Post 15- Proposal

By Katie Cook
 Topic
The topic that we have chosen to do for our documentary is plastic surgery. We have
decided to do this topic for our documentary because it is an interesting topic and
has a wide range of issues we can explore for our research, meaning there is a lot
we can include in the documentary. Additionally, plastic surgery is becoming very
popular, so we think it would be beneficial to create a documentary telling people
the facts about having documentary. Furthermore, Liv friend wet through the
process of changing into a girl. So we would like to share his story to our audience.
 Purpose of the documentary
The purpose of our documentary is to investigate an issue to educate our
audience on the plastic surgery topic. We would like to teach our audience all
about plastic surgery, informing them on the facts and statistics that they
didnt know what plastic surgery. This will include:
Health issues that are involved with the operations and after the operations
Dangers but also advantages of plastic surgery
Is it really worth it?
Expenses
What plastic surgery says about our society
 Type of documentary
The type of documentary we have chosen is to be a series. We think that this is a
very wide topic to explore and we have many opinions we want to express in our
documentary, so we would like to create a 3 episode series documentary so we
can explore everything in detail. Also, with a series it keeps it interesting and
entertains the audience. By creating a series we can say at the end on next
weeks episode which will excite the audience for a following series if we do it
right. For example, on benefit street the audience were excited each episode to
watch another as they wanted to find out all about these people lives. This is
what we want to create for our audience.
 Style of documentary
Our documentary will have a mixed formality tone. We want it to be a formal
style as this is a serious subject. It will also be subjective because we will be
including someone's real life story, which will be personal to the people
involved, therefore this may create sympathy from the audience; creating a
serious atmosphere. To do this we will emphasize some aspects of the persons
life, which will be presented via music, camera shots and angles and the
editing. Music is key as this will develop the mood and tone of the story that
we are trying to tell. Moreover, when talking to doctors they will be
discussing real life events and past experiences from plastic surgery
operations. This could include disturbing facts, therefore it will be
entertaining but not in a humorous way. However, we will also use an informal
tone as even though we want people to take seriously but at the same time
we want our audience to be entertained a not get bored so to do this we can
use an informal tone, which may connect with our audience more.
 Mode of documentary
For our documentary we are going to do a mixed mode:
The first mode we will include is the expositional mode. By using this mode we
will address the audience directly and the aim is to educate and explain the
topic to the audience. This will include us using interviews, graphics, narration
and actuality footage to support what we are saying.
The second mode we will follow is the participatory mode. This mode welcomes
engagement between the us and the subject. Therefore, our aim will be for
immediacy and we will often present our point of view to connect with the
audience. Also, people in the documentary will be part of it and engaged.
 Narrative structure
The narrative structure we will follow will be a mix of open narrative, non-linear
narrative and circular narrative.
Non-linear narrative- we will use a non-linear narrative structure as there will be
no order to what is shown in the documentary as we will be addressing many
different areas to the topic but an order wont be necessary.
Open narrative- the documentary will end with unanswered questions and all the
ends will be loose as they havent been concluded. We will do this as we want our
audience to make up their own mind about if they agree with plastic surgery or
not.
Circular narrative- This is where a documentary starts and finishes at the same
point. This means that we will address the question at the start but the end may
leave loose ends. We will use this narrative as we will make strong arguments for
both for and against plastic surgery but we will leave the audience to make their
own decision if they are for or against the issue.
 Target audience
Primary audience- Our primary audience would be females as from our research
we found that it is mostly women who have plastic surgery done and it is more of a female
topic/issue. Therefore, we believe it would be a documentary that mostly females would be
interested in to watch, meaning we would get majority female viewers. This means we
should aim at females specifically as they are our main audience.
Secondary audience- we believe our secondary audience would be males as males can be
interested in the plastic surgery too. However, we found their not as interested in the topic
as much as women are. However, in this modern society and with how much the world is
developing, plastic surgery and cosmetic products have branched out to males also.
Therefore, we may expect for some male viewers too. This means that we should include
facts and talk to males about their opinions on plastic surgery as well.
We think that our audience will be 16+ as this is the age where there are problems with how
teenagers see themselves and wish they could look like all the models and celebrities we
see on social media and in magazines. Therefore, teenagers begin to think they need plastic
surgery to be as pretty as these people. So our documentary will aim to talk about these
issues. Also, the older generation may be interested in this topic as they may be concerned
about aging and then think they need plastic surgery to again be as pretty as everyone
else. Therefore, we want to talk about this issue and tell people pros and cons about plastic
surgery and go into detail about this topic so people can see if it really is worth it.
 Target audience
Social class- The audiences social class that may watch our documentary would be middle
class and upper class people. We think that this would be our target audience as plastic
surgery is expensive, therefore lower class people may not watch a documentary about it as
they cant afford to have it, therefore it may not be a topic that interests the. However, on
the other hand people who may be part of the underclass group may watch it as they dont
have a job so they may just be sat at home watching TV so it may be something they will
watch.
Ethnicity- We think that it will be predominately a white British audience. We think this as it
is more likely that white British people get plastic surgery done as other ethnicity groups
done believe in changing your appearance through plastic surgery. Also, we now this from our
research as we found statistics that said it is a majority of white British people that get
plastic surgery compared to other ethnicity groups.
Lifestyle- The lifestyle of our audience would be that they care a lot about their appearance.
We think this as plastic surgery is a topic that is all about the way you look and how you want
people to perceive you. Therefore, people who watch this documentary will clearly care
about the way they look, therefore they will most likely have an opinion on what we are
discussing. Moreover, I think that our audience may be either single people that are
interested n the documentary to see if plastic surgery is worth it or it may be families who
will sit down together to watch it, as it is something they can discuss between themselves.
