The Story of India is a 6 part documentary written and presented by Michael Wood, it originally on the BBC in August 2007. Each episode of the six part series explores different parts of India's past
- Beginnings
- The Power of Ideas
- Spice Routes and Silk Roads Ages Of Gold
- The Meeting of Two Oceans
- Freedom and Liberation
The Story of India resembles our documentary in many key ways, one of the most important way in which this documentary is similar to ours is with how it depicts the place that it is looking at, for example the Story of India looks at India, that has many negative stereotypes and connotations, but instead decides to show India in a different better light, it goes on to explore many different cultures and landscapes that India has to offer. In our documentary we look at Barnsley which like India also has negative stereotypes and connotations, and like this documentary we look on the brighter side and we show how Barnsley is improving along with modernising.
Another area in which The Story of India can be compared to our documentary is with the camera angles and shots that were used. Throughout the documentary of India many extreme long shots and normal long shots are used, they are used to establish the shot and to get a sense of the scale of the location they are filming at. In our documentary we also had an extreme long shot of Barnsley town centre from above, which gives Barnsley more detail to the viewer. Many of the new modern buildings we feature in the documentary are shown in a long shot, which helps the viewer understand the scale of several of the buildings which make them more impressive looking, for example The Gateway Plaza, it is a very tall building that looks over Barnsley and we tried to capture that image for our documentary. The Story of India has many impressive landscapes that are shown on screen which is one thing that was difficult for us to do.
The Story of India has a quite distinctive sequence of editing, at the start of the program there are many fast edits, the quick edits are used as a preview for the series has they show many different locations and many different people which then intrigues the audience even further, also when you look at most T.V shows there are quick edits at the start of the program as it subliminally adds tempo and excitement for the audience. As the program progresses and the shots have already been established they editing shots slow down considerably, this gives the program more of a chance to delve deeper into detail about the locations, culture and people. Our documentary features mostly slower edits as a large amount of our documentary is exploring modern day buildings and interviews.
