Documentary Assignment 2

When it comes to the topic of culture, Manchester is 3rd most diverse city in the UK. 200 languages are spoken in a city with a population of less than 500,000 and it's a tourist attraction especially in November/December when Santa's grotto, ice skating rink and the Christmas markets hit the city centre.

RESEARCH DIARY

WEBSITES
Quote
"What began as a dozen stalls outside the town hall now occupies four of the city's biggest squares and several other streets besides, attracting around 7m visitors to its 300 stalls." By Sarah Walters, MEN. X

Summary
Every mid November, Manchester City Centre is changed into an area busting with wooden cabins and European delicacy's - known as the Christmas Markets, which isn't a disappointment this year.
With over 300 stalls you can follow the trail and buy goods from France, Germany, Holland and more along the way, not forgetting the food and drink that's on offer! From


Bullet Points

• 120,000 people visited the markets over the opening weekend.
• The food and drink stalls have been expanded into Exchange Square.
• They attract around 7 million shoppers annually.
• The success of the stalls have gone up 15% from last year. From

Evaluation
The secondary research was useful because all the websites gave me relevant information as the articles were written recently, they also include photos from the markets so I know the writer has been there and is giving me an accurate report. In a way all 3 websites are biased because they're all saying how good the markets are, none are criticising them because it's promotion so more people will go.

BOOKS

Quote
"They headed for the large cities of London, Manchester and Leeds. In these cities were the greatest opportunity for work." Multicultural Britain, page 12.

Summary
The work of a director is meant to act on the audience, the stories shown can be educational. For example to warn of danger, to show people how different some people are - murderers etc, your aim as a director is to draw your audience in and keep it interesting. Directing the Documentary, page 13.

Bullet Points

• Researchers involved with documentaries observe audience viewing histories. 
• Audience levels are a way of measuring the success.
• The programmes are made for people to watch so you have to take their thoughts into consideration and think about what they would watch. 
• Audiences like the whole action part to documentaries and footage that's interesting and engaging, you have to consider this as without it, for some people, it defeats the point of one. Introduction to Documentary, page 15. 

Evaluation
The sources that I found were okay, the first book I found, "Multicultural Britain" was quite dated and the information wasn't exactly what I wanted. The majority of the chapters I took from were relevant to the subject but some went off topic a lot and you had to scan over that and carry on.
Because the books were made a while ago, the vocabulary tended to be big words and the phrasing was different to what i'm used to reading which made it harder to understand.

NEWSPAPER
Quote
"Britain 'falling behind' due to lack of foreign language skills..
A poll found three in four people can’t speak either Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish or Japanese." From

Summary In a poll of 4,000 adults by YouGov, 3 in 4 of those couldn't hold a proper conversation in any of the main European languages. John Worne argues that the UK needs to take more people up on the opportunity to learn and use these languages, adding that we'll lose out economically and culturally. From

Bullet Points

• Manchester has being applauded for having a vibrant and individual culture.
• It was voted as the best UK city of 2013.
• In some countries, you find all the culture in the capital but here that isn't the case.
• For the 15th year running, the rest of Europe are bringing their culture to Manchester for Christmas. X & X

Evaluation

These newspaper articles were all very useful because it gave me statistics which makes any statement sound better because it's backed up by research. The text was all easy to understand and it all made sense. The articles in a way are biased in both directions, for example the first quote is being negative saying that Britain isn't taking advantage of the multi-culture we have going on and we're not learning anything new from it. Whereas from the article I took bullet points from is praising individual cities for being unique and diverse and a great place to be because it's welcoming to new people to bring their culture and share it - for example the markets in the city centre over the Christmas holiday.

ANALYSIS OF A SIMILAR DOCUMENTARY

"Make Bradford British" appeals to its target audience because it's reality and it about a certain group of people. I also think it appeals to people because it's set in a specific area so anyone who lives in Bradford will be more inclined to watch it because it's in their neighbourhood.
In the documentary it focuses on 8 people who are of different ethnicities and throughout the programme there are interviews with them and the families they're staying with, what keeps the documentary interesting, is that there is a lot of footage from Mosques and when the selected people live with the new families so you know that it's not put on and you get to see yourself what happens.

PRIMARY RESEARCH
Questionnaire I used for my primary research

From doing this questionnaire I've learned now many younger people watch documentaries, as all of the 16 and unders who answered the questions said that they do watch them and it was useful because now I know that they're a big part of my target audience and I'll need to look at my feedback to see how I can make my documentary appeal to them.
                                 
TREATMENT
I'm want to aim my documentary at teenagers and under, I'd say 17 and below. From my primary research, everyone who I asked who was in that age bracket watched documentaries and some answered that they don't think Manchester has a diverse culture so I want to show them that there is a diverse culture but in a way that they'll find interesting.

After reading some of the Make Bradford British reviews, a lot of people said that the programme didn't go beyond the racial stereotypes and it was foccussed on working class white people and Pakistani/Southern Asians. bradford is one of the most racially divided places in england and obviously more ethnicities are around there but there was no mention of them in the programme in my documentary I'm aiming not to focus on one thing too much. I want to shift the focus around a bit and not have the whole thing on one topic, which in Make Bradford British almost wife swap with people switching lives and trying to learn from it
In my secondary research I looked at examples of culture in Manchester such as the German markets and how language plays a part in making it a multicultural city, I want to involve this in my documentary by including interviews with people - those who run stalls on the markets and people who go to them and try and talk to people who go to Mosques/any other religious buildings I can get to.
Like in Make Bradford British, I want to speak to a range of people, not just those who think there is a diverse culture in the city. I want there to be different opinions in the documentary so that it appeals to more people and talk to people who don't think there is a lot of culture and those who think there is "too much" culture.
by the end of the documentary I want to have educated my audience on the different types of people living in Manchester - different ethnic groups and how their culture they've brought here adds to ours making it better/worse in peoples' opinions.