Throughout this semester it has been vitally important both as a production group and as an individual to undergo intense research in order to create a documentary film to the best of our ability.

My initial research involved looking at various documentaries and analysing them in order to increase my understanding of the different documentary modes and techniques, as well as gaining inspiration for our own documentary. However, although I researched a good number of documentaries, I would have liked to have looked into and reviewed more documentaries of different, and perhaps more interesting modes, such as participatory, reflexive and performative, which would have enabled me to contribute more to our group discussion of what mode of documentary we wanted our own production to have. Therefore, in future productions I will ensure that I have a wider knowledge of documentary modes, allowing me to make more educated contributions to what mode of documentary would be best suited to our production.

Through critical reading I was also able to gain a higher education in photojournalism and documentary modes. However, I should have completed my reading earlier, which consequently would have allowed me to make more educated decisions about our own documentary modes and therefore I will ensure that in future productions I will read my critical readings at the beginning of my research.

As well as researching into modes of documentary it was also very important for me, as director, to research into our own documentary ideas in order to discover more about the subject, so that when it comes to filming I will be well educated in the subject and know exactly the kinds of questions that I need to ask in order to get to the point that we are trying to make. Therefore, as our documentary idea is about the day in the life of a taxi driver, focusing on a driver that has come over to seek work form Pakistan, I took the initiative to research into why he left. As well as this I also thought that other interesting topics that we might like to cover would be racism in the work place and ‘Taxi Wars’ between various taxi companies. By doing this it has allowed me to gain a wider knowledge of our protagonists’ background, which will allow me to focus my questions more directly in order to express the hardships that he had to go through.

This in depth research into both documentary modes and our subject also helped us as a group to develop our ideas further, as we were able to empathise with what our protagonist had endured and using this information to decided what modes of documentary we wanted to incorporate into our production to ensure that we expressed the protagonists journey in the best way possible.

As well as this research we also went to visit our protagonist as we felt that it would be vitally important to build up a strong relationship with him, as it would then allow us to ask perhaps more personal questions and receive more private information about his life. However from this visit we did not receive all the information that we wanted as we had not fully prepared the meeting. Therefore from this experience I have learnt that it is very important to pre-plan meetings in order to gain the most out of the time spent with the interviewee. I will now take this lesson and apply it towards our meetings when filming, ensuring that both myself and our production team are fully prepared. We will do this by having meetings before we visit our primary to organise our questions and to make sure that everyone has done what they are assigned to do as part of the production team.

One of the main issues that we as a group endured was the constant struggle to find a subject that we were all passionate about. However, after many long discussions on topics that we wanted to focus on we finally decided that we wanted to do some spontaneous filming at Southampton docks and therefore began our research. Although we had not taken into account that we may not receive permission to film there, and therefore, when we were refused permission we did not have a strong secondary idea until a few weeks later so consequently we were then running behind schedule . From this I have learnt that it is highly important to have a number of strong ideas that have already been researched, so that in case an idea is shut down, as a production crew we don’t fall behind schedule and loose valuable research time in order to gain a more in depth understanding of our subject. Therefore, it could be suggested that by splitting the production team into two research groups for the first few weeks of the research process to do the initial research on several projects allowing us to maximise the time we take in researching all our documentary ideas in case one of these idea is shut down.

As a production team we were able to make decisions reasonably well through group meetings. Within these group meetings one member from the team would state the agenda and then record minutes allowing us as a crew to go through our meeting and make justified decisions. However, even though I feel that these meetings work well, I do feel that some points raised were overlooked due to some members of the team being more vocal in expressing their ideas than others, therefore I feel that a system should be suggested that allows for every member of the team to express their views. Another flaw within these group meetings was the organisation, as there were times in which not all the group members could attend. Therefore, I feel that by having a chairman (normally the producer) who invites people to speak would be an ideal solution to allow those who are not so vocal get the opportunity to put across their ideas. As well as this it would also be good practice for the agenda to be sent out before the meeting so that if someone cannot attend they have a chance to communicate their opinions on an agenda item before the meeting, allowing the meeting to still go ahead.

As director of our documentary, it is important that I had a clear idea on how I wanted the aesthetics of our documentary to look like and to be able express these ideas clearly to the rest of the production team. Therefore in order to do this successfully I provided visuals to present to the crew to help me explain my ideas. This technique worked incredibly well, as it allowed the other members of the team to visualise what I had in mind and permitted them to make changes on these visuals in order to strengthen the camera shot. Therefore, I will take this method and apply it throughout future productions.

For our presentation I have been set the task of researching racism against Pakistanis within the UK, by the producer. I feel that I have performed well in this task as I was able to find a large quantity of valuable and reliable information that would not only help us in the question and answer section of our presentation, but also when interviewing our primary and secondary sources, as it is incredibly important for us to understand the Pakistani culture and what trials they have been through in order for us as a production team to express their stories in a knowledgeable way and communicate them accurately to the audience.

In conclusion, I feel that my overall performance throughout this semester has been to a reasonably high standard and have learnt the importance of in depth research into our chosen subject as it allows us to develop a far more educated documentary. However, I do still feel that my organisation skills need to be improved in terms of my time management as at the beginning of the semester I lacked motivation as our original idea to film at Southampton docks did not excite and interest me and I therefore found researching that particular subject tedious. However, after changing our idea to looking at a Pakistani taxi driver living in the UK with his family, I was highly motivated and enjoyed researching all areas of the subject and with this in mind I believe that I am prepared for the filming of our documentary and am very much looking forward to applying the knowledge I have gained from my research into practice.

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