Formal Proposal For Documentary

Topic
The topic of our documentary we want to explore is the supernatural focusing in particular about fortune tellers and psychic readings. We wanted to investigate the brief history of fortune telling and different types of fortune telling involved, for example palm readings, tarot cards and tea leaves. We plan to also involve how the media has become a great influence win fortune telling and the money involved giving unbiased opinions about if it is fake and if it is real. Involving our audience we wanted to get opinions and beliefs off them, by asking questions in interviews to show these unbiased opinions we are trying to portray. When including about the media we wanted to include how celebrities scan have a major impact and how people can idolise celebrities who get their fortunes read, read horoscopes and how this can influence people.
Other sub topics we wanted to include Ghosts and haunting and show real life experiences in interviews where people have had contact with the supernatural. We investigated different opinions and beliefs about the supernatural and, the paranormal genre overall.
When choosing our topic we knew we wanted something intriguing and objective, we wanted it to be non bias and appealing towards a large audience. Initially we wanted to explore all areas of supernatural, however, when we looked more in-depth we found our interest leaning towards Psychic readings and fortune telling. This particular area of the supernatural was interesting to us and we have a strong knowledge on each topic. For the content of our documentary we had several sources we knew we could rely on to submit strong and trustworthy advice and answer all of our queries.

The name of our documentary is Fortune in fortune telling.


Type of Documentary
The type of documentary we wanted to carry out was participatory documentary, this will involve the filmmaker (us) getting involved and interacting with the interviewee’s and people featured within the footage, us being involved may alter the results and opinions. We will be interacting and having our own fortunes read and communicate with the fortune teller by asking various questions.

Style of Documentary
The style of our documentary is formal. We feel by having it formal we can include more objective opinions and wanting our audience to have their own opinion on what they believe after the documentary

Channel and research
The channel we have decided for our documentary to be on channel 4. We felt this was a strong channel to show our documentary on because lots of successful documentaries from many genres are shown on channel 4 and have become very popular. We wanted to show our documentary on Thursday at 9 o’clock; this we felt was an appropriate time because we felt our target audience would be available to watch during the week, as many people can be busy on the weekend. Another reason we choose channel 4 is because it has many other options viable if our audience does miss our documentary, for example 4 OD and channel 4 plus one.

Secondary research needed
We needed research on each type of fortune telling, what they’re about, what they do and who does them. We then needed to research the advertising behind fortune tellings and the money to be made from it. We researched authors of at home psychic books and the sales made from them. We found statistics from a website stating the countries beliefs and the amount of encounters have had with something supernatural.

Narrative structureThe narrative structure for our documentary is linear. This is because we wanted our documentary to be chronological and show our journey while exploring the supernatural.
Outline Content
· Intro – We introduce the theme of Supernatural, a voice over narrates the up and coming footage.
· History – We look back on the evolution of Fortune telling and zoom in on focus points IE tarot card and were it originated.
· Tea Leaves – We conducted an interview with a tea leaf reader and she opened up about her process and accuracy.
· Fortunes - How easily people are influenced by media, Sylvia Browne and the business she’s created. How people advertise with images of celebrities to draw in the public.
· How the media has become involved – Advertisements and how easy it is for people to say they are gifted but are fraud.
· The fortune in fortune telling – The money that can be made
· Palm reading – At home palm reading books and how you can predict your own future.
· Tarot Cards – Participate in a tarot card reading and conduct an interview with the reader
· Ghosts – Interview people who have had ghost encounters and their views on the situation.

Resource Requirements
· Camera, microphone tripod
· Interview questions
· Candles and images for mise-en-scene .

Brainstorming

Target audience - 16+
Channel - Channel 4
Time - 9:00pm
Friday Night
Supernatural Documentary - Including ouiji boards, fortune telling, fortune cookies, ghosts, interviews etc...

Target Audience Research

Queistionnaire...

1)      Are you male or female?

         Male    Female

2)      How old are you?

               Under 16?    16 – 20      20-26     26+

3)      Do you like documentaries?

   Yes      No

4)      What is your preferred genre of documentaries?

          Crime?    Nature?   Supernatural?  History?                    Religious? Scientific?

5)      Do you believe in the super natural?

               Yes   no

6)      If so what type are you most interested in?

               Ghosts / Spirits / Haunting / Psychic readings / Fortune Tellings

7)      On a scale of 0 -5 how much do you believe in Psychic readings?

                0  (Not at all)    1          2         3 (Sceptical)      4       5  (A lot)

8)      Have you ever had a supernatural experience?  Or do you know anybody who has?

   Yes   No?

9)      Would you ever go/pay for a fortune telling?

                Yes     No

     11a) Do you know anybody who has been for a fortune telling?
             Yes   No

     11b) If so what was there experience like?

