew ever higher, stress fractures began to occur as the walls pushed outward. In response, the cathedral's architects built supports around the outside walls.

Le Louvre, Paris (Research)

The Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre), located in Paris, is a historic monument, and a national museum of France. It is a central landmark, located on the Right Bank of the Seine. Nearly 35,000 objects from the 6th millennium BC to the 19th century AD are exhibited over an area of 60,600 square metres (652,300 square feet).

The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre) which began as a fortress built in the 12th century under Philip II. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1672, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, from 1692, a collection of antique sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum, to display the nation's masterpieces.

The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being confiscated church and royal property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The size of the collection increased under Napoleon when the museum was renamed the Musée Napoléon. After his defeat at Waterloo, many works seized by Napoleon's armies were returned to their original owners. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and gifts since the Third Republic, except during the two World Wars. As of 2008, the collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; and Prints and Drawings.

Arc de Triomphe, Paris (Research)

The Arc de Triomphe is a monument in Paris, that stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle, also known as the Place de l'Étoile. It is at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. The triumphal arch honors those who fought for France, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Arc is the linchpin of the historic axis (L'Axe historique) — a sequence of monuments and grand thoroughfares on a route which goes from the courtyard of the Louvre Palace to the outskirts of Paris. The monument was designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806, with triumphant nationalistic messages, until World War I.

The monument stands 49.5 m (162 ft) in height, 45 m (150 ft) wide and 22 m (72 ft) deep. It is the second largest triumphal arch in existence. Its design was inspired by the Roman Arch of Titus.

The Faculty of Law buiding, Cambridge (Research)

The Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge is one of the faculties at the Sidgwick Site. The building opened in 1996 and was designed by Norman Foster, who also designed the terminal building at Stansted Airport. The building suffered serious acoustic problems (primarily due to a lack of consideration of acoustics in Foster's Design), with its form amplifying any noise from the lower levels and causing significant disturbance at higher levels, not least in the library. This was fixed in 1999 with the addition of a glazed acoustic screen, separating quiet areas from noisy ones.

The Faculty building contains the University's Squire Law Library, together with offices, lecture and seminar rooms and common room facilities. The Faculty has 24 professors, nine readers, and over 70 other University, Faculty and College Teaching Officers.

The Squire Law Library, which consumes the majority of the first, second and third floors of the building, is a dependent library of Cambridge University Library. It contains one of the largest legal collections in the UK. The collection is very strong across UK law, the law of other major common law countries, and the law of the European Union, France and Germany. There are, additionally, smaller collections for the law of many other countries. The library provides its users with access to many major legal databases.

Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge (Research)