Commissions (Initial Idea Development) 4

   The 'New Directions Mentoring Programme' have come back to us and have given us permission to film our documentary with their organisation as the main subject. This is great news for our group and we have started to plan areas on what we are going to achieve with the documentary as a whole, individual areas we will be looking into by ourselves and also how we are going to match the BBC Three documentary commissioning criteria.
   The BBC Three commissioning brief states that documentaries aired on the BBC Three channel must be aimed towards a young adult audience and must be about their perspective on the issues that affect us all. It has to be bold and upfront in style but also entertaining at the same time, but also has to be compelling and intimate on extraordinary personal stories of ordinary people. We have taken steps to ensure we meet this criteria such as the charity we have chosen, which is aimed at helping young people. We will be bold and up front with how we film it by filming it with smaller cameras handheld, not stationary as it will help immerse the audience in what is happening on the screen. The people we will be speaking to will majoritively be within the target audience age range and also we will be talking in depth about their personal experiences and stories. We will be up front in a sense that we will be getting in close with the people involved with the charity and also that we will be getting in depth information about what the charity does and what the young people's opinions and feelings are on what they are going or what they have been through.

Commissions (Initial Idea Devleopment) 3

   Hannah, Sophie and I have looked into local charities in our surrounding areas to base our documentary on. We have been looking at charities that aim to help young people mainly, this is because we want the charity to fit into the BBC Three commissioning criteria. Hannah came across a charity/programme local to Maidstone called 'New Directions Mentoring Program'. This programme is provided by 'The Young Lives Foundation' situated just on the outskirts of the main Maidstone town area, but their charity reaches out across Medway and also the rest of Kent. The 'New Directions Mentoring Program' is a volunteered run programme which aims to prevent 7-16 year old from a life of crime, substance/alcohol abuse, social exclusion; basically to make a positive impact in a young persons life. The young persons get put forward for the program from a variety of sources but ultimately they are in need of help and the mentors from the programme aim to provide the help and support they need and in my personal opinion the help and support they deserve.
   We have decided to go ahead and contact the charity to enquire if they would allow us to base our documentary production on them. We believe that their programme would be an interesting subject to base our documentary on because of the uniqueness of how they engage with young people. It is a different approach to other known services to help young people, their approach is original and more hands on compared to another outreach for the young people to turn to such as counselling. I have personally been through counselling myself and I would say that having help provided in a group environment would both provide aid and support a lot more in depth than on compared one to one counselling sessions.