Our first interview and what we learnt from it

For our first interview Elliott met up with a woman called Julie who is a newly trained vicar. We have now got 17 minutes of straight footage with Julie airing her opinions on various Christian related questions based within a homosexual context.

The interview was conducted at Elliott's house in a room with pale wallpaper so that she stands out. She is seated so as to be comfortable and was asked to answer the question directed at her in her answer so that when it comes to editing we can cut from and to various questions throughout. This will also aid cut-away shots.

The interview was good and definitely usable, but there are some points we will be able to improve upon when doing our next few interviews:

• The framing of the shot could have been better, for example there is a radiator in the corner that is not very visually appealing and a glass of water is half visible which could have been cropped out.
• The lighting in the room was not ideal because of the lateness of the hour and next time we will make the area as bright as possible.

• Julie does not have a very loud voice and although she was asked to project her voice at the camera her answers are still quite quiet. In the future we may like to use a microphone that can be clipped on to the interviewee's shirt. 

For our second interview we have arranged to meet up with Sharon Ferguson, a homosexual reverend who works for the Lesbian and Gay Christians Movement, on Tuesday 3rd October. Sharon Ferguson will be an invaluable asset to our documentary because she has been on television previously, on the BBC's ethics programme 'The Moral Maze' and also 'The Big Questions', so she will be well rehearsed in airing her views.

Teacher Feedback

I know you have done more than this! You have some BASIC information and there is an attempt to include visual images and made this look presentable and easy to read. Your presentation was very good (proficient/excellent). If you had completed this blog, you would have earned high marks.


Lastly, please label your blog entries--and complete drafts. Two of your entries are drafts. I posted one of them, but it is incomplete.

Audience Research

We created a questionnaire to find out information regarding our audience. The questionnaire contained 6 questions about their television preferences and views on homosexuality in the church. 

We put these questionnaires into graphical form to make it easier to read and draw conclusions from.


Note: Please click to make larger! They stretch the page if embedded in their original size. 












Not all the results are posted, however from the graphs shown we can determine that there is an interest in our documentary type and the subject matter. 

Influences

Louis Theroux does controversial documentaries such as the enclosed picture taken from 'The most hated family in America' which we gained inspiration from. For a start, Louis has a very typical technique of creating an unbiased account of both the for and against parties. Secondly, he has a very courteous demeanour when talking to people he does not necessarily like or respect. 

'The most hated family in America' is a documentary about one family in America which is part of a particular type of Christian church that sets out to hate homosexuals. They are presented in a carefully negative light, with the grandmother of the family acting very hostile towards anyone who does not share her view. Unlike this documentary we will not be taking a specific side in the debate and will not present anybody either negatively or positively. 

Pitch and Response

We pitched our documentary idea about gay and lesbian christians to the class. We got lots of useful feedback such as how we should go about presenting our formal pitch. We also got the idea to create questionnaires for people to fill out, so that we can gather more information about our target audience. For example we need to make a powerpoint presentation and make sure that everybody in our group speaks and also include pictures to help maintain focus.