Formal Proposal

Formal Proposal for documentary

Topic

After we brainstormed ideas for the possible topics for our documentary and then conducted questionnaires for research into our ideas we have concluded that the topic of the documentary is going to be sandwiches. Our reason for this is that there is a wide range of topics within this subject and it will have a wide range for the target audience as this is a topic that is relevant to a mass majority of the population. Also for this topic we are able to easily access a lot of evidence and it will be easy to obtain interviews from the public and gain a professional opinion.

Type of documentary

The type of documentary that we are going to make is a mixed documentary and this is because we can obtain a lot of sources that make a mixed documentary such as lots of archive footage and we can easily observe sandwiches, people buying sandwiches, shops selling sandwiches etc… Also it will be very easy to obtain interviews for this topic as there are many places that sell sandwiches and many people who can relate to the topic as everybody will have had an experience with sandwiches.

Style of documentary

The style of the documentary is going to be like a debate and this is because even though sandwiches are a very popular subject but not everybody likes them. So we can aim to create a debate about everybody’s different preferences towards sandwiches. Also with this style we will be able to make the exposition of the documentary really stand out as it will become clear to the audience that the theme is about what people like about sandwiches and what they don’t like, and this will become obvious as they are both completely opposite ideas.

Channel and Scheduling

We have decided that the channel for this documentary to be shown on is Channel 4. This is because of the feedback that we received from our research said that this was a very popular choice for people to watch documentaries as it has a wide viewing audience and it will fit in with a large majority of our target audience. The time and day that it will be on is a Wednesday night at 8:00 pm, this is because this is not too early in the week for people to want to take notice of it and its also not on during the weekend when a lot of people will either be going out to enjoy their days off of other popular programmes like the x factor are not on which will hopefully give us a wider viewing audience.

Target Audience

We have decided that our target audience should be from the ages of 16-70, and this is because the topic of sandwiches doesn’t really have a closed age group as it is a wide topic area and everybody all ages is able to relate to this subject.

Primary Research Needed

We conducted some research by handing out questionnaires that were aimed at finding out what people liked about sandwiches and what people thought channels and what time they should be on. To find this out we handed out 30 questionnaires and then calculated the results and created conclusions from these results and these have enabled us to decide what the documentary is going to be about and what other subject matters to include in it. We can also do interviews to find out these facts and opinions.

Secondary research needed

This research can be done over resources like interviews with people who buy sandwiches and also work with them (subway for example), we can read books to find out about the history of sandwiches and we can also use the internet to fins out the same things. So we have a wide range of resources available so that we can find out essential information to create the best possible documentary about sandwiches we can.

Narrative Structure

Our structure is going to be linear, and this is because if the topic is sandwiches then we are going to need to try and tell some kind of a story of at least be able to come up with an argument that leads into a debate which ends on a conclusion that will justify our exposition.

Outline of content

Within our documentary we are going to include the following contents

·        why people like sandwiches,

·        why they think they are so popular,

·         Why people prefer to buy them

·        Is the sandwich being made available nearly in every shop ruining people’s personalisation with food?

Resource requirements

The resources that we obtain will be either from the internet or from other resources like books or television and we will need to ensure as a group that they are all factual and accurate so that we can create a very informal documentary but also be able to keep it entertaining by having lots of good archive material.