Our First Team Meeting

Today, we had our first team meeting where we discussed our ideas for the genre of short film we want to go for. We initally thought to do a horror/thriller as before we broke up for the holidays, we were shown some of last years A2 work; the scaring factor was particularly popular and seemed like a fun genre to choose. However, after researching other short film genres, which we put into a mind map, we discovered that we could do a short film documentary. We thought that this would be an original and interesting genre to do since we both enjoy watching documentaries on TV.

To help us choose the right topic for our documentary short film, we then listed some of our favourite documentaries. My interests lie within the documentaries on BBC3 and Channel 4 by journalists such as Stacey Dooley - she investigates a variety of topics from exploring the lives of young people who are affected by a financial crisis to lifting the lid on the global war on drugs. Tamuka, however, preferred documentaries based on inspirational people in the sporting culture e.g. skateboarding. Tamuka then suggested that I watch a film called 'The Motivation', which ended up being a huge inspiration.

The Motivation is a non-fiction sports film that tells the story of...

'Eight of the world's best pro-skateboarders prepare for the upcoming Street League Championship in NYC. Each equally talented, they all must overcome unique challenges - family pressures, injuries, money, fame and their own internal struggles - for a chance to win $200,000 and the title of best street-skateboarder in the world.'

This film prompted us to create a documentary, also known as a docu-drama (dramatized re-enactments of real events), as this type of feature film would combine our interests in non-fiction. Our overall aim for our documentary short film is to inform our community about the skateboarding subculture and its benefits, gathering this information from owners/workers of local skate shops and those who skate in public skate parks.