The student has chosen to create a documentary film for their A2 coursework to show their life experiences living in both China and England. As an international student from China, they will use the documentary format to visually depict cultural similarities and differences between the two countries through travel between them. To develop their ideas, the student plans to research documentary genres, narrative structures, and successful directors, as they have limited prior knowledge about documentaries. They also intend to create a plan to help manage their time better after feeling rushed completing their last project.
1. I have chosen the Brief Seven, Documentary for my A2 coursework.
The reason why I decided to work on this brief is because I have an
idea to use this type of video to show my lives in two different
countries. Furthermore, I think documentary is the best suitable
format for me to present my ideas rather than anything else.
A documentary film is a nonfictional motion picture intended to
document some aspect of reality. I want to use visual media
language to show my interesting life. As I am an international student
from China, I often travel between China and England. In my opinion,
British culture is kind of similar with Chinese culture, but there are
also many differences. They both have a long history and many
traditional things left still now.
I have watched just a few documentaries before. So I have not got
enough knowledge about its genres and narrative structure. I will do
more research about the documentary industry to develop my ideas. I
will also research to find out some successful directors. From what I
have learnt before, a documentary doesn't need to have any
characters or actors. It is used to show the information and facts with
voiceover.
A plan can help me manage my time better. I can follow my plan
which will not make me miss out any steps. I learnt this from last
year's course work, the Foundation Portfolio. At the beginning, it
seemed that I had a lot of time to do my magazine. However, the
time went faster than I thought. So at the end, I was a little bit in rush.
As English is not my native language, I think I need to manage my
time for A2 coursework better than last year, in order to do well in my
research and planning portfolio and production sections.