This document outlines a proposal for a documentary investigating the stereotype that skateboarding is antisocial. The filmmaker wants to show skateboarding as a community and disprove outdated views. Research included interviews that identified exploring both the community and stereotype as the main question. The documentary will include public interviews, skaters at a local park discussing public opinions, and an interview at a skate shop. It will be distributed on YouTube or BBC due to their counterculture content. Publicity will include a skate magazine feature and premier at a skate park.

1. #Skatelife

2. How did my idea start
• My idea came from my passion for Skateboarding, I
thought it was unfair to label Skateboarding as
antisocial so I wanted to find out where this view
comes from and whether it is true or not. I wanted to
present Skateboarding as a community of individuals
and hopefully disprove the idea that all skateboarders
are antisocial. The purpose of this documentary is to
inform people of the positives of skateboarding and
how the view they have of Skateboarding could be
outdated.

3. Development of idea
• During my secondary research I found many articles
where they argued it is “uncool” to skate past a certain
age suggesting the antisocial stereotype is applied to
mostly young skaters.
• Furthermore Some of the students I interviewed said
that there was not a clear research question as I
switched between talking about the community of
skaters and whether it was antisocial. This helped me
clarify that I was in fact investigating if the sport is
antisocial through the observation of the community.

4. History of skateboarding
• Skateboarding grew in popularity during the 1990s with
the punk movement, this new form of Street
Skateboarding is what I think created the stereotype of
the antisocial skateboarder.
• I wanted to highlight this in my documentary that
recently many Skateboarders have their own style and
don’t follow the punk movement.
• Also Skateboarding is economically resilient, due to the
commitment of Skateboarders and the strong
relationships with the brands, the skate industry can
still flourish during economic crisis. I think this is useful
for my documentary as this means my target audience
is committed to the topic

5. Content
• My documentary will start off with Voxpops with
the public about Skateboarding.
• I will then interview Skateboarders from my local
park and possibly present the opinions of the public
to them and gage their reactions.
• Then I will interview an employee of the famous
Skate shop "Slam city skates" and ask more open
questions and hopefully get some examples of
when skateboarding has been positive.

6. Research
I wanted to find out from my focus group what
kind of conventions they wanted to see. For
example many of them wanted it to be participant
led and all of them wanted to see Voxpops with
the public as well as interviews with Skaters.
However in my Questionaire more people wanted
Hip Hop as back ground music as it has a greater
appeal to people living in urban areas. I also used
my questionaire to help me decide to use a vlog
style presenter for some parts as not only did
more people vote for it but Vlogging has a large
appeal to my target audience of 16-24 year olds
due to the popularity of youtube.

7. Distribution
• My documentary will be shown on BBC 3 or on
YouTube channel Vice because they are progressive and
often document counterculture content and vice has
done many short documentaries on Skateboarding. But
on BBC 3 there is a gap in the market for
documentaries about Skateboarding that are presented
by Skateboarders.
• I will sell my documentary through advertising slots on
pre- roll YouTube videos, this is because the main user
group of YouTube is 16-24 years old Which is very
similar to my target audience and in march YouTube
drew 31.4 million people of that age group.

8. Distribution
• To publicize my documentary I will contact London
Skate magazine "Sidewalk" to get a feature or an
interview to give a chance for my audience to find out
what the documentary is about before they watch it. A
feature in Sidewalk would also open it up to other well
known Skateboarders who could share it on social
media. Furthermore a premier for my documentary
could be held at Skate park and cinema, "House of
Vans" which often do screenings of local Skate films
details of these would be concluded later once my
documentary is in the final stages.

9. Budgeting
• My documentary in total will cost £76,808, this is
for the cost of equipment, personnel for the
duration of the shoot and other possible costs
such as Legal issues.
• To save money I will cut costs by using my own
equipment such as Cameras or borrowing it
from a local school. I will also take on some of
the roles myself such as director and editor.
However for jobs such as filming I will need to
hire an A level student to do work experience.

10. Content research
• The Documentary Jump is a documentary introducing free running
to the channel 4 audience. This documentary also used famous
landmarks as a way to spread the message of Free running. However
they used a middle class female voice over to present the
documentary. I felt this seperated the audience from the topic so I
decided to present the documentary as a Skateboarder to give a
more authentic presentation of Skateboarding.

11. Content research
• Another documentary I analyzed was about a
historic Skate landmark 'Love park". This
documentary interviewed the group of
Skateboarders from Love Park of the time using
archive footage of them Skating it as cutaways. This
influenced my decision to not only interview
Skateboarders but to include footage of the people
I would be interviewing Skateboarding as this
would be visually appealing to the target audience.