DOCUMENTARY: Research into BBC Documentaries & Ideas Development

Before we started thinking about ideas for our documentaries we were told that we were to think about them as if they were going to be shown on BBC3. BBC3's speciality are films which relate to younger people on subjects which tackles the issues important to them. This can stimulate strong emotions and provoke reactions. 

Stacey Dooley Investigates: Crime, Carnage and Cancun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dwqtd

They choose to have presenter-led documentaries with Stacey Dooley, Professor Green and Reggie Yates. These presenters complete a couple of documentaries about different things such as 'Stacey Dooley Investigates' and then she will go around the world and a new film comes out every so often. A few recently were 'Trail: War On Drugs' and 'The Truth About Booze, Bar Crawls and Bulgaria'. 

BBC1 documentaries are slightly different as they like to show single films with big subjects that can make an impact as a stand-alone film, on broad subjects of real national importance. Such as 'Lawful Killing: Mark Duggan', 'Behind Closed Doors', 'Ambulance' and 'The Met: Policing London'. These were films that brought a fresh look to important subjects. 

The Met: Policing London
http://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/
dn84wj/the-met-policing-london--series-1---4-night

BBC2 is similar to BBC1 in that they choose to show successful single films in amongst the busy schedule. The big single documentaries give the filmmakers a chance to bring their unique and singular perspective to a broad issue, such as Dan Gordon's 'Hillsborough' and Louis Theroux's 'Drinking to Oblivion'. 

Idea development:
After researching the different types of documentaries on BBC1, 2 and 3, I know the category I should be looking into to get my idea from. I think the best path to go down will be maybe a problem that all teenagers have such as their body image, or I could investigate someone going through the process of changing their body, e.g. recovering from an eating disorder. I happen to know someone who denied the fact she had anorexia when she was younger and only in the past couple of years she has realised what it is doing to her body and she is now happier and has nearly completed the recovery stage. I can get information from her as to how she thinks it started and why she put her body through starvation. This is something all teenagers worry about, their body image, so I think it will be interesting to investigate further to get the word out there that people's bodies are perfect the way they are. This will be more suited to BBC3 that the David Attenborough approach and relates to more people, therefore is more likely to be watched if it was to go out. 


- BBC, Commissioning, http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/articles/documentaries-bbc-three. Last accessed 9th March 2017
- BBC, Commissioning, http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/articles/documentaries-bbc-one. Last accessed 9th March 2017
- BBC, Commissioning, http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/articles/documentaries-bbc-two. Last accessed 9th March 2017