Possible interview questions, so far...

Since you moved to the U.K in the 50's do you think there has been a change in traditions within your Greek family?(Grandma)

Do you think traditions have changed in your Greek family? (cousin)

Why do you think Greek food is an important ingredient that brings your family together? (Grandparents and cousins)

Do you take part in the preparation of Greek food at home? (Grandad, cousin)

How do you feel about cooking food for the family? (Grandma)

What do you like most about being Greek? (everyone)

I have been trying to think of questions that could be asked to the Grandparents and the cousins so that there will be a clear comparision between the answers of the older and younger generations. I need to think of more questions for the cousins whilst they're cooking and for my Grandad. However i also understand that during the interviews new topics of converstations may develop which will generate new questions.

Character Profiles

The Grandma:

• will be used as part of a voiceover and interviews
• strong Greek accent,may need subtitles
• close-ups on use of hand gestures
• important because she is the voice of the older generation within the Greek family
• her role is to provide the audience with opinions about Greek culture, which will be more traditional than the youngsters interviewed

The Grandad:

• Used for interviews
• strong Greek accent
• located sitting in an armchair in his house-typical greek man
• His opinion on Greek culture, important to see his male opinion

Young Greek people:

• Will be interviewed and will be completing their task of cooking a traditional Greek dish
• their opinion's on their culture are valued, because the aim is to compare their opinions with the older generation.

Planing-Brief outline of documentary

My Big Fat Greek Family uncovers the reality of Greek culture and being young but Greek in Britain today. We meet four young people of Greek origin and learn about their attitudes towards family, food and more about their culture. Channel four will seek to uncover the gap between generations in the Greek culture and how it has changed as we move into a more developed, contemporary society.
The youngsters will be given a task of attempting to cook a traditional Greek dish for them to understand more about the preparation that goes into making Greek food. Will this open their eyes to how much their culture is still very much a part of their lives or will the effect of living in Britain make them value their traditions less?

Planning-animation

I finished putting the drawings together to create the animation. I was very pleased with the way it looks and have come to the conclusion that i will definately be using this animation idea for the documentary. I am now in the process of selecting music that will sync well with the pace of the animation. I like the "Sousta" and the pace of this song works well with the sample animation.

Planning- Testing animation

On Thursday the 16th of October I scanned the animations on to the computer. There was a delay in scanning the drawings because there was problems with the scanner and i had to go to the photography department and use their scanner. This was quite time consuming, however now i know that when i need to use the scanner again it may take a while and therefore i will need to leave myself more time.
I was pleased with how the animations looked on screen. Each drawing was 4 seconds long, which is too long in order to make the animation look good. So i had to shorten each drawing to around 14 mini-seconds; this also took awhile because i was getting used to using the software again, although once i got the hang of it, it did'nt take as long. I only managed to work on two of the drawings as i ran out of time, but the result looked really good and so far i think i am going to stick with the animation idea, seeing as it worked out how i had intended. Although next week i would like to finish it off to make sure this idea is worth considering.

Planning

I have been thinking about how to create the opening of my documentary and have come up with an animation idea. The idea is to draw stick men dancing and plate smashing at different stages and scan them into the computer to then put together to make a sequence, which will hopefully look like an animation. A friend of mine is a talented cartoon drawer, so i would get her to do the drawings. However i understand that this would be very time consuming to construct and edit but i think the result would look really good. During the animation there would be diagetic greek music and the sounds of plate smashing.
At the moment i am working on an example animation to test the idea and see if it works and looks good. Tomorrow i will scan the drawings into the computer.
I hope the idea works as i think it is fun and creative, which will appeal to my target audience.

Brief Outline-(rough)

My Big Fat Greek Family uncovers the reality of Greek culture and being young but Greek in Britain today. We meet four young people of Greek origin and learn about their attitudes towards family,food and more about their culture. Channel four will seek to uncover the gap between generations in the Greek culture and how it has changed as we move into a more developed, contemporary society.

The youngsters will be given a task of cooking a traditional Greek dish in an attempt for them to understand more about the preparation that goes into making Greek food.

Will this make them see that their culture is still apart of their lives or has living in Britain influenced them in valuing their traditions less?

Institutional Research

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/16/tvratings.television1

This article shows channel 4's viewer ratings have dropped, according to a recent survey. BBC1 came out on top, as it got the highest viewer rating out of the five terrestrial channels. This is because the BBC are more diverse. Whereas the main focus for channel 4 viewers is big brother, it seems that channel 4 are relying on their audeinces because of big brother. They need more divers programmes that will attract new audiences. My documentary will provide channel 4 with the diverse programe that they need, which will attract a new audience. As it is informative, interesting and humerous.

Institutional research- Production company

Diverse Productions have produced many diverse, cultural documentraies for channel 4. They are part of The Zodiak Television Company who are one of the largets production companies in Europe. Zodiak develop, produce and distibute innovative content for all screens.

This Production company is appropriate for my documentary, as it has produced diverse documentaries such as "Young Black Farmers" and "Ballet changed my life" these documentaries are away of challenging young people; as well as informing and educating people about something new and interesting, which is what i am intending on portraying in my documentary.