This blog post, written by Beatrice, details the development of our documentary; Prescription for Deceit. It contains our documentary name development, documentary topic ideas, as well as the processes and reasoning behind the creative decisions we have made.
Possible Documentary Names :
Frankly speaking, we haven't come up with the documentary's name until 3 days prior the deadline. I realized this when I wanted to start working on the thumbnail. Therefore, I asked my teammates if they're able to come up with some names for the documentary.
These are the title suggestions Aurel proposed. While we found the titles acceptable, we felt there were other options that might better align with the documentary’s theme. As a result, we agreed to conduct further research on potential titles. Below are the names I proposed.
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I conducted research on various crime documentary titles and came up with several options for our project. To aid my group in understanding the significance of each title, I included brief explanations to clarify their relevance and purpose. I highlighted my personal preferences in yellow, as I believe they best suit the tone of our documentary. Regine and Aurel also shared their preferences, leaning towards Silent Dose, The Lethal Remedy, Prescription for Deceit, and Misdiagnosed. To resolve our indecision, we sought the opinion of our teacher, Mr. Nick, who favored Prescription for Deceit. He acknowledged its use of medical terminology, providing clarity about the documentary's subject, while the word 'Deceit' adds an element of intrigue, engaging the audience through the use of hermeneutic code. After further deliberation with the team, we ultimately chose Prescription for Deceit, as it best aligns with the documentary's themes.
Documentary Topic Ideas :
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Here are the initial documentary concepts proposed by Aurel shortly after the formation of our team. We found all the ideas compelling, but ultimately chose Idea 3. This decision was based on the practicality of execution, as it features student actors and actresses of a similar age to ourselves, making it easier to coordinate and manage. In contrast, Idea 1 would require an adult actor and necessitate off-school filming, focusing on the nurse’s home life. Idea 2, while relevant, addresses themes similar to those in Idea 3, particularly concerning anti-bullying. Thus, we determined that Idea 3 offered the most practical and relevant approach for our project.
Shooting Location :
Since our documentary revolves around a poisoning incident at school, we chose Regents Secondary School as our primary filming location. Given that all team members, actors, and actresses attend the same school, and the facilities we plan to feature are readily available on-site, filming at school proved to be the most practical option. This decision allowed us to avoid traveling to external locations and easily replace any unavailable actors (which occurred on one occasion). As a result, all filming took place within the school grounds, as detailed in our location scout.
Self Reflection: Finalising our idea on the plot was extremely complicated at first as we had to make readjustments based on our capabilities since the ideas all had different requirements that can't be guaranteed to be met. Factors such as limited amount of adult actors that are available to film and how reasonable the length of the plot to fit within a 5 minute time frame of the documentary. But by the end, we were able to decide on an interesting plot that comprised our interest as well as our abilities. Seeing it come together was unexpectedly very exciting to see and motivated me to push through to see the end result.