Change the world- Initial Ideas

My first thoughts on the project were to look at how we love each other as a community, and as people all part of one world. This video which I have taken inspiration from, explores the concept of doing something simple to make someones day; something as small as giving a meal to someone in need, spending time with someone who is lonely, taking care of sheltered animals or changing the life of a child afflicted with some kind of illness. The "Share the love' programme, established by the Subaru car company, donates money to all different charities every time somebody buys one of there cars. Despite the fact that the money is provided by a huge corporation, I think the idea of doing something for someone you don't know, just to make them smile, is a really special and amazing way to change the world, and would be a really interesting subject to base our film on. 



On meeting with the rest of my group, they brought to the table some interesting ideas, pretty similar to my own. Having discussed and planned over a few days, we finally decided on two potential ideas. 

1. The first idea we decided to try and develop, was to go into the city centre and film one of us approaching a member of the elderly population, and having a simple conversation with them. The aim of this was to raise awareness of the struggles that elderly people face during the winter months; not having enough money to keep themselves warm and comfortable in the cold; all too often, we see stories of gas and electricity companies putting their prices up during the winter, and people on a fixed pension are not able to cope with this rise in heating costs. We hear about people freezing to death in their own homes, which we all agree should not be a regular occurrence in this day and age. Their could be some ethical problems with this idea; some people may feel they are being stereotyped; we realise that this is not something that the entire elderly population is afflicted by, and we don't really want to cause offence by asking the wrong person. 

2. Another idea was to film Aidan taking a homeless person for a hot meal or a drink, and just simply talking to them. The idea behind this was to give somebody there dignity back, not having to search and beg for there next meal or to be turned away from a shop or a restaurant because of prejudice or stereotypes. We wanted to find out there side of the story, after all, it's there story to tell. All to often people jump to the conclusion that people are on the streets due to there own fault, which may be the case for some people, but it's unfair to assume this applies to everyone we see struggling on the street.  The only troubles I see with this could see with this idea, is that being homeless is not something many people would be proud of. It may be difficult for somebody to appear in a film knowing that there are potentially going to be people judging and criticising them. But it is definitely something we would like to potentially develop. 

Filming techniques – Both ideas would be filmed by myself and two other members of my group, stood at different distances and angles around Aidan and whoever he was talking to, Aidan suggested that we should film this in a way where the subject doesn’t know they are being filmed, although, this could be very risks and potentially could be seen as being unethical. The reason however for filming this way, would be to get a full, realistic, and natural reaction. If we do decide to go down this route, it will be important to afterwards get the correct permission and release forms from whoever we end up interviewing.