Idea

When thinking of an idea for a documentary, one thing kept popping into my mind and that was the power of technology, and in particular the power and information online organisations such as Facebook hold about us.

My first idea was to make a documentary about homelessness, as this is a big problem in the country. I would have explored the rising amount of people that find themselves on the streets and the conditions they have to endure day to day. However after careful thought and discussion with my peers I decided that if I wanted to interview someone homeless, they could be potentially unpredictable and could endanger my safety. Therefore I decided against this idea.

My second idea was making a documentary that explored post-Brexit Britain and the problems that could occur. However after doing some research I realised there were so many documentaries out there at the moment exploring this and that people would be fed up with it and loose interest.


When thinking of an idea for a documentary, one thing kept popping into my mind and that was the power of technology, and in particular the power and information online organisations such as Facebook hold about us. From this  I knew I wanted to explore the darker side of social media, such as privacy/data breaches and cyber-bullying. Here is my final proposal

Documentary project proposal

In life I believe that members of the public should know about the dark side of social media and websites, for example the amount of information sites like Google and Facebook know about you, privacy breaches and the psychological effects that prolonged use of these sites can have on the mind. My film will show this dark side of social media by exploring facts and statistics and  looking reports carried out these sites. Furthermore I will ensure that I interview people in my college group and some older people ( as these are also increasingly popular social media users)as they are in the 18-29 age group which uses social media the most, according to my research. Through doing my interviews I will question my interviewee's on  whether they are aware of the data social media sites like Facebook hold about them, and I will present them with facts to hopefully shock them and make them and the audience more aware of the darker side of social media. The main characters in my documentary will be, Talitha Engledow, Nathan Burgess-Johnson and Katherine Bunker , as I will be interviewing them about the dark side of social media and whether they are aware of the shocking facts and statistics. Speaking to Talitha, Nathan and Katherine I realised they are quite oblivious to the dark side of social media so they will be good people to interview and shock them with statistics I my documentary. My mother (Katherine) will be good to interview as she is middle aged so it will mean the audience get to hear and older persons perspective on social media. Furthermore as I have done a lot of research into the dark side of social media I will also be one of the main characters as I will be presenting facts to my interview's to hopefully shock and inform them about the negatives of social media. The main issue that my film will be exploring will be the negatives of social media and online sites. My purpose in the documentary will to to be to inform people of the dark side of social media however I will also mention some of the positives so the audience gets to hear both sides of the argument. When planning who I was going to interview, I ensured I had someone that was very positive about social media and put down my research into the dark side claiming that it could be fake and not accurate - this character is Nathan a frequent social media user that fails to accept the dark side of social media. The disagreement between me and Nathan will be the confrontation part of my documentary, and the audience will learn of the split opinion of social media. In terms of the form and style of my documentary I am going to ensure that I as the documentarian am going to be part of the documentary and it will be a reflexive style of documentary but also will have elements of participatory documentaries. I am also going to ensure that I use three-point lighting technique for my interviews and use plenty of inter-cutting between different interviews that I will be conducting. Researching the different types of  documentaries has made me aware that I really want my documentary to be a mix of reflexive and participatory documentary as I know that I as the filmmaker I want to be part of the film such as doing pieces to camera and narrating it - these are important elements of both participatory and reflexive documentaries.

My film should end similar to how it should start. I will sum up how although social media and online sites may seem like innocent helpful sites that connect us with people all over the world, there is a dark side to all of this and how we must be aware of this. One of the main reasons why I feel I am uniquely qualified to make this documentary is that, all of the mainstream documentaries that I have seen about the negatives of online and social media are always made and narrated by adults, even though the late teens to late 20's is the highest age group that use social media and I'm in that bracket. Therefore I will be able to explore the dark side of social media as a teenager and give my unique perspective. In terms of logistics I am going to do most of my interviews on the college campus as I will be interviewing many of my peers so there shouldn't be any problems in logistics or the feasibility of my interviews.