Brief pitches for week2

Human and Non-Human:

1. Pets and their owners. As we can constantly see seniors in Brighton walking dogs on weekends, we may do a documentary about the different species of pet dogs and their owners with different personalities. We may futher explore the owners' relations with their dogs( how long those dogs have accompanied them ; what life experience they have been through with their owners ; why they chose to keep this type of dog ). We can interview some owners and let them tell some stories about their pets and them and make it light-hearted (my personal view: it will be easier to let subjects we need actually participate if our interview questions are light hearted so we may get more contacts). We can also explore the psychological aspects of the topic (eg. why those owners choose sometimes to spend much more time with their pets more than with their friends or families).

2. 'Spiritual diet'. We have students from different cultural backgrounds and this idea is about their media gratifications. Is 'We are what we eat' right? by 'eat' here i mean the books those students read, the films they watch, and also websites they browse daily. How do they balance the different cultural media content? how is it afftected by their personal life ?For example, a pakistan student may speak English, make friends with local students but when he accesses to the social media space how will he perform? will he watch only pakistan programmes or will he just watch english programmes? how is his concern on social media space distributed? and what factors will influence his choice? We can interview a few students on campus and ask them why. The issue is we may not have vibrant footage on the topic.

Self and Other:

1. A day on a bus. This idea is inspired by the documentary we watched and studied in year 1 video class LIFT. We may spend the whole day(24hours) operating the camera on second floor of bus 25 and film whatever footage we can get. We may encounter all kinds of passengers with different nationalities, religions, classes on a bus in one day. We can film the ways they respond to the presence of the camera. The ways they talk. We can talk to them as well ( as informal interview). this idea is still at its starting stage. We can try to get the footage of passengers in day and night. My concern now is how to negotiate with bus company about the filming if we actually do it.

2. PDA (personal display of affection). This idea is about PDA in Brighton, or campus (or anywhere we can go to). We can film the footage of kissing couples in parks in brighton or on beach. We can go and interview couples themselves or ask passers-by how they think about PDA. Again, psychological aspects can be explored as not every cultural groups accept or would like to perform it. We really need to negotiate with those couples if they are willing to be on camera.

3. One child policy in China. (This idea needs to be developed). As i am a chinese i started to realise the policy's effect on me after i came to study in UK. We have a big chinese student group and they may be some ideal interviewees to talk about how they find themselves impacted by the policy compared with other students on campus. For example, do they prefer to self study instead of team work so they can have much more say about the work; how they felt when they listen to other students talk about their childhood experience with bros and sises.

4. Your first time.

well this is just an idea if we could really get access to some people who would be liberal enough to talk about their loss of vinginity maybe in teenhood or any other time.

i know it sounds a bit bizzare but it is just a pitch. This idea is a bit hard to realize and i can not think of any possible footage we can get so far.