 Code and conventions
In our documentary we will include the following code and conventions:
Interviews
Expert interviews
Voiceovers/narrator/presenter
Reconstruction
Music
Vox pop
Background footage
Actuality footage
Credits
Opposing opinions
Factual information
 Expert interviews
For our expert interview we will contact a doctor. We think a doctor would be
beneficial to talk to as they may have had to deal with people who are
insecure about themselves and have asked about having plastic surgery on the
NHS. We can include questions such as, how often do people come to you to
talk about plastic surgery? And what are your opinions on plastic surgery, do
you agree with it? This will help us to get a medical, professional opinion
instead of just asking people who dont know all the information about plastic
surgery. Similarly, we can ask a surgeon of plastic surgery. This would be
beneficial as they could talk to us about real life events, that will interest
and engage our audience.
To enable us to get expert interviews we will have to research into people we
can talk to then find a way of getting in contact to ask them. To do this we
will either send a formal email or put together a letter to send to them to ask
if we can ask them some questions for our documentary.
 Interviews/vox pop
We will also get interviews from other people. One person we will ask if we
can have an interview with is someone called Josh. Josh is someone who went
through the procedure of plastic surgery to become a female. Therefore, for
our documentary it would be good to discuss his life story and why he did this.
This will help us to find out the pros and cons of plastic surgery. Additionally,
we hope that this will make a connection with the audience and engage them
into our documentary, leaving them intrigued to watch the rest.
One code and convention that we will use is Vox pop. For this we will go into
Solihull and around college and ask people their opinions on plastic surgery.
We will ask them questions such as, do you agree with plastic surgery? Would
you ever have plastic surgery? And do you know about plastic surgery? We will
do this as it will allow us to have an understanding of what we can talk about
in our documentary and we can relate peoples answers to what we are
discussing.
 Background footage
In our documentary we will include background footage. For our background
footage, we will set up a camera in either Solihull or college and film people
walking past. We will then speed this up using a selected software device and
add a voiceover of us giving our audience facts, statistics and discussion of
our topic.
We could use a range of places to create background footage for our
documentary, such as:
Touchwood
LRC- in college
College canteen
College grounds
Outside of Solihull areas
 Reconstruction/voiceover
For reconstruction we will reconstruct a girl putting makeup on trying to
make herself look glamorous. We will do this as this will set a sympathetic
tone for our audience as this may upset them as it is sad how many girls now
a days are constantly trying to improve themselves due to the image we are
given that we should look like due to social media and magazines.
During this reconstruction we can also use a voiceover of one of us talking
about the facts that are to do with the footage. This information may include
statistics and facts about how many girls go through this and how it effects
our society and why the world has became like this.
Another reconstruction footage we could create could be in the LRC of
students researching about plastic surgery. This could link to a point where we
talk about people not having knowledge about the plastic surgery issue.
 Primary and secondary
research
Primary research- Our primary research can be found on post 12, created by
Numaan. Our primary research is the research we have collected from our
questionnaire. We asked 9 people to fill out our questionnaire and form this we
found out that people are more aware about lip fillers, Botox and implants.
Therefore, we will inform people about these certain plastic surgerys but we
need to inform people about the other options that they offer as they might not
be aware of the facts. Furthermore, 6 people said that they would allow their
children to undergo plastic surgery and 3 said they wouldn'tt. This shows how the
world is changing and it is becoming more popular and becoming a normal thing in
our society. This will help us to know what to include in the documentary.
Secondary research- Our secondary research can be found on post 11,created by
liv. This research was done using the internet to find out facts and statistics about
plastic surgery. This research will help us to talk about the topic our documentary.
 Channel and scheduling
We would like our documentary to be on ITV2 as this is the channel that we
recognize mostly for covering these type of documentaries, such as light
hearted TV shows like reality shows and comedy programmes. Also, the type
of audience that ITV2 get is the type of audience we are aiming at.
We would like our documentary to be shown at 9pm. We think this is the best
time to show this documentary as it may include images and videos that could
disturb younger children. Therefore, it will need to be shown when younger
children have gone to bed so parents can watch it and when adults are most
likely sat down watching tv. Also, the audience that we are looking to attract
will most likely be watching TV at this time.
 Resources required
Camera
Tri-pod
Headphones
Microphone
Computer
Phones
Internet
Premier software
Garage band software
 Software
Photoshop- We will use Photoshop if we have images we want to include, that
might need editing. This s a useful tool as t will allow us to mediate images.
These images may include images we've used from social media or images of
celebrities transformations(before and alter pictures) or even of plastic
surgery operation picture.
Premier- This software will allow us to put our documentary together. This
software will allow us to edit the footage we have took and put it all together
to create our documentary.
Garage band- This software is useful for adding sound to our documentary as
we can create music and adjust pitches and bass etc.
We have PowerPoints that we produced during our practice trial using these
software's, which is a guide on how to use these type of software's incase we
ever need to refer back to them when we are creating our documentary.
 Beginning, middle and end of
the first 5 minutes
Beginning- This will be the introduction, introducing our topic and opposing a
question to the audience that we will then go into detail throughout the rest
of the documentary. We will then discuss what we will talk about in our
documentary as this will allow the audience to look forward to what is coming
up in the documentary. This will include a montage showing a preview of
everything that will be includes in the first episode.
Middle- The middle will create a strong argument for both for and against
plastic surgery. To do this we will include expert interviews, Vox pop and
factual information. This will be the part that educates the audience about
our topic.
End- The end will be a summary of everything we have said during the
documentary, which will then leave the audience to make up their own mind
about plastic surgery.