     12) Do you believe fortune tellings are true or made up?
           True?   Made up?

     13) Do you read your horoscope?

           Yes   No

     14) If yes do you believe they’re truthful?

           Yes    No

     15) Have you ever done a Ouija board?

            Yes    No

     16) If yes, did you make any contact with the dead?

     17)  Do you believe in extra terrestrial’s?

            Yes    No

     18) Do you think houses can be haunted?
            Yes      No

     19) Do you believe the theory of Children and animals being able to spot the dead?

            Yes   No

     20) Do you believe in life after death?

            Yes   No

Graphs and results...

The graphs below are showing the results from our target auidience research questionnaire.

Concluding our answers in a bar graph is the easiest way to understand and see the results from our questionnaire as its easy lay out. Firstly we gathered our answers in a tally chart which then we changed it into a bar graph to make our results more easy to read and understand.

Within this question we made sure within our questionnaire that we had asked 15 women and 15 men so our end results of our questionnaire would not be bias and it would be fair.

Because most of questionnaires were given out in college it ended in a result of being mostly 16-20 year olds who had done our questionnaire. However as our target audience was from the age of 16+ it gave us a better view on how to do our documentary as we had all the answers from people of the age 16+.

From this graph you can see that 20 out of the 30 people who did the questionnaire believed in the supernatural. This therefore shows us that most of the target audience would be interested in our documentary and would watch it as it's all to with the supernatural.

This question then gathered the information in which type of supernatural they are most interested in, we chose to do this question as it would help us choose what to put in our documentary. Howvever it also shows from this question that a lot of people we asked did not believe in the different types of supernatural.

We got a different variety of answers from this question in order to see if people believe in psychic readings or if they believe there just a scam and are fake. Very little people who did our questionnaire said '0' which was not believing in psychic  readings at all whilst most of the people we gave our questionnaire to were unsure and went with the asnwer '3'.

We chose to do this question as it's an interesting subject to know about and would be good to do about within our documentary, it shows the close link to the target audience with the supernatural and the experiences they may have had. From this question it shows that just over half of the peole who did our questionnaire hadn't had a supernatural experience whereas just under a half had.

Horoscopes get read a lot as they are put in the back of magazines, on the internet and so on, this question was to show us wether people actually took interest in them and read their own horoscopes even if they don't believe, from this it shows that the majority of the target audience we asked do read their horoscopes.

This question is linked into the question before to see wether people just read their horoscopes for the sake of it or actually believe in what they are reading. 19 out of 30 people do not believe in horoscopes, this shows us that people may only read them through boredom or other things.

From this question you can see half the people say they would pay for a fortune telling and half said they would'nt, some peolple may believe in things such as horoscopes and fortune telling but would'nt waste their money in actually paying for it.











We included this question as we wanted to know wether the target audience know anyone who has been to a fortune teller or if they have been for a fortune telling, this shows us that over half the people who did our questionnaire had payed or knew someone who had payed to have their fortune read.










This was so we could find out what the differnt types of experiences the target audiences may of had.












This was to get different answers on wether the target audience actually believe if fortune tellings are made up or true, as you can see the answers were half and half, as we have a balanced result we can use both sides of an argument of this within our documentary.


We asked this question as we believed ouija boards are an interesting thing to show in a documentary and would be a good idea to include it, as only a few of the people we had asked had done a ouiji board it will make it more interesting within our documentary as not many of the people have done a ouiji board.


We wanted to know from this wether or not ouiji boards are real and not just someone pushing the glass around the table making it look as if their is somthing spirtual that they are contacting,we will never be certain with this as you don't know the truth so this could be slightly bias.



This question helped us with our content and would help us choose what different types of area's to include in our documentary, as it shows not a lot of people believed in extra terrestrails therfore wouldn't be that good of an idea to include within our documentary.








There are always a lot of stories about houses being haunted and it's always interesting to know about, we asked this question as we believe it would be good to include within our documentary to link into the supernatural so we have different things to talk about.









This is a werid question to ask as some people may not of heard about the theory of children and animals spotting the dead. More of the people we had asked believe in this theory so we need to consider in including this within our documentary, this couls also help with the content of the documentary.







We used this question as our finalquestion an it's a yes or no answer and it could be hard for people to answer as they are unsure.














Supernatural interviews...

Here are the interviews we did within college for our target audience research to find out different views and opinions on the supernatural and different kinds of experiences.

