Reading up on Documentary making

I decided to read up on documentary making before I actually start filming:

Book: The complete guide to Digital Video, Ed Gaskall

‬What I have taken on from this book:
- Always have a filming schedule!
- Always think of these questions beforehand: What is going to be shot? When is it going to be shot?
Are there any interviews? Will there be dialogue?

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http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_13/section_5/artc1A.html
"Guidelines for producing a short documentary by Kirsten Sørensen, Mette Bahnsen, Henrik Holch, Gitte Hvid and Lise Otte (makers of Jutta Ravn, 2000):"

What I learnt from this article:
- Use tv and/or film documentaries as primary inspiration > "discuss the qualities of each film and note the good elements. This will probably give you an idea of how you want to structure your own film."
- Ethics: From the beginning you must consider whether you are portraying people appropriately. Are you twisting in any way the image(s) of your subject(s)? Respect your subjects (which includes an honest representation of them) must come before making a great film.
- Interviewing: "If your film contains an interview session it is important that you experiment with different interview techniques before you start shooting."

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In the next few days, I will:
- watch a selection of documentaries (from sites such as
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/category/documentary/)akes or breaks a documentary film in order to learn about which kind of genres and filmaking styles I like.
- Create an outline of documentary
- Organise interviews!

Pilot Study

Rebecca suggested that I conduct a pilot study - which I did. I did the pilot study on 10 random people; I received positive feedback but some of the improvements included:
- have tick boxes instead of having the respondent circle things in.
- (question 3) "how would you describe your nationality?" - the options are not clear e.g. "Shouldn't 'Black African' be 'Black British' instead of having "British" separate? I have decided to reconsider the options available for this question.
- (question 4) "Do you believe that there is a 'mathematical formula' for beauty?" - a few of the respondents were confused by the question and so having an explanation of what this is (before the question) may help.
- (question 7) "Why do you think that less ethnic models are represented in fashion, magazines etc?" - some of the respondents were confused as to what "ethnic" meant and felt the space available to write was too small. To solve this, I will add in brackets what I mean by "ethnic" as to prevent confusion and create a larger space to write an answer.
- (question 10) "What does 'beauty' mean to you?"- one of the respondents said having this as a closed question wouldn't allow people with other perceptions of beauty to answer how they really feel. Although I understand this, having this question as a broad question would make it harder for me to analyse the question, especially as people would come up with various definitions of beauty.

Plan

My project now focuses on "The Formula of Beauty" and if all goes to plan *fingers crossed*, it will follow my rough week by week layout.
Week 1 = carrying out a questionnaire of public opinion on their perception of beauty.
I will post the full plan as I go along..

Woop Woop first post!

*Sigh* as with every project, you always encounter setbacks...never thought I'd experience one even before I started! Let's just hope the rest of the project isn't like this...