Research For Documentary

Primary research

We came up with the idea to use professional music artists in our documentary to make it look like a more professional production. The first thing we will need to do in our research is find potential musicians who would be willing to be in our documentary and also be interviewed. To find these people we will contact a series of managers - by finding their contact information on either the artists website or google - and will send them a proposal so we can get footage of the band/artist playing a live concert. Within the agreement we will also ask for a short interview. Here is a draft of the letter we will send out to potential interviewee's.

“Dear Sir/Madam,

We are writing from the Media and Film department at Priestley College. We are a team of 2^nd year students who have recently acquired a bank of high definition broadcast standard solid state video cameras. We have been commissioned to produce a documentary based on ‘The Gig Experience’ and will feature a wealth of ‘Indie Rock’ talent. We would like to propose that we will film your event in 1080p with a multi camera set up for free.

 Within our proposed agreement we would offer exclusive rights to yourselves to the footage filmed at the _____ concert in ______ on _________ 2012. All we would request in exchange would be a 5 minute interview with the band before or after the gig.

 I understand we are working against time and your speedy response would be much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

                                NED Productions.”

Filming brief 16^th November 2012-10-09

"We are a team of 2^nd year students who have recently acquired a bank of high definition broadcast standard solid state video cameras and we would like to propose that we will film your event in 1080p with a multi camera set up for free. The camera set up will include three cameras – one roaming on stage and two static at fixed points within the venue.

We will not be using this footage commercially or for profit. It will be used for an internal college assessment only. We have already filmed similar events and have received positive feedback so far.

In return for all of the raw footage, we would like access to the band for a five minute interview to ask some generic questions for our documentary. This could take place before or after the gig.

We would like to thank you again for this opportunity and we guarantee you will be happy with what we provide for you.

Thanks,

NED Productions.”

We searched on Google to find the managers contact information

Once we came to an agreement with the managers we contacted the venue and asked if they'd give us the 'okay' to film. We contacted them via email once we looked up the venue online first for their contact details.

Locations

We know where we will film because we will be going to venues to film live concerts. We will travel to the most local venues that the music artist is performing at to get footage and interviews for our documentary. To make sure we know the directions to the locations, we will use google maps and a sat nav to ensure that we know exactly where we are going and will  not to late to film.

When we go to location, we will take music related props such as a guitar to use in the background of our interivews and footage. This relates to the mise-en-scene that we will consider by filming infront of a stage, possibly with the stage lights on to add to the atmosphere. We will also film outside of venue's because there are places which have a board of future concerts at that venue. Liverpool O2 academy is an example of this, where there is a line up right outside the venue which would fit perfectly with the mise-en-scene of our music documentary.

Secondary Research.

All our secondary research was Youtube based. The Archive footage we used was all of live concerts from various bands. (30 Seconds to Mars, Paramore, Foster the People, and The Kooks.)

We extracted clips from these YouTube videos to help create our montage at the beginning and middle of our documentary.   

Sound-bed:

We researched YouTube for the appropriate sound-bed for our documentary and then downloaded the music. We chose ‘Artbreaker’ by Kids in Glass Houses because it fit well with our footage and it had a long introduction. We used the song ‘Too Close’ in our documentary and our radio advert as we had an interview with the artist and it mixed well with the rest of the documentary. We chose to use it in the radio advert because it is upbeat, has a 30 second introduction and it gave our project a sense of continuity.    

Graphic: This was the original image we used for our graphic.