*Group Project Proposal [500 words]

Group Project Proposal (500 words)

This should give a clear idea of what the film will do:

• What story will it tell? 
• How will it be told? 
• What is the theme? 
• Who will be in it? 
• Where will it be filmed? 
• What material will be incorporated? (e.g still or moving image archive) 
• What kind of sound is proposed? (e.g narration, such as third person, ambient sound, music, effects etc.)
• Who is the proposed audience? 

(Describing the subject matter is NOT enough – the proposal needs to show clear evidence of concrete research of contributors and/or locations and how these will be used to explore a theme. Above all what will we SEE AND HEAR rather than what we will be told.) 

You should refer to examples of proposals on the Creative Practice Virtual Learning Environment and those provided in class to get a sense of how a proposal should describe a documentary project. The proposal may originate from an idea from one member of your team but you should all contribute ideas for its realisation. 

Group D’s Documentary Project Proposal - Humans & Dogs

Our group’s observational documentary will explore the close relationships between humans and their pet dogs, focusing on two to three characters. The documentary will explore the nature of their relationship, looking at the history between the dog and owner and the positive effects it's had each other’s life.

We shall be interviewing a woman who lived with her dog as a companion since her husband has been living in Ireland for the past 7 years. We shall also interview someone who has an occupation who works closely with dogs whom we have access to a dog trainer and other dog owners we have met as a team in town and possibly the use of a psychologist to provide an analytical insight into human-canine relationships.

We will let our interviewees tell the story of their relationship with their our documentary and shall not use a voice-over narration as we want our audience to emotively engage with the judge our characters and relationship for themselves. From the questions we ask, we will want make our audience aware of what these bonds between humans and pets have fulfill and satisfying each others lives with providing unconditional love and affection, friendship and companionship for one another.

Each member of our group will do research into one of our interviewees’ personal lives and relationship with their pet and construct relevant questions surrounding it. We aim to acquire responses from the interviews that show the relationships between the dog and their owners is almost humanlike and satisfies the needs of each others lives.

The content of our documentary will consist of interview footage shot on the Sony Z7, which can be static mid-shots using a tripod or tracking shots, using a monopod. We shall shoot in our characters comfort zones by where they spend the most time with their pet dog as we want our responses from our interviews to be as natural and truthful as possible. We aim to give a balance to amount of frame for both the dog and the owner receive which visually connotes to our audience that the dog is just as important as the owner in their relationship for our documentary.  

An array of cutaways of our subjects engaged in affectionate activities together such as playing in local parks together, grooming, and feeding as well as using close-ups of the just the dogs, and in particular their eyes. This will provide emotively stimulating visuals for our documentary and will deliver the balance of frame time we want to convey in our inductive narrative.

In terms of sounds, we want to integrate both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds respectively to engage the audience more into the narrative. A soft piano for the musical soundtrack can be used to go in between transitions of characters and layered over certain sections of dialogue from the interviews, making certain lines more poignant and sensitive for the audience. Boom microphones will be needed to record key ambient noises and clip-on or radio microphones will be used for interviews.