Running Order

Time Span Description


0 secs Vox Pops of people saying 'Making It Big' and the title credits in front of a live band we filmed playing with rock music playing with it.


5 secs Introduction to documentary. Footage of bands playing with narration/cutaways.


25 secs Flowers For Helen footage from shows (our recording) plus some archive.
Interview and cutaways will be used as well

1 min 25 Footage of Instruments with narration. Not as easy as it seems


1 min 50 Music as a subject


2 mins Interview with experts and cutaways


2 mins 30 Narration over well known bands before they were famous


2 mins 45 Second band interview


3 mins 15 Third band interview


4 mins 10 Vox pops - views on unsigned bands


4 mins 30 Narration over bands playing - reflection on peoples views


4 mins 45 Experts - University lecturers interview


5 mins Brief history of music leading into an interview with someone who works in a
recording studio


6 mins 56 Clip from battle of the bands - describing what it is (voice over)


7 mins 30 Interview with events manager from 02 academy in Liverpool - describing a local
battle of the bands


9 mins 03 Montage of stills/images and live footage of band No Signal - voice over introducing
band


9 mins 25 No Signal interview


10 mins 10 Footage of guitar lesson - voice over describing first steps of becoming a musician


11 mins 30 Interview with private guitar teacher


14 mins ADVERT BREAK


17 mins Footage of Enginevein (high school band), Flowers For Helen (middle point), Pegasus
Bridge (just signed) and Iron Maiden (over 35 yrs playing) - voice over describing
ideal progression of bands


22 mins Voice over on top of footage of Muse playing at Wembley - Stage most bands want to
get to


23 mins Mixed interview - describing the best way to get your band to that point


23 mins 30 Interview 1 - Russell Dyson, University Lecturer


24 mins Interview 2 - Recording Studio member of staff


24 mins 30 Interview 3 - 02 academy member of staff


25 mins Interview 4 - Jim Mason, University Lecturer


25 mins 30 Voice over summing up points made in the documentary about 'Making it big' as a
band, playing over faded out footage of a band

Primary and Secondary research

Finding Interviewees

The main focus of the documentary is bands trying to make it 'big' in the industry and the band 'Flowers for Helen' who are supporting Electric Six in December making them a quiet popular and big band whilst they are not signed. We have decided to dedicate alot of the documentary time to them and we wanted to interview them about themselves, the band and making it in the industry.

Here are the questions we have lined up for the interview with the band.

• Introduce yourselves - Your name's and what instruments you play in the band
• What genre would you place your music in?
• What artists influence you as a band?
• How did you come up for the name for your band?
• When did you form your band/How long have you been together?
• Do you write you own songs?
• Do you like to do covers?
• Have you recorded anything in the studio?
• How do you earn your money?
• How do you travel to and from gigs?
• Do you have a manager?
• What is you main goal as a band?
• Do you think your image plays a big part for you band?
• Where do you see yourself in 5/10 years?
• How do you express your individual personalities? - Do you think its important?
• How do you distribute your music?
• Do you have a big fan base?
• Do you use the internet to reach out to your audience?
• Do you have a MySpace account and do you use it to interact with your fans?
• Do you have a target audience?
• Do you interact with your fans?
• Where do you practise?
• What is it like going from being the audience to playing to an audience?
• What are your thoughts on music being downloaded illegally?

Part of the codes and conventions for a documentary is a expert us interviewed relating to the subject that the documentary is about so for our documentary we wanted someone who knew about the music industry and how it works. Rhiannon emailed two university lecturers from Chester university who teach music production. She emailed Russell Dyson and Jim Mason asking them if they would like to be involved in the documentary and there response was good and they set up a time and date for the interview.

Below is the email between Rhiannon and the University lecturers.

