Research into Genre - Documentary

In order to make the best documentary possible, I decided to research into examples that were 5 minutes or less, and texts that focused specifically on homophobic bullying.



In Bed with The Kills is a behind the scenes look of The Kills during their photoshoot/interview for Nylon Magazine. I found this video incredibly useful in terms of making our own documentary visually interesting in the short space of time we have. The video is only 3 minutes 25 seconds and uses a lot of close ups, focus pulls amongst other shot types, and successfully manages to use handheld in a sophisticated way without making it disorientating for the audience. With practice, I think our group could also master these techniques and subsequently make our own film visually interesting.




The video above is the shortlisted short films made my young people, in association with Stonewall, on homophobic bullying. They were screened at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in March 2010.
These short films are incredibly useful as they shine a light on homophobic bullying in their own unique way. The first film is a talking heads, documentary which is similar to what we're planning for our documentary short - this will be a good resource of inspiration for our film, although it is a little dull in terms of camera work. The second film is a fiction piece highlighting not just the bullying of homosexuals, but of people are thought of as homosexual simply for engaging in activities that don't conform to the "typical" behaviour of their gender stereotypes. Finally, the third film looks at the violent attacks on homosexuals in schools using a CCTV style of filming.

I think we could take inspiration from all these films to tackle the issue of homophobic bullying within schools and how to make it visually interesting for the audience.