Documentary Unit: Final Cut & Critical Reflections

As of today, Mary and I have completely finished our film and the documents supporting it. Today, Mary viewed the editing changes that I'd made and agreed that everything looked great and was almost ready to submit. The only task we had left was to add the closing credits, so we viewed two Channel 4 documentaries' credits (Skint & Educating Essex) to use as a reference on how we should display and order our own. We finished with very neat credits with the upbeat acoustic music that's used throughout to accompany it.

Once finished, we showed our documentary to our tutor. And thankfully, she couldn't find fault with it. Thanks to her advice in previous viewings, our final cut needed no further changes.

We've ran into a few issues along the way, with the LGBT support group dropping out, struggling to collect rights-free Gay Pride footage and smaller details such as on-set lighting issues and a faulty battery. But due to being very organised and co-operative, along with our characters also being so, we've had great success in this unit. I think that our central character is perfect, due to wanting our documentary to be touching and emotional, but not depressing, he's ideal. He has sad stories of his past and has had struggles with his sexuality and the discrimination he's faced, but due to his bubbly and extremely likeable personality, he's perfect for being our main focus, drawing the audience in, and ending the documentary on a positive note.

Our other characters of Michelle, Vicki and Kristian make up the rest of the documentary in a very contributive way. Rather than being add-ons to Carl's story, they each bring their own very informative and personal touch. I think that Michelle is very useful for relating to the past and how things are changing, as well as getting an insight into gay people in an older generation. Vicki is the least personal aspect of the documentary but the most informative, as any young gay people can find her information extremely helpful. Lastly, Kristian is both great support for Carl's story as well as bringing a second experience of a young gay person coming out in today's society.

The visual's of our documentary are of course a large part of what makes it so interesting. Being made up of active sequences of the characters and their surroundings to support what they're saying, and vibrant Gay Pride footage, I think it makes the documentary a lot more eye-catching than one that is filled with nothing but interviews.

However, we didn't solely rely on visuals. I think that the questions we had each character answer provided us with great interviews full of helpful and very touching stories. We also added statistics to our documentary based on previous research about the discrimination of homosexuals and how homosexual teenagers are dealing with their sexuality. Give the documentary a lot of factual support.

I'm also very happy with our choice in music. We searched a few royalty-free music websites and eventually decided on Acoustic Breeze by Bensound. It's a very low-key soundtrack, allowing it to fit with the emotional side of the documentary, but due to being an acoustic guitar track, it also has an upbeat feel. I think it really strengthens the ending to the entire documentary.

I'm incredibly happy with the outcome of all of our hard work. I think the documentary fits very well with the Channel 4 style, due to the overall subject and it's visuals. I also think it's very inspirational for any teenagers struggling with their sexuality or homosexual people in general. It's a very touching film and we've achieved exactly what we set out to.

Being Gay Today - Final Cut