Here are the questions will be asking the university lecturers:

• Does a band/artist need to have any knowledge of the music industry and how it works?
• What exactly is popular music?
• Is a bands image important?
• Is downloading music becoming more popular than buying CDs?
• Is downloading music illegally becoming a bigger problem for bands and artists?
• How do bands/artists promote their music?
• How do bands/artists get into the music industry?
• Is it better for a band.artist to have a manager or manage themselves?
• What is Fan Culture?
• What is Music law and what types of laws are there?
• What exactly commercial music making?
• How do record labels work?
• How does the music industry work and what are the latest issues affecting it if there are any?
• What is the cultural politics of music and how is it linked to the music industry?
• What is the relationship between popular music and race/gender?
• How is music talked about and consumed?
• What is the role of music in society as a commodity and a force for social cohesion?
• What is the cultural significance of popular music?
• Is there a realistic outlook on the music industry?

Finding Locations

The Flowers for Helen footage was filmed in Liverpool at the Masque, this location wasn't chosen by us because the band chose to have their gig there. We were going to interview the band backstage but the noise from the other bands playing made it difficult to hear so we went to a quieter area. The lighting however in the new location wasn't great so once we watched back the tape we may need to interview again, maybe at band practise.

For the University lecturers interview we will be filming at Chester University, we may be able some footage of equipment used on the music production course.

Archive Material

The archive material we will be using will come from the band's MySpace, Facebook and Youtube pages. We will also be using other footage from youtube.

Formal Proposal

We are going to be doing our documentary about the local music scene in our area. We will be interviewing 3 bands, filming one of them at a live gig getting footage of them playing and we will also be interviewing two university lectures who teach music production at Chester university.

The point of our documentary is to raise the awareness of the target audiences(+14) local music scenes and about the challenges that bands face trying to get signed. We will be looking at the history of bands and looking at interviews with bands before they got record deals to see how they make it. A lot of bands think they will make it and get signed but they don't realise how hard it is going to be. The documentary will show positives as well as negatives that come with being in a band and trying to get signed.

Our documentary will involve showing bands therefore it will be publicity for bands so they should want to be involved. Most of the documentary will be dedicated to Flower for Helen out of the three bands because they are popular and doing well. They have regular shows and are supporting Electric Six in december and already have a large fan base.

The primary research will be focused on Flowers for Helen because they fit all the criteria that we picked up from our questionnaires. We will be attending one of their gig's to see how they perform live and to see what they are like for ourselves. We will also be recording the gig and use the footage in our documentary and we will also be interviewing the band asking them about how they got popular and if there interested in their local music scene. We will be interviewing two university lecturers that teach music production at Chester University and we will be asking them what they think about the direction the music industry is heading. Flowers for Helen will be interviewed at a club and the lecturers at the university. We have prepared questions relating to bands trying to make it and the music industry as a whole.

Our secondary research will be made up of mostly archive footage from pages on myspace / facebook / youtube. We will be also using archive footage of famous bands which we will be including in our documentary.

We will be using a non-linear narrative because we are planning on mixing up footage of bands playing and interviews with them and the university lecturers interviews.

The equipment we will be needing are:

• Camera
• Tripod
• Microphone
• Headphones
• Gig tickets
• Master copy of questionnaires

We will be concentrating on rock bands because we found out from our questionnaire results that our target audience prefer that genre over any over. Pop, classical and Jazz had no votes in the questionnaires so we are going to completely avoid using these genres. Metal and Indie were quiet popular in our questionnaire so we will be looking into 'hybrid' genre of music and how it was created. To do this we will be looking at the history of music.

Almost half of the participants in the questionnaire enjoy listening to live music, so to appeal to our target audience we will be using footage of live music in our documentary. we will use footage that we film ourselves to avoid using too much archive footage. The majority of the participants have been to 1 or more live gig this year so this further supports our decision.

Half of the participants don't keep with their local music scene and unsigned bands so our documentary will help raise the awareness of unsigned bands and how hard it is for them to make it. One aim of the documentary is to try and get people to back their local unsigned bands and music scene more because they need it to do well in the industry. With involving the bands in our documentary we are helping them get some good advertisement in hope that this will help them progress in their careers.

