Final Proposal

Final Proposal 

Over the last couple of months, myself and my work partner have made and edited a documentary about James O'driscoll and about his life behind being a blind personal trainer. We also show footage about a charity event which James  recently took part in called the 300 Workout, this was to raise money for the charity Save The Children. During the documentary we show James and some of his fellow friends completing the workout, we found this inspirational to put into our documentary to show how amazing James is and how loosing he's sight has not stopped himself from doing ANYTHING. We also show footage of James talking before and after the workout and what he found was hard about doing this challenge. We also have a small clip on some of his friends talking about the workshop and how they felt after completing the challenge.

I think one of the main reasons myself and Ryan chose to make a documentary on the life of a blind personal trainer is that he is an inspiration to everyone! I feel that it literally puts into perspective anybody can achieve or be what they want to be if they put their minds to it. James also does a lot of fund raising for the charity Save The Children, so to complete such a hard workout to raise money is a great achievement.

I feel that from filming this documentry I have not only learnt myself but taught over people never to give up in life. James is this first blind persoanl trainer in england and after loosing is sight during his mid 20's it just goes to show that for anyone who has lost their sight from birth or midway through life, they should not let that put them down, they should pick themselves back up and achieve what they want to. This may not happen straight away but you will certainly achieve the highest you can one day, and be proud of it!

Production Log

Production Log

During our documentary planning period, we decided to arrange meetings with James to discuss with him exactly what was going to be happening and what we wanted to gain from this documentary.


09/02/2013 - This was our first meet with James to discuss all our ideas and intentions in which myself and Ryan had for our documentary. This was a very successful meeting as James had agreed to take part in our documentary and allow us to film one of his biggest charity events 'Save the Children'. We also arranged our next meeting in which we will be filming the event at Virgin Active Gym. The only down fall in which we had at this meeting was that we were unable to get any filming done and this was just a meet to secure dates in which we would be able to meet up with James.


16/02/2013 - This was the big day for the charity event which James was taking part in at the Virgin Gym, this was our first day in which was doing our first part of filming for our documentary, this was a very successful day for us as we managed to film the whole charity event, and speak to James and several of the other boys who took part in this event before and after they had completed the 300 workout.


02/03/2013 - After a very successful day the other day when filming James and others doing the 300 workout, we then went back on a third meet to speak to James a bit more about his life and about the effects he has been left with after durning blind at just 22 years old. We had previously thought and discussed about some of the questions in which we would like to ask James, We had his permission to ask him anything what we wished to. I thought that all the questions in which we asked James were very effective towards our documentary and interview.


23/03/2013 - This was our last and final meet with James to finish off our any last inputs which we needed for our documentary. This was very successful and we thanked James a lot for all his help with taking part in our documentary and interview and giving all the information and shots in which we needed to put it all together to produce the best documentary that we could present.

News Vs Documentaries

News Vs Documentaries

I will be exploring and comparing the similarities and differences between The News and Documentaries.

News Channels broadcast their information in a very different way compared to a documentary. The News channels give us audience members minimal information about a matter or cause. They give a brief overview of the story, this overview will mainly include live or archive footage. A story can be presented by either 1 or more presenters speaking about a story or they will have news presenters at the scene speaking live about the news. In some situations news channels may have guest speakers or even witnesses speaking, this will obviously depend on the story. The news will also occasionally have one to one interviews, this is where wither the presenters is speaking either face to face with someone or over satellite. Some news channels have a ticker bar which tells you things that are happening at that exact time, this will instantly be updated when a new story is released.

Documentaries will explore a pacific document in a lot more depth and detail. Documentaries do the useful job of exploring a story or matter in a lot more detail for example in the Bin Lade: Shoot to kill documentary the audience is given a first hand account from the men and women who were responsible for taking down Osama Bin Landen. The documentary is based around the reasons why Bin Laden was the most wanted terrorist and talking about the day they would finally capture him and eventually kill him.

There is quite an obvious difference between a news program and a documentary. This is, the news is always live and read from a TelePrompTer and includes voice-overs and short clips between reports, however documentaries are usually pre-recorded before being broadcasted on television.
News reports usually inform the audience on the key facts about a story whereas documentaries go into a lot more detail about these facts or stories instead of highlighting the key points.
In both The news and the Bin Laden documentary narration is shown. It is most likely that whilst The News is on new stories are being released this can then be shown through narration on screen.

The layout for a News Channel and a Documentary are extremely different.
The mise-en-scene for a news channel is usually two presenters live in a studio presenting the viewers with the top headlines and news stories across the world, they would usually be sat behind a fairly high desk with screens behind them and in some cases ticker bars will be shown on screen. They will usually start but quickly a quick overview of some of the stories they are going to viewing on todays show they also show some pictures of the topics they are going to be discussing. They then go on to speak about the headlines and stories. In some cases they have other presenters and the scene of the story reporting back to the studio .
 The mise-en-scene for documentaries will always be changing depending on the chosen topic, all documentaries are difference and will be documented and shown in a different way. The majority of documentaries will have a narrator, director and even a scientist or someone who the documentary is based on to back up their facts.

interview