Our Documentary

We have got an idea to do a documentary about busking in Sheffield and challenge peoples perceptions of what a busker actually is and why they choose to busk. This idea came to us when we both walked past a busker in the city centre playing music quite badly but singing along happily and putting a smile on the face of every passer by. We both immediately wanted to make a documentary about this man so we began the planning. I went and found him and spoke to him about the possibility of being in a film and he was really positive about the idea, excited in fact and then I went again to find him with Hannah to finalise the discussion and find out when he would be able to make the film. After speaking with him we have noticed that he has a very friendly and likable personality so we want the interview him and then use his responses as voice over, with his music in the background as well and just film the reaction of people passing by him on the street, showing them smiling/reacting to his music. It will be fairly simple to film this documentary as we have two cameras and will be able to interview the busker using a marantz then cut the sound and footage together to make something that should come off as quite poetic. The aim for me is for this documentary to show that the busker is not just being annoying and loud but has a reason to be where he is and hopefully this will change the perceptions of the viewers and cheer them up a little.

2 Minute Poetic Documentary

There are many ways in which you can make a documentary from investigative documentaries such as Louis Theroux (in which he also takes a participatory role and does not just sit back like other investigative documentaries such as Africa where the film maker sits back and lets the events unfold) Within all these different types of documentaries are also different ways of approach meaning that you can actually be very creative with something that would normally be associated with being purely factual, a good example of this would be a documentary winning a BAFTA last year "Senna" which was sold as a film to the public as it was very entertaining. The approach we will be taking for this assignment is a poetic one which is not very common in mainstream documentaries but also not un-heard of. The British Documentary Movement had used poetic documentary but this was quite early last century meaning that Poetic documentary has seemingly phased out, saying that from the small clips we have seen it can still be a very effective way of communicating with the audience and perhaps engaging them on a higher level than just presenting them with facts as poems/lyrics can often evoke emotions in the audience.