Formal Proposal

Today my group came up with the formal proposal for our documentary production, outlining what type of documentary it will be, what content we will include and what research and resources we need, etc:

Topic - Sleep
Type of documentary – Mixed
Style of documentary – Informal and informative, fully narrated
Channel and scheduling – Channel 4 – 8:30pm, Wednesday night
Target Audience- young adults/teenagers 15-20/educated audience

Primary research needed:

·         Interview with a shift worker and/or an air hostess

·          Interview with Psychology teacher/ psychologist

·          Vox Pops: Where is the strangest place you have ever slept or woken up?, How do you feel when you don’t get enough sleep?, What keeps you awake/ distracted at night?

·         Interview with the sleep clinic?

·         Locations for filming – airport, bedrooms, train station, public shopping areas, school

·         Interview with new mums and dads on changes in sleeping patterns around a newborn baby

·         Interview with the wife of someone who snores

·         Props- coffee and cups, beds, etc. (for title sequence), remedies

Secondary research needed:

·         Archive footage: clips of babies crying, people snoring, people sleepwalking, etc. Music relevant to topic, TV news extracts, documentaries on dangerous dreams, YouTube clips of people dreaming. Photographs of babies for cutaways.

·         Dangers of sleeping, narcotics, sleepwalkers, insomnia 

Narrative structure: Single strand, Linear, Open

Outline of content:Different peoples sleeping habits, based around their family or their job, and how sleep affects our day to day performance in life
Dreams and the mysteries of them, why do we dream, does cheese make us dream
Strangest places people have fallen asleep
Remedies that keep the human body fighting off sleep or help sleep and whether they actually work
Sleep clinic and interview with someone who runs it
VOXPOP – the joys of sleep and favourite thing about sleep
Interview with psychologist/psychology teacher
Interview with Shift worker/Airhostess
Interview with new mums and dads
Footage of people yawning
How sleep affects people emotionally, mentally and physically
How sleep can affect lives Sleeping disorders
Interview with relative of a sleepwalker


Resource requirements:

·         Digital video camera

·         Microphone

·         Tripod

·         PC with Adobe Premier Pro software

·         Tape

·         Voice recorder