Documentary Pitching
For this unit we had the task of forming an idea for a Portrait Documentary, which would result in a 5 minute interview and a unique perspective on an interesting person of our choice.
For this we first had to understand a bit more about portrait documentaries so we actively watched many different pieces as a class looking for all the specific shots and typical facets of the genre such as b-roll and interviews and it was interesting to see the ways that different qualities of a Doc such as the editing, stories told, shot choices, audio and likeability of the subject or at least a sense of intrigue that can make these pieces that much more engaging.
We then picked three shorts of our choice to watch individually and analysed them in order to form our own ideas and opinions.
Now we had all done some research on the subject we began thinking of at least two possible candidates to shoot and developed a realistic idea for what it would actually be or say that would make it interesting for people, i mind mapped these ideas to get a simple display of ideas for me to build off of and think about.
Mind-map for my two initial ideas:
01
Idea 1
My main idea that I'm going with at the moment is a portrait of my Gender Fluid Circus friend Luka Misina where I will show his circus performing, bold style, and quirky personality whilst having a conversation about his identity and approach to life
02
Idea 2
My second idea is to do a portrait of my Guitar teacher who i've known since I was about seven where I would ask him about how he got into playing and teaching with the backdrop of the piece being the music school and coffeehouse Music Workshop which provides music scholarships and instruments for those who cant afford them as well as displaying there community events which show how incredibly committed they are to spreading the joy and passion of music to improve communities.
Once I had prepared my ideas I pitched them both to Will to talk about which one would be strongest to go forward with
After my elevator pitch I decided to go forward with planning my first idea and putting together a full presentation for a more extensive pitch. I started by creating a rough draft of my ideas and concepts.
I started by writing a paragraph outlining the project and creating a moodboard to convey the visual aesthetic I was going for
My project will tell the story of my friend Luka, a gender fluid trainee circus performer who I've known for a number of years now. She has a bold and colourful style, a love for nature and sense of adventure which I think will make her an interesting and engaging subject for my documentary. With this documentary I'm intending to convey a message about being yourself and living your life on your own terms which I've always admired her for doing, an example of this would be how he sometimes chooses to walk around barefoot simply because he wants to and finds it fun and never cares one bit what people would think. It will attempt to dive into discussing her gender fluidity and perhaps link that to why we feel the need to take the societal “status quo” so seriously and form a conversation about the simple but different things that can make you happy such as walking barefoot, etc and being wholly yourself at all costs because after all, Why wouldn't you?
The documentary will likely mix interviews of Luka with footage of him performing his impressive stunts and some B-roll of him exploring nature. I intend to show it online through youtube and I think the target audience could gain some inspiration from it to be themselves and do the things that make them happy even if it makes them seem quirky.
I also spent some time planning and bullet pointing the important things about Luka as well as the style and message of the documentary..
I then turned my ideas into a google slides presentation that fully Pitched the documentary
And spoke this pitch to Will!
Then once the unit was done I evaluated.