Documentary Unit: Ideas Lab

Today, Danny and I started to think more about some ideas we had researched and see if they were viable.
My idea was to have our hero be a female footballer player called Casey Stoney. Casey plays for Arsenal Ladies and is Captain of England Women's team. Recently she announced that she was gay making history as the only high profile active footballer in the country to do so. I felt this was a very courageous act and especially as in football many issues such as racism are all but eradicated from the game in the UK but homophobia is still a big issue.
Danny also mentioned about his own experience of going to football matches and hearing homophobic chants in particular against Brighton & Hove Albion FC. His main concern with this idea was getting Casey to agree to an interview and how much access we would be able to have in terms of filming her playing football and her life outside of football. I decided to ring her agent and see what she had to say. The conversation was really positive and she said it would be fairly likely that Casey would be interested dependent on her availability but she would run the idea past her and get back to us ASAP. We then thought we should speak to a charity such as Stonewall to see about getting an interview with them as it is important for us to have others speak on the impact this will have had. I spoke to Stonewall on the phone and they only have 2 media representatives for 3 countries but they are hopeful that we could interview someone if the schedule is right. We are also going to email a few other gay rights charities just incase it falls through with them. Another issue we may have is finding a young person who feels strongly about Casey's story and the effect this has had on them. Andre mentioned he has some friends who play for Gillingham Ladies FC and that he could put us in contact with them as he thinks they would be interested in speaking about the story. Hopefully with the right research and if all things go well this could turn into a good starting point for the documentary.

Danny came up with the idea from our time on Top Dog, where he worked as a runner for the Dog Trainer Roy. We all love dogs and he has a good relationship with Roy. He thought it would be interesting if the hero was a dog, as their are plenty of dogs that help people as we saw through our time on the show. The main idea was that we could speak to Roy and a few charities about finding some people who have dogs. The arc of the story could be following 2 people one who already has a dog and one on the run up to the first time they get their dog. It may prove a challenge to find these people but we are willing to put the research in and find them.

When we discussed our ideas with the class and Helen we had really good feedback and everyone seemed interested to hear about them which is a good sign as our classmates are the key age range for the audience of BBC Three. Helen said our only issue would be access to Casey and making sure the programme was not solely about interviews and with the dog idea it would be finding the right people to make the show a success. We know from experience that Roy is perfect for our show as he has a fantastic personality and thanks to Danny's friendship with him we are very hopeful of being able to have him on board with that idea.

Without Chris being at the Idea's lab it is difficult to pick one idea outright as he may have a good idea of his own but at the moment we are really pleased to have found 2 equally strong ideas that both will work well for the BBC Three channel.

I think i will now start to research more about BBC Three as a channel and the time slots our shows would fit into.

Stay safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: Pride of Britain Awards

One of the first things i thought about when i saw the word hero was the Pride of Britain Awards and wanted to do a little bit more research into it as all i really knew was it gave awards for unsung heroes.

Here is some information from their website:

Pride of Britain Awards director Peter Willis, who founded the awards in 1999, explains what they are all about...

Q: What makes Pride of Britain so special?

Pride of Britain celebrates the achievements of truly remarkable people who make our world a better place. It's the biggest national event of its kind in the UK.

Hosted by Carol Vorderman, our Awards attract an audience of around seven million viewers every year in a primetime slot on the ITV1 network in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - making it the highest rated awards show of its kind on British television.

It also receives huge coverage on Daybreak, the ITV1 network, the national press, national and regional radio and national magazines.

Many of the biggest names in showbusiness, sport and politics attend the glittering annual ceremony at the London Television Centre.

Among those who have taken part are HRH Prince Charles, Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Victoria and David Beckham, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Sir Paul McCartney, Bono, President Bill Clinton, Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Richard Branson, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams.

However, the stars are never there to receive the accolades - but to present them to real-life heroes whose inspiring stories are brought to life with powerful "reconstruction" films.

Pride of Britain has been described as the most uplifting awards ceremony of the year. And that's how we want it to stay.

Q: Who are the Pride of Britain winners?

Our winners come from all walks of life and from all age groups, but they have one thing in common - they inspire others...

Whatever the danger, they brave it. They care for others more than themselves. And whatever the odds they beat them. They say they are ordinary people, but their extraordinary acts show they don't know the meaning of the word.

Categories range from courageous children and adults to inspiring members of the emergency services, teachers and carers or careworkers who have gone above and beyond the call of duty.

Winners of our Lifetime Achievement Award have included truly exceptional Brits such as Peter Benenson, who started Amnesty International, Chad Varah, who founded the Samaritans, Sir Alec Jefferies, who pioneered genetic fingerprinting, and Robert Winton, who saved many Jewish children from the Holocaust.

You can read their stories as well as about all our other remarkable winners in the winners section of this website.

Q: How are the Pride of Britain winners found?

Every year our team of full-time researchers spends months reading through more than 20,000 stories to draw up the shortlist.

Many nominations come in from members of the public in response to appeals in national and regional press and magazines, on Daybreak, ITV, ITV regions and on 60 million lottery tickets. You can pick up a nominations form, fill it in and post it in the Pride of Britain box at your Bank, Travel or Pharmacy branch anywhere in the UK.

Nominations are received by post, email and through this website. You are welcome to nominate someone you feel deserves recognition on this website right now.

We also receive nominations from the UK's emergency services and hundreds of charities and voluntary organisations. In addition, our research team scan newspaper and magazine libraries for nominees.

Q: So who decides who wins?

The majority of the award winners are decided by our national judging panel from a shortlist of contenders. This committee includes celebrated figures in national life, as well as eminent experts in the fields of medicine and teaching, a representative of the emergency services, and a former Pride of Britain winner.

