2. SAFC Documentary
• My initial idea was to make a short film based in Sunderland but when I couldn’t think
of a plot, I decided to make a documentary instead. The focus of the documentary is
going to be the Sunderland football club however I was struggling to think of a way to
make it seem original compared to every other documentary about the football club
because it seems like every documentary you see based on the team feels like the
same thing, focused on the same aspects of the club and its history, I don’t
necessarily think that this makes a documentary uninteresting or boring, but I would
rather make a documentary that stands out from the rest than just make another
documentary that people will view as repetitive. To combat the repetitiveness of the
other documentaries I will watch a few mini documentaries and informative videos
based around Sunderland AFC and determine what the ting I will do differently will
be.
3. My unique selling point
• After watching a few documentaries based on Sunderland AFC I have decided that my unique
focus will be the future of the club as well as the recent 21st century history of the club rather than
just the past few seasons or the entire history as whole. From my research it seems like there is no
intersection in documentaries when it comes the clubs entire and the clubs very resent history
(usually the past season or two) so I want to make a video regarding the history of the club,
focusing on the late 90s/early 2000s all the way up the present and into the future, highlighting
what we can expect to come from the investment of Kyril Louis-Dreyfus. I think this focus of my
documentary will resonate with my audience as this is the point in the club's history most of them
will have grown up in (myself included) so I think there will a level of nostalgia in with the videos
especially when I include clips and highlights from the season's past. My goal is to show what we
as Sunderland fans have been through over the last decade or two and how a club as big as
Sunderland AFC has just experienced the worst stint in their entire history (4 seasons in the 3rd tier
of English football) however, I also intend to show how we bounced back from that awful time in the
clubs past and what is being done at the club to re-establish itself among the giants of the English
game once again.
4. Potential shooting locations and contributors
• My initial ideas for a shooting location was going to be in
and around the stadium of light. I will be getting shots of fans
on matchdays and hopefully getting interviews with fans so I
can get their opinions on what went wrong and what is going
right at the club. I will make sure that I get their consent to
be in the video otherwise I can't put them in. if I can get
enough compelling interview then I will use my friends to
give the answers I desire as well as giving their own
opinions as to not in-authenticate the documentary. The
contributors of the video will be the people I interview and
the people who help me film/set up the documentaries, other
than those people, I will be filming the audio as well as
editing and filming the rest by myself.
5. Time frame/match day diary
• The time frame for my documentary filming is anytime from now (mid-November 2023) till about march of
2024, this will give me time to get enough footage for the documentary while also allowing time for me to
edit the documentary and meet the deadline of April 14th . As for the SAFC matches where I will be
conducting interviews, there are 11 home matches in the time frame I have set out for the for the filming of
footage in the documentary. The most likely games for filming will be the 3pm/12:30 kick-offs, as the night
games would be too late and too dark to film at, so the potential list of games consist of;
- West Brom (H) sat 9th Dec 12:30pm
- Hull City (H) sat 20th Jan 3pm
- Stoke City (H) sat 27th Jan 3pm
- Plymouth Argyle (H) sat 10th Feb 3pm
- Swansea City (H) sat 24th Feb 3pm
• These are the 5 potential games that I have chosen to film at, I decided to exclude the two games around
charismas because I will be too busy, and I think the stadium will be too crowded.
6. inspirations
• My inspirations for this documentary are the youtubers that I
watch, called ‘away days’ and ‘Footy Adventures’ both of whom
do the same type of content. Both creators make videos
covering ubique football teams and going to their games, with
footy adventures focusing mainly on Scottish lower league
sides that have a unique story attached to them. As for the
documentary side, my inspirations are the football
documentaries on Netflix and amazon prime (Sunderland til I
die, Manchester city all or nothing). The part I want to emulate
from these shows is the story telling, I want my documentary to
feel like a story rather than a just spewing facts and statistics at
the audience. My current idea would be like Sunderland til I die
but Instead of focusing on the internal affairs from a single
season at Sunderland I want to tell the story of Sunderland in
the 21st century.
