1. Formal Proposal
Topic
After much consideration and discussions of ideas mostly involving the internet, we have
decided to focus mostly on the social networking world during our documentary. We wanted to
focus more on this idea because in the last few years it has become a huge part of everyday life
for a lot of people and we are very interested in how this has been affecting them. We also
wanted to look at how businesses and individuals use social networking to their advantage to
promote themselves and their work.
Type
We have decided to create a mixed documentary as there is a vast selection of social networking
sites around and we think that this will be the best way to document all of the aspects of this
interactive world.
Style Of Documentary
We want our documentary to appeal to our teenage audience so it will not be completely formal
but there will be some formal elements as we will be discussing some serious issues that affect
teenagers using social networking.
Channel and Scheduling
Our documentary will pre-echo any programme that is broadcasted before the 9pm time slot on
Channel 4 at 8.30pm on the 16th of January 2014. We have chosen this channel as there are
currently a vast amount of documentaries which have a similar target audience and
documentary subject for example; ‘Educating Yorkshire’ and ‘Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. These
documentaries relate to our ideas as they cover topics that our target audience will be familiar
with and will have experienced.
Target Audience
We have chosen to make our target audience between the ages of 16 to 25 as we have found
from our research that this is the most popular age group that uses social networking sites and
have experience in different issues such as cyber bullying or privacy issues which we will be
covering in our documentary.
Primary Research Needed
We created questionnaires and interviews so we could find out the general public’s views on
social networking and to give us an insight onto what we could cover in our documentary. Our
questions were open, for example; What do you think is good about social networking? and what
do you think is bad about social networking?. These questions provided us with a narrative
structure for the documentary that we think will intrigue our audience and allow us to present
an unbiased argument. In addition to this research we have used email to contact a local app
development company about a short interview to gain insight on to how they use sites like
Facebook and Twitter to promote themselves and to create new apps that will aid social
networking users in the future.

2. Secondary Research
As part of our secondary research, we have looked at different statistics and facts about social
networking to include in our argument as well as watching YouTube videos to provide us with
appropriate archive footage for our documentary. We have also screen-recorded facebook event
pages and other websites to use in interviews with green screens and during transitions.
Narrative Structure
The structure of our documentary will be one narrative which shows both good sides and bad
sides of the argument. Side A will look at the positive sides of social media whereas side B will
look into the negatives. These two points will interlink however; our documentary will conclude
on a positive point.
Outline of Content
The documentary content will include different businesses and their uses of social networking
and apps and their development. We will then look at cyber bullying and the negative sides of
social media as well as the positives including YouTube and its ability to provide individuals
with recognition.
Resource Requirements
In order to produce our documentary to the highest possible standard, we will require
professional high definition broadcast cameras as well as up to date editing software,
microphones, tripods and access to a green screen and Chroma key. These resources will be
supplied to us through Priestley College.