Our judges have included IVF pioneer Lord Robert Winston, Dame Kelly Holmes, Sir Richard Branson, author Sarah Brown and Britain's top policeman, Met Commisioner Sir Ian Blair. For more details on national judging panels,click on Judges, above.

A number of the awards are not decided by the national judging panel. These are the exceptions:

The Prince's Trust Young Achiever of The Year Award is selected by the Trust's own judging panel, which is chaired by the Trust's Chief Executive Martina Milburn and includes a Pride of Britain representative.

The award for Most Inspiring Public Figure is decided by Daily Mirror readers.

Q: When did the Pride of Britain awards begin?

Launched by the Daily Mirror, the very first Pride of Britain Awards was held at the Dorchester Hotel in London's Park Lane in May 1999. It was hosted, as it has been every year since, by the incomparable Carol Vorderman.

The idea took off immediately. The winners included Donna Marie McGillion who had narrowly survived the Omagh bomb a year earlier. And among the guests were Tony Blair, who had only been Prime Minister for two years, Sir Paul McCartney, Victoria Beckham, and Queen Noor of Jordan.

ITV decided to screen the event from the following year, 2000. It exceeded all expectations, attracting10 million viewers.

HRH Prince Charles launched the Prince's Trust Young Achiever of The Year category at Pride of Britain 2001 and has kindly supported and been involved with our Awards every year since.

I feel i now know a lot more about the awards and also how they go about finding heroes which i will also look into. I like the idea of finding an unsung hero but as i am not from the area is may prove difficult to find someone.

Stay Safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: Research

When looking at the title 'my hero' my initial thought was "what does that mean to me?"
For me my hero is my dad but i felt that this wasn't a story i wanted to explore. I decided to research the word and see how the oxford dictionary defines the word hero:

A person, typically a man, who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.

Wikipedia:

A hero or heroine  refers to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some greater good of all humanity. This definition originally referred to martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.

Stories of heroism may serve as moral examples. In classical antiquity, cults that venerated deified heroes such as Heracles,Perseus, and Achilles played an important role in Ancient Greek religion. Politicians, ancient and modern, have employed hero worship for their own apotheosis (i.e., cult of personality). Stories of the anti-hero also play a major role in Greek mythology and much of literature. The anti-hero is a protagonist whose qualities are the last expected from a person in certain situations; an anti-hero often lacks the typical characteristics of heroism, such as nobility, bravery, and fortitude. The favorite type of anti-hero is a characterless individual.

The words that struck me from this research were courage and bravery. A hero often will put themselves on the line for a higher purpose. They may not feel brave or courageous but their actions show otherwise.

Many people associate hero's with super hero's often depicted in comics and films. I think as much as that is entertaining it is not relatable to many people. 

Most people view hero's to be service men and woman in careers such as the Armed Forces, Firefighters, Doctors, Nurses, Paramedics, Police officers, The Coastguard... e.t.c 

Below is a link to an interesting article i found on what is means to be a hero:

http://raproject.org/blog/entry/what-really-is-a-hero-anyway

Stay safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: Team Roles

As a group we looked at all our strengths as weaknesses to decide who should take on which role for this project.
Danny is a great leader, he gets on well with everyone at uni, knows exactly what he wants in terms of shots e.t.c, he isn't afraid to tell people what to do and is incredibly hard working. He admitted himself he isn't the most technical when it comes to camera's but that is something he is working on and improving on as he said he'd never even held a camera like these before he came to uni.

Chris is a technical genius. Cameras, FCP, After effects, Photoshop - he knows his stuff. He is incredibly patient and always has time to help people in the class and is also super hard working. He says his main weakness is working with outside people such as composers as he is used to working from things he was created or for example already has a chosen track in his head to edit to.

My strengths are my writing, i have a really good memory, and that I'm organised. I make plans for every event because I'm always thinking what if it goes wrong (probably because I'm a fairly negative person and hyper critical about my work). My weaknesses are that i get super stressed fairly quickly, i can be quite bossy, i tend to turn everything i make into something funny because it's a default setting for me and that i am super critical.

After looking at each of these points it was clear to see what roles we should take:

Danny Hewitt - Director, Executive Producer, Assistant Editor
Helen Welsh - Producer, Assistant Director, Assistant Editor
Chris Sarmiento - Editor, Assistant Director, Executive Producer

We will all pitch in with filming, cinematography and devising the plot.

In the past i have always said i do not want to be a producer so we will see how this works out as i may find that i actually really enjoy it or am good at it.

Stay safe,

Helen

Documentary Unit: The Brief

Today we were given the brief for the Documentary unit. I had already spoken to Danny & Chris about working as a group if the opportunity ever came up as on Chris's shoot for Directing we all worked well together. As this unit is group based we started thinking about the brief and what ideas could work well for all of us.

The brief gave us 2 options to look into:

• Canterbury Catherdral
• 'My Hero' - Stories of Heroism.

Immediately we were drawn to the hero theme as it gave us more creative freedom. We are all really into our football and felt that it would be good to find something to do with this that could work well for the hero topic. We decided to each go away and do a little bit of research around the hero topic and see if we could come up with anything relevant or a new interesting idea.

So now I'm off to Research!

Stay safe,

Helen

Direction's unit: DVD Cover

Here is the DVD cover i made for the film. I am over the moon because this was my first time using photoshop and i taught myself how to use it thanks to the help of youtube videos.

Stay safe,

Helen

Directions unit: A Journey Through Love

Here is my Final version of the short film 'A Journey Through Love'.




Stay safe,

Helen