Client and Audience Research, Idea Pitch and Existing Product Analysis

The Client

The client for this project is an organisation, that is a registered charity, called Sunderland Culture who was founded in April 2016. This is a group that aims to bring together Sunderland's most important cultural assets and show the creative potential in the area. Their mission is to "improve life for everyone in Sunderland through culture". The organisation operates at multiple locations across Sunderland including places like the National Glass Centre, The Fire Station and the Winter Gardens. Sunderland Culture was set up in April 2016 by Sunderland City council, the University of Sunderland and the business-led Sunderland MAC (music, arts and culture) trust. 

 Sunderland Culture’s activities are managed by a board comprising directors from each of the three partner organisations along with five independent members. The chair of the board is Jane Earl. is looked after by 13 person board. 

Sunderland Culture also offer opportunities to people in the area to help get into some sort of job or education. 

As we can see they are currently offering a university internship for a development assistant, but are also offering a customer service role at the Fire Station which is one of their operating sites for the business. Looking at this we can see that they are more than just a charitable organization that helps people learn the history and cultures surrounding Sunderland but also offer educational courses and sometimes employment. 

Browsing their website we can find out that they also host a number of events, we can see they host a number of craft fairs and sale events to help sell their products. They operate these events at there venues with 2 of the events above hosted at the National Glass Centre where they sell "unique handmade gift ".

They also sell a bunch of photo prints from many locations in the north east if you don't fancy a handmade gift. 

What Sunderland culture have made

In the past Sunderland Culture have created short videos to promote the city. This is an example of one of them called " Get Behind our City" which is a video made supporting Sunderland's bid to become the UK city of culture 2021. The city of culture award is a title awarded by the department for digital, culture, media and sport every 4 years to a city in the UK, the winner hosting a year long programme of cultural events and celebrations. 

In the video we see a variety of events from the airshow, to live bands. There is also the inclusion of the younger generations enjoying themselves at different events which show the viewer everyone is able to get involved with the events in Sunderland. There is also clips of the industries in the area and also many shots of Sunderland football shirts to show that the city is all about football. There is time-lapses of different things in the city, from ships in the river to the light house at night.

Talking shot types there is a lot of wide shots to showcase the vast landscapes and landmarks in the area. The inclusion of close up shots to showcase signs and people help build a relationship between the viewer and subject on screen. It helps the viewer to build up and understanding with the city. 

With this promotion style video it helps show all of the positive points of the city but doesn't show any negative due to this video being about showing Sunderland in a positive light. They interview a range of people from artists to grandads to get a broad range of opinions from a range of different people about the area so there is no "bias" answers. 

This video will help to organize my video and decide on what things the include based on the editing throughout this video, they include some unique time lapses that I haven't seen anywhere else so this could be a feature I add into mine. The use of wide establishing shots to show a scene is effective in showing the viewer where you are, this could be a key feature to add into my opening sequence.

This is a second video that Sunderland Culture that made for the city of culture big. This video shows a wide range of the different cultures in Sunderland, Showing us churches to represent the religious followings in the area. The featuring of the glass making culture is huge as it is such a staple of Sunderlands past cultures. The title "we are makers" allows the viewer to imply that Sunderland is a creative city full of ambition and creative knowledge, this couples with the video clips of glass making, cooking ship building etc helps to reinforce the this point. 

Shot types range a lot high Ariel drone footage to showcase large landmarks, with close up movement shots to show people doing their jobs make this video particularly effective because they give the audience an insight on what people do and where they are from, which promotes the region even further. 

From watching these videos it allows me to see what I could include in my documentary. I have saw examples of drone footage being used as establishing shots due to the wide field of view allowing me to capture a large area to show as much landscape as possible. I could incorporate movement shots to help to blend two clips together seamlessly but I could also use close up shots to showcase small minuet details that would mostly likely be overlooked if I used any other shot type. 