The majority of the participants also said that the questionnaire itself has help make the participants think about their own local music scene. This is good because it means that our questionnaire alone has raised people's awareness of the local music scene so a documentary focusing on that will do a lot more.

Our documentaries main aims are to raise people's awareness of their local music scenes and about unsigned bands and what they have to do to make it 'big'. Another aim is to advise up and coming bands who watch the documentary to take watch and take tips from how bands have made themselves popular. Another big aim is to show bands that you popular over night and its not as easy as it might seem. A lot of bands form and have the idea that they are going to make it big whereas in reality only a small percentage do infact make it big.

Our documentary will be well mixed with a combination of voice overs, interviews from a different range of people involved with music, footage from a gig we filmed and archive footage from youtube. We will also use footage of people looking at bands various sites, such as myspace, facebook and youtube. This will show them different ways that they can reach out to the band and also give ideas to bands looking to advertise themselves. Live footage from the gig's will make them feel like they are atchually there and they will see what being in a band involves.

The target audience for our documentary is going to be 14+ up to young adults so people in this age range are likely to have a favourite band and be into the modern and new music. Also many people in this age range may find it the documentary good because they have a band and want to take it more seriously or maybe thinking about starting a band and this documentary will showcase some bands which have become popular and hopefully help up and coming bands do the same. It may also interest people in this age range who have never been to a gig and are thinking about going to one. the image below is of our target audience, this picture was taken at the Mazque when filming Flowers for helen.

Timeline

Questionaires + Results

We gave out 30 questionnaires, 15 boys and 15 girls. 27 of them were written and 3 were recorded in a interview.

Recorded Interviews

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=&feature=player_embedded

Questionnaires and the results in graphs

Please circle your answer.

Are you male or female?

Male Female

We split the questionaires equally between boys and girls to see if there was a difference in opinions from different sexes.

How old are you?

17 – 19 20-23 24+

We handed out the majority of the questionnaires to fellow students at our college and in our media class so this means are target audiences will be at students and young adults

What is your favourite genre?

Rock Metal Indie Pop Rap Classical Jazz Dance

Other …………………………………………….

The questionnaire results show that the rock genre seems to be the most popular with the young age range so we are going to concentrate on the rock genre to appeal to the target audience.

Do you enjoy live music?

Yes Sometimes Never

The results show that most of the participants like live music so we will show live footage of bands to appeal to our target audience.

If yes how many times have you been this year?
0 1-3 4-6 7-9 10+
The results show that the majority of the participants have been 1-3 gigs this year which also shows that they do enjoy live music.

Do you keep with the local music scene in your area?
Yes No Sometimes
The results show that the majority of participants don't keep up with their local music scene so hopefully our documentary can help raise awareness of the local music scenes.

Have you ever been to an un-signed gig?
Yes No
Most of the participants hadn't been to see a unsigned band so hopefully this documentary will raise their awareness and get them interested.

Have you ever been to a ‘Battle of the bands style gig?
Yes No

This graphs shows that the majority of the participants haven't been to a battle of the bands style gig so we will include footage of a battle of the bands to raise their awareness about them.

If yes to the previous two questions, how did you hear about it?
Facebook Through a friend Poster Radio Other…....…
Out of the 14 participants who answered yes to the previous question, the majority of them heard about the gig via Facebook which shows that Facebook is a great place for a band to advertise themselves.

If advertisement for local bands gigs were more widely distributed would you go?
Yes No Maybe

The graph shows that even if local bands gig were advertised more that they still wouldn't go whereas the other half would or would consider it. This is good information for the target audience as if they are in a band it gives them a idea that they have to be more creative.

Have you ever been involved in a band?
Yes No

The graph shows that just under half the participants have been involved in a band and over half haven't so this good for the target audience as they can relate to the documentary.

Has this questionnaire made you want to look for bands in your local area?
Yes No

The graph shows that our questionnaire has raised the participants awareness of their local music scene and hopefully will get them a little more involved.

Initial Ideas

We narrowed our initial idea's down to ten ideas.

