Levi Roots Contd...

My mother soon after informed me that Levi will infact be able to be filmed for our documentary, sometime in october. They said that they would let us know of a specific date and time for the filming, nearer the time. This worked out well for us as it would allow us plenty of time to storyboard, create a script, rehearse and prepare ourselves for the actual event.

The video of levi's pitch at the Dragons Den' in 2006 can be found below...

Levi Roots

Whilst trying to think of more topics to base our documentary on, an idea suddenly came to us. We thought to create a documentary about the rise to fame of the chef, musician and songwriter, Levi Roots. He had made his fame and fortune after appearing on the BBC show "Dragons' Den" and receiving the investment he had asked for. He sells his sauce, entitled, "Reggae Reggae Sauce" in major supermarkets and had become a multi-millionaire almost overnight. We thought to produce a documentary about how he came from "rags to riches" was a brilliant topic. This is because it is very interesting and engaging for the audience and would appeal to a wide range of people of a varied demographic.

My mother knows the PR of Levi Roots and had spoken to her on my behalf. Whether Levi is able to be filmed is yet to be confirmed.

Ideas and Topics for our Own Documentary...

As we will have to start to think about our own short documentary, i needed to come up with various topics of which the documentary will be based on. In my group there are only two of us, and although this means that there will be a larger workload between us, there will be less error with regards to communication that can be found with larger groups. I had met up with my group member (Lauren) after school, to discuss some of the topics that would be interesting for our documentary, some of the ideas we came up with are as follows...

• A short mockumentary, viewing the lives of abnormal people


• Drugs in sport


• The effect of video games, related to violence


• To what extent does the media have an impact on our body image


• Fashion - then and now


• Global Warming


• Economic Crisis


• Recent Topics. e.g. recent wars, swine flu.


• Technology, then and now

Researching Documentaries - Expository Documentaries

There are many expository documentaries, many of which have arrived during recent years. As mentioned earlier, during my first post, the purpose of expository documentaries is to "expose" the subject. This involves many interviews and undercover footage to use to expose the subject with. There are many expository documentaries which are broadcasted on terrestrial television, and the storyline tends to be very serious (hard-news) as compared to something of a more story-like manner (soft news). The two main terrestrial television channels which broadcast expository documentaries are, Channel 4 and Channel 5.


One of the Channel 4 documentaries include a series known as "Dispatches". This series looks at exposing rather contreversial issues and range from a wide selection of topics. Some of the episodes include...

• Dispatches - Undercover Mosque



• Dispatches - China's Stolen Children



• Dispatches - Saving Africas Witch Children



• Dispatches - How The MoD Wastes Our Billions

The undercover mosque dispatches raised many complaints towards the program being broadcasted. There were allogations that the footage shown was very one sided and bias. A lawyer complained "they cut and cropped sentences to make new sentences", meaning the footage was edited and as a result of it was taken completely out of context.



There are other expository documentaries broadcasted by channel four. An example would be "Chickens, Hugh and Tesco Too" which was a documentary exposing the condition of the chickens supplied by tesco, in order to try and make them change their way.

Researching Documentaries - Poetic Documentaries

As I had mentioned earlier during my first post, a poetic documentary is a style of documentary, in which the topic is portrayed in a "story-like" way. There are many different topics that poetic documentaries focus on that appeal to a varying demographic, over a wide area.


I had created a PowerPoint Presentation about poetic documentaries and had presented it to my class. If you find the pictures to small to read, simply click on them to enlarge...



























One of the poetic documentaries that i had taken the time to watch over my summer break was a Channel Five series, called, Extaordinary People. It is about certain people all accross the world who obtain unique qualities, physically or an extraordinary talent. The shows how the individual lives their everyday life and there is usually a number of interviews with the individual, as well as with the friends friends and family of the person.

An extract from this series can be found below:

The Diamond Nine

In class, we had produced a diamond nine, related to documentaries. A diamond nine is a diamond shaped table which we filled out. We put the most important aspect of creating a documentary at the top and the least at the bottom. I recreated my diamond nine on my computer and here it is below...




















Can't see the image clearly? Click on the picture to view the full size image.

Researching Documentaries - Observational Documentaries

Over the summer break i took the time to watch a few observational documentaries. This genre of documentary is whereby the subject is being observed by the camera, usually with a voiceover emphasising what is going on.














I watched a documentary on The Discovery Channel, called, "How its Made". In this documentary they take everyday objects and have a closer look at how the product was made, from start to finish.

Three clips from this documentary, are shown below...

Techniques Used in these Observational Documentaries:

• Very Sturdy Shots, No handheld cameras
• Voice of God
• Very short clips before the transition of the next clip is inserted
• Panning

This information will be very helpful and beneficial when i make my own documentary.