Research into Establishing Shots

The general manager of the club Ed Henderson was leaving most of the creative decisions up to me. This meant I could play around with what I thought could work. A lot of the documentaries I have watched start in a similar way, however. They start with B-ROLL and a voice over. I thought that this would be the best way for my project to go as well. 

In the original edit, I had it go straight into a piece to camera which was fine but it didn’t feel very professional. For this reason, I decided to switch it to what I had researched which was this voiceover and montage-esque start.

I had been looking into football documentaries and Alan Shearer’s recent documentary “Alan Shearer: Dementia, Football and Me” (BBC, 2017) was one I drew a lot of inspiration from. As football documentaries go Alan’s is more serious but still has underlying values that any good football documentary would need.

In the opening voiceover, he talks through what is going to be explored in the documentary as well as showing clips of Alan doing exactly what they are talking about. Of course, for my project, it is a little different as I am not a player. However, in my opening section, I will be talking about women's football and Watford more specifically.

The choice of what opening shots you use is important. If the opening shots are tacky and shot in a hurry it would cause viewers to click off through the apparent lack of quality. The use of drone shots will come in useful here as they are a great way to grab the attention of the viewer. The use of drone shots is becoming more and more apparent in films and documentaries as the cost is becoming ever cheaper. Luckily I have my own drone and I have a decent amount of experience with it meaning it was not much of a worry to get the required shots.

BBC, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMoDtIJ_b8I
Accessed on 6th December 2017