PRE-PRODUCTION

Pitch

Before I could do the actual documentary I had to pitch the idea to my teacher and have it given the green light. Below is a video recording of my pitch presentation.

Pitch Reflection

Need To Know Information

(Slide 1)

The first slide is a title screen. It has an illustration of the exoplanet Kepler-186 f.

(Slide 2)

The second slide is the summery for my idea. The documentary that I am doing will be a participatory documentary that is to inform, not to force a certain view point. It will also have a historical element to it in order to show people the scope of the topic.

(Slide 3)

The third slide is an introduction to my topic. Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars and we have discovered 4,375 planets, 5,902 potential planets and 3,247 solar systems (not including our own planets and solar system) as of April 28th 2021. New exoplanets are constantly being discovered at an average rate of 27 new planets every month. In the top right hand corner is an illustration of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 d. In the bottom right hand corner is a diagram of all the planets we have discovered and have been put into categories including Lava Worlds, Rocky Planets, Ocean Worlds & Ice Giants, Cold Gas Giants and Hot Jupiters. It also shows the frontier, an area around stars that we can't explore due to technological incapabilities.

(Slide 4)

The fourth slide is about the research that I did for the documentary. The main source of research was the NASA exoplanet page, especially NASA's Eyes on Exoplanets which is a visual archive of all confirmed exoplanets (except for Gliese discoveries for some reason) with procedurally generated visualisations based on the type of planet and the distance from its star. Another source of research are news articles, these allow to find recent discoveries and/or updates. In the top right hand corner is an illustration of the exoplanet Kepler-452 b.

(Slide 5)

The fifth slide is about how I am going to make the documentary. Since I have most of the equipment that I will need at home I probably wont need to borrow any. I am going to be using After Effects for showing planet visuals in things such as size comparisons and information in the form of text graphics. The documentary will be roughly 60% shot footage and 40% stock footage. In the bottom right hand corner is an image of the After Effects logo.

(Slide 6)

The sixth slide is about my backup plan. In the event that I am unable to do the exoplanet idea for any reason then I have a Plan B. It will be a mockumentary about the daily life of my family in a very overdramatised way, the theme will be very similar to The Office. In the bottom right hand corner is a picture of The Office title with one of the main characters in the background.

What Went Well.

I felt that I did the pitch very well because I did the presentation very well and spent very little time stuttering and things like erm's and uh's. Since I am a very passionate about the topic I already have a lot of knowledge about it so I could do this pitch very well.

Even Better If.

I felt that I could have used examples of some of the planets that I would use in the documentary. Also I would have been more specific on some of the things I used in pictures.

Mindmap

Below is a picture of my mindmap.

This is a visual representation of how my documentary is going to be.

Below is some of the paperwork that I had to do for my Pre-Production.

The examples here are my shot list and proposal. The shot list is fairly self explanatory, it is a list of the different scenes that will be in the documentary, what is going on in them and where they are being filmed. The proposal is essentially me explaining what the film is about, who the target audience is, what the message is and other things like that.