Initial Plans

After we decided what topic we were doing our documentary on we needed to write down our initial plans. The topic we decided to do it on was the supernatural which would include things such as physcic readings and fortune tellings including things such as reading palms, tee leaf reading, ouigi boards, horoscopes, supernatural experiences and so on. Within this we will include up to five interviews so we can find out different views and opinions on the supernatural and see if anyone has encountered supernatural experiences and their opinions on physicic readings and fortune tellings. We want to find out wether physcic readings and fortune tellings are accurate or just fake and made up.
As a group we decided that the target audience for our documentary would be 16+ but would also suit the age range 20+, this would give us a wide target audience which would enjoy our documentary. We also decided to show our documentary at 9:00pm every thursday night, we chose this time and day as 9:00pm is an appropriate time to show as children under the age of 16 may already be in bed or have no interest in watching this documentary as it is'nt suited for them, we chose a thursday night as it is through the week and not the weekend, if we were to do it on a friday or saturday then our target audience (16+) will most probably be out doing somthing else therefore would miss the showing of our documentary. For this reason we decided to have it showing on a thursday night at 9:00pm.
The channel we decided to show our documentary on was channel 4, however at first we did think of using sky living as that usually shows supernatural programmes such as 'Most Haunted.' But in the end we decided to go with channel 4 as it it is common for showing different types of documentaries and to watch channel 4 you don't have to have sky or freeview you can simple watch it as its one of the main channels. Also with channel 4 if you miss it or forget to watch it when it's showing then you can also go onnline and watch it on 4od which is a website that shows all the programme's on channel 4, it will stay on the website for a certain amount of days therfore someone would be able to cath up and watch this documentary when ever they like onnline.

Brainstorming our idea's

This is one of our brainstorming ideas we did through lesson. We brainstormed idea's which we were interesred in and what would make a good and interesting documentary. Most of our idea's fitted into the target audience age range of 16-20, therefore we decided to aim our documetnary at people over the age of 16.

BBC: Osama Bin Laden; dead or alive? documentary

Narrative Structure

Women Voiceover


Archive Material
-Footage of army men
-Footage of the Afghan army

-Blurred footage of Bin Laden

-Video messages from Bin Laden

-Footage of president Bush

-Explosions

Themes

-Terrorism

Sound

-Explosions

-Narrator

-Intense upbeat music playing in the background of the documentary

-Qoutes from different people over images of Bin Laden.
-Music in some backgroiunds of the interviews.
-Helicopters
-Army men running
-Bin Laden talking in the background
-Planes
-Cars
-Computers
-Person who last seen Osam Bin Laden walking. (Goes by the name Dolton Furray.)


Camerawork
-Close up on interviews , on faces.
-Interview with Asif Ali the president of Pakistan, zooms into his face slowly.
-Establishing shot of a room where one person is being interviewd (the person who last saw Bin Laden.)
-Nightvison of army men.
-Close up of the Afghan army.
-Establishing shot of Washington - President Bush's house.
-Extreme close up of Ambassader Hank Cromptons eyes, then goes into just a close up whilst talking in the interview.
-Establishing shots of mountains.


Graphics
-White bold wrighting with a black background at the start of the documentary saying what the documentary is.
-Light green floresent sharp wrighting of 'Osama Bin Laden: Dead or alive?' with a navy blue background. Shown as if it was being typed on a computer.
-White bold wrighting of names of people who are being interviewed.


Editing
-At the start after saying what the documentary is about it cuts into loads of images of Bin Laden on t.v.s.
-Images of Bin Laden disolve into images of 9/11.
-Blurred footage of Bin Laden.
-Computerized wrighting typed like how you would type on a computer showing what the documentary is called.
-Blacks out a persons face who's being interiewd who can't be shown.
-An image blurs and fades out at the same time.
-Animated map with a voiceover - zooms into where Bin Laden was last seen.

'The Day the wave came' Tsunami Documentary

Narrative Structure

The narrorator was a male voiceover.


Archive Material
-Footage of the tsunami.
-Footage of the tide going out.
-Earthquake , hand held camera.
-houses being taken down by the rushing water.




Editing
- Cut aways from a persons interview to the archive material.
- Real foortage to a fade in image of an animated image.
- People in the interviews either positioned to the left or right.
-Logo - Journeyman.tv
-Fading, an image of an amintated earth is on the screen when a picture of how they believe the tsunami started fades over the top of it.

Sound

- Birds.

- Wind.
- The sea.
- Screaming.

- People talking in the background.

- Music in the background of some interviews, music which sounded like a heartbeat.

Camerawork
- Close up of people's faces who were being interviewed about the tsunami, with a high key lighting on the people being interviews faces and all the rest of the shot in a low key lighting.
- Establishing shot of the place.
- Birds eye view of the place and the damage caused by the tsunami.

Graphics

- Black backgroud whilst people being interview'd.

- Subtitles at the bottom of the screen for when the foreign people are being interviewd.

- Animated images of how the tsunami happened.