Rationale

Which brief I have chosen and why?

• The brief that I have chosen to follow is 7, the one within which you are required to create a 5 minute extract from a TV documentary, as well as a newspaper advertisement and double page spread feature in a listing magazine. 
• I have chosen this brief due to my strong interest in horse showing, something that I have been involved in for years and am eager to create an extract based on.
• Moreover I have recently joined a newly established showing team, and thought this would be an interesting and enjoyable to focus my production on. 

What do you know about your chosen industry and how you will build on your existing knowledge with research?
 
I have been showing my own ponies since I was 11, thus have a wide range of knowledge of this competitive industry and those interested in it. This knowledge has been gained through riding with a variety of show teams, as well as getting to know people over the years within 'the showing world'. I feel that this will enable me to successfully target my audience and have a developed understanding as to what it is that they would be interested in watching and learning about. To build on this and better appeal to my audience I will conduct a variety of research tasks, including audience profiles, surveys, interviews, ect. In addition to this I will be required to watch a range of documentaries of a similar genre in order to develop an understanding of the themes and conventions of a lifestyle or sporting documentary, as well as helping to inspire my own product.

Since this will be the first time I have ever created a documentary style video research will be of vital importance. I will need to ensure that I conduct  enough detailed textual analyses of similar products to enrich my understanding as to what is required, as well as enhancing my understanding of how to better appeal to my audience. Moreover since my showing team is based in North Yorkshire which is 4 hours from where I live, thorough planning for my filming will be a necessity as it will have to be condensed into being completed in one or two trips there over  several days, and it will be very difficult to go back and reshoot anything that needs improvement. 

Preliminary task

 I have recently finished conducting some preliminary work, as practice for my coursework. For this task I completed the filming and editing of a documentary about the head girl at my school and how she achieved this position. I was very pleased with some of the shots that I produced, and I felt that my location shots were particularly successful, in both the angles they were filmed at and also the variety that I included. However when it came to the editing of my work I found that I did not have enough filler shots to break up the long interview clips and make the video more interesting for the viewer. I also found it very helpful that I had planned each of my interview questions that I was going to ask my interviewees, allowing them time to plan before hand what they were going to say, making filming much more effective and quicker.
 Looking forward towards my coursework mini documentary, there are several aspects of my preliminary task that I will need to learn and improve on. For example when watching my interview shots I later noticed that there was too much dead space around the interviewee, which made them appear out of proportion within their surroundings. However I was pleased with the angels from they were filmed and I felt as though despite this the framing of the shots were still successful. Another improvement I would make would be to ensure that I am using reliable people within my documentary, as I found it difficult to gain the time I required to film the head girl as she was often busy with her own work commitments. Moreover I had underestimated how long my interviewees would speak for in answer to each question, thus will need to offer more direction as to the points that I wish for them to require and be clearer about how long they will be allowed to discuss each one. This was something that wasted time during my filming and also meant that when repeating shots their answers would vary, as due to being left to consider their dialogue without direction, this had not been carefully planned and what they were saying did tend to vary somewhat.