For this project the aim was to make sure the pre-production process was undertaken and understood to prepare ourselves for the production process which will follow in the next few months.  To do this we began by forming a group in which we became Silver Line Productions. In this critical analysis I will be discussing my role in the group and how I contributed towards the pre-production process to guarantee we would be prepared for filming.My role in the group is Producer. At the start of term my role began as Director of Photography, however, we felt as a group that the current producer was not able to handle all the responsibilities (as he was already producer for another film); therefore we switched out the roles. As Producer, it is my job to oversee each and every aspect of our production. To do this I will be organising our shooting dates, creating the budget, finding locations and contacts and so on. This means I will be working closely with each crew member to guarantee a successful film is made.  I have created a production folder which includes a list of all our group members and their roles, a brief synopsis of our film, a list of our primaries and their contact information, a budget breakdown, all the equipment we intend to use, a schedule of meetings, health and safety forms, insurance documents, and our company’s release form.
I have also done pre-production research into different ideas. During the early stages when we were coming up with documentary ideas I looked into Therapeutic horse riding and cancer research. These are two topics that I have already had some experience with and found quite interesting when looking into documentary. As a group we decided to look further into cancer research and the current debate about whether treatment should be giving to terminally ill patients or whether it would be a waste of NHS money. I looked into the various debates surrounding and make note before starting to look for contacts.

As our cancer treatment idea became more developed I took on the role of communications and phoned hospitals around England that were known for their cancer wings. The first hospital I contacted was the Royal Marsden Cancer centre as they would have experts on the subject. Unfortunately, after many phone calls and e-mails they turned us down due to issues with filming regulations. I continued to phone other hospitals such as the Royal Free hospital, the Royal Liverpool university hospital, and Kings College Hospital. Again, we were continually getting turned down due to health and safety issues with filming in a hospital. We made a group decision to give up on this idea and start finding another one.

Not too long after we dropped the cancer treatment idea did I come up with the idea of Greyhound Dog racing. There are many negative perceptions to this sport and I wanted to show what the sport actually was. This documentary which is our current idea would not be biased as we aim to depict the positive side through filming a trainer who treats his dogs well and going to a stadium to capture to enthusiasm for the sport. However, to show the reasons behind the negativity we will also be visiting local Greyhound rescue centres and getting various stories to how racing can be harmful. Hopefully, our documentary will show evidence to both sides and then leave it to the audience to decide if they think Greyhound racing is ethical or cruel. As any project, research needed to be conducted before we could start to develop the idea further. I looked into different articles relating to Greyhound racing such as an article from the Guardian; “From the Greyhound Track to where?” This article demonstrated how the many racetracks across the country are closing its doors and leaving many dogs without homes. I also read about the rules and regulations in Greyhound racing on the official British Greyhound Racing Bored. This was very informative because it juxtapositions the other article as it demonstrates what the industry claims they do to make the sport ethical. Other research I undertook involved looking at various YouTube videos which were promos from animal rights societies depicting (in a horrific way) what the sport does to dogs. After undertaking all of this research, we established that we wanted to focus on the themes of greed and competition as well the human/dog relationship. We began making contacts.
Taking on the communications role meant I began contacting various stadiums such as Oxford, Brighton, Poole, Henlow, Kent, and Birmingham to try and find us a location. I also contacted our primary source who is a Greyhound trainer and races his dogs. He was happy to be interviewed and filmed as he wants to show there is nothing cruel about racing. Finally, I contact rescue centres who has also shown interest in being in our film.

As a group we were required to create a Yola webpage which would have the function as a research site in which we displayed the various researches we undertook to understand the industry better. This website was created at the start of the semester so we could begin documenting the process of planning our documentary and the research it required.  I looked into styles of documentary and photojournalist practitioners, new media, and various technical aspects to further enhance my knowledge of the documentary industry and be more prepared for creating our own production.
This module has allowed me to have been trained on the Canon 450 and 550 DSLR cameras, RAW Photoshop processing, Adobe premier Pro and Final cut pro. These will all be significant when it comes to shooting our documentary as part of creating industry standard productions is being able to use the technology. Another part of our module we learnt about was photojournalism and created our own photo essays to demonstrate we understood the theory and could apply it to our own work. This allowed me to experiment in more depth with the technology we had been trained on. I feel that doing this project will help me when it comes to producing our documentary film in the upcoming months.

With any group project it is important to make sure the group works well together and communicates properly. We had weekly group meetings and informed each other of any ideas we had. We also made sure we had to support of the entire group before making any major decisions. This became clear when we had to make the major decision to switch 2 of our roles out, as mentioned earlier.
When planning how we wanted to pitch our documentary, we thought about ways to grab the audience’s attention early into the presentation. Since, animal protection groups often use shocking images to do this I thought to find one of their promos on YouTube and show a portion of that to open our presentation with. This would then have our audience interested in the topic from the start. My role in the pitch would be to introduce our company and our film, breakdown the synopsis and discuss our target audience.

After reflecting on the way this module progressed and how as a production company we developed the pre-production of our documentary, I would say that there are a few improvements we could aim to make next semester. Mainly, to make sure our group is more organised with time. As Producer, I will aim to make sure the group knows where they need to be and when and also to make sure they are contributing to the group. Overall, I feel as though the progress in this module was successful as I gained a good amount of knowledge on the various aspects of the documentary industry. I was also able to enhance my technical skills through the training are equipment and editing software. This module also allowed me to learn where my personal strengths and weakness lay. I believe that I have developed my leadership skills and how to manage a team within working in a team. Also, I like to believe that one of my main talents lies within the organisation and how I have began conducting myself in a professional manner. As producer, I will make sure that as a group we will work well and learn from any issues or conflicts we have had this semester. This will hopefully allow us to enhance group dynamics, to create a better production.  Next semester I will take into account everything learnt in this module and the skills I’ve gained to guarantee that a successful production is made.

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