Digital Broadcasting Production Diary: Part Four

For our documentary, we filmed a local football coach named Emma Hankins. Having taken on many youth coaching roles in Dorset and now waiting on the result of a prestigious American placement, we all agreed that she would lend herself well to a dramatic, human angle narrative.

In the style of Channel 4’s ‘3 Minute Wonder’ documentaries, we needed to record an interview with Hankins that could be used as the underlying bed. Unfortunately we had problems with the microphone and could only record a sequence relating to her present coaching, rather than her future in America. It meant that we had to change the angle of our documentary and focus on the difficulties of juggling her university life alongside being a young football coach.

To add energy to our documentary we wanted to film Hankins coaching her squad. Including teenage players was problematic because of censorship issues, but we were vigilant in ensuring that the head coach had given his full permission. Close ups of football boots, goals being scored and Emma Hankins giving orders was a great way to reflect some of the dialogue we had recorded earlier. An interview with the male head coach was lost because of a faulty microphone and to improve our piece I would have liked to conduct the interview again.

During editing, we found it difficult to work with our limited interview and regularly had conflicted opinions. To improve efficiency we split into pairs and worked in shifts. I was pleased with the production values and the music we chose (Coldplay, Life in Technicolor), which added to the overriding tone. However, the inclusion of the American work placement could have made this much stronger.