The following TV documentaries are all examples of how you could interpret the brief. Remember, you need to come up with an appropriate subject or topic for your documentary, ensure it is appropriate for a mainstream family audience and can be shown on a broadcast channel pre-watershed.
UK doctor switches to 80% ULTRA-processed food diet for 30 days
This is a perfect example of a subject that would be entirely appropriate for a mainstream family audience that can be shown pre-watershed. It has a nice mix of 'selfie'-style pieces to camera alongside more traditional documentary conventions and interviews.
Facing The Consequences Of Catfishing
This uses a different style with an interview between presenter and guest - it's slightly different but effective. This is also useful for its opening scene - edited to immediately intrigue the audience and draw them in. It also has a short title sequence so meets quite a few requirements of our brief.
BBC3 Presents Tough Young Teachers - Episode 2
This is another topic appropriate for the mainstream family audience. It's also an excellent example of how the opening three minutes can draw in the audience, introduce key themes and characters while also including social media hashtags and other industry elements our coursework brief requires (see 0.41). Also look out for classic documentary conventions such as the montage sequence in the first 10 seconds and the characters staring at the camera to allow the audience to make a connection (0.21 - 0.23).
J. Cole - Applying Pressure: The Off-Season Documentary
This one is likely to be blocked in school but is an example of a classic sub-genre of TV documentary - the music documentary. This would not meet the brief in terms of pre-watershed family audience but there is no doubt a more mainstream music documentary could meet the coursework brief we've been given. If you're potentially interested in the music genre, this Vulture article detailing the 50 Best Music Documentaries is worth a read.
Other documentary examples
There are many other examples of BBC documentaries and beyond - remember to research topics that YOU find interesting or that are linked to your idea. Here are more examples:
This BBC3 documentary looks at climate change and the impact of the electricity used by the internet worldwide. This uses greenscreen and presenting to camera in a really creative way and may have conventions you want to use in your coursework.
This takes a different approach - putting people around a table to discuss an issue. It's particularly worth watching in terms of an opening sequence - cold opening with a quote, introducing the topic, short title sequence, hard-hitting close-up shots to introduce the contributors, use of sound etc.
This is interesting for the way it uses documentary conventions - text on screen, no voiceover and all driven by interviews. It's a current topic and while this particular programme would be inappropriate pre-watershed due to the language the topic of racism could certainly meet the brief.
This looks at the beauty industry's reliance on palm oil and uses a range of documentary conventions such as voiceover, non-diegetic music and creative camerawork. This is also great for the print aspect of the brief as some of the promotional photography that went with this is excellent:
Researching a creative documentary topic
This website feature on creative short film documentaries might help you find a quirky or creative topic for your coursework. This doesn't exactly fit our brief (we are making the first three minutes of a TV documentary) but some of the ideas here are brilliant. You may also be inspired by some of the technical construction of these documentaries with some using black and white, montage sequences and sound in really creative ways.
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