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.