99 / Death of an Ice-Cream Man / Stop Me and Buy One 

Photo source: http://photosfromwinchester.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/ice-cream-van.html  

A Dog's Life / A Dog's World 

A contact who competes in dog shows was recently telling me about a largely unseen underside to the competitions. Issues to explore include: inbreeding to preserve desired traits at the cost of health, old or unfit dogs being re-homed or left with shelters, insurance scams on pedigrees and even unnecessary surgery to improve appearance.

Ideally this would be an undercover investigation over a long period to gather video evidence of mistreatment and interviews with competition participants and rights campaigners to establish conflict.

Such a proposal may however be difficult to convince our primaries to agree to discussing openly, for fear of affecting their reputation or standing within the community. For this reason, it may be wise to instead focus on the strange and humourous aspects of dog showing, to avoid such difficulties. We could reflect this farcical side in our method of filming, using unconventional editing, or employing the use of GoPro cameras attached to dogs to demonstrate their point of view, a 'voice of dog' technique. This could then be made literal with an actor's overlayed narration.

The style we choose though, will ultimately be determined by the nature of the footage we record.

                       Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1112706 

Behind the Curtain / Behind the Screen

I have long wanted to investigate the truth behind many TV adverts and their unbelievable claims.

For example, there is an advert for Lindt chocolate that shows an impossibly clean and handsome chef swirling beautiful liquid chocolate in a bowl like it's the best, most luxurious thing ever to exist. 

I imagine the truth is more of an industrial factory where robots squirt the chocolate into shape and minimum wage immigrants cart it off.

Boys Don't Dance

The first idea I had for a documentary was to look into dance schools and focus specifically on the male dancers. 

My younger brother used to be a member of our local dance school, in a Modern Dance class. He reached Grade 2 and was getting top marks (which was impressive for a 10 year old) but then quit due to bullying at school. 

I wanted to investigate the stigma there seems to be around male dancers, and how those who have stuck with dancing cope with bullies and criticism from those who still believe that dancing is a female activity. 

At home I work with my father's business 'Octopia Productions', and each year we film two separate dance school's end of year and summer shows. We are also close friends to one of the dance school owners, Julie Storey, who owns the 'Let's Dance' Dance School. I spoke to her about my idea and she granted me full permission to film at her dance school on the spot. She also suggested that I looked into the generations of people who attend her school, as she knows that there are several members of the same families who attend, both male and female.

I think it would also be a good thing to talk to both younger male dancers, and also to the older generations to see how their opinions and stories differ from one another, but also to see how they are the same. 

                                                                 Video © Octopia Productions 

Website link for 'Let's Dance' - Weymouth 

• Julie on: 07967 558346 or
• Becky on 07708 923715.
• Email: julie@juliestorey.co.uk

 Living with Polycystic Ovaries Syndrome 

P.C.O.S, or Polycystic Ovaries Syndrome is a condition which directly affects both how a woman's ovaries work and their fertility.

http://www.verity-pcos.org.uk/ 

The Olympic Nightmare 

Another documentary idea I had, was looking into a town which had been affected by the Olympics in a negative way. Focusing on the opinions of the people who live there, the business owners and the shop keepers affected by the events.

I wanted to focus on my home town, Weymouth, as it hosted the Sailing Events of the London 2012 Olympics and was the second largest Olympics venue after London.

A little while before the games began, as the town was still preparing for the events, my father and I went around to a few of the shops and casually spoke to the shop owners asking them what their trade was like at that moment and whether or not the scare mongering that had been happening about how busy the town was to become had affected them in any way.

Every response we received was negative, and it seemed that at that point none of the locals were happy with how the Olympic events were taking shape as the people who advertised Weymouth to tourists and Olympics fans built it up so much that even the yearly visitors didn't book into the hotels as they feared how 'busy' Weymouth was due to become.

During the games I was back home in Weymouth and also helping out at a few of the events and I saw first hand how the great expectations of the planning committees and councils were not hitting their targets and falling far short of the figures they'd predicted. 

Many businesses lost money and nobody but the people highest up made a profit.

I spoke to smaller stall holders dotted about along the seafront and at the Bayside Festival by the pavilion (which closed extremely early due to the companies running it liquidating because of the extremely poor attendance figures), and a lot of them had paid thousands of pounds for their pitches but knew they would never make the same amount back, let alone a profit. One man who had a small food hut had paid £7,000 for his pitch but had barely scraped £1,000 throughout the events.

The sheer amount of problems the organisers caused Weymouth and it's local people featured prominently in both our local and BBC news reports, but also became a talking point in the town. 

Even though the Olympics has been over now for a while, I do still think that we would get some good responses and strong opinions from people if we interviewed them, as Weymouth is one of those towns where everybody knows everybody else's business and news travels fast.

                                Photo from the Echo © The Dorset Echo 

Resources 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-19108734

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-19045825

Dailymail Article on Trains

 Photo from Yachts and Yachting 

My Extended Family of Sex Dolls

My first idea was to get in contact with Mr Bob Gibbins, to ask if we could create a documentary about his life with his collection of over two hundred sex dolls. I saw an article about him and his collection online and I managed to get his phone number.

Photo from The Sun 

A New Hate Crime? 

I also had the idea of exploring the issue of “goth bashing” – where people are targeted in public by others for deciding to dress “goth” “emo” “scene” etc. I got this idea from reading about the death of Sophie Lancaster, who was murdered while trying to protect her boyfriend who was made a target of drunken violence by a group of teenagers because of his gothic dress sense. 

