Location and Presentation Planning

In terms of how I want the layout of my documentary to look, I am taking a lot of inspiration from my original music viedeo research. Because the documentary is for young people, I am trying to go for a format which they will be comfortable and farmiliar with, and the music video format is one which the vast majority of teenagers across the developed world are aware of. Many R&B or HipHop music videos have the main characters/ the singers onscreen with a variety of objects against a plain background, which is usually either black or white. The character will be wearing contrasting clothes to the background to make him more visible onscreen.

I want my presenting character, Manousos to be portrayed in a way such as this. This way I hope that the audience will relate more to him as a young character, who has the same sorts of feelings and attitudes as they do, but whose cultural background is the only difference. I also plan to use Greek objects in the background such as Komboloi, Frappe and more modern things that are popular in Greece such as their Mobile Phones (which incidentally you can never get them off!) to show that although he is different, in many ways he is the same as the audience.

In the parts of the documentary where the presenter is not the main focus, video clips and images will be used along with voice overs to tell the story and show how things progress. The internet is full of video clips and pictures that will be useful for this project and it will be my main source for such parts of the documentary. From the audience research that I gathered I have decided not to include any interviews as part of the project. From the comments that people gave me, they wanted to be given the facts so they could make up their own mind of what to think, rather than having other peoples opinions thrust apon them.

In the background there will be a variety of modern music being played, however although the genres of music will be very similar to what is listened to by those in the audience, the music itself will be Greek, again linking the subject of the documentary to the audience it is aimed at. I will post details of what music I will probably use later in the project, however I think I will fully decide after I have filmed and put together the basics of the video so that it fits in properly.

From the surveys, a lot of young people thought that presentation of the documentary was a very important factor in making them watch. I hope that my ideas here will not only fulfill their wishes, but also be seen as trying out a very new and modern take on the layouts of documentaries. Fingers crossed that it will be a success!