STATEMENT OF DIRECTORIAL APPROACH
Our aim with this documentary is to sidestep the common misperception of the homeless being looked negatively upon by society. Therefore our documentary will shed a positive light on the issue of homelessness through the eyes of women over the age of 35.
The approach will be one of empowerment, showing how these marginalised women have fought to create a better life for themselves and what fills and fulfills their lives. The focus of our documentary will predominantly be on one of the women now residing at Bethlehem Community; a women’s home in the northern suburbs.
In terms of conflict we will aim to highlight the difference between her homeless life and her new life enriched by the house that she lives in and the people that surround her. It will be a story of an un-finished journey, one that is neither happy nor tragic but lies somewhere in-between. This is because we do not want to avoid the obvious issues that still face people that have suffered alcoholism, drug addiction and the mental problems that they have to live with everyday. However, we don’t want our documentary to be filled with pessimism.
In terms of aesthetics we will approach this predominantly through the interactive mode of documentary filmmaking, yet use observational filmmaking as well to capture the ordinary occurrences that take place in this woman’s life. In the interviews we will avoid over-using talking heads and interview the women in locales that are familiar to them, to emphasise their independence within a world that has rejected them in so many ways. The style will be rough; using a hand-held camera approach as we feel a stylised approach would contradict the toughness of their lives.
Overall this documentary will be one focused on women and we want to show how their issues of homelessness are different from those of men, this will create a unique approach to the subject of homelessness.
PRODUCER’S STATEMENT
Dates for filming are yet to be confirmed. However, we have established that we need to collect an array of footage and will most likely film over numerous days to get as much scope on the issue as possible. We are determined to experience and travel along with the women on some of their daily activities. We will most likely be filming over weekends, as this is when the majority of my group members are available. Even though we have not targeted in on the woman that will be the focus of our story we have contacted the house and discovered that there are numerous women that will be willing to talk to us about their lives. Therefore we believe there will be no issue finding someone with an interesting story who will be willing to talk to us. The location that we will start off at is at the core of these women’s lives, their home in Reservoir and as we interview some of the women we will determine other locales to move from to gain a sense of their independence. All our interviews will be attainable as we do not require to shoot in any difficult locales and our simplistic approach means that the women wont feel overwhelmed by our presence.
So I did a reading, and it forced me into proactive mode as I realised that there is SO MUCH to do. The reading was on ‘Initial Research and the Draft Proposal.’ The things I loved about this article was that it gave me a starting point and an end point and heaps of steps along the way (well 23 steps to be precise), luckily this is a group project, otherwise I’s be terrified of running out of time. Overall there are three stages: The initial stages, which include research. trust and reality checks. Following this is the drafting and proposal stages, which includes action sequences, preinterviewing and rewriting a hypothesis. The nest stage is a refinement, to narrow your focus and deepen the film. The final stage is addressing aesthetic concerns, such as style and images. The broaden the contextual framework of your film.
This was overwhelming for me so I decided to draw up a mind-map to get to the main points I need (and therefore my group) to do in terms of getting the most polished, well maybe not most polished by to achieve all our aims.
a research mind-map different areas we need to explore.
I did a seperate one for aesthetics, because even though a lot of these ideas will come from research I think that it lies quite seperately to the research frame.
aesthetic areas we need to cover
These mind-maps helped me to see where each form of research led to and how that will help us to come towards a refined idea for our documentary. I will use this reading mainly as a check list in terms of pre-production. Even though some of the ideas are more crucial than others I think that a systematic approach to this will really be of value to our documentary in terms of shooting and editing. One thing about this reading that really stood out for me was step 12. I thought that this step really guages if you are ready to begin filming. The step is to ‘Write a three-line description’ that will summarise your story. If you cannot summarise it in 3 lines you aren’t ready. I find this a crucial point. In these lines you need to get to the heart and sole of your documentary, without any nonsense. Another point made that really resonated with me regarding narrowing the focus to deepen your film. The tip here given was to ‘seek the center of your film by assuming that you may not yet have it’ (pg. 210). This to me will force your documentary to have so much more meaning, even though you think you have a great central core, there could be something better.
I will really use this reading to really get into what our documentary is all about. It has truly motivated me to research and develop our story into something that will truly resonate.
Reference
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Rabiger, ‘M. Initial Research and Draft Proposal,’ Directing the documentary,
(p. 207-218). 4th ed. Burlington: Focal Press, 2004.
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