Documentary ideas
Over the holidays I had some time to think about what I want for my final project documentary and I came up with a few ideas:
I could stay in a hostel for 2 weeks and live the life of a homeless person to see get a better insight into the kind of lifestyle they have. I could interveiw some of the people I’m living with whilst I’m there to compare thier life experiences to my brief experience.
I still like the work of Shepard Fairey and would like to incorporate similar imagery into an animated section of the documentary. Ideally, I would like to interveiw a young homeless person and animate thier life. I think this would highlight the fact that the subject is still a child and, hopefully, this will hit an empathetic note with the audience. I think something similar to that in the Shock doctrine by Naomi Klein, a mixture of moving image and graffiti-style stop motion would be a really powerful method for getting such a strong message across. I think the use of animation, much like Persepolis, would make such an intense subject more accessable to a younger audience.
Quite a while ago I saw a Panorama episode called Esther vs the PC brigade, where Esther Rantzen was talking about political correctness gone mad and how this affects the protection of children. In one part of the programme, she used child actors to look as if they were lost in a shopping centre so that Esther could surviel and question those who did and didn’t stop as to why. I think a scene like this in my documentary could be very powerful. I could set up a camera opposite a homeless person in the street and ask different people why they did and didn’t stop to give them money or even make eye contact with them. I think this is quite a risky idea, and I’m not sure how many people would allow me to use their shots if they would look bad in the final piece. However I think it is definatly something worth looking into.
Another possible angle I could take would be to talk to police officers and see what they feel about having to move homeless people on, or what they think about the laws around homelessness.
If we agree to work together I will put these ideas to Ross and see what we can come up with.
