More intresting books on PRP

Faking It - Mock-documentary and the subversions of factuality
by Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight

This book contains a study of mock-documentary, the history and its placement in current culture. The book questions where the boundries are for the documentaries when fiction and fact start to merge from the increasing popularity of this form.

"Documentary contains a call to action in the sense that the representations on offer not only yield infomation about the social world but can and should alter the social world. In this way documentary has attempted to align itself with what Nichols refers to as 'the discourse of soberiety'(1991:3); that is those non fictional systems such as law, science, medicine and politics that have instrumental power."

This quote comments on how documentary is used as a scientific tool to gain knowledge. Using the infomation from individuals to form a collective of knowledge to change and adapt to society.

"Both documentary and journalism are able to maintain their privileged positions because audiences continue to put faih in their professional practices and their ability to present truthful and honest accounts of the social world."

This quote comments on the standards of truth telling in society. Society has nominated truth tellers such as news readers to inform society about global and domestic issue that effect us. But the truth will always be biased and the truth modifed to fit its purpose whethter to used in journalism, education or public service. These nominated truth tellers become an "educator of masses", a provider of infomation and knowledge but lack the essential experience and emotional attactment to the issue at hand.

Books For PRP

Reality TV: how real is real?
This is an intresting book debating on the issues of reality tv and how it effects viewing and quality. It is an collection of short essays by Dolan Cummings, Bernard Clark, Victoria Mapplebeck, Christopher Dunkley and Graham Barnfield.
Essay 2 Victoria Mapplebeck makes particularly intresting points about Big Brother on how "it explores contempary ethics, the relationship between the individual and the group" and the "erosion of privacy". I find that this part of documentary intresting and will look further into the globalization of Big Brother, a game show or a social experiment?

Developing Story Ideas - Michael Rabiger

Making a Working Hypothesis

"A Working Hypothesis is a planning statement for a narrative - Fictional or Factual. Starting from particular conviction you hold, it describes particular events befalling particular characters in a particular world, and defines the feelings and realisations you mean to awaken in your audience. Making one for an intended work forces you to be clear with your intentions. Remaking it after any big round of changes during the project is an excellent reality check."

A working hypothesis has helped me while I have been re-writing my scripts. It outlines the main ideas and concepts that I want to share with the audience whether it is factual or fictional and I think that it will help me clearly express the intentions for my final year project.

By completing the following sentences, it helps me focus on the main points of storytelling.
-In life i believe that....(your belief in relation to this topic)
-I will show this in action through....(topic)
-The main conflict is between...and...(main opposing forces)
-The point of view characters will be....
-I want my audience to realise that....
-And to feel that....

Shocking Entertainment - A Viewers Response To Violent Movies by Annette Hill

Building Character Relationship

A major problem with my script is the relationship between characters and how they interact in certain situations. I feel that i have to build sympathy for the characters so i have doing some research and reading on the subject. i found this book very useful on how to achieve a better respond for the audience and the relation between them and the characters.

Even if you cannot identify with the characters then build on character relationship. Relationships are dynamic and fluid. Utilizing a number of factors of building character relationship - consumer choice, personal experience and perferences, imaginative hypothesizing and character expansion. These factors combine to create complex and varied interpretations of the scene.
RESPOND rather the IDENTIFY = Process of viewing violence

Questioning the Identification
-Identify with actions but not character.
-Feelings fluctuate according to context, characterisation and personal opinion.
-'Sympathy, empathy, relate, feel for, understand were used to qualify what identification meant to individual particicpants.

Question of Entertainment
-Participants differtiate between real violence and fictional violence.
-Participants consider mediated images of real violence. Problematic in relation to their respone to viewing fictional violence.
-Participant consider degrees of emotional involvement with real violence, mediated images of real violence and fictional violence central to their response.
-The term 'responsibility' and the role of 'witness' are sigificant to degrees of emotional involvement and response to viewing real violence,and mediated images of real violence.
-Participants consider real violence violence as abhorent and in no way entertaining.
-Participants consider the target films to be entertaining.

Developing Story Ideas - Michael Rabiger

I have recently had trouble finalising my script. I feel that the structure is not strong enough, there is not enough dialogue and I have not been analytical enough.
I started to read Developing Story Ideas by Michael Rabiger to help me improve my ideas and script.
I used a story making game called CLOSAT.
C = description of chararcter who could be used in a story.
L = intresting and visual locations.
O = curious or evocative Objects.
S = loaded or revealing Situations.
A = unusual or revealing Act.
T = any Theme that intrigues you or that you see embodied into life.

I was reading the chapter about Artistic Identity and how is it achieved through experience and curiousity to make sense of things. By growing and changing and using my experiences of life to determine the choices and actions i use to contribute to the film.

"Artistic Identity is the source of creativity that you carry within. Shaped by temperment and biographical circumstances, it is the inner force powering your search for answers to the 'unfinised business' in your life."

I've been reading an intresting section on displacement. By alter certain characters and places to protect sources and not being type casted by the readers. I think tht this helps me write a fiction script but uses ideas from my experience. It becomes more personal than just writing a script which i have no attachment or feelings to.

"Displacing your underlying concerns into other areas of life lets you avoid the quicksand of autobiograpy. Using fresh characters and fresh circumstances lets you explore truths and your relationship betwwen them."

My research in the last project led me to use crime culture as the theme to use in the 6min film. There is alot of news acticles about gun and knife crimes in nottingham so i read chapter 16 Ten minutes News Inspired Story. My main concern was how to say alot in a little time. So i used a dramatic arc, start with the apex;
-What can you put at it's apex? (This is the dramatic focus of your piece)
-How little of the rising action (setup) do you need to get us there?
-How much or little of the falling action after the apex must you show if you are to plant the idea of change and resolution?

"The famous war photographer Robert Capa (1913-1954) is renowned photograph (above)from the spanish civil war that shows just how how much be impied in a single moment. We see meagerly equipped peasent soldier with his brains flying from his cranium at the instant of his death. Before this moment he began charging down the stubbly slope toward the enemy. After this moment he will collaspe and become another corpse on a rural battlefield. This hundredth-of-a-second moment forcefully captures a single, tragic truth about warfare: In one irreversable moment, someone beloved by family and friends forfeits his life to a belief. Differcult and even terrible issues about the human thirst for conflict flows from this."