Where do they operate

This is a map of the venues or projects that Sunderland Culture operate in. As you can see by the map they are located all over the northeast, therefore, appealing to a broader range of people who live all over the northeast. A key place that they operate in is the likes of the National Glass Centre this is because it is a place that shows the glass making history in the region and what life was like during the time. 

They also operate in the Sunderland Museum and winter gardens located in the center of town. So its more accessible for more people to go to and visit.

The Audience 

The population of Sunderland is in the region of 250,000 - 300,000 people and looking at the latest census we can see that 93.6% of the population are white British with only 3.4% of the population being Asian residents, only 0.7% of the population are black. The Census also shows that 70% of the population identify as being Christian, 22% not following a religion with the minority religions including, Islam, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhism and Jewish.

The audience for this brief is young adults in the age range of 18-25-year-olds that enjoy football or follow the football club. From this information, I can infer that these people will either still be in education or will be in some sort of employment, either apprenticeships or full/part-time employment.  There were approximately 61,000 children and young people aged 0-19 years in Sunderland in 2015. This number is predicted to rise slowly to 62,000 by 2030. Because people in this age range would be either in education (college or University) or just got into employment or an apprenticeship this means they could have some sort of income for their own disposal. 

To gather more accurate research about my specific audience I decided to create a research form for people to fill out to give me a greater understanding about what people are interested in.

This was one of those questions, "What is the most unique thing about Sunderland in your opinion?". This questions was included and designed to give me a broader understanding of what people thought was unique about Sunderland to help me define a specific topic that would be effective in capturing the attention of the regional audience, my indented target audience. 

This question " How do you view the north east?" was a question designed and engineered to get people to think about the area that they live and how they see it as a whole. It was included to gather opinions on the area from the people who live in it, therefore making the answers accurate and specific to the area, which would eliminate any stereotypical answers from people who live outside the area. This question helped me in the way that my documentary would be presented, by including region specific shots to portray the area in a positive or negative light.

I then asked the question "what do you enjoy about Sunderland?" This was to gather ideas of what should be included visually in the documentary to make it appealing to the target audience. I gathered a variety of answers to this question, which helped give me a better understanding of what people enjoyed about the city they live in. Popular answers included football, specifically Sunderland AFC, the local football team. People also answered with, events, nightlife and museums. This helped me come up with a subject for my documentary as it appeared that Sunderland AFC was a hot topic when asking people what they liked about the area. 

Existing Products

 Part of my research included looking at pre-existing products to help influence my idea. I looked around on the internet on sites such as YouTube and Netflix for documentaries that show the northeast and Sunderland in particular. I found these examples:

 This first example is the trailer for the popular Netflix series “Sunderland Til I Die” which was first shown on TV on the fourteenth of December 2018. This was a rather popular series that currently has two series on Netflix. This documentary was created by a group from the northeast called Fulwell 73. The main focus of the series is to show people the culture behind Sunderland AFC and also to show the football club its self. This worked really well as it received a really positive rating from people who watched it. As it was released on Netflix people from all over the world could watch it and therefore increases Sunderland’s exposure all over. The series followed the football club through a couple of seasons where the club was doing the worst it has done. 

The utilisation of the Observational Mode style of documentary really helped with audience engagement within this series, it allowed the viewers to really get an insight on what goes on behind the scenes at the club. I believe this is what made this series so effective and helped it gain a lot of views this is because the fans have never really been involved with the running of the club before and haven't really had their voices heard. Especially after the season that they had just have it was really effective to have this come out to give the local fans an insight on how their club was being ran. 

During the episodes, we see many different camera angles, shot types and types of content. We see a lot of interview-style shots where the camera points at a person while they are talking. We see lots of action shots where the camera is moving and capturing the action. 

 This helped me come up with my idea because when I watched the series it gave me ideas of the type of documentary I could create. It helped me identify what techniques were used in order to create an effective video.  

