College Documentary

[damaltese]

I'm working on a project for my Documentary Production class. The goal is to film a 15-20 minute broadcast documentary or client driven community service video. I have 13 weeks to organize, film, edit, and produce it and it's going to be submitted to a film festival. We have a week to come up with the concept to pitch.

I've been spending hours reading news articles about events, looking up different charities or programs in my town (St. Augustine, FL), talking to friends and family about different ideas that I've come up with. My problem is taking the idea, making it specific, and developing it into a story. I've come up with a few things, but again the ideas are not organized.

1. I have a 101 year old great great aunt living in a nursing home right now who has years of life and experience under her belt. She's still got all of her marbles too. I thought about doing something about life or aging?

2. My grandfather and my uncle recently passed from Cancer. I thought about working maybe with Hospice or something and doing a film that deals with cancer.

3. Another idea I had would be the importance of getting pets spayed or neutered or something with an adoption center.

4. An idea that I would like to pursue would be about disconnecting and how technology is actually taking over people's lives and the relationships of their loved ones.

5. A look at the local gun owners and the gun laws that may be enforced.

6. Body image and how America's view of the perfect size affects women.

You can see how jumbled I am.

I'm in my third year and I have plenty of experience with my camera equipment and knowledge in FCPX. Editing and shooting has never been an issue for me. But now when I have to direct/shoot/edit/produce my own thing, I'm a little at a standstill.

Any help with ideas, new ideas, comments or criticism is welcomed.

Thanks!

 

[substitute]

All of these ideas could work, though, some more easily than others. Since you have a deadline, an idea that you can easily organise the resources for would probably be best.

The one that stands out to me is:

5. A look at the local gun owners and the gun laws that may be enforced.

1) An easy concept to plan an interesting narrative around e.g. conflict of opposing views etc.

2) It is a very current issue, albeit for unfortunate reasons.

However, I wonder how easy it would be to find participants for compared to your other ideas.
But I would definitely just pick one and try to plan it loosely, then you will see whether it will work.