Audience research

Audience Research - questions

Here are some questions we came up with to ask around 5 people from our target audience to see what they are looking for in a documentary and see if they'd be interested in ours.


1. Do you watch documentaries on a regular basis?
2. What kind of documentaries do you usually watch?
3. What time do you watch them?
4. Do you prefer to watch a series or a one-off?
5. Have you ever watched a documentary about South Yorkshire? If so, what?
6. Would you be interested in watching a documentary about the regeneration of Barnsley?

These questions will hopefully give us a better understanding on what documentaries are the most watched and how people prefer to watch them.

Script

Voice Over Narration -

Welcome Back.
Before the break we looked at three new buildings, the new council building on Westgate, the media centre on county way and the Barnsley interchange which has been transformed from its old dilapidated state, to something what Barnsley can be proud about.
From this, we have learnt that Barnsley is serious about moving on to something new from its old mining background.
In this part, we are going to look at new buildings such as Gateway plaza.
Firstly, we will take a look at the new college building which is being developed at the current moment.
This building replaces the one which was there for multiple years which has been inadequate for the students trying to work there.
Under the Labour government, the college was given money to build a new site at Old Mill lane, three years ago.
Work started a year after but as the recession hit hard they had to delay building work at the site.
During this, the college had to release teachers to prove that they had the commitment to use this correctly.
After speaking to the education finance minister, college received funds to restart the project.
The building is proposed to be finished around spring twenty eleven.



This is Gateway Plaza. The development cost around fifty million pounds and was completed in 2009, a year after it was targeted to be complete.
Gateway Plaza has many key features with the modern courtyard at the centre.
Gateway Plaza offers 120,000sq ft of open plan prime office accommodation split over 8 floors in addition to 188 apartments. It also holds 21,000sq ft of retail and leisure space.
The Glass House pub and restaurant is the most popular facility in the complex at the moment.
It offers a warm relaxing environment to enjoy a meal as well as a lively pub atmosphere all year round.
The Premier Inn is a 3 star hotel with 100 beds available for affordable prices, making useful accommodation for people on business affairs or family visits. The complex also includes a 516 space car park built around the side of the plaza.

Barnsley Council has bought the project this year for around twenty million pounds and now will use the office space for its let to housing manager, Barneslai Homes.
The Gateway Plaza scheme also includes an NHS Health Centre. All are leased on 999-year leases. For Barnsley, this is an opportunity which could start off a chain of new structures which could offer a new start to many people who are jobless.

Before the break we looked at the new Digital Media Centre. Inside is Barnsley council member Michael Stokes who can tell us more about development in Barnsley.

Five Minutes Treatment

Boom or Bust?

Our age rating will be fifteen plus (15+) , for younger children the subject matter may be too complex to understand, having not seen the development of Barnsley themselves. 
The documentary will focus on people from the Yorkshire area ,and will hopefully generate an interest in the new developments happening near them locally.  It may also  bring about a atmosphere of nostalgia for older people, who have seen the changing skyline in Barnsley.  The documentary will be shown on Channel 4 a reputable channel ,and the home of many other similar documentaries.  

The section of the documentary that will be filmed will last for a total of 5 minutes recapping on the previous showing  after a break.

The Documentary will include an interview about the regeneration of Barnsley, with a councillor who is known personally to one of the group members. We will include a shot of the bus station, and a time lapse of Barnsley College been built. The new gateway plaza will also appear in the  film, with shots taken from the inside and outside of the building. 
There will  be  interviews with a selection of  people from Barnsley discussing how they feel about the developments, and an interview with a Barnsley councillor taking about his view on the regeneration. Asking him if he thinks the gateway plaza will be a success, and also questioning him about Barnsley college, and the future for Barnsley in the years ahead. 


Unusual Elements:

 The documentary is set in  Barnsley. 
Barnsley does not have a lot of coverage in the news, and does not feature in many documentaries, this documentary is the first one of the area in a long time, and we  will endeavour to show Barnsley in better light, than it has perhaps been more commonly portrayed by  media sources in the past.

Treatment

Title – Boom or Bust?

Audience – Age 15+

The rating will be 15+. There are several reasons for this, one being that it would be difficult for children below this age to understand the evolution Barnsley as gone through and will keep going through. This is the correct age rating for our film because the audience members who just make this age will watch this program and be excited of what Barnsley is going to look like when they are ready to work and live in the town but will also teach them of where Barnsley as come from and how much Barnsley had already changed. Older members of the audience who watch this documentary will enjoy watching it and it will be nostalgic and they can relate to what Barnsley was like in the past, and these people as much as others will want to know what Barnsley will look in the future and these people can fully understand and have opinions on the change Barnsley has and will go through. Our documentary can be classified as a 12 because it has none of the things that would move it to a 18+ according to BBFC, it doesn’t feature strong language or violence which are key for our documentary being 15+ not 18+, People in the Yorkshire area, people with specific interest in Barnsley. Our documentary will be broadcast on channel 4 at 7 PM, the reason for chosing channel 4 for our documentary is that channel 4 often shows documentary's about different subjects and sometimes niche subjects that are more specific such as ours.

