Portfolio Project: Documentary Research

     I have been challenging myself to watch more documentaries, episodic ones in particular, to understand better, what techniques I should be using and how I can tell my stories over the duration of an episode. I have particularly fallen in love with Netflix's Drive to Survive, which follows a single season in F1. I have found this documentary to be very interesting, and has introduced me to a new sport that I find that I enjoy. Each episode more or less follows a different driver/team, with a few repeats through the season, as they overcome a challenge or experience a setback. 

    Throughout my time watching various documentaries, I picked up on various techniques that I will be taking account. This includes the addition of primarily instrumental music that matches the tone of what viewers are visually seeing. While I personally would rather include music with lyrics, I believe that this may take away the focus from the topic at hand; thus, I will be using instrumental music instead. Additionally, something I really want to accomplish in my documentary is being able to hear the interviewee without seeing them first. I intend to write a script and add a voiceover as well to my documentary; however, it will be minimal as I want the stories to be told overwhelming by the subjects.

    I have yet to decide what portion of the first episode I will be creating; however, I am leaning toward the beginning 5 minutes to start with the introducing of my subject, and going from there. I feel that starting from the beginning would be beneficial when coming up with appropriate questions to ask for each specific part of the documentary. I will be filming these interviews as indirect interviews as to not take the focus off the subject, and instead have the subject rephrase the question when answering, this was common with the Drive To Survive docuseries.