2. September
Week Four
Monday: Wee looked at ‘Super Size Me’, a documentary
about health and the effects that eating unhealthily has
on the body. From this we managed to pick up things
that we could use in our own documentary. We also
decided on other documentaries that our group would
watch to consider other genres of documentary and how
we could use ideas from them.
Wednesday: We fed back from the documentaries we
watched and thought about the genre of documentary
we would like to make.
Friday: We each handed in an essay on ‘Super Size Me’
so that we could consider things we had observed and
share our ideas.
3. October
Week One
Wednesday: We did research into other
documentaries to see what kind of things we
needed to use in our own documentary. We also
wrote a questionnaire so we could find out what
people thought of documentaries and what they
enjoyed to watch.
Thursday: We got people to fill out the
questionnaires.
Friday: We collated our questionnaire results so
that we could create statistics to consider when
creating our documentary.
4. Week Two
Monday: We considered what topics we could do our
documentary on. Our ideas involved ‘Health and Body
Image’, ‘Knife Crime’ and ‘Video Games’. We then did
research into our chosen topic of ‘Health and Body
Image’. We thought about all the ways in which we could
explore this topic. As well as this, we did a target
audience questionnaire to find out what our target
audience’s preference was. We also did a risk
assessment for filming.
Wednesday: We sent out emails to people who we
wanted to interview. We emailed Julie Maitland, the
Student Development Team manager, Solihull Youth
Council, Principal Paul Ashdown and a psychology
teacher. We also created some questions to ask them
during the interviews. We also thought out some story
boards to get an idea of what we wanted the
documentary to include.
Friday: We filmed the introduction to our documentary
and some background footage with the computers.
5. Week Three
Monday: We filmed some background footage of
vending machines in the college refectory.
Wednesday: We filmed our interview with Julie
Maitland. During the interview we had the
opportunity to ask her the questions we had come
up with and she also suggested some of her own
questions that she thought may be important.
Thursday: We filmed our interview with Paul
Ashdown, principal of The Sixth Form College,
Solihull. From him, we were able to gather some
relevant and important footage for our documentary.
6. November
Week One
Monday: We filmed some footage with our onscreen
presenter, Jake, and considered what questions he
would need to ask and what he would need to introduce.
Wednesday: We interviewed three youth workers from
Solihull Youth Council. They were able to give us some
opinions that fit well into the theme of our documentary.
Friday: We considered other background footage we
may need. We asked some people who were eating in
the refectory if we could film them. We experimented
with some camera shots to see what we preferred and
also thought about how we could use these.
7. Week Two
Monday: We looked through our interview footage
to find parts that would fit well with the theme of our
documentary. We also considered what background
footage we could use for these clips and how we
would introduce them.
Wednesday: We filmed some voxpops of students
in the college refectory. We asked them about
where they eat, whether they think they eat
healthily, and whether they exercise.
Friday: We began putting our documentary
together. This gave us the opportunity to see how
well the footage fit together and what we needed to
film.
8. Week Three
Monday: We continued to edit together our
documentary and considered what still needed
filming. We also added captions over the beginning
of interviews.
Wednesday: We decided that we weren’t happy
with our introduction and so we filmed it again using
a different angle and style.
Friday: We collected together some statistics about
our topic of Health and Body Image that we thought
would be relevant for the documentary and filmed
our on screen presenter saying these facts in front
of various backgrounds to experiment with camera
movements.
9. Week Four
Monday: We began looking at some listings
magazines and how they presented articles about
documentaries. We also looked at how previous
students had presented theirs and used these to
gather ideas for our own article and made a rough
draft.
Wednesday: We filmed some footage of our
onscreen presenter using relevant props such as
food and salt to present facts that would fit well into
our documentary.
Friday: We continued editing our documentary,
including using some footage we had filmed that
week to create stop motion.
10. December
Week One
Monday: We looked at music that we could use in
our documentary and narrowed down some clips
we thought would fit well.
Wednesday: We checked the sound throughout our
documentary so that we could add music. We then
edited the sound levels so we were sure it sounded
smooth and came from both headphones.
Friday: We checked the sound levels by playing the
documentary out of the loud speakers to make sure
it sounded smooth and clear at all times.
11. Week Two
Monday: We finished adding last minute touches to
our documentary and ensuring that it flowed well.
We did this by asking others who were not in our
group to watch it through.
Wednesday: We took some screenshots from our
documentary that we wanted to use on the double
page spread. This way we were able to see how
much room we had left on the page for the
article, pull quotes and a heading.
Friday: We started the article and the article
heading using our drafts. We created two separate
ones with different headings so that we could see
which was preffered.
12. Week Three
Monday: We listened through our documentary to
find which clips we wanted to use for our radio
trailer. We then came up with a script for it.
Wednesday: We used the script we had made to
put our radio trailer together. We also made some
adjustments to the clips we had taken from the
documentary to add transitions and adjust the
music so that it sounded better.
Friday: We made the finishing touches to both of
our double page spreads to decide which we
preferred. We decided that we liked the heading of
one and the main body of the other, so we adjusted
them so that we could use the parts we liked.
13. January
Week One
Monday: We finished editing our article. We also
listened to our radio trailer and had others listen to
it to ensure that the clips we’d used fit well.
Wednesday: We watched our documentary through
a few more times to make sure there were no
mistakes and then transferred it onto a disc.
Friday: We watched the documentary through on
the disc to ensure that it had transferred properly.
We then thought of some ideas of what we could
ask for feedback from our target audience on our
work.
