Documentary research - 'Banged up and left to fail'

'Banged up and left to fail' is a documentary that is on BBC Three and was shown on Monday at 9:00pm for an hour.

"Natalie seems like any other university student on her Policing, Investigation and Criminology degree, but she has more experience than most. From the ago of 13, she has repeatedly in and out of the criminal justice system - that helped her change. Natalie's story isn't unique. Nearly 60 per cent of all offenders on a short sentence will commit further crimes within a year of release from prison. In this documentary, Natalie explores the impact being locked up has had on young adult offenders like Sephton, who spent most of his adolescence in prison and now struggles with basic tasks such as food shopping and cooking a meal. She also meets those in charge, such as Minister for prisons and Rehabilitation, Jeremy Wright, to find out what the government are doing to tackle our high re-offending rates."

In this documentary Natalie shares her story and also meets up with three different people who have recently come out of prison and are trying to get their life back together.

1 - Martin - Looking for a house
2 - Elliott - Looking for a job
3 - Sephton - Has anxities and has been mentally scarred from prison

Unfortunately for each of these people they had the same response on what happened when they came out of prison and that was because they didn't get help with any rehabilitation, they were more likely going to go back into trouble. This happened to be a continuous cycle for some people.

While meeting each person throughout the documentary she tries to help out every person by getting them a bit closer to what they want to do, i.e. Natalie helps Sephton with going shopping and learning to cook a meal, so that he doesn't feel so anxious about doing it.

Natalie also went to visit a women's prison called Drake Hall, that did help women with rehabilitation so that they won't get back into trouble. They discovered that people who served over 12 months here had a great response with getting back on their feet, where as the people who served under 12 months didn't do so well, and ended up getting back into trouble.

Natalie also went to see Jeremy Wright who is the Minister of Justice to talk about the new scheme they have for people who serve short prison sentences. Their new scheme is to keep them in contact for a year, to make sure they don't reoffend again and if they do they can take the person to court and put them back in prison.

I noticed that for filming locations, Natalie went to the houses to interview the three people that she was helping. Natalie met up with Jeremy Wright in a pub/restaurant area, which is interesting because you would have thought that because he is so high up that the interview would have taken place in a work area such as an office.

There was some interesting parts to the documentary and one part that caught my eye was when there were drawings of Natalie when she would talk about her past. This made the interview more interesting as is mixed up the shots a bit. I also liked how there was a mixture of speaking in front of the camera as well as commentary which made it less sync heavy, due to there being quite a few interviews.

Overall it has definitely given me some ideas for my documentary, especially because how they have set this film out is similar to how my group want to do our documentary.

Meeting with Louise - Main Case Study

After having a meeting with the Young Lives Foundation, we was able to discuss with them what case studies were suitable for our documentary. As a group we originally decided that we would have one person who had done the programme as well as one case study that has currently joined the programme.

One case study YLF gave us was about a girl called Louise, who has been through the process of The New Directions Programme. After leaving the programme she has done a variety of appearances for the YLF, including, talks and Children in Need 2013. Due to her being over 18 she can give her own consent on being part of the documentary.

We was able to get into contact with Louise and speak to her about the documentary and what were hoping to achieve from it. She really liked the idea of it and was happy to be involved with the documentary.

Our next step was to meet up with Louise and discuss what ideas we have for her part as well as gathering as much information on her story, etc.

We discussed with Louise on what information YLF had sent us over about Louise and found that there was much more to Louise's story that wasn't included. There were some key locations that popped up to me in Louise's story, especially the places where she had changed for the better, that I thought would be interesting to show in the documentary.

Overall she seemed very open with her story and didn't mind talking about what problems she went through. I feel much better that Louise is very happy to be involved with the documentary. All we have to do now is find another case study.

Meeting with the Young Lives Foundation

After communicating to Janine about the New Direction Programme (a programme part of the Young Lives Foundation), we decided that it was time our group met up with YLF, so that we could find out more about the charity as well as get an idea on what limitations we had.

