It's difficult when you first start to work on your documentary ideas to avoid a couple of common mistakes.
I've stuck a few of them down here, maybe it'll make things easier or allow you to spot problems.
When you're asked for a documentary idea, what someone wants to read is a 'story'.
In documentary terms this means having a subject, having something interesting about that subject that you want to present to us the audience.
The problem is, like most simple things, you can't to the idea without going on a journey of EXPLORATION first.
What tends to happen with most students in the beginning is they think of a THEME, say for example, NURSES. And then tend to jump straight away to something like:
'My documentary will be a day in the life of a nurse.'
Unfortunatley this isn't a documentary. At least not in my book. It is more of a school project. Or maybe even something like Factual Entertainment.
A documentary, a story, is much harder to find.
And ironically, you have to stop looking for it in a way, to find it. Yoda would be proud. But what do I mean.
Well, if, for instance, you're interesting in Nurses, or Models, or Zoos, or Paramedics, you need to go and find out about them, talk to a few of them, and then, during that, usually a story will present itself.
A Nurse might tell you about a story in which she saved someone's life, and that becomes your documentary.
Because it is an actual real thing that happened.
You see I'm sure the difference between this and the 'Day in the life of' type of story.
Think of yourself as an explorer. Go explore the area you're interested in and wait until a story emerges. There are thousands upon thousands of them.
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