This was a quick essay on the plan and execution for my Documentary project as part of the 'Creative Documentary' module

1. Brandon Boyd - N0703554
Creative Documentary (Critical Reflection Essay)
In this essay, I am going to talk about a variety of different documentaries, what I have learned
from being in some of the lectures, and how all of the resources shown to us have inspired a
creative idea and therefore a finished documentary. In each of the lectures we were taught a
different aspect of what makes a good documentary, including ‘Fake vs Truth’, types of
documentaries and the way in which stories can be told; (chronologically or reversed).
Documentaries are simply a method to provide factual information on a particular subject or
event, in either a film, television or radio format. They usually contain real footage and images
or could sometimes be reconstructed if the event/situation that occured was too difficult to show
real images of. With documentaries, there are usually narrators or presenters, but they are
generally not seen, and you tend to see a lot more content without speech as this brings more
of a meaning to what is being shown and the audience won’t get distracted by listening and
watching at the same time. ‘What distinguishes a documentary is portrayal of sound and images
of actuality’ ​(Corner, J., 1995)​.
The initial concept of a ‘documentary; was defined back in the 1930’s by a Scottish film maker
called John Grierson, who created some of the first documentaries including ‘Coal Face’ and
‘Housing Problems’. He further developed the meaning of the term to ‘the creativity of actuality’
which meant capturing real people in real life situations or environments, giving more of a
personal insight into people’s private lives. In old styled documentaries, they would often contain
various forms of persuasive images to usually advocate a particular viewpoint or side of an
argument, whereas in Grierson’s documentaries, he focused more on the facts. ​(Stollery, M.,
2017)​. One of the main concepts that John Grierson uses within his documentaries are the use
of interviews which can create a balanced argument (if speaking about a more controversial
issues), or can just simply be used to back-up the initial statement made in the introduction of
the documentary. He adds that they can often support or contrast with what is being seen on the
screen, and that the interviewer/interviewee(s) can either be seen, unseen or both.
Before coming up with a final concept for our own documentary, we had to look online or in texts
to get some inspiration and allow us to develop our basic ideas further. One concept that I
decided to look into further was the more personal side to documentaries. As humans, we
experience emotional and memorable events in our work life, home life or social life, and they
can often be the basis for a documentary. An example of a personal documentary was by Sarah
Polley back in 2012, entitled ‘Stories we tell’. ​(Ghomeshi, J., 2012)​. The documentary is a
detective story where she tries to understand her childhood and think about the relationship
between her mother and father...whom she discovers isn’t her biological father. She explores a
variety of home footage, conducts interviews and pieces together various home movies which
she had created herself, in order to tell the story more creatively, rather than using too much
speech/narration. In summary, it is a powerful documentary about how she remembers her

2. childhood, with aspects covering love, memory and how she came to terms with appreciating
her adopted father in a way she might not have otherwise done. ​(Atkinson, M., 2017)
When thinking about our own documentary, there weren’t any ethical issues that we needed to
think about as we were promoting the topic of ‘creative people’ as opposed to a more
controversial topic such as feminism/religion or gender. When we collated all of our footage and
images together, we weren’t sure if we wanted to have just a narration, or a presenter for the
whole documentary. ​(Ciccarelli, S., 2008)​. In the end, we decided to have a small segment of
the introduction to our documentary with a presenter (that you could see and hear), with various
parts of voice over and initiations of questions...but the majority of the documentary was
listening to a mix of Nottingham creatives speaking about how they got into the specific creative
industries they did, or if they were students, ways in which other creative students could
become more proactive in the local area whilst balancing University work. When we were out
shooting our various subjects, we had quite a small production team so there was no bad
behaviour on set, and we were able to get all of the footage we needed almost instantly.
(Butler, A., & Hrankowski, G., 2013)​. Along with our group, several other videographers and
photographers came along to help with the production of our documentary and they will be
credited at the end of our project for supplying us with video footage and photographic content.
For our project, our main structure was to firstly have the audience in shock as to why we were
projecting famous faces on the screen; (Sir Paul Smith, Jake Bugg and Alice Levine), as well
as pictures of the city in Nottingham, before actually introducing ourselves or our creative
friends. ​(Kennedy, A., 2016)​. We thought this would be a good way to capture the audience’s
attention, and instead of heading straight in with a video clip and 24/7 narration, it was a more
creative way to showcase our idea as well as still being factual and having some light humour to
add to the video.
When it came to the organisation stage and distributing out roles, everyone easily picked what
they wanted to do. Holly was the director, making sure that everything was in place and we
were getting the footage we needed. ​(Bell, J., 2019)​. Matt was in charge of completing the
consent forms, risk assessment forms as well as ensuring that the audio was clear. Rheanne
was primarily on the camera, but also helped me with the production log when I was working on
something else. I was the presenter/interviewer for the majority of the project, helping on
camera when we wanted a variety of shots to pick from for the final edit, and I was also in
charge of organising the interviews/booking the locations prior to filming.
From this project, I believe that my whole group worked extremely hard and although it was
difficult to get everything done in the short time frame we had, we were all able to dedicate time
for our specific roles and completed the documentary project to the best of all our abilities. In
terms of future employment, this is the industry that I want to go into, helping with
videography/photography and maybe even touching upon the presenting side, so I believe that I
have gained additional confidence having completing this project and also been able to think

3. more quickly on the spot adapting to different group members and different ways in which
people work.
Bibliography:
Atkinson, M., 2017, ​‘Documentary - Developing Ideas’​,
https://www.slideshare.net/MarcAtkinson5/documentary-developing-ideas-81242479
Bell, J., 2019, ​‘The roles of the film production team’​,
https://www.govtech.com/education/news/The-Roles-of-the-Production-Team.html
Butler, A., & Hrankowski, .,G, 2013, ​‘Filming with a small crew’​,
http://www.fatherfiguresdocumentary.com/filming-with-a-small-crew/
Ciccarelli, S., 2008, ​‘Narration in film and documentaries a must’​,
https://www.voices.com/blog/narration_in_film_and_documentaries/
Corner, J., 2008, ​‘Documentary Studies; Dimensions of Transition and Continuity’​,
http://www.johncorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/documentary_studies.pdf
Lu, J., 2010, ​‘First Principles of Documentary’ - John Grierson​,
http://readingfilm.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/2010/09/28/first-principles-of-documentary-2/
Stollery, M., 2017, ​‘First Principles of Documentary’ - John Grierson​’
http://tiny.cc/wqvj6y
Dargis, M., 2013, ​‘Family opens its diary, with mother as subject’ - Sarah Polley​,
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/movies/stories-we-tell-written-and-directed-by-sarah-polley
.html
Filmography:
Ghomeshi, J., 2012, (YouTube), ​‘Stories we tell - Director Sarah Polley in Studio Q’​,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqBe1DSY1Vc
Kennedy, A., 2016, (Video), ​‘Introduction to documentary video storytelling’​,
https://www.lynda.com/Final-Cut-Pro-tutorials/Introduction-Documentary-Video-Storytelling/4355
37-2.html
Warner Bros. Pictures., 2018, (YouTube), ​‘They shall not grow old - Peter Jackson’​,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds

4. Banksy., 2010, (YouTube), ​‘Banksy’s exit through the gift shop’​,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0b90YppquE