We was able to meet up with Janine and Stephen (CEO of YLF) to discuss on what ideas we had for the documentary, etc.

One of the ideas we discussed about was filming a group of children from the New Directions Mentoring Programme doing an activity. We was able to agree with Stephen that as long we didn't show the identities of the children, that we would be able to film this.

There were a couple of condition Stephen had for the documentary, so we decided to create a 'Agreement Form', stating that Stephen gets to see the video during the editing process as well as the finished video, before it is published. Also including where the video will be published, i.e. personal blogs and youtube.

Janine gave us a booklet on the YLF, that we could keep, that included more information about the YLF as well as a copy of a DVD of one of the case studies being interviewed for the BBC Children in Need.

Overall the meeting was very successful as we was able to get our questions answered and queries sorted out. Janine and Stephen were very cooperative and were happy with the ideas we had for the documentary.

Sequencing and Actuality Mini Project

After learning about sequencing and actuality in class, we was given a small project where we had to get into our project groups and produce a short video showing a typical day in the life of one of the people in the group.

Due to me and Charlie being ill over the week the mini project was briefed out, we ended up producing a video without our other group member Sophie.

When me and Charlie was feeling better, we decided that we would film 'a typical day in the life of' Charlie as he lived near by.

We ended up taking out a Canon camera instead of a Sony (which is recommended for us to film with), due to there being a workshop, so the Canons were the only cameras available.

Canons are great cameras, but because I haven't used one before, I didn't know how long it would take me to get all the settings set up. The only problem with Canon cameras is that you have to use separate sound, as Canons don't pick up sound well. For separate sound we was told to use a fostex. By the time we took all the equipment out, we found out that the fostex was very low on battery and because it was coming to the end of the day we didn't have much time to charge it. We decided to leave the sound and just use the Canon.

Here is our finished video on sequencing and actuality.



As me and Charlie only had a small amount of time to produce this video, there were a couple of things we could have done better. The lighting was bad, due to the room having lack of light, but also because I didn't know how to use the camera. The other thing is sound, if we had come into uni earlier, we could have had enough time to charge up the fostex.

Overall due to having little time to film this, I think me and Charlie did ok. We was able to get a variety of different angles, and it definitely gave us some ideas on what type of shots we could include within our documentary.

Young Lives Foundation Research

YLF (Young Lives Foundation)

"The Young Lives Foundation is an independent children's charity established in 2007, dedicated to delivering quality services tailored to ensure we achieve effective outcomes in the lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young people."

What the foundation do:

- Support young people through times of difficulty and distress
- Enabling their voices to be heard
- Assisting them to achieve their potential

Who they support:

- Looked after children/care leavers
- Children on the edge of care/children in need
- Young offenders/at risk of offending
- NEET (Not in education, employment or training) young people/young people disengaged in education
- Young people with mental health difficulties
- Families in need of support
- Young parents

How they support:

- Mentoring ad befriending
- Advocacy and children's rights
- Positive activities

YLF mission

- Affirm their identity and worth
- Champion their rights, needs and interests
- Promote their well-being and development

YLF website - http://ylf.org.uk

The New Directions Mentoring Programme

The Programme we are focusing our documentary on is 'The New Directions Mentoring Programme' which is a mentoring programme under the YLF.

"New Directions Mentoring Programme provides volunteer mentors to support young people at risk of offending or social exclusion to make a positive difference to their lives."

How referred?

Children can be referred through the medway council/ local authorities. Friends and families can also contact the foundation, however it has to be approved by someone is authority, i.e. social services, school, etc.

What happens?

Mentors meet weekly with the young people for a period up to six months to motivate and guide them towards the achievement of positive goals.

I feel that I was able to research into the foundation and programme quite well, even though there wasn't a lot to find about The New Directions Programme. I was able to find out key information that would be very useful towards the documentary.