The document summarizes a student's process of creating a documentary about the lack of support for special needs children once they turn 18. Some key points: - The student chose this topic due to their brother having special needs. They plan to interview family members and a local charity that assists these families. - To learn documentary conventions, the student watched "Supersize Me" and analyzed documentaries about Barbie dolls and eating disorders. They developed skills in Final Cut Pro. - The student conducted research, interviews, and filmed footage. They created scripts, maps of documentary topics, and sequences to include in the film. - Feedback from test audiences and analysis of Channel 4 documentaries helped the

2. • I chose to do the 7th brief for my coursework, and
have been thinking of ideas to base it on. The
ideas I initially had were documentaries
surrounding Type 1 diabetes, ballet, and growing
up as the sibling of a special needs child, however
my final idea which I’m going to move forward with
involves the lack of support offered to special
needs children once they turn 18 and the system
no longer supports them. Thanks to my brother
having special needs I have access to filming him
for my documentary, but I also plan on reaching
out to other families with disabled children in the
area, and the local charity Bexley Voice, who work
with these families to create help packs for issues
which many families face and are available for free
on their website.

3. • To increase my knowledge on
documentaries in general, I watched
Supersize Me to help me with codes and
conventions of a typical documentary and
gain ideas of my own from it. This includes
things like costume (as the doctors in the
film were stereotypically wearing white
laboratory coats) and the use of titles and
voice overs.

4. • I have started to gather footage
and stills of my own brother for my
documentary as well as getting in
contact with other people who
would be useful and relevant to
feature in the film. I’ve been
expanding my knowledge by
finding information about the
charity Bexley Voice, by helping to
set up their stall at an event and
getting to know some of the
volunteers who I plan to interview
in the near future for the project.

5. • To learn more about the genre
expectations of a documentary I created
my own questionnaire and asked a range
of people to give me their own opinions
about documentaries, including what
makes them memorable and/or effective. I
will now collate this into charts to make it
clear to see which codes and conventions
I should focus on for my own film.

6. To help me create an accurate documentary that
follows the codes and conventions of existing
productions I researched John Corner’s five central
elements of documentary film. These include
observation, which gives the audience an
eyewitness/firsthand account of what is being
shown and extends realism; Mise en Scene, which is
used to create reality and convey meaning in the
use of props, costume, set and lighting, which I
have already noted the use of in the documentary
Supersize Me. The other 3 central elements are
interview, exposition and dramatisation.

7. • This week I started to learn how to use in
design instead of using photo shop for
everything when I edit. This will come in
handy when I start to create my ancillary
tasks for my documentary, two of three
options are a double-page spread from a
listings magazine focused on the
documentary or a newspaper
advertisement for the documentary.

8. • I’ve created a shooting script on my blog
to give myself a little more guidance when
it comes to filming valuable footage for my
project. Although it’s normal for my ideas
to slightly change direction it’s useful to
have a rough guide in order to keep my
film flowing and developing steadily as
time goes on.

9. • To develop my skills in Final Cut, I filmed a
short sequence with my fellow classmates
Doneh, Samuel and Lanre, where I
experimented with using different audio clips.
Another skill I developed was using
stabilisation to stop camera shake so I was
able to use footage that I previously thought
wasn’t good enough.

10. • To progress with my project I
have emailed Bexley Voice to
ask for permissions to interview
some of the attendees to their
next ‘Tea and Talk’ sessions
which happen on the second
Wednesday of every month, in
order to explore other aspects of
my topic rather than having one
main focus documentary, this
way I will be able to get some
natural on the spot opinions to
include as vox pops or to use as
voice overs to show how large
and varied the community is.

11. • As well as watching and analysing the documentary
Supersize Me, I have gone on to watch and study the
documentaries Barbie: the most famous doll in the
world and Diabulimia: the world’s most dangerous
eating disorder, the latter of which I found very helpful
in it’s layout and the way it was edited. Although
neither directly relate to the topic of documentary I’m
creating, both have further inspired me to push myself
regarding editing. The most significant sequence was
from Diabulimia, where textual information was shown
appearing and fading over footage of the view from the
train window as it went through the countryside. This
simple sequence is something I’m hoping to recreate.

12. To look into how my documentary would be broadcasted, I
researched Channel 4 as it is know for creating ‘cutting edge’
original documentaries such as Educating Essex and Chicken
Shop. The majority of their documentary openings follow a
similar structure. They often begin with a montage of both
observation and interviews with a voice-over exposition,
leading into the titles and following with establishing shots
and narration to build narrative – something I will attempt to
incorporate into my own work. I am lead to believe that my
own documentary production would be welcome among the
roster of documentaries channel 4 already has, due to my
similar target audience, and the subject of my project which
isn’t too far from documentaries other film makers have
created for the channel.

13. • I experimented using different forms of media on my blog to show my
progression of topic ideas for my documentary. I used coding in jsfiddle to
create a topic map to show 8 different areas I will cover in my production.
These include
• Lack of social acceptance towards special needs children who may appear
to be a normal child but are disabled/ children who do not have
wheelchairs/walking aids/hearing aids or any equipment which indicates
they are disabled
• Lack of knowledge surrounding special needs children from members of
the council who are put in charge of a field they don’t know about
• The effects that growing up with a special needs sibling has
• The impact on ‘normal’ family life, what makes a traditional family and
what doesn’t
• The impact of local charities and organisations, how much help they are
able to provide to these families

14. In Final Cut I created my first sequence to use in my
project. Because the clips I used had been shot on
my iphone, they were vertical and didn’t take up
the whole screen which therefore led me to believe
that I wouldn't be able to incorporate them in my
project. However, I was able to put them together
to create a successful sequence.

