Pre-Production: Professor Green Documentary Research

The Professor Green documentary series on BBC Three is in many ways a slightly different genre to what we are preposing. However, it is a documentary of inspiration that always lies in the back of my head. Something about out the way it is carried out really stood out to me and I believe that is due to the 'realness' of the leading presenter, Stephen Manderson (Professor Green). Stephen seems to relate to the people he walks with and interviews and you can see genuine empathy in not just his voice but also general persona whilst discussing troubling and heartbreaking issues. Although the man is now a millionaire, and some would say he is not relevant to this, he clearly hasn't forgotten his routes and is using his success and accolade for good.


Steven didn't have an easy childhood himself and adult life hasn't been much easier. We are first introduced to this in his first and what I believe to be his best documentary 'Suicide and Me'. Despite the 'tough guy' image that he portrays visually with his career, tattoos and scar on his neck, we see the this voice is breaking and eyes welling up when discussing this sensitive issue.

Suicide is the biggest killer for men under 45 and yet it’s something so many people feel uncomfortable talking about. Seven years prior to this documentary, Stephen lost his estranged father to suicide, despite showing no previous signs that he was suffering. Whilst their relationship was at times toxic, his love for his father was unconditional. I think his story is something that really reached me. “It’s not a topic that anyone really wants to talk about, you know. You want to empty a room, then you bring up suicide,” he says in the film. “I would like to highlight the severity of the situation and bit by bit remove the taboo that surrounds it.”

Because of the success of this documentary, BBC Three have commissioned several more since. Having such a strong character lead the documentary, someone well known and who can relate to certain topics gives this documentary a great edge over many other documentaries I have seen. This is something I feel we can also bring to our own documentary with Liam as our lead presenter. he too is well known and can relate to the topic on discussion. By having similar attributes we can produce something just as successful, and Liam is also able to bring his own audience in too.

Shoot Style:

Shots used in-between interviews to break them up and keep them interesting. Audiences get very bored of looking at the same shot for so long. "Psychologists say that the average human sustained attention span is 20 minutes. But for online videos, it seems to be about 60 seconds." (Wista, 2011). Whilst this is referring to online videos, it's equally applicable to video content.




The use of archive photos was interesting also. As I want to delve into history in our documentary with the first case where digital evidence was used in court, this is something that I could introduce if archive video is difficult to get hold of access wise. It is also interesting having images on full screen and then having them come out of that into the real life photos being held.




With this close up shot the hands and photo are in focus which a shallow depth of field to give this a more cinematic aesthetic.










The single interview here uses nice natural light (although key lighting on the left of Fram has also been used to help). It stays with a traditional interview style but keeps it fresh with the casual background; it makes a formal interview seem more informal which is appealing to its younger BBC Three Audience.






References:

BEN TRAVIS , Tuesday 27 October 2015. 'Professor Green's 'Suicide and Me' explores the ‘silent epidemic’ in heartfelt BBC3 documentary'. (https://www.standard.co.uk/stayingin/tvfilm/professor-green-explores-the-silent-epidemic-of-suicide-in-heartfelt-bbc-three-documentary-a3100286.html)


Wista, 2011, 4 Ways to Keep Viewers Engaged in an Online Video. (https://wistia.com/learn/marketing/4-ways-to-keep-viewers-engaged-in-an-online-video)

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