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.