The documentary will explore different types of cakes, perceptions of cakes, and ways of obtaining cakes. It will use techniques from multiple documentary styles to make it professional. The style will be fun and colorful to appeal to its target female audience aged 25-50. It will air on Channel 4 on December 18th at 7:30pm between a news program and cooking show to inherit audiences. Primary research involved questionnaires on cake preferences and secondary research analyzed other food documentaries for stylistic influences. The narrative structure will open with archive footage, introduce the topic, include interviews, discuss cake history while showing a food historian, and close with a baker taking a cake out of the oven.

1. Formal Proposal For Documentary

2. Topic
• The topic which is being used for our
documentary is cakes. The questions which
our documentary will explore are what
different types of cake are available? What the
general perception of cake is? And the
different ways of getting cake? For
example, Supermarkets, bakeries, and
homemade cakes. This also varies from
different types of cakes to where cakes are
baked and where they are sold.

3. Type of Documentary
• The type of documentary which we are
producing is a mixed documentary; this is
because we will be using techniques used in
different types of documentaries put together.
Sound, music, narrations, clips, facts and
reconstructions, all of these will feature in our
documentary to try and make it as
professional as possible.

4. Style of Documentary
• Style of documentary: The documentary itself
will be easy to watch. Cake baking is meant to
be fun and creative so we want to reflect that
in the style of our documentary. The music
will be laid back and fun and we will try and
make the documentary bright and colourful to
appeal to our female target audience.

5. Channel and Scheduling
• The documentary will be aired on the 18th of December on
channel 4 at 7:30.p.m. The time of the programming is after
the Channel 4 news, which many people will tune in for.
Therefore our documentary will inherit a proportion of the
news’ audience after the proposed scheduling time is a
cooking programme, Hugh Fearnley–Whittengstall’s river
cottage. This being the days ‘big billing’ programme our
documentary will gain a proportion of viewers due to preechoing. Also as a Wednesday evening is during the
working week the general primetime viewing hours is
earlier therefore our documentary is within the working
week prime time therefore we will draw in more viewers
from there 12,236,000 daily reach of viewers.

6. Target Audience
•
The target audience for our documentary is primarily women aged 25 to 50; this is
because this is the most common type of person to bake cakes and have a general
interest in cakes. The most common favourite colour of our target audience is
blue. Out of the fonts which we asked the people to choose on the
questionnaire, Arial Black was the favourite font. Channel 4 is the most watched
channel by our target audience. When we asked what a person’s favourite music
was, the most common genre was Rock music. The most common time to sit down
and watch telly is between 9pm and 10pm on weekdays. Out of a variety of cakes
which we told the people to tick their favourite; chocolate cake shown to be the
most popular. Out of the option of buying cakes in a shop a bakery of making their
own cakes, the majority of people preferred to make their own cakes. Lots of the
people we asked said that they owned a baking book. Out of having a cake served
hot or cold most of the people asked said they preferred cold cake. Nearly all
people asked said they would give someone a cake to someone as a gift. Birthdays
were the most popular occasion to have cake. The majority of people asked said
they would rather listen to a female voice over on a cake documentary rather than
a male as females are usually associated with baking cakes. Brands do not seem to
effect most people’s decisions when buying cakes. Most people who watch
documentaries said they wanted to be informed rather than entertained.

7. Primary Research
• For the primary research we conducted a questionnaire
that 30 people filled out to give us bases on how to create
our documentary. This included questions that asked what
a person’s favourite cake was, when they eat cake, what
their favourite genre of music is, what their favourite colour
is and their favourite font. This helped us decide what the
layout of the documentary should be, what colours and
music should be used and what type of cakes should maybe
be discussed more than others. We will conduct a series of
head and shoulder interviews with people from the
industry like bakers and taste testers. We will also conduct
vox pop interviews on the street to find the public opinions
of cakes.

8. Secondary Research
• We watched and analysed in detail several different mixed
documentaries prior to our cake documentary idea. This gives us an
insight on what the general codes and conventions on making a
documentary are and we also used different parts of the
documentaries as influence for our documentary. Now that we
have researched in depth a variety of mixed documentaries we can
pay more attention to certain things we want to emphasise such as
mise on scene or camera work. Now that we have planned what
topic we have based our documentary on we will watch a few more
documentaries based specifically on cakes and baking so we can see
the general codes and conventions of making a documentary based
on cakes. We will find information and statistics on the amount of
cakes eaten and sold in Britain we can find this either from the
internet or by interviewing somebody who will know, for example a
supermarket representative.

9. Narrative Structure
•
The beginning of the documentary will start with archive footage edited in to a montage with a
voice of god narration introducing the topic to the audience. This will be followed by quick camera
shots of cakes, cake shops and people eating cakes before the title of the documentary will appear
on the screen. This is then followed by a secondary short introduction by the voice of god narration
about what the documentary is going to be about. Between cut away shots of people eating cakes
and panning shots of cakes. This will then lead into several short edits of vox pop interviews asking
people what their favourite type of cakes are, and there general opinions of cakes. An explanation
of the history of cakes and baking will be discussed by the narrator to the audience; this will go
alongside archive footage of people baking and people eating cakes from the past. During this
section of the documentary we will show a food historian answering questions about the history of
cakes. During head and shoulder interviews a title card graphic depicting there name and
profession will be added as this is a convention of a documentary. There will be more interviews
that fade in and out every time a new topic is discussed. After this the narrator will discuss cakes
and explain some in depth knowledge about how cakes are made and a footage of someone baking
a cake will be seen whilst they explain what they are doing in the video. A conclusion to the
documentary will be told by the narrator. The last shot of the documentary will be the person
baking the cake taking the cake out of the oven and eating a slice.

10. Outline of Content
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Our documentary will include;
Film tea rooms
Panning and establishing shots of
bakeries
Reconstruction of someone baking
Archive footage
– Someone baking
– Great British Bake Off
– Baking programmes
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Interviews
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Professional baker
Supermarket worker
Home baker
Bakery workers
People who like cake
General public (vox pop)
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Healthy cake alternatives
Occasions where cake is eaten
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Weddings
Christmas
Birthdays
Easter
Cut away shots
– Create words using baking ingredients
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History of baking

11. Resource Requirements
• We will be using a HD Sony camera to film our
footage and use a boom mic to film some vox pop
interviews to get the best sound and picture
quality possible. We may also use a clip on mic
when recording head and shoulder interviews.
We will use a computer to use ‘adobe pro’ which
will allow us to professionally edit our footage to
get an industry standard finish. There is also a
microphone on top of the camera that we may
use for some simple footage.