The documentary will follow two students - one from the Rugby Academy and one from the Performing Arts Academy - as they swap academies for a lesson. The rugby student will take a dance class while the drama student participates in circuit training. Filming will be done in an observational style to capture natural reactions. The purpose is to both inform viewers about the different demands of each academy and entertain them with the comedic fish-out-of-water scenario of students experiencing an unfamiliar discipline. The target audience is 11-18 year olds at Ravens Wood School who will be able to relate to the locations and subjects of the documentary.
1. B E N D A V I S & L A UR E N C E H I S E E .
FINAL PROPOSAL
2. CONCEPT
Our documentary will be filmed In the style Observational, we will be mainly
following the participants around, rather than getting involved in the
activities they are going to do. However we will still interview them, asking
about their progress. We will be using both archive footage and our own
that we will be capturing for the sole purpose of the documentary. The
storyline for the idea as a whole is the process of swapping two students, one
from the Rugby Academy and the other from the Performing Arts Academy.
These are two academies known throughout the school to be very different.
For one lesson they will be doing the opposite of what they would normally
be doing, so the Rugby Student will be dancing, and the Drama student will
be doing circuit training. We will be filming the process of this, making sure
that we get a balanced amount of footage that shows the strength and
weaknesses of the students. In the interviews we will be asking questions like
“What do you think you will be doing in the session” bearing in mind that
they have no idea what they will be doing in either session. This will give a
natural reaction, rather than one that has been forced. All of the footage
we hope to capture will be 100% real and none of it set up for the benefit of
the documentary, this is to ensure the realistic nature of the documentary.
3. PURPOSE
The purpose of this documentary is to show the difference in
academies, and how two students, one from each academy, react
and work in a very alien environment. We also want to inform the
audience about how the two academies have different impacts on
the students, because even though they are both challenging, the
circuit training for rugby is going to be slightly more difficult than the
dance session, so we want the audience to see how the drama
student will react in a situation like that. Another part is that we want
it to be comedic, to make the audience laugh, we feel that if we
portray it in a comical way it will be even more relatable, however
we don’t want it to come across like a joke so we will ensure there is
a constant serious underlying theme, this is to make people actually
care about what is happening on screen. So as a whole we want
the purpose of this documentary to both inform and entertain the
audience.
4. NOTABLE CONTENT
• The documentary will be roughly 6 minutes long, with 2 and a half
minutes in total of interview time and the rest being general footage of
the two students in their respective sessions.
• The location of which we will be filming is Ravens Wood School, and
within that several different rooms. For the expositional shots we will be
using the locations of the 3G football pitch and the Drama Studio, these
fit the theme of the documentary and they really set the scene well. We
will be using the Dance studio for the dance session itself, and then the
sports hall for the circuit training session, these will be good because they
are the natural locations of these activities. The interview locations will be
the Gym, this is where we will interview the rugby student, and then the
drama changing room, this is where we will interview the drama student.
• The two students we have chosen are Sami Shaffian – Drama student.
And Harry Holland – Rugby Student. These two students fit the criteria very
well, and are very different in both physique and personalities.
• We will be using the Canon Legria HFG30 HD to shoot the footage, this is
due to the fact that it is an easy to use and very high quality camera,
with very good zooming qualities.
5. TARGET AUDIENCE
• The style of documentary we are going for is Observational,
this is very good for the target audience we are going for
because it gets them more involved, as if they are in the
documentary itself.
• The specific age group we are trying to entertain mainly is 11-
18 year olds from Ravens Wood School, the age range of the
school itself, we feel that this is an appropriate age range
because those that are in that age that go to RWS will be able
to relate to it much more than those who don’t go to the
school, this is because they know the locations and in some
cases they know the people.