 This is the second product I looked at regarding my idea. This documentary series was created by the club its self and posted to their YouTube Account. The documentary series follows the football club throughout the 2017 season showing how the season unfolded and the outcome of the season. It also talks about the history with interviews from older players and fans of the club where they talk about their experiences. The documentary also talks about the history of the club and city, explaining how the club was founded and more. 

This mini-series was rather successful and accumulated over 100,000 views on their YouTube channel. The documentary uses a lot of photos, especially when talking about history to help the audience visualize what they are talking about and to get a better understanding of what they are talking about. In the series, they incorporate a lot of interviews, with former players and fans to help connect the viewer to the documentary. The use of images to help tell the story along with the video helps the viewer to follow the story clearly and visualize the story more.

In these episodes, we see a variety of camera angles and shot types. We see a lot of fast-paced panning shots when they showcase the action in a football match. The use of mid shots during interviews is rather effective as it helps the viewer to connect with the person who is speaking and to understand the story more. We see the use of slow-motion to show when something dramatic happens to help create a more dramatic mood. They also include graphics being used to help show the audience what the narrator is talking about and to help understand what they are talking about, we see them using keyframes as well for this reason.

This product also inspired my idea because of how well the story is presented and how well the video flows. I particularly like the way they show key matches and the outcome/consequence of it.

Documentary Types

When it comes to documentary making there are many different styles in how they can be presented, they are as followed

•  Poetic Mode - Poetic documentaries focus more on mood, tone, or juxtaposition of imagery than linear continuity. Their main aim is to show experiences, images, and the world from a different viewpoint.
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• Expository Mode - Expository documentaries are probably the closest to what people think of documentaries. They use a narration and include stock footage b roll or re enactments. 
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• Participatory Mode - Participatory documentaries are defined by the interaction between the subject and the filmmaker. The cinematographer must capture both the subject and the interviewer as he is the interviewee.
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• Observational Mode - Observational documentaries attempt to discover the ultimate truth of their subject by observing the subject's real-life without interrupting - this is done by acting as a fly-on-the-wall.
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• Reflexive Mode - Reflexive documentaries focus on the relationship between the audience and the filmmaker. The subject matter is often the process of documentary filmmaking itself.
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• performative Mode - Performative documentaries are focused on the filmmaker's involvement with the subject. They will usually start with the filmmaker deciding to document their journey to explore a specific topic.

From this research about different documentary types I have decided to use the Expository Mode as I believe that this will give me the best chance to utilise my current skill set  to have the best possible outcome. By using this type of presenting style, I allows me to have more creative freedom with the shot types and what I can include. It also enables me to use voice overs if I choose too which could help me to shift the tone and presentation style to a more narration driven style. 

Pitch

This is the idea pitch that I created in order to present my documentary for an evaluation. In this pitch, I talk about my idea, how it will be created and what will be featured in the documentary. It is rather detailed and in depth talking about my idea and how I plan to achieve. 

I presented this to some of my peers for a bit of feedback, and from what they said I can conclude that the really liked the idea of a footballing documentary. This was done verbally as this was presented face to face and not over the internet.  

Audience

In order to gather feedback about the area and the possible audience that will be watching I decided to create a survey order to collect Quantitative research, that will be helpful to understand what people think of the area.

As you can see from this pie chart, people who my product is aimed at say that football is the most unique thing about Sunderland. As we can see this is closely followed by shipbuilding which links to the history of Sunderland which also included the football club. From this information, I could include certain pieces of history into my documentary, so it appeals to a broader range of people. 

This question in particular shows to us that football is a big thing within Sunderland as it is a very common answer to this question. We see other things such as events being mentioned, this is the main point, especially during the winter period when the seafront is decorated with lights and attractions which many people go and see every year. We also see answers talking about the museum, which is another key point as Sunderland does have quite a lot of history behind it, everything from shipbuilding to glassmaking all happened in Sunderland at one point in time.