Documentary Unit: Ability Dogs Response

Today i received a phone call from Carol Court, Founder of Ability Dogs for Young People. The conversation was really positive and she has said that her charity would love to be involved in the documentary which is great. She discussed with me some filming opportunities on the phone and i noted these down and told her i would email her with an outline of our intentions for filming after discussing with the team.

Some of the ideas that she put forward to me were:

Christina & Georgie in training

On the week of the 7th of April, the Charities first sponsor dog - Georgie will be going to live with Christina, a young girl who suffers from Cerebral Palsy. We could film this and learn more about Christina and Georgie.

Puppy Training classes - The Charities Puppies are trained once a week on a Wednesday and we would have full access to filming opportunities here. We could also film some of the puppies performing their newly learnt tricks such as taking washing out of the machine.

There are 2 young guys who will receive their dogs in November she will speak to them about potential interviews. We could also film the dogs that will be going to them.

After talking with the Danny & Chris, the only issue is making sure we are able to travel to the Isle of Wight on a budget. I will be looking into this in more detail but we are all committed to this idea should all the filming opportunities be granted as it is looking at being a great story for our documentary so are willing to spend some money on travel & accommodation.

Stay safe,

Helen Welsh

Documentary Unit: Dog research

I decided to do some research so as to answer the question why this story?

Part of that answer relates to why have you chosen your hero to be a dog?

When discussing idea's we ket coming back to the topic of something a bit different. We thought the majority of people would choose a Male hero and thought having a female hero could possibly work as a USP but then Danny mentioned Top Dog and the stories we heard of dogs who worked to rescue people from avalanches and dogs who carried insulin to their owners to prevent a diabetic attack. This would be something different.
We also thought dogs are fairly popular in the UK and would appeal to a mass market - people of all ages and genders would enjoy this.

I decided to look at some statistics about dogs in the UK.

Below is a  list of the Top Ten Pets for 2013 (based on running totals over two years) 

1. Fish kept in tanks: 20 - 25 million (9% of households) 
2. Fish kept in ponds: 20 - 25 million (6% of households) 
3. Dogs: 8.5 million (25% of households) 
4. Cats: 8.5 million (19% of households) 
5. Rabbits: 1 million (3% of households)
6. Caged birds: 1 million (1.9% of households) 
7. Domestic fowl: 1 million (0.9% of households) 
8. Guinea Pigs: Half a million (0.6% of households) 
9. Hamsters: Half a million (1.5% of households) 
10. Horses and ponies: 400,000 (1.1% of households)
 - See more at: http://www.pfma.org.uk/pet-population/#sthash.e7FUgqc4.dpuf

Top Dog breeds among Men & Women:

Top Dog Breeds among Women

1. Labrador

2. German Shepherd 

3. Golden Retriever

4. Pit bull Terrier

5. Chihuahua

Top Dog Breeds among Men

1. German Shepherd
2. Pit Bull Terrier.
3. Labrador Retriever.
4. Rottweiler.
5. Great Dane.

http://shibashake.com/dog/top-men-and-top-women-dog-breeds

I also read an interesting article about 'Man's Best Friend' - Women Twice as Likely to have a dog than men. 

Here is the link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/pets/9700894/Britains-dogs-twice-as-likely-to-have-a-woman-owner-than-a-male-one.html

Stay Safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: Roy Dyer Email Response

Roy has emailed back confirming that he is available for us to interview. He also mentioned about us using his Cynophobia Dogs as a possible angle for filming which will give us a good back up plan if things with the isle of wight don't work out or prove to be to expensive. 

Here is his response:

This was Danny's Reply:

Now to wait for his response.

Stay Safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: It's Me or the Dog Research

It's Me or the Dog is a popular tv show in the UK and America about badly behaved dogs.

