Making the Final Decision on Theme

Today our group made the final decision that we are going to do a documentary on the attack of a young girl at school. We spent quite a lot of time on the BBC Crimewatch website looking for some inspiration and also to see how the majority of them are set out. One particular film which we liked was the 'Hayes Attempted Rape'. They used reconstruction, CCTV, interviews from close family members and lots more which we were thinking of which is good because now we know were on the right track. The pictures below are screen shots from the film on the BBC website. Click on an image to enlarge.

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Teen Cribs

After making 'Testing out... Interview Techniques', we realised that producing a documentary on Bipolar Disorder would be too challenging and sensitive to make as humourous so we decided to try out lots of different topics. This was one that we have made into a proper 'short' because we think we might like to use it for our main piece. 

Testing out... Interview Techniques

Unfortunately there was a problem with the computer we did this film on and by default is says 'Directed by Amy Michael', something we couldn't change.. It was actually made by myself, Matt Burge and Olivia Cope. 

Testing out ... Camera Angles

Testing out...

In last weeks lesson we had a task to make a mini documentary on different interview techniques. It really helped us decide what we liked and what we were not so keen on so we decided that it wouldn't be our last. we thought of the idea of making a mini series of documentaries on all sorts of things and we decided to call it 'Testing Out...' The second one we made was about all the different types of camera angle and they will both be placed on our blogs when fully completed, along with a montage of audience feedback to the 'Testing Out... Interview Techniques'.

Our work so far

At first, the idea of doing a test for our media sounded like a fun, hassle free challenge but we soon discovered that the style in which we intended on doing it in was going to be harder than we imagined. The style we wanted to achieve was black humour, a sort of mockumentary but as we did further research into Bipolar Disorder we discovered how sensitive it is and how it could upset certain viewers who are familiar with the illness or have family members with it. Because of this we have had to rethink our idea slightly and come up with something more serious. So, in conclusion, doing this test turned out to be a good idea because could have ended up making a really big error and now we have enough time to correct it.

Reseach into Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depressive illness) is a brain disorder that causes random and extreme changes in mood and energy levels. The changes in mood differ alot from the mood swings that everybody else experiences now and again. They are severe and very obvious. The illness, however, can be treated.

It is uncommon for Bipolar disorder to start in childhood and in most cases the symptoms will start showing from teenage years to young adulthood. It is also uncommon for Bipolar disorder to only start showing symtoms later than this. A study taken shows that at least half of all cases start before the age of 25.
Although the symptoms for Bipolar are easy to spot if you know what your looking for and may seem obvious, it is not easy to spot at the start as the symptons could look like seperate problems depending on how the person is reacting to them.
The phrase used to describe the two different personas that a person suffering from Bipolar disorder will go through is "mood episodes". A 'manic episode' is when the person is in an overly joyful and energetic state and an extremely sad or hopeless state is called a 'depressive episode'. Occasionally, their mood can reflect both a depressive episode and a manic episode and this is called a 'mixed state'. Whatever state they happen to be in, it can change instantly and they can suddenly explode for no reason.

The information which i used to write this post i found from these websites
http://www.kimandry.com/bipolar-disorder.html
http://www.psychotube.net/page/3/
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/complete-index.shtml

1st Idea - Crime

The first idea we had was to do a 'Crime Watch' style documentary. We were going to do a reconstruction of a crime, perhaps a robbery or a break in, and then interview people who had genuinley had this happen to them. After thinking this through we thought that it may get boring after a while and it may not be the best we could do as we would get bored watching it over and over and perhaps lose interest.

Coming back after summer

Over summer I watched a number of documentaries to help keep myself up to date whilst I wasn't studying at school. One in particular that interested me was Beckii Cruel: Schoolgirl Superstar at 14. It is a documentary about a 14 year old girl called Rebecca Flint who lives in the Isle of Man with her parents. She used to film herself dancing to Japanese music and was scouted by somebody over youtube to go to Japan. She now lives another life in Japan and is known nationwide as 'Beckii Cruel'.

Class Word Clouds/Diamond 9

In class we made 'O-Clouds' which is like a hand made word cloud. I put mine into an electronic word cloud on www.worditout.com . We also made a 'Diamond 9' which is where you take words from a word cloud and put them in a particular place in the diamond to show their importance. It ranges from the most important being at the top to the least important at the bottom.