Unit 3

Assessment 2
Ive been asked by Channel 4 to produce a short documentary on an issue that effects young
peoples lives today. Ive decided that my documentary will cover the issues of mental illness in
young people and will aim to educate people about this topic and take away stigma around mental
illness, especially in young people.
Audience Research
The target audience for my documentary will be 13-20 year olds, since rates of mental health
problems among young people increase as they reach adolescence. My documentary will appeal to
this age group as over half of young people asked
in
a survey aged 16-17 suffer, or know someone that
suffers with a mental illness but 100% of the
people that took this survey werent able to even
guess correctly that 500,000 of young people
aged 11-16 have a mental disorder, with 89%
selecting a lower number than 500,000 and 11%
thinking a higher number than 500,000 so this
type of documentary will be very relevant to
people around this age group as mental illness
affects a lot of people, but is highly
misunderstood.
Since my target audience is 13-20 year olds I will need the documentary to be broadcast on a
Saturday or Sunday, or maybe in the early evening on weekdays since most of my target audience
will be in education or work during the day. Ive decided to choose to air my documentary on a
Sunday at 18:00 as I feel this will be the day were most people will be staying at home getting ready
for school/work the next day. My documentary should last approximately 45 minutes with the
allowance of a 5 minute commercial break 20 minutes in so the programme will be scheduled to
finish at 18:50. The first part of the documentary will be highlighting the issue of mental illness and
stating facts and figures and explaining just how many people are affected by mental illness and how
lots of people suffer from it. The second part of my documentary will be aimed at encouraging
young people to speak out if they feel they are suffering, letting them know they can talk to people
and attempt to break away from the taboo of mental illness. Ill be working to a budget of 40,000
for my programme.
Primary Research
Quantitative and Qualitative research are two important
types of analysis that I will need to look at and use in
order to gain a sufficient amount of information so that I
will be able to put together a 45 minute documentary
that the audience will find engaging. Quantitative
research is very much mathematics based and therefore
its results are meant to be replicable, it is used a lot in the
sciences like sociology, psychology, economics and
political science. Quantitative data is any data given in
numerical form, for example percentages or statistics.

Quantitative research is about gaining information from a sample group, in a structured way, so that
you can produce hard facts and statistics to use to predict the future behaviour of a similar sample
group via employing statistical analysis to order its sample results. I will use quantitative research by
gathering both primary and secondary sourced research. For my primary quantitative research I will
retrieve some facts and figures from my primary created questionnaire/survey.
From doing a questionnaire I found just how ineducated young people are about this topic. For
example, I found that when I asked how many people aged between 11 and 16 do you think have a
mental disorder that nobody chose the correct answer and most went for a lower answer than the
correct one this shows that people are poorly educated about this topic. I also found that over half
the people asked suffer, or know someone that suffers from a mental illness, this shows just how
many people my issue affects.
Qualitative research is mainly exploratory research. Its used to gain an understanding of underlying
reasons, opinions and motivations. It helps to
provide an insight into a problem or helps to
develop ideas or hypothesis for potential
quantitative research. I will gather my
primary qualitative research from my survey.
I will also gather this information by asking
some people online their opinions of mental illness.
Secondary Research
For Secondary research I will look at programme ratings from a website
called BARB to see if there are any similar programmes already out and if
so what these programmes include and then see how popular these
programmes are. I will also look at readership figures for similar themed
newpaper or magazine articles aimed at a similar age group to gather
ideas as to how I should address the reader. Ill also look at reviews for
documentaries either aimed at this age group or with similar themes as
my documentary to look at what viewers liked and what they didnt. Ill
get this information from the guardian as they have reviews.
The review that I am looking at is from a film called Good Girl, a selfportrait of Norwegian filmmaker Solveig Melkeraaen as she undergoes
treatment for depression. A successful director at an early age,
Melkeraaen found that she was feeling empty and unhappy despite her
career and relationship. She decided to film her journey through her
illness and recovery, sharing with us a very personal view of the process. Although it is not exactly a
documentary it covers the same themes that I will be looking into as it is about mental illness and
from an age that relates to my target audience.
Any film which explores mental illness from the point of view of the person

experiencing it will bring interesting and useful insights and do its part to
reduce the stigma around seeking help for mental illness. As MacRae
concludes: the point should be to identify people with this illness as being
humans, as being us, and make their experience understandable so they
arent stigmatised, so they get more help. This film may miss some of its

targets as a piece of documentary filmmaking, but in the final analysis gives

us a human, if flawed, window into the experience of an individual.
This paragraph gave me the idea of using an interview of someone that suffers from mental illness
and to take concepts of what the interviewee has said and explore them. From reading the whole
review I have come up with some ideas as to what I should and shouldnt include in my
documentary. I have decided that I will be using Buzzfeeds I Survived A Suicide Attempt video in
my doumentary since I feel it really helps to inform people about one major form of mental illness
and comes from the point of view of the person that experiences it and so should bring useful
insights and do its part to reduce the stigma around seeking help for mental illness.
Market Research
I have also looked at several news articles about mental illness in young people such as the
Independents Mental health: Young people are struggling to cope with pressures of social media
sites, studies find and the BBCs Mental health stigma campaign
starts. In the Independents article there is a survey conducted by
the National Cirizen Sevices (NCS) that asked 1,000 teenagers
how they have experienced stress over the past 12 months. The
article is also more based towards the issues that can occur
through the use social networking sites, which my documentary
will only breifly cover since it will be based around many different
mental health issues in order to inform people about as many
things as possible.
In the BBCs article it focuses a lot more on mental health stigma and a mental health
stigma campaign that has been launched by the government. This is usuful for me
because one of the aims of my documentary is to reduce the stigma around mental
health and so I can go over some of the points that are made in this article. There are
also some interviews that have been used in the article and I can use some of them in
my own documentary.
16-34 year olds are Channel 4s second most popular age group that watch the
channel. This is good because it means that my documentary will be relevant to the
channels main audience. I have also looked at the most popular social grade of those that watch
channel 4 (which happens to be C2DE) and which sex watches channel 4 the most (females) though I
have found that neither of these two factors will be relevent when thinking of the target audience
for my documentary.
Channel 4 have said that Research also shows that Channel 4 is
renowned for creating new and exciting content and for covering ground
other channels wouldnt which is useful since Metal Health is a topic
that isnt really touched on by other channels and is very misunderstood.
There are a lot of things my programme can cover that will teach the
viewer something new about this topic and is something that people will
find interesting.
Production Research
The costs for producing my documentary will be as follows:

I will be using 4 different HD cameras and a good quality microphone to capture the raw footage
and sound for my documentary, I have found that these will cost 7440. I have decided that the
editing software I will use will be a mixture of sony vegas and Adboe After Effects, these will cost
950. Ive decided that my set will be a studio at Pennington Three Renting and that we will spend 4
weeks filming here, this will cost 1500. Ive also found that for my staff and cast, for example, a
director, editor, script writer, and cameramen/women it will cost 4000. I will also need to make
sure that I have persmission to use everything in my documentary, for example, the Buzfeed video I
plan to use and Ive found that this will cost 500. I will have 25610 remaining.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mental-health-youngpeople-are-struggling-to-cope-with-pressures-of-social-media-sites-studies-find-10496483.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34597424
http://www.channel4.com/info/commissioning/production-information/research