1. Childhood.

2. Teenagers.

3. Fashion.

4. Local music scene.

5. Buses.

6. Walton Gardens.

7. The River Mersey.

8. Converse.

9. EMA

10. Drugs.

We then narrowed them down further to three and put them in order to decide which would be best to base our documentary on.

Buses.

Pro's- It would be easy to get opinions from people because almost everyone uses them. They affect a lot of people and therefore we wouldn't be short of interviewee's. Its extremely easy to access information because bus services have websites with a variety of information on. They also distribute leaflets and have posters everywhere.

Con's- It isn't a very exciting subject so the documentary could get boring. It could also be hard to get an interview with an 'expert' because it could be seen as potentially bad publicity depending on how we use the information.

We decided not to go with this idea because we wanted to concentrate on an exciting subject that people would want to watch rather than endure.

Childhood

Pro's- We could get interview's with people of all ages and the viewpoint of different generations. Also because of the wide range of possible interviewee's it would be relatively easy to get interviews. It would also be easy to access 'expert' opinions.

Con's- It could get boring depending on how we do it. It could also be difficult to get people to open up about their childhood if it was troubled. It could also be difficult getting permission from parents or guardians when it comes to interviewing their children. Also children are unpredictable so we might not get any footage that would be good enough to put in the documentary.

We decided not to do our documentary on this subject because the negatives outweighed the positives.

Local music scene/trying to make it big

Pro's- We have quite a few potential interviewee's so we wouldn't be short of interviews with bands. During the pre-research we were able to set up interviews with experts, music lecturers. Also it is an exciting subject so it would be interesting to produce as well as to watch. The subject would also be helpful to a lot of people because many people in bands are convinced that can 'make it big' without knowing how hard it can be, so it would be extremely informative to people.

Con's- Some bands may not want to be interviewed or have any of their performances filmed, so we would have to ensure we have permission.

We decided to go with this idea because it would make an interesting documentary that has an audience wanting to watch it. Also the positives outweighed the negatives. It would relate to a young audience and we easily able to set up interviews with university lecturers and a band called Flowers for Helen.



Schedule for documentary to be shown at 9 pm as most of the target audience, aged 14+, would be watching the television at that time and may choose to watch our documentary.

Channel for documentary to be shown on would be channel 4 as they show a broad range of high quality and diverse programming which, in particular:

• demonstrates innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes;

• appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society;

• makes a significant contribution to meeting the need for the licensed public service channels to include programmes of an educational nature and other programmes of educative value; and

• exhibits a distinctive character.

Following this we believe our documentary fits in with this and should be shown on channel 4.
The name of our documentary is ‘Making it Big?' as the main focus of our documentary is new bands trying to make it in the music industry and the troubles they face on the way.

Brainstorm of Ideas

The image above is a mind map of idea's that we came up about what to focus our documentary on. It shows some of the ideas with had before coming to a final idea of doing it about our local music scene.
Some of the main ideas were:
Warrington
Warrington Buses service

Converse

Local music scene - This is the idea we followed and focusesed our documentary on.

Documentary Research

Documentaries can be split into 6 different types;

1. Poetic Documentary
2. Expository Documentary
3. Observation Documentary
4. Participitory Documentary
5. Reflective Documentary
6. Performative Documentary

Poetic Documentaries

First appeared in the 1920’s, were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—’life-like people’—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and space—a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The ‘real world’—Nichols calls it the “historical world”—was broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form.

Expository Documentary

Speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds ‘objective’ and omniscient. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and ‘objective’ account and interpretation of past events.

Observation Documentary

Attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.

Participitory Documentary

Believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. Nichols: “The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)” The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov’s kinopravda into French; the “truth” refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.

Reflective Documentary

Don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this sub-genre of films. They prompt us to “question the authenticity of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’ It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to ‘defamiliarize’ what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.

Performative Documentary

Stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1991). This sub-genre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc) to ‘speak about themselves.’ Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.