Our production group Silver Line Productions aims to produce a documentary on the life of a racing greyhound. During the pre production stage, we have undertaken research into all aspects of documentary to prepare ourselves for the actual production. As I have taken on the role of director it has given me the opportunity to excel my management skills; communication between the group and myself. As a group we thought it was necessary to ‘document’ our progress of the pre production, with group meetings and social networking group to keep everyone up to date. I have been directing my own strategy to researching to help me gain better understanding of this role.

 Our idea for Greyhound documentary gave us a helping hand as I am fortunate to know a contact for our primary source; a greyhound owner who trains and often goes to races.  My initial instinct was to contact a close friend of the family as he races his greyhounds but due to personal issues he was not willing to take part in our documentary, however he gave us another contact which led us to our current primary contact Morris Massey. In my planning stages I have gone into the types of questions I would ask on the days of filming, such as what a regular day of training consists of, how did you get into greyhound racing? What the benefits from it? Etc.  As we are looking into all perceptions on this subject I have thought about the ways I would interview the manager of the stadium, going into why he/she thinks the greyhound racing gets bad publicity? How the stadium is beneficial to its members? For the Hampshire Rescue Centre, I aim to find out about how people can become aware of the neglect on greyhounds; I will ask about what damage the races have done to the ones they are currently looking after.  

The style we intend to use is a combination of expository and observational; the expository without the voice of god, although it will be a rhetorical form of asking the audience whether Greyhound racing is a right or wrong? The main part will be improvised in some ways i.e. showing the Greyhound in its natural environment i.e. training at home. We thought this would be appropriate, as we would like to inform our audience as well as foresee what truths lie in beneath this subject. Also, it will portray a balanced perception without any inference from us or staged action.

During the group meetings I helped manage what we were going to discuss, and helped us move forward with our pre production; I regular had a discussion with Alyssa about the follow up with contacts and information they provided and whether we had conformation or not.  My role was more researched based looking into documentaries with similar styles; one source that I found extremely helping was a book called Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger.  It goes into the visual style/ aesthetics, the relationship between the director and the subject “authorship challenges and opportunities” also includes all technical information and communicating with members of the crew.

Things to improve, for future reference I will write up a schedule for when each task has to be completed, I got caught up in the research as a whole and confused myself as I was doing different parts of each page at a time instead of being consistent and getting them done.  For the production process, next semester, I will have a folder with all my jobs to do - also including questions for my primaries, location maps dates/times, travel, expenses etc.  

There were a few issues with production meetings, thereby group members not turning up on time which put us behind and often having to repeat what had already been discussed. However, we did overcome by people organizing their time more efficiently towards the middle of the pre production process. Due to miscommunication and systematic thought we decided to change the roles of producer as we thought our previous producer, Ainsley, was taking on too much as he is already a producer in Drama Production.

Initially the path we were intending to go down was the one focusing on primarily the primary source and their story, following them in their journey – relationship between the owner and his dog, training, buildup to the races, at the races in Oxford Greyhound Stadium and the aftermath of either winning or losing, where he will go from there. However, due to a commitment on Oxford’s part we were not allowed to film as they have a contract with another film company.

Further research for our documentary – I have found two parts of a documentary called On the line: from cradle to grave on the Racing Dog Protection Act website, it makes its audience aware of the cruelty to these domestic animals and going into the negative aspect of racing. We will show an interest into this side of the fence; however we will go in with an objective approach to fairly show both sides of the argument.

In terms of understanding the technical elements, which support the production process, I have taken notes and put my newfound knowledge into practice. I found the Canon 550d challenging in ways of setting the aperture to the ‘f’ stop that would complement the subject I was focusing on.  For the photo essay I decided that to learn more about the way in which this specific camera operates I should detached myself from what I knew by going out of my comfort zone. My photos of China town at night were not constructed; the majority of my photos were decisive moment.  I felt this was appropriate as the location was very open and so was quite hectic with tourists and the local Chinese community rushing around, dining, and shopping. I think I the photos show everything that was worth capturing; everything that makes Chinatown unique and gives it character.  I have developed an understanding of Raw processing and photojournalism throughout this semester, I believe this will give me an advantage and professional outlook on future projects.

My role for the pitch will be explaining the risks we will face and the dependencies we will reply upon. As producer and director, Alyssa and myself have filled in risk assessment forms outlining the main interferences we may come across and how they will resolve them as a group. I think my part will benefit the group as I am confident in talking about our contacts and how each one will be a vital part of our documentary. Planning ahead I have thought about the cost of our travel, time management and keeping regular contact with our primary of who I plan on visiting so that I can practice my interview techniques beforehand and get to know background information so that I come along prepared and ready to ahead with the interview.

Overall, I am pleased with the progress of our group production. We have had a lot of setbacks due to misfortune of being denied by certain contacts. However, this made us more determined to get more contacts; we have been fortunate to gain a mass interest by people who race their greyhounds, they are willing to take part in our documentary. I believe that our documentary will be unique in a sense of following people on a journey while exposing conflicting beliefs across the scale. 

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