1.2

 

Research Project

Case Study: Stacey Dooley

Case Study: Louis Theroux

Case Study: David Attenborough

Case Study: Documentaries about People

Case Study: Why are Documentaries Made?

Chosen ones:

1.2 Case Study: Stacey Dooley

1.3 Case Study: Documentaries about People

Mark Scheme

UNIT 12
Specialist study in creative media production	1. Understand the principles and practices of a chosen discipline in creative media production.	1.1 Critically describe a range of contextual perspectives influencing a chosen discipline in creative media production.
		1.2 Apply knowledge of critical perspectives to inform own practice.
	2. Be able to locate and evaluate information from a range of sources.	2.1 Identify a range of relevant academic and cultural sources for a personal research project.
		2.2 Critically evaluate information from a range of sources to inform ideas.
	3. Be able to communicate ideas and arguments in a variety of forms.	3.1 Apply academic conventions in the production and presentation of ideas.
		3.2 Effectively communicate ideas in appropriate formats.

Context

1.1 Critically describe a range of contextual perspectives influencing a chosen discipline in creative media production

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Documentaries are made to educate and inform people about several different topics such as: people, animals, science, history and many more. They can be filmed in many different styles with journalists/presenters being in front of the camera interviewing people or exploring places or they can just be narrating it. Back in 1922 the first official documentary was made which is called ‘Nanook of the North’. It is about the life of Canadian Inuit Eskimos living in the Arctic. With this being the first official documentary, it educated the audience like nothing else has before as no one would have watched something like it before. When the documentaries were first introduced in the early 1900’s, they were all very similar to each other with them being about people or war. I have come to realise that this is because back then science and technology was not as big as it is now so there was not much to document about them topics as much. Now in the 21’st century, documentaries have evolved by becoming more popular and more journalists have become well known from them. One being Stacey Dooley. Stacey Dooley was born in Luton on the 9th of May 1987, but it was 2008 when she started her career in journalism. Her first appearance on television was for a documentary series called ‘Blood, Sweat and T-shirts’. This show had participants, including Dooley, where they live in India whilst working in a factory that makes the clothes that are for sale in British high-street stores. From being recognised from the show ‘Blood, Sweats and T-shirts’, Dooley was offered the opportunity to be the presenter of her own documentary by the BBC which is called ‘Stacey Dooley Investigates’ and she kept bringing this series back for eight years up until 2017. At the beginning of 2018, Dooley brought her book called ‘Stacey Dooley, On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back’. In this book, Dooley talks about the women she has met while filming her documentaries and she talks about the issues with domestic abuse, sex trafficking, gender equality, sexual identity and what womanhood is like currently. Dooley went on to do ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ in 2018 and won it with her now boyfriend Kevin Clifton. This made her even more recognisable to a vast range of audience, so her work become more popular with people as it is such a big show on the BBC. The documentaries that Dooley makes are ones about: sex trafficking, ISIS, domestic violence, child labour, women in prison, homeless people, drugs and many more. She has focused them on people’s life’s as that is what she is interested in specially to do with feminism as she is a feminist herself. With Dooley filming these documentaries, she wants to educate people of how people around the world suffer by showing the audience what they go through and asking them personal/tough questions about their life’s. Dooley became a ‘Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)’ in 2018. She was awarded this because of her services to broadcasting as she created such a big impact on people as she made them see what really goes on in the world which is educational to them all.