15. On Monday the 13th I went with Robbie to Kings
College Hospital to film some more footage for my
production, and will help me cover the topic of
medicine in my documentary, specifically the use of
clobozam amongst special needs patients as it is a
benzodiazepine. The use of a benzodiazepine drug
along with opioid drugs is known to sometimes lead
to very bad side effects which would able me to
include some more statistics and use the inspiration
I had from the sequence of statistics I commented
on from Diabulimia: The World’s Most Dangerous
Eating Disorder.

16. • For my opening sequence I took inspiration from both Supersize Me
and the disney pixar animated film Up to use archive footage and
photos to give the audience a better understanding of what life has
been like for Robbie and how he grew up with special needs. To do
this, I found old family photos which I scanned using the
photocopier and sent to myself. I then placed them, one at a time,
into final cut and positioned them into polaroid templates so that
they all matched. I then changed the angles so that it would look
more like a normal pile of pictures. With Final Cut Pro, you can
create compound clips, which allow you to group any combination
of clips in the timeline or the browser and nest clips within other
clips. Compound clips can contain video and
audioclip components, clips, and other compound clips. I made the
corresponding polaroid template and pictures into compound clips
so that it would be easier for me to see what I was editing.

17. • The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and
zooming effect used in video production from still imagery.
It’s named after the American documentarian Ken Burns
who used it extensively in his work. Although it is
commonly used to ‘breathe life into old photos’ I actually
used it on a video clip to create the effect I wanted. I
started off with my montage of polaroid photos and as it
came to the end I wanted to use a video, edited to play
within the polaroid template which would then grow bigger
until the video became full screen and play on until I
progressed onto my next clip.

18. After attending one of Bexley Voice’s tea and talk sessions, I
have managed to film 3 interviews with different members of
the community, a mother of a special needs child who also
has a sibling with special educational needs, another mother
of a child with ADHD who founded the charity ADHD and Me,
and the chancellor of Bexley Voice who is the mother to twins,
one of whom has special educational needs and downs
syndrome, and the other who is in mainstream schooling.
These will prove to be invaluable to my production. They have
also given me a direction for my documentary to go down,
where I will change it slightly to focus on schooling and day to
day life for children and adults with special educational needs,
and how they often have the needs overlooked or aren’t
supported well enough.

19. I have completed my first draft for my documentary,
which has enabled me to see how it looks put
together, and see which parts I need to work on and
improve. I added statistics to my production in the
American typewriter font and have used this font
throughout to make my production uniform. I
played around with making these statistics appear
in stages, similarly to the way they were added to
the documentary Diabulimia which I have analysed
previously on my blog.

20. I’ve added my initial voice overs to my
production to give myself an idea of how the
final documentary will flow together, however
as I have a cold these voice overs are not to the
standard I had hoped for, so I will definitely
recreate them at a later date, and possibly
change what I say slightly to fit with the imagery
I have used so far.

21. • To accompany my documentary, I need to complete
two further tasks which may be:
• a radio trailer for the documentary;
• a double-page spread from a listings magazine focused
on the documentary;
• a newspaper advertisement for the documentary.
• Of the three, I have chosen to create a radio trailer as I
have more footage that I could extract audio from to
use to my advantage and a newspaper advertisement
as I will be able to further develop my skills using
InDesign and/or Photoshop.

22. As one of my ancillary tasks is to create a newspaper
advert for my documentary, I took it upon myself to
experiment with different effects on photoshop that I
could potentially use to create my final outcome. I chose
the original image which you can see below as it shows
Robbie, the focal point of the documentary, in one of his
favourite habitats as he thoroughly enjoys train journeys,
much like other special needs children, and its an
instantly recognisable setting for the majority of the
British public which will make the documentary much
more accessible and relatable, and will draw attention
when used as a background in a newspaper
advertisement.

23. After researching the codes and conventions of a
newspaper advert, I chose the picture I wanted to use
and researched how to edit it in Photoshop using
different effects. I used a vintage effect, 3D effect and red
effect, but the colour block effect is by far my favourite
effect as it’s unpredictable, much like life is with a special
needs child. The colours used in the image can also
signify Robbie’s unpredictable and colourful and vibrant
personality, which is what the documentary aims to get
across. My plan for the newspaper outcome is to use this
effect again more meticulously to create an outcome to a
very high standard which is true to a newspaper advert.

24. I created my radio advert using both final cut and
garage band because as I had so much footage left
over from my documentary that didn’t make it into
the first five minutes, I decided I wanted to
incorporate it into my radio advert. To do this is
separated the audio from the video in Final Cut, and
then exported it as an mp3 file. I found the royalty
free track ‘Enigmatic’ and then imported my mp3
files and used the ‘split regions at playhead’ tool to
cut the files to get rid of short pauses and audible
breathing.

25. The first improvement I made from the original
version of the documentary was to create new
voice overs so that overall the documentary would
sound more professional. The new voice overs are
easier to understand as I no longer have a cold, and
I recorded them in a sound proof room to eliminate
any background noise that I had issues with before.
Although I still read from a script, the new voice
overs sound a lot less robotic and therefore more
natural which will help to build a relationship
between myself and the audience.

26. To create a more ‘uniform’ outcome, I added the
american typewriter font with a typing effect,
which supports the ‘educational’ genre of my
documentary, to all the subtitles and headings
in my documentary. As well as this, I changed
the font I used for the title to extra thin, and
added a glow effect to be more creative.

27. One of the last improvements I made to my
documentary was applying effects to the clips of
Robbie that I had juxtaposed the interview with his
parents with, creating a dream or flashback effect,
which emphasises how the clips used relate to the
dialogue of the interview. As well as this, I cut down
the overall length of the documentary from 10
minutes to 5 and a half minutes by significantly
cutting down the lengths of the interviews with the
charity members using the blade tool, but without
losing ay valuable content.