"Dog behaviour expert Victoria Stilwell calls upon all her canine training skills to bring the country's most mischievous mutts and headstrong hounds to heel" - from Channel Website

Format:

Most episodes begin with a brief interview with the dog owners on when they first met their dog(s) and how their ordeals began. Victoria observes the dog and owners in their home and in a range of situations. Once there's sufficient evidence of the bad behavior, she then spends two or more days teaching the owners how to create a better atmosphere for both dog and owner, and how to train specific behaviors. On occasion owners are taken to shelters or training centers to provide them with additional information. Victoria then leaves them to implement her training regimen on their own. After some time (usually several weeks), Victoria returns to evaluate how the dog and owner are progressing, and, when necessary, dispenses more training advice. This format mirrors the format of Super Nanny.

US Season 3, filmed in New York, took a looser documentary format. Stilwell sometimes implements a technique as soon as she sees a behavior rather than waiting until after the Confrontation.

Here is an episode from the show that also includes go pro type shots and has a similar opening to what we are thinking of for our documentary with the sound effect.



This research has been interesting to see how dog shows work at the moment and has given us some good ideas for shots.

Stay safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: Contacting Charities

I initially contacted Ability Dogs through email as their was no phone numbers on their website. Here is the email:

I contacted Medical Detection Dogs by phone and was told that they will get back to me on Monday if they can commit to the project.

I will now wait for their responses.

Stay safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: Pitch Research

Today we had a group meeting to contact our potential characters, come up with a pitch and a title.
We decided the best way to do this was to look at relevant programs & ones that were on at the moment and see what their TV guide pitch was.

Sport Relief's Top Dog -

Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs -

Catfish: The Tv Show -

Life and Death Row -

Looking at these synopsis's really helped and we decided to make a list of relevant and important words to help come up with out pitch. They included:

Life-threatening conditions
talents
dogs
special
heartwarming
puppies
trained
ability dogs
medical dogs
life savers
debilitating
Charity
dog loads washing machine

These key words helped us to come up with our 25 word pitch:

A documentary about Ability Dogs and their incredible talents.  We follow people with debilitating conditions as they tell their heartwarming stories about their special dogs.

We then decided to try and come up with a working title for our documentary. Danny was the best at this and easily came up with plenty for us to choose from including:

Hero Hounds

Puppy Power

Mighty Mutts

Courageous Canines

My Hero: Doggie Style

We wanted something punchy and that would appeal to a wide audience. The last title is definitely more tongue in cheek and although it would suit the BBC3 market, it could put people off by thinking it is about something else.

We all agreed that Hero Hounds is the best working title for the moment and will see if anything else comes up during filming that could work.

We decided to split our pitch presentation into 3 key parts so we each could go away and research our own parts before bringing it together to edit and apply the finishing touches.

• Danny will talk in more detail about our title and the work of Roy Dyer, his training centre and his Cynophobia dogs.
• Chris will talk about how the dogs are trained and how they help individuals.
• I will talk about the charities and the bbc3 timeslot research. 

We felt doing this would not only work well for our pitch and help us to deliver something that would flow better. The aim is to not have to have notes so that we can speak directly to the panel as if it was a chat with friends and hopefully at the same time deliver a professional pitch.

Stay safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: Contacting Roy Dyer

As Danny worked with Roy Dyer on Top Dog we decided to ask him if he would like to be a part of our documentary as our Expert.

Here is some information about Roy:

Essex Dog Display Team Director Roy Dyer has received an International Lifetime Achievement Award for his work within the canine world and in 2008 was invited by Her Majesty the Queen to Buckingham Palace for recognition of his charity and community work.

Here is a link to an interview with him:

http://passionforfreshideas.com/audio/fe-30208-roy-dyre-rescue-dogs/

Roy is a Expert in dog training and also runs a free class for people with Cynophobia - The fear of dogs. The class is thought to be the only one of its kind in Europe and boasts a success rate of 98 per cent in helping children feel more comfortable around dogs. 

After leaving him a voicemail, he rang back later in the day saying he is more than happy for us to interview him and to email him over all the details and we can arrange a day that suits us all.

Here is the email Danny sent: 

Stay safe,

Helen