Last year I worked on news pieces and features that were no longer than three minutes on average. With my documentary I have produced a 15 minute feature on a topic related to my participatory project with Upstart. To see the work I have done with this documentary, you can look further down this page. To listen to the final documentary follow this link
What you need to know
This documentary process was broken down into 3 stages: the proposal, the process and my reflection. During the proposal, I discussed my overall plan and vision for my documentary. In section 2, the process, I spoke about how I have gone about the process of research and content gathering for my documentary, by creating an audio essay and series of listening diaries. You can look to my audio diary process by clicking on this link. In the final section, I reflected back on the process, what I did and how it was achieved. You can listen to these radio talks at the end of this page.
Section 1: My Plans
From working with Upstart and reading back issues of the newspaper I found that Mfundo Jacobs, a former Upstart, had his short story printed in the newspaper over a number of editions. I decided to see to what extent his short story related to his life. As it turns out, there's more to it than I had thought. His life story then became the subject of my documentary.
To read my proposal, click here
Section 2: The Process
Throughout the process of making my documentary, I have been referring to some theory for assistance. These theories has allowed me to think about what a documentary is as well as what it entails. I have also considered the theory around fieldwork. Click here to see this work. In addition to this, I spent some time listening to other audio documentaries and discussing them in a separate blog. I found that through listening to how other documentaries have come together, how different subject matter was portrayed and documented, I began learning to identify styles and techniques that I adopted for my documentary as well as different style of documentary that I wanted to experiment with. To see these writings, please follow this link.
Section 3: My Reflections
I had completed my interviews with Mfundo, but from listening back to the actuality, I was not entirely convinced that I had sufficiently managed to gather everything that would be essential to putting the documentary together and actually doing it justice. Listen to this clip to hear all about it.
For the beginning of my documentary, I wanted to set the tone for the whole documentary. Trisha Das says that the beginning of the documentary needs to hook the audience and I think that should be done by letting the listener know what is coming in the documentary. I have tried to achieve that with this opening. Listen to what I had to say about it:
I think that ethics play a big role in any journalism that one takes part in. Many social research theorists speak about ethics without fail. Journalist also have their own code of conduct with regards to how we treat sources and the public that we serve. Through this documentary I have faced this ethical problem and this is what I had to say about it:
It is finally came to the end of the whole process of putting my documentary together and I allowed an audience to have a listen. This is my reflection after the feedback I received:
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