The Plane Crash Documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm68PK8GCuk

You can watch the full documentary here:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-plane-crash/4od

The plane crash was a one hour twelve minute documentary following  a crew of scientists, pilots and air crash investigators who plan to fill a Boeing 727 full of cameras and crash test equipment and crash it into the desert. 

The test took 4 years to plan and develop in order to get permission to crash the plane. There has never been a test like this in the world that has so much scientific apparatus on board the plane including slow mo cameras to see what happens inside the plane when it collides with the earth. 

The documentary has large amounts of scripted elements to reconstruct what was not possible on the day to shoot. It also had a wide mixture of sit down interviews and actuality shots and interviews.  The documentary also has a large amount of graphics, them being text and also moving computer animated simulations of the crash itself. Is shows archived footage of airplane crashes and has interviews with some of the crash survivors.

This documentary would have come across a lot of boundaries for example they had a permit that only lasted till a certain date and if they went over that date then the experiment and the production would not have been able to carry on. As well as risk of death, the pilots had to parachute out of the plane not long before the impact. The plane could have lost control and created an explosion or ended up in a populated area. 


This was a bold and risk taking documentary but it work out brilliant in the end and completely worth the money that was spend on it, as it has helped manufacturers of aircrafts see their build flaws and to show them what they could do to help reduce any more air crashes in the future.

Documentary Unit: Development

I originally planned on traveling to Cornwall to get an interview with the staff in the witchcraft museum but after I contacted them I found out they are not open from the start of November. This segment was going to be about the history of witchcraft and how it is not what people still today think it is.

With this out of the question I began to think of what could I have in their instead. I asked Sal the witch who I am basing my documentary on, if it would be possible to film one of her classes that she does every month or so to show what she is doing to help the community and to show people the real meaning of witchcraft, but she quickly turned me down as he clients would not like to be shown on camera as a lot of them still do not want people to know that they have an interest in witchcraft as it can effect their jobs etc. I respected her wishes.

Now I am stuck on what I can use to fill out the documentary. I plan on doing some reenactments not of Sal's life but just of witchcraft things in general such as rituals, spells etc but this will not be enough. The only other thing I can think off is maybe I talk about the difference between witchcraft and Wicca. Wicca is a pagan religion that also incorporates witchcraft into its believes, and witchcraft is doing spells, raising energy etc but you do not need to be wiccan to be a witch.

I have also been watching a lot of documentaries online about witchcraft including Hexon from the 1920s. Most of these documentaries focus on the stereotype of witches or only talk about the burning times of Europe and the Salem witch trials. With this research this shows that the direction I al taking my documentary in is unique and has never been done before.

Documentary Unit: Contact

Today I contacted the woman I know in town who is a Witch, and thankfully she has agreed to allow me to do the documentary about her and her life. This is great news as she would have been the hardest person to have found and the face that she is so up for the project is great and she has given me the full go ahead.

I have also contacted the witchcraft museum in Cornwall to discuss if I could film some of the artefacts that they have in their wonderful museum and also if I can get an interview with one of the knowledgeable staff they have working their. I am just waiting to hear back from them on what they think about the project and to see if they are going to give me the permission to film some shots there.

Documentary Unit: First thoughts

Today we had our first lecture on our documentary unit. We were given our briefs and our theme for the doc. which is "The day that changed my life". I think this unit is going to be amazing! I already have 2 ideas which I am very happy and excited about and I brain stormed these today in my group with Lizzie Sam and Gemma.
My first 2 ideas are:

Idea 1: The paranormal, I want to try and find someone who has been effected by the paranormal which has changed the way they see life, death religion and what it has changed in their everyday life. So I began to look up some haunted places in the Kent area and to try and see if I could find and names of people who these storys are about to see if it would be possible to contact them and to hear from them what happened. But this became a lot harder than originally thought, on the first bit of research we did not come up with anything really to give us a lead on who and what story to go ahead with.

Which brings me to,

Idea 2: Witchcraft. I know a lady who is a with that lives in a small village in kent where she runs a pagan/witchcraft shop. My idea was to find out how she became a witch, what in her life made her decide this was the route she wanted to take. while also going into the history of witchcraft and what people think it is and what it actually is.

When I presented these ideas the one that got the most conversation was the witchcraft idea. So I am going to do a bit of research into it and see if there are the beginnings of a documentary in their.

Watch this space.

Seven Minutes New updated Poster

Here is the new updated poster for Seven Minutes. Enjoy

Direction Unit: Stills

Here are a couple of stills from my episode. Enjoy!

 

Direction Unit: Editing

I shot my 3 minute episode on wednesday afternoon, everything went really well despite people coming out to trim the hedges half way through one of my scenes and my actors falling into dog poo. I have been editing my footage for the last 2/3 days and I am pretty much finished I am just waiting for us all to decide what font to use for the credits and dot the finished intro to come through. I think my edit has exceeded my expectations but there are still a couple of things I dont like about it. For one I could not think of a better way to show the effects of them on the drugs, and the Episode NEEDS music but I cant make my own to fit it. So no music for me :/
Other than that I believe I have stuck to the brief and done what was asked. It may not be the high standard I usually put on myself but it is close enough for missing the first 2 weeks into the unit.