I had two ideas to put forward to my group, the first one being based around Alzheimer’s, I had this idea because a few years ago my granddad passed away and he was an Alzheimer’s sufferer and as his condition worsened it became hard for him to remember me and my family, so the subject was something that affected me personally. As my uncle owns a care home for Alzheimer’s sufferers, I spoke to him and he said that it could be possible to film there, but we would need permission from family members if we wanted to film in the home, my idea was to talk about the new developments into Alzheimer’s cures/ treatments, looking to interview some doctors specialized in that field and people affected by the disease whether it be from the stand point of a family member or friend of a sufferer or an actual sufferer. This idea wasn’t one the group felt strongly enough about to push forward with and I got a lack of response from various organisations I emailed, such as the Alzheimer.org.uk, the leading Alzheimer’s research and care facility.

My second idea was based around the charity organisation MEAK; they supply aid, health care and educational supplies to Kenya. The leader and co founder of the organisation Dee Belliere is a friend of my aunts and she agreed to let us get involved, but as she travels around the world as she is in the process of getting support from American companies we would need to pay for our own travel costs etc., so this idea was turned down by the group as it would be over budget for us and it wouldn’t seem worth while unless we could go to Kenya and get evidence of the good they are doing there. Although it’s still a consideration for me as my final year project in year 3.

After we had decided on taking the superhero/vigilante idea for our documentary we had group meetings to sort out what paths or routes we would take for the film, but as we had no primary subjects to film we had to do more research into the subject and the wider theme of heroes to find subjects to interview or focus on. Chris and Lucy within the group managed to make some good headway with contacting known heroes from around the UK, which made the rest of us take a back seat in searching for primaries or subjects. Although I had researched into heroes looking on the http://www.reallifesuperheroes.org/ website, where you can find heroes in your local area and across the country, where I found a hero called ‘Vague’ and messaged him via the one loud cat myspace page, but have received no reply since sending the message.

While discussing our idea with other students I was told to look into the ‘Fathers 4 Justice’ campaign, which I did and I emailed their office, who said they were interesting in taking part in our documentary, and as they live near the Winchester area the opportunity is too good to pass up, so I am keeping in contact with them, Nadine O’Connor’s office is in the process of sending some more specific details, although they have been away from the office for a past week so I am now waiting on their reply so we can make more arrangements with them. I think that I have helped with the development of the documentary by getting the ‘Fathers 4 Justice’ group because it has opened up a new route of the ‘hero’ image, rather then sticking to making a documentary similar to the channel 4 ‘Superheroes of Suburbia’ we have an element to add that will give our documentary a unique twist.

Lucy has kept the group very organised throughout the process giving us all individual deadlines for our own department parts of the process, although we had frequent group meetings at the beginning of the semester, which were always very optimistic and we all went away with ideas/ things that we needed to look into or bring to the next meeting, but there were lots of times when we would meet up again and no new progress had been made and we ended up wasting a meeting talking about the same things from a week before, to improve this for next time we all need to take the preparation side of the work more seriously.

For me personally because the filming process of the documentary isn’t until semester 2, I didn’t feel as pressured as I should because of the amount of time, but as the end of semester 1 got closer I started to look at the amount of work I hadn’t done or things I’d planned to do and hadn’t done yet, which then made me get into a better work ethic and prioritise my time to get up to date with everything I had planned to do weeks before. This has made me want to keep up this ethic for semester 2 because I don’t want to get to in to the same position as I got into this time.

I enjoyed the photo essay side of the module, although I took an easy option and went to the beach, which I did because I was too nervous to get involved in anything too public. I need to build up my confidence further for future projects and the upcoming interviews so I can produce better and more professional work. I plan to take a camera out during the holiday period and going to events and getting involved with the public. As for the presentation I had the idea of using a fake ‘Happy Slap’ video to portray the message to the audience ‘What would you do?’ to quickly get across the idea/ theme of our documentary, looking a individual people taking risks to better the community and help others.

I think I should have chosen a different role for the pre production process and then gone onto DOP for the actual shoot, as I feel that some of the work has relied on the same two or three roles for the majority of the group tasks, I have taken part in the website developments and I designed the business cards, but I feel that in some of the more practical elements, such as designs of trailers and posters, I had no hands on involvement, just an opinion on the designs chosen, but then I should have been more assertive and got involved more, so for next semester I plan to involve myself in everything that I feel I should have a bigger say in.