My role in our production group is director. As director it is my duty to work closely with Naomi, our producer, to ensure that our idea is successfully transferred from paper to screen, making sure we stick to the genre, style, and modes we have outlined as a group.

At the conception of our group, we began to think of a production name. We found it very difficult because so many we thought of had already been taken. A few of our initial ideas were Red Square Productions and Unknown Productions. However, Red Square was taken and we ultimately decided Unknown sounded like we had not bothered to come up with a proper name. After intensive discussion we decided upon High Violet Productions, which we were all happy with as a group. We began designing the website, looking a different layouts and deciding on one we thought was aesthetically pleasing. However, we later realised when we came to creating the logo that the layout we had chosen did not support embedding an image into the header. We considered changing the layout to support this, but once the logo was in place in the middle of the page we were happy with the look. At the time of choosing a layout, more thought should have been put into looking at what each layout supported.

Soon after the formation of the group we had many meetings where we would brainstorm ideas. It took us a long time to decide on an idea we were all happy with. I as a director should have pushed harder at the beginning for a solid idea with contacts as we ran into a lot of problems later in pre-production. Taxidermy was the idea we were rolling with for many weeks. Harry did a lot of research into this and we had a few contacts. However, it soon became clear that to make even a fifteen minute documentary would be a struggle. The idea was axed and we were left once again brainstorming ideas. Naomi came up with the idea of doing a documentary about toilets. As odd as it sounds, we rolled with the idea. We were to juxtapose some of the cleanest toilets with some of the most dirty, unhygienic ones, and follow a toilet/hotel inspector as they travelled around these places. We researched into weird and whacky toilets, and found a book that included many pictures. We contacted the publisher to see if we could get a primary for our idea, but the replies were vague and it wasn’t looking good. As director, I struggled to see how the documentary would flow, and even to point of the documentary. What would the audience gain? After no primary, and no clear idea of how the documentary would work, we dropped it. This didn’t happen till very late in our schedule and we were struggling for another idea. As I said earlier, I feel as producer I should have pushed for a solid idea earlier. This is something that I feel may really affect our documentary.

After hours of struggling for another idea, we came up with Speed Dating. I immediately looked back upon the research I had done on the genres and modes of documentary. It quickly became clear that our documentary would be observational and participatory. Observational because we would be following someone as they went thought the speed dating process, and participatory because some of my group members were keen to get evolved by taking part in finding a date for themselves though speed dating. During further research we looked into where you can go speed dating. Though it is still widely available, online dating has taken a lot of the audience that would have, before the Internet became a household norm, gone speed dating. This gave me the idea of including within the documentary a comparison between the two services, to show our audience how they differ. This is where the participatory mode would come in; presenters would try out both services and review them.

I looked back at some of the photojournalists I had previously looked at to try and gain further inspiration for our production. I looked at the work of Antonin Kratochvil, because of the attention to detail he has to his photographs. He also uses differing angles, which can sometimes be very obscure and uncomfortable for the audience. As director, I hope to work closely with Alex, the D.O.P, to capture some shots of a similar nature. I feel within speed dating there is a lot of discomfort, and hope to portray some of this to our audience though the use of these obscure angles and inspiration gained from Kratochvil. For the participatory side of our documentary I looked at existing documentaries by Nick Broomfield. I looked at Juvenile Liaison, and Biggie and Tupac to see how he uses the participatory mode. I felt that his use could sometimes be too intrusive, and that though it worked for his documentaries, specifically Biggie and Tupac, within ours it would not. I hope to direct our participants in a way that our audience will feel comfortable watching and trusting them.

Once we were set on our idea we were to create a promotional trailer and pitch the documentary. I was evolved in looking into existing Mediastorm trailers and coming up with an idea for our own, as well as other promotional material. Our trailer was to take the form of a short quirky comedic teaser. I hope to get permission to use music of a Bossa Nova style to play over short cut clips of people answering questions of a speed dating nature. We feel this will not give too much away about our documentary, but at the same time entice people into watching it. As well as a Wicks website to promote our film, we plan to create short webisodes where the audience decide a specific rout they take each week. The viewer would take one side of the speed date, and each week decides whether to peruse a date or move one. We would hope to include quirky twists, and make the process humorous.

I undertook many roles in the pre-production stages, including research into ideas, planning, and promotion. I feel, generally, that I have performed well. However, the way in which we planned and made decisions could have been dramatically improved. This I feel was the biggest downfall of our pre-production. When we made decisions, we failed to fully consider their implications and how achievable they were. We did not truly research and plan each idea, so when it came to preparing the pitch we got stuck on simply outlining the project. With this in mind I confess that for future productions I would definitely endeavour to carry out more thorough research and ensure that everything was planned out fully. With this aside, I feel that once we had come up with a solid, which we had researched and planned, we ticked and everything began to flow and fit into place. It the initial struggle that set our group off on the wrong foot.