Documentary - Week 1 - Choices, choices!

For the documentary segment of our module, I wanted to change it up and focus my efforts on something I hadn't been solely responsible for before when it came to the animation process and I found that Petra and El were also looking to do the same. We formed a group and decided I'd be doing backgrounds (instead of the usual storyboards), Petra would be doing character designs (instead of her usual puppets), and El would be working on storyboards (instead of her regular character designs).

Because we had all been directors for previous projects, none of us were actually willing to step up as director this time on account of wanting a break, so it was decided that the director would be the one who pitched the best idea for the subject of the documentary.

This ended up being difficult to choose.

We met up a few times over the week and ended up changing the topic a few times. We considered the Potternewton brief but actually decided at first to focus on the history of Leeds Arts University; however the information was too easy to find on the uni website and the subject wasn't as interesting as we thought it would be. We then thought the Yorkshire Ripper, but that was done already before and we wanted to be original. We had the same issue when it came to haunted places in Leeds.

I woke up one day inspired by a thought and messaged a friend (and ex roommate) from medical school to ask her if there was any chance her father, who I knew was a freedom fighter from the Bangladesh Liberation War, would be up for an interview for a documentary project and she very eagerly responded that she thought that was a great idea and he would be down for it.

The final choices boiled down to avocados (and the impact of their farming on the environment) and freedom fighters. We ultimately chose freedom fighters as there was an interesting history behind it and I already had a confirmed interviewee.

I am the director once again.