Final Project Ideas, Influences and Approaches.

Choosing what to work on for my Final Project is a tough decision. I think it’s the fact that the word ‘Final’ is such a huge part of. It feels like this is what I’ve been working towards, but at the same time I’m just at the beginning, I’ll be learning about the production of television shows for years to come yet. 

There are two different things I’d really like to work on, and have a creative handle on. I’d either like to work on a documentary, as I’ve only done one in my first year, and it didn’t go very well. And the other thing I’d like to work on is a short film combining comedy with drama.

Documentary, as a genre, wasn’t something that massively interested me before starting the course. I had seen documentaries but they were only really the ones you see on Channel 4, and I only really watched them because everyone else was talking about them and I wanted to be part of the conversation. But the teaching on this course really opened my eyes, and I’ve been watching a lot more documentaries, and if not documentaries then a lot more factual programming at least. 

I’m a big fan of Louie Theroux and his documentary style, but he tends to hit some quite hard to deal with subjects. Cherry Healey is someone else who has adopted a similar style but keeps hers a bit more light and gets a bit more personally involved on an emotional level. This is something I’m interested in trying, as I think it’s becoming a more and more popular way of getting viewers to become more involved with the programme as they have a face that they can be familiar with and it helps them become more engrossed, as they feel like they are going on a journey with the presenter.

As I said above, I’d like to work on a short film combining comedy and drama. I’ve been trying to write some scripts combining the two genres, but I haven’t got anything at the moment that I’d feel confident enough to work on. But the combination of the two genres is something that I really enjoy as a viewer, so it is definitely something I’m going to keep working on and possibly consider when it comes to the final projects.

But more importantly I want to be part of team that I work well with. I’ve worked on quite a few projects over the past couple of years, and the one most important thing I’ve learned is that you have to like, or at least have a good working relationship, with the rest of your team members. There has to be a level of respect and understanding for everything to work, otherwise it tends to just leave a small amount of people doing the majority of work for the team.