I personally know people who have been a victim of this kind of assault. 

Photo from The Guardian 

Living With Diabetes

My third documentary idea is to explore the difficulties and restrictions that come with being diagnosed with diabetes. 

I know several people with this condition and have to get tested myself. 

I think this potential documentary could inspire people to be more vigilant in caring for their health because a poor lifestyle can cause Type 2 diabetes, also, this could inspire viewers to get tested for the condition as it is hereditary.

Sticklers syndrome is a genetic disorder that mainly affects connective tissue. Most of my family have this illness, because I’m related to them, it would be very easy to get interviews with them, there are several generations with the illness so we would have a wide range of ages to interview.

We can also interview the doctor who diagnosed the family; we could also try and find other families or people with the illness, as it is fairly unknown. 

The illness typically affects the eyes and joints in my family. The illness is progressing with the more babies that are born into the family and it also seems to be getting worse with age. 

As I am so far the only relative that has been born into the family without the illness I could still carry the sticklers gene, therefore I could pass on the gene to my future children, it would be an interesting and perhaps emotional feature to the film, if I took a blood test and found out if I have the gene or not. 

If I don’t have the gene, it means that my family can still carry on, and there can be more generations, if I do have the gene, then it can potentially mean the end of my family line. 

Photo from here. 

Size 0

I have previously made an experimental documentary for college where I tried to reach size 0 within a few months; I tried to do this through fad diets and exercise. 

Unfortunately the final documentary wasn’t as I had hoped. 

I know that we could do this better with interviews with doctors and with a budget we could hire a personal trainer. 

It would have to be with somebody in our group or somebody outside of the group. It’s easier to do it with somebody in our group because they are less likely to quit, with an outsider it would be very easy for them to pull out once the diet got hard for them. 

A good element of this style is video diaries, the audience love getting to know people and their emotions, they also love honesty, which is why reality tv is so popular.

Jobless

Lots of people are unemployed nowadays and its getting harder to be employed. We could have interviews with the job centre, people that are unemployed and looking for jobs. We could also interview somebody who is hiring and ask how they choose to employ one person out of hundreds. 

I got this idea from when I was being interviewed for a job and I was told that I was one out of 200, considering it was a part time sales assistant at a small shop, it really showed how many people out there are trying to find a job.

Picture from: (The Guardian)

Games Addiction 

For this idea I wanted to outline the disadvantage of having a car in the UK. Not only for young drivers but generally as driving costs too much. 

Petrol, repairs, insurance and tax are only a few points to outline. The fact that more and more people want or have to drive is clogging up the roads. 

One day it could almost be like the ‘Dr Who episode Gridlock’, which features endless traffic in which people barely move. 

I would suggest healthy options such as walking to places or taking public transport to avoid the stress of driving and to save money. 

Photo from here. 

From asking around I have found out that some Government policies are contradicting. 

The one I would point out is that the Government want UK homes to be more energy efficient. To be more energy efficient you need better installation. 

In conversation areas ‘like the one’ the Government/local council will not allow the front of house windows to be changed. They will however let them change the back windows. 

The fact the house a house is owned by the family should the Government/local council still have a say in what people can and cannot do to their own homes? 

Picture from here. 

 Life as a Chinese International Student in the UK

1. Some students only come to the UK to obtain a visa. They attend University only so that they are registered, then they leave to do illegal work and earn money.
   
   
2. Some universities do not care about their international students as they are only interested in getting money from them, and allow them to over stay their visas.
   
   
3. Their language levels sometimes do not meet the requirements of higher education, their writing is much better than their speaking ability. Silent is the direct impression.
   
   
4. Culture shock. It’s hard to get used to just how different Eastern and Western cultures are and to acclimatise. So students often stay in their own exclusive groups and don't even speak English or expand their social network.
   
   
5. Their age level is decreasing each year. So some lack the ability to distinguish between what they should and should not be doing, like not attending their classes, gambling etc.

Research Links 

Sample documentary from Canada, which is more positive -  

Expectation vs Reality- The Chinese Students' Experience 

Nearly 8,000 Chinese students apply to study in the UK

Abortion - Murder? 

BPAS (British Pregnancy Advisory Service) is the biggest provider of abortion services in Britain. Few months ago, there was an Anonymous member stole over 10,000 databases records from BPAS, and then he left his opinions about abortion including Anonymous logo on the BPAS official website.

From that, I came up with the second idea, which is relevant to abortion debate. 

Personally, I am not in favour of BPAS, but abortion still be an appropriate documentary idea to expand, as people still have mixed views on whether abortion should be judged. Some people think that abortion should be banned, while others think it is acceptable. 

Also, abortion is not that simplistic and it concern with many circumvents, such as religions views, women rights, the rights of unborn child.

Resources: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9132654/BPAS-Hacker-held-over-illegal-breach-of-abortion-website.html 

(BPAS: 'Hacker' held over illegal breach of abortion website)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBorsRS2eo0 

( voices from BPAS members)

(Photo of baby from: word press) 

It is obvious that ‘4G (The fourth generation of mobile technology)’ has been a popular topic recently, and there was a recent news coverage from Daily mail said that the first UK 4Gnetwork is going to be launched in the late of October. 4G network will be five to seven times faster than 3G. 

I find it is a good idea as our documentary subject, because most of people don’t exactly know the terms of ‘3G’ and ‘4G’, so the content should stimulate the audience and they will get a clear perspective of 4G from that. Meanwhile, 4G network is still new developing to general public and it would not be zero defects. 

Thus, there will be a number of sides that enable us to expand.