Pitching Time!

Thursday (27th March) was pitching time! We had briefly gone over what we were going to talk about in the pitch on the day, just to keep it fresh in our memory. Below is a photograph of Caoimhe and I after our pitch and you can see our t-shirts.

On Caoimhe's t-shirt, I wrote "Vegetarians Do Eat..." because a lot of people think vegetables just eat vegetables so I listed a number of different foods (including vegetables) below this and on the back of the t-shirt, I drew and coloured in a few foods.

On my t-shirt, I wrote in big letters "What is a Vegetarian?". This was my first idea for the documentary; I wanted to dispel the myths and find out from vegetarians themselves what others think when they hear they are vegetarians. So on the front and back, I wrote questions and phases that vegetarians are likely to hear when people ask them about being vegetarian. 

For our pitch we talked about a number of different topics:

The title: "Green Beans and Everything Inbetween", I actually give credit to Pearse for this quirky name because he came up with it and we thought it wasn't a generic name for a vegetarian documentary but it was enough for people to be interested, just by the name.

Subjects: Lindsey Mitchell and Richard Andrews. We spoke very briefly about how we were glad to have a man and a woman involved so we could get two different perspectives. Richard has been a vegetarian since he was born, so he didn't choose the choice to be vegetarian, whereas Lindsey did make the choice so it will be nice getting those two different sides too.

Audience: We want these to go out to a wide range of audiences. We want people to watch this who are skeptical of the vegetarian lifestyle or don't know much about it. We want people who are interested in getting involved in becoming a vegetarian. We want vegetarians to watch and feel like they're not dislocated from society like a select few make them feel.

Research: I feel our research has been strong; we watched a film called "Vegan Love" about a guy who wanted to make a documentary about his best friend who was vegan, and trying to find a vegan girlfriend. I also ordered a lot of resources from the Vegetarian Society including leaflets, pamphlets and posters which I had posted about before. 

Themes: Both our themes and locations are heavily dependent on our questions and our subjects answers. Our themes include whether it is their choice to be vegetarian or not, their lifestyle, the reaction of friends and family, common myths and their experiences eating out and shopping.

Locations: As I previously mentioned, this will be dependent on our subjects answers. For example if Lindsey said to us, she did it for the animals, we would go somewhere like Streamvale Farm and get a few shots of the baby animals. However, if she said she did it for the health benefits, we would get shots of health food shops. A few examples of locations are; Holland and Barrett, St. George's Market, Streamvale Farm, supermarkets.

Interview locations at this point are depending on shooting dates; we have Caoimhe's house and my house down as possibilities but when we know when both subjects can film, a decision on interview locations can be confirmed.

Shooting Dates: We were thinking the 4th or 5th April for Lindsey's interview and 8th April or 12th April for Richard's interview and then going on the 13th April for cutaway shots once we watch the interviews back. We feel this will be much more productive due to time restraints, instead of going to get a lot of cutaways at all different places, at least if we know their answers, we can base locations off them.

I was really happy with how our pitch went; we had an innovative idea with the t-shirts and no-one had the same idea. It stood