From the first week we got in to our respectable groups and made sure to organise regular meetings immediatley which in the long run made the whole process of pre-production much easier in terms of everyone knew what they were doing and everyone was able to start immediatley that really befitted how the whole process pre-production went in the long run. I put forward a number of ideas, one being about Buskers in Winchester. This was not as strong an idea as I had hoped as it was unoriginal on the subject matter. We then decided upon the documentary to be on the Portsmouth Docks and the life surrounding them, issues would be those that are currently in the news like immigration and be of a poetic mode in terms of documentary style. However that idea did not hold through as we found out through an extensive time emailing the UK border agency that we could not have permission to film there. It was a long time until we came up with another idea which meant that our progress slowed dramatically in terms of research. However the time helped our group to develop our production company in terms of designing the logo and ideas on how to promote our documentary.
We then came across a topic which has been much neglected in today's documentary and found that it was most topical in the news, themes that every person would have an opinion. It was an idea was about a cab driver living in Southampton who I stumbled upon in a cab journey and asked about his life because I was always intrigued in how, who and why they are what they are. His name is Muhammad Fiaz from Pakistan, 40 years old, Hindu, immigrant taxi driver. All attributes already giving us a basis of what our documentary will bring up and make the audience ask themselves questions.
There was a number of discussions with the taxi driver after my ride and me mentioning it to him regarding the documentary to see if he was interested in being the subject of it and was happy to do so. We then had a meeting as group to ask him a few questions and to get some more information regarding filming in his car which was going to more tricky than expected as there was consent and health and safety to consider. Consent was the big one to think about because it would dictate the out come of what we can and cannot film so I conducted my own research on the Ofcom website regarding this and came up with a method using bullet cameras to get Muhammad (when we are not there) to give out our own specially designed release form when someone entered his taxi just to get consent to film them. This would have an impact in how people will act, however he can also just ask them on video if he can have the passengers consent to be filmed and would just be as good and would be more casual and less official that will make our subject more relaxed.
As a group we all discussed how we were going to film the documentary and decided for it to be filmed in a way that would have a slight poetic conventions but more observational than anything.
I created the Wix site for our documentary after we had confirmation from our primary so that we had an immediate online presence as I knew that when promoting an online presence was vitally important to get the word out there to the public. Along with this I created a Without a Box account for our production company which creates access for us to be able to enter competitions immediately and raise our efforts in making us become more professional.
The Wix site contains the synopsis and is a general promotional attribute for anyone who wants to get more information about our documentary. The trailer will also be up on there by the 14th of December which we will embed from our YouTube account so that we would get site traffic to our site through that to generate more interest.
Early on I also created some business cards to promote our production company and also to make us look and have a more professional image. I worked with Ben to design our company logo and put it on a business card and designed the back of them as well, which involved me creating an image on Photoshop that would make the business cards look better aesthetically however make it subtle enough for the person to glance and not notice it.
However when I received the business cards the back of them had a few mistakes on it with group member's contact numbers being wrong as well as spelling mistakes. However this was a good way to be able to see how we could make them better in terms of how our logo looked on a product. As a result we re-evaluated the business card in terms of what information to put on there that the recipient of the business card can go to for more information. We also edited the logo so that it would have a bit of colour in it. This made the logo more visually appealing to the eye and connected better with our production name. This was a major learning curb in terms of developing our professional as well as our brand image that we hope to be able to come across to the public as this is an important way to market anything in the business world.
In terms of researching, I asked a few questions regarding ideas for being the subject for our documentary along the whole pre-production process and as our ideas were developing along this whole semester. I asked Yahoo! Answers and posted questions surrounding how they would think about watching a documentary about: London Waterloo train station, dockyards and finally cabbies all of which got a numerous amount of feedback: See links ( http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111123090505AAmzMFs, http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111111065329AAvzsLw, http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111111062137AAdXwUo )
This not only gave us valuable feedback about what the public is interested in but also the demographics to who and what age group are interested in what because we also receive some statistical information about who answered your subject which was valuable when deciding our target audience for our documentary. This in turn was vital in how we marketed our documentary because it influenced about what our products we chose to get e.g. rubbers and pencils would not apply to an older generation because they would not be interested in it.
In terms of who I worked with most was Natalie as she was also marketing. We split the role due to the immense importance of the role which would put immense pressure on just the one person plus we would be able to confer more ideas regarding promotion and get a wider variety of material to work with, that with the combined efforts from our other group members made the job much easier.
We also worked as individuals very well and could get along as a team well because of how we communicated between each other. This was mainly because of the producer being able to assign us tasks that was tailored to our particular skill sets.
For the presentation, my role was to research the Hindu religion. This is because our primary's religion is that of Hindu which is vital because the more you know about the subject the more you can relate to him and get better footage that the audience will respond to. All this has a knock on effect on the production and holding our professional image.
Throughout this whole pre-production phase the biggest lesson I have learnt is creating a professional image and how much of an impact research has on the quality of your end product. And is ultimately what we all have had to learn very quickly is that you are not to survive if you are not professional. Not only does it help meet deadlines but it also is vital when in terms of organisation and again is key for a successful team that all contributes individually but also as a unit in order to create a product that is of top quality.