Duration – 60 Minutes

Summary/Synopsis –

In part one of the documentary we will feature the past of Barnsley and look back at the history of Barnsley, we will feature interviews with several different people in the social standing, we will feature interviews with older people who worked in Barnsley in their youth and saw Barnsley grow, the interview will feature questions such as “what was it like working in Barnsley everyday”, “what was your first opinion when you were informed about new plans for developments around Barnsley”, “were you happy growing up in Barnsley and what was the feeling looking round at the different buildings. We’ll feature several different areas of Barnsley that are old and see how they look in the modern world; we will feature the area where the mines used to be, the old council buildings that still appear in Barnsley’s town centre area, and also the market which has become an iconic symbol of Barnsley.

In part two and three we will have an in depth look at how Barnsley has changed over the last 50 years to the present day, we will look at which buildings have changed, which are still standing, and also we will see how people have reacted to changes and if they think Barnsley has improved and become a better place to live. We will have images from inside some of the brand new buildings such as the gateway plaza, and we will show the new Barnsley College building with is quite far into its building progress but not finished yet. We will have an interview with someone who works for the council, we will ask them about both the College and Gateway Plaza but we will also ask them their feelings on the Regeneration of Barnsley, how excited are they about the new things they are building and do they have potential to build more.

In Part four we will look more into what the future holds for Barnsley, what new things are in the line to be built, we will go into detail about what Barnsley is planned to look like within 20 years. How does Barnsley 20 years in the future compare to what Barnsley looked like 50 years ago.We will look at what future plans are already in the limelight to be built, an example of this is the planned “new market”. This is a plan to modernise the old still Barnsley market to an upbeat version to match the times. This new development will cost Barnsley millions and in this day of recession we ask the people of Barnsley is it worth it, and will they be supporting it or objecting. An interview will be shown with different people in Barnsley, such as simple members of the public, workers in Barnsley, students in Barnsley and OAPs in Barnsley, to ask what they want for Barnsley in the future, would they like to see any new buildings and if so what type and why.

In the final part,  we will round up all our findings and show some of the old and the new to do with Barnsley and will give our own opinion of what Barnsley is like at the moment and how it can be expanded.

Barnsley A Portrait Of The Town & It's People

An early documentary of Barnsley’s in the 1950s/1960s, documenting Barnsley as a mining town.
This is the only documentary that I have found on redevelopment in Barnsley, and the only documentary that I personally have viewed, which provides subject matter regarding the Barnsley area. 
This Film has has provided  part of the inspiration for the development of our ideas.
As a group,we decided to make a modern documentary regarding, the regeneration and redevelopment of the Barnsley area, especially with the recent building of the new Barnsley college; and the completion of the Gateway Plaza complex.

Regeneration documentary, Park Hill Estate, Sheffield

Park Hill Estate Sheffield Regeneration - Video Link

The Park Hill Estate in Sheffield is Europe’s largest listed building, and requires urgent renovation. We see how English Heritage and Sheffield City Council architects and engineers, work with property developer Urban Splash, to determine the most appropriate method of repairing its deteriorating concrete façade. 

The Jerry Springer Show - 'Classic Springer: The Mole People' [UK Edit] ...

The Chinese Are Coming

This documentary charts the development of China as a rising economic superpower, and asks the question what will the world be like if it overtakes the USA.
The documentary is on a similar subject to our own, about  the redevelopment of an area.
In this case highlighting a number of areas throughout Africa. Though the documentary is very informative and shares many similarities to own, it covers too wide an  area, to show  redevelopment in detail ,so I will not be using this documentary for later analysis.

The Man Who Slept for 19 Years

Further development of ideas

We thought of certain specific ideas for the documentary on the regeneration of Barnsley.
First, we decided it was crucial to keep getting the same shot of the new college building being built over time so at the end we can edit it so for an interesting shot of the development of the building.
Another idea was to have some shots taken from high places like the Alhambra shopping centre car park or from a high level in the Gateway Plaza to show the town as a whole.
Finally, we decided the documentary would use information and interviews to address the question "is Barnsley getting better?"

Documentary Ideas

Here are the ideas we had on topics for a documentary:

- Social issues: unemployment, homelessness, racism, Conservative/Lib Dem Coalition.
- Barnsley Hospital.
- Art in Barnsley.
- The regeneration of Barnsley.

Out of these we thought the best two were Barnsley Hospital and the regeneration of Barnsley. We then decided that it would be very hard to get permission to film around the hospital as we would get in the way and patient confidentiality would be breached if we were to film them. This left us with the regeneration of Barnsley, which we decided was the best idea anyway because we can film the college which is in the process of being built, then review other recently built buildings like the bus station, Gateway Plaza, the Civic and the new council buildings. We can also get interviews from people who work for the council, and older people who can give an account on how Barnsley has changed over the past few decades.

Brief History of Channel 4 and Why We Chose Them

• Channel 4 began working on 2nd November 1982
• The station is owned by Channel Four Television Corporation
• It is a direct rival to BBC and ITV
• Channel 4 has strong links to Comedy, Documentaries and Reality T.V
• Has previously broke viewing records for amount of viewers
• Channel 4 has relatively recently expanded to an online viewing service to catch up on their programs, it is called Channel 4 On Demand (C4OD)

We chose to air our program on Channel 4 for a variety of important reasons. Channel 4 regularly airs documentaries which is the main reason we chose it because the audience they attract have interests in factual documentaries. Coupling this with the amount of viewers they have and how much recognition they have would help our documentary get seen.