THEORETICAL CONTEXT

Stacey Dooley has been making documents since 2009, and she has always kept them the same style with her taking the camera crew with her around the world and interviewing people whilst gaining experiences. I have discovered that John Corner who is a professor from University of Liverpool and a documentary maker, has a theory that there are ‘5 central elements to documentaries.’ These are: Observation Interview Dramatisation Mise en Scene Exposition Documentaries that have the element observation, are ones that have the camera as an eyewitness for the audience. This means that the camera acts out as though it is not there. This used in many documentaries however, it does receive a lot of complaints because some people feel as though participants are shown as objects do not subject, which can cause offense to some people depending on the circumstances. Interview documentaries are simply where the presenter/journalist asks questions to the interviewees so the audience can get gather a lot of information about the subject they are talking about. The interviewers can be shown on camera so the audience can see the face of who is asking the questions but sometimes they are not seen. They may put other material like clips from events or images in the documentary to make it more interesting, so the audience do not get bored. Dramatisation documentaries are very different to interview and observation because they get the audience involved by placing them as an eyewitness and they are placed as people in the events that the documentary is about. The reason why some documentaries use this element is because they want to include conflict to have a different tone to it. With Mise en Scene, it is very similar to dramatization. It is used to construct reality by using things like props, costumes, makeup, lighting equipment, set and colour. Finally, the element in documentaries that use exposition are documentaries that tells the audience what the topic is by description and commentary (narration). There are a few ways in which exposition can be made, these are: Direct Indirect Obvious Hidden These really set the tone of the documentary as they will be the styles in how the audience will gather the information from the documentaries. Going back to Stacey Dooley, I have realised that she uses the interview element in her documentaries. This is effective because it allows the audience to have a clear understanding of the topic as the interviewee’s answer the questions about the topic in much detail. Dooley goes above and beyond to create her documentaries by going to dangerous places and putting herself in dangerous situations as she was near gun shots for one documentary. Dooley does also include the element observation as the camera is filming content as though it is not there and is involved with what is happening around it.

 

Relate perspectives to FMP

1.2 Apply knowledge of critical perspectives to inform own practice.

HOW THIS MIGHT INFORM YOUR PRACTICE

After reading all the historical context of my medium (Stacey Dooley), I am going to take in the information and use it in my project. I will do this by taking inspiration from Dooley’s hard work and put that amount of effort she puts into making documentaries, into mine. I will also use the same style of documentaries as Dooley by focusing it on people. From studying the theoretical context of John Corner’s ‘5 elements to documentaries’ theory, I have chosen which ‘element’ I think is best to use for my documentary. This is the interview one. The reason why I think this element will best suit my documentary is because I want to ask people questions so an interview is the best way. I will take away from this research to use images/videos of the people I will be interviewing and the settings so that it is more interesting for the audience to watch.

Sources (Harvard referencing)

2.1 Identify a range of relevant academic and cultural sources for a personal research project

SOURCE 1	Filmsite.org. 2021. Documentary Films. [online] Available at: <https://www.filmsite.org/docfilms.html> [Accessed 29 January 2021].
SOURCE 2	Dooley, S., 2020. (63) Sex, Drugs, ISIS & Armageddon: Stacey Dooley On Her 90 Documentaries. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XUuOsjMtgo> [Accessed 29 January 2021].
SOURCE 3	En.wikipedia.org. 2021. Stacey Dooley. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Dooley> [Accessed 29 January 2021].
SOURCE 4	Narborough, E., 2021. Theory of documentary. [online] Slideshare.net. Available at: <https://www.slideshare.net/ElisaNarborough/theory-of-documentary> [Accessed 29 January 2021].
SOURCE 5	Penguin.co.uk. 2021. Stacey Dooley: How I kick-started my career in journalism. [online] Available at: <https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/feb/how-stacey-dooley-kick-started-her-career-in-journalism.html> [Accessed 2 February 2021].

 

2.2 Critically evaluate information from a range of sources to inform ideas.

Evaluate sources and their use/relevance

EVALUATION

I have found five different websites/articles/videos that relates to my medium to help me study it for my FMP. Three of them is about Stacey Dooley, as I am studying her and her work, another is about the history of documents and the last one is a slideshow about the theories of documents. The first website I found was ‘Source 3’ Wikipedia about Stacey Dooley. This is a very popular website that people use to read information about a person, place, subject and much more. I used this website to gather information about the achievements Dooley has made in her career. I found it this website useful for my research as I used it for the historical context section. Wikipedia is easy to read as it is very to the point and the part I read was ‘Career’ and ‘Honours and Rewards’ which are subheadings. The only fault I have with this source is that anyone can write on it if they wish too, so not everything is reliable on the website. However, I do believe that the Wikipedia page about Stacey Dooley is very accurate and correct. On the other hand, a source of research I did find very reliable was the YouTube video of an Interview with Stacey Dooley which is called ‘Sex, Drugs, ISIS & Armageddon: Stacey Dooley On Her 90 Documentaries’. This video is 4 minutes and 19 seconds long, but it is just the right amount of time to know all the information I needed to know without getting bored as long videos can make me and most people loose interest. In this video, Dooley covers a lot by talking about how she started her career, what people think of her, her first appearance on TV and her advice on how to get into the industry. From this source, I took away the information to get more knowledge about Dooley as a person as I felt like I know her more as it is an interview with her on video so I can see and hear her. I used some of the information to write the historical context section. The final research source I used to study Stacey Dooley, is an article on ‘Penguin’ called ‘Stacey Dooley: How I Kick Started My Career in Journalism’. This website page explained in much detail from Dooley’s perspective of how she started her career and how it progressed. I found this source useful because I found out how hard it can be to get into the journalism industry and how it happened for Dooley. In the article Dooley states, ‘I want to do my bit.’ This indicates to the reader’s how badly Dooley wanted to help people and document them to raise awareness. This makes me feel more motivated to do a documentary because my idea’s will raise awareness, so Dooley has inspired me too. I researched something completely different and found a website explaining the history of documentaries, where they began. This is ‘Source 1’ and the website is called ‘filmsite’. This website really helped me with the historical context section as it told me all about the first ever documentaries that were made and what they were about. It made me realise how much documentaries have evolved since they first started as the topics have become vaster and they are a lot more popular now. The last source I found is a website called ‘slideshare’, which is a slide show explaining the theories of documentaries. I found this source useful for writing about the theoretical context part as it allowed me to write about ‘John Corner’s’ theory of the ‘5 elements to make documentaries.’ This made me discover all the different types of documentaries there are and how they are made which has helped me decide what type I want mine to be. Overall, I have found different benefits from reading/watching these research sources as they have all helped me gain knowledge about different stuff but they all relate to each other. I will be using all the information I have gathered to help me research and make my own documentary.

Presentation of ideas

3.1 Apply academic conventions in the production and presentation of ideas.

3.2 Effectively communicate ideas in appropriate formats.

Here is where you need to bring in your research to present your ideas to your supervisor.

You might want to use a writing frame such as

My FMP idea is

A key quote is this

Which is useful/relevant because

I will be reacting against

I will be following the genre of ____ but developing it by ______

The main thing that interests me is

This relates to my research on

Where I found out

Some other practitioners disagree, and say

I would argue

The way I see this project is

I could relate it to the theoretical perspective of (eg) narrative construction because my character follows this arc, the story ends like this… the inciting incident is

To conclude, my research will be highly useful because

MY FMP IDEAS

For my FMP I want to make a documentary about how teenagers have coped during the pandemic with there being three lockdowns in less than a year. The reason I want to do this is as my FMP is because I want to make something that is relatable to watch for my audience as I think this will make them want to watch it. I also think it will help a lot of people as this pandemic has affected people mentally a lot so hearing other people’s stories will make them think they are not alone. From researching John Corner’s theory of ‘5 elements to make documentaries’, I have decided I want my documentary to be an interview. This is because I want to ask at least three teenagers questions about their time in this pandemic, so this style of documentary will be an interview. My inspiration for this is from Stacey Dooley because she has made about 90 documentaries in her career of journalism and (from Source 5) she quoted ‘I want to do my bit.’ This quote shows how much Dooley cares about helping people and raising awareness. I want to make a documentary not just because it sounds fun to do, but because I want people to feel better about what they are going through by hearing someone else’s story. The way I see this project is it will be a short interview documentary as I don’t want it to be too long as realistically, if I did it as long as Dooley does hers, which is about 60 minutes, I wouldn’t have time to edit it all. I also think if I did it for too long it will be hard to find enough content to keep the audience engaged the whole time. Therefore, I want my documentary to be about 7 minutes long. To conclude, my research will be highly useful because it will help me see what sort of documents people want to see. It will also help with planning in making it too see what I want to include in my documentary.