Which brief have you studied and why?

An extract from a new documentary TV programme, lasting approximately five minutes, together with two of the following three options:

• A radio trailer for the documentary.
• A double-page spread from listings magazine focused on the documentary.
• A newspaper advertisement for the documentary.

I have chosen to do the documentary brief as I feel it will equip me with a firm foundation of skills and knowledge in an area I hope to pursue at university. In other words, because I’d like to go onto study multimedia journalism, a course that will involve still imagery, writing, investigative reporting, sound recording, moving image shoots and editing of all the aforementioned, I feel that this brief will help me develop critical skills in many of the areas I will be studying in the future.

In addition, having elected to create a music magazine front cover for my AS I felt it would be interesting to be able to develop skills I used for this project this year through the ancillary tasks this year – hence my choice to do the double-page spread from a listings magazine focused on the documentary and a news paper advertisement for the documentary. I did contemplate the radio advertisement option, however a lack of equipment prompted me not to undertake this.

In short, I feel this project producing a documentary, created an advertisement and a double page spread will further my knowledge in the following:

• Using professional software such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects,
• Developing my filming/photographic skills (e.g. use of digital SLR cameras and film cameras while putting my AS British Film studies knowledge into action in terms of shots, angles, composition and editing).
• Along with this, I will be learning different journalistic interviewing techniques, researching methods and different shots and effects to create connotations and denotations within my documentary.

Aside from learning important skills, I was drawn to the documentary brief because I am passionate about a number of issues I feel would lend themselves to a documentary.