Evaluation: 'The Balance Of Grief' Documentary

Ideas and concepts


When the part 2 project began, there was little idea as to what the subject matter would be for the documentary or what theme could be explored. However, it was decided early on that the film disciplinary would be the best approach, due to my expertise and skill in this area.


It was decided that before a subject matter could be found, research into what templates of documentaries existed. This would allow the film to either follow the redundant conventions of existing types of documentary or to exist from combination of different types and elements of entropy, to allow the film to be original.

From looking at real world examples of documentary that fit certain moulds, It was found that some abstract elements from poetic documentaries, such as out of focus long takes of nature, could be used to illustrate a certain mood or tone. Expository documentaries were most effective at delivering a large level of information to the audience through a non bias narrator, however this template lacked much of the artistic qualities that made up poetic documentaries and therefore the audience may not be as engaged in what they are seeing. Observational and participatory documentaries brought up the idea of weather the narrator would be involved in the events of the film or not. The end decision of this research task resulted in a early concept that would borrow various conventions from each template. Abstract imagery would be taken from poetic to use over facts and figures on screen, as well as cutaway footage for when the subject on screen is talking for a long period of time. the documentary would have a narrator that at times would be removed from the events in the film, just like in expository, but in some scenes, would be involved in the events, just like in participatory, as this would show a sense or narrative journey for the speaker themselves. This is because the documentary needed to be structured as if it was a story.

After the style of documentary was decided on, the subject matter needed to be considered. The problem that was run into was that the subject matter could not be centered around anything too ambitious, as resources, time and location would restrict what footage could be gathered. Therefore, the subject matter needed to be something close to home, which in itself was a favourable idea because this would allow for the documentary to be a passion project. After much thought, I decided to base the subject matter around the theme of grief. This is due to my personal experience with loosing my father a few years prior.

The subject matter of grief then needed to evolve into an argument or debate of some sorts to allow for an essay structured approach of progression to occur.

Ideas were considered such as the concept of feeling invisible when suffering from grief and documenting the different types of grief. It was decided that focusing on the idea of the positive and negative  effects of grief would work, due to self reflection on how it effects myself.

From this the structure began work on.





Research

I explored into further research along production to use as examples as to how certain segments could have been created.

Another one of Charlie Brooker's documentaries was studied. The main element that was taken from his films is that of the traditional way of editing and cinematography, for example cutaways.

The documentary of Rio Ferdinand's experience with grief helped to develop the structure of the film for this project and it also helped to find the correct one that was needed. This would be a mixture of somberness and serenity.

Materials and processes