Pitching Our Ideas

Our two ideas for our documentary project are detailed within the presentation above. Said presentation was used to aid our pitches for the two ideas, which I feel went rather well for the most part. I believe the presentation was effective in disclosing the details of our projects in terms of their themes, styles, and approaches in a succinct and interesting manner. On a more critical note, I personally feel that the pitch could have benefited from a little more research and perhaps a little more detail on stylistic and cinematographic approaches in order to more effectively convince our peers of our competence as filmmakers. Regardless, the presentation did allow our peers to gather a rather comprehensive view of our ideas. They recommended that our first idea (Sheffield Steel) would be the best to settle with considering limiting factors such as time limits and accessibility; two factors that would likely have proved particularly problematic with our other idea. This was beneficial for us as of the two, the vision of our Sheffield Steel idea had been more comprehensively fleshed out. 

Though of course there are many details that need further consideration, we do have some concepts and ideas that we would like to explore. For example, the documentary "The Archive" (Sean Dunne, 2008) that I have analysed in the previous post utilises the exploration of the concept of time, as well as the effect that the passage of time has on culture and society. This idea is delivered through the medium of music. We would like to explore the passage of time in a similar fashion; through the medium of steel rather than music. It would also analyse the development of society and culture, though of course on a much smaller scale than The Archive.

In order to obtain the historical perspective on Sheffield's steel industry, we are hoping to arrange to do some filming at Sheffield's 'Millennium Gallery', which is home to numerous exhibits regarding the development and eventual decline of Sheffield's manufacturing industry. Ideally, we hope to be able to arrange some form of interview in order to gather some kind of overall view of the subject. In regards to the present, we have managed to obtain a potential contributor that currently works in Sheffield's steel industry. We hope that he will be able to enlighten us on how despite a majority of Britain's secondary industry being relocated overseas, Sheffield's manufacturing industry continues to thrive. An accurate future perspective is of course realistically impossible, though we intend to ask both of the aforementioned contributors on their thoughts for the future of Sheffield's steel industry; that is assuming their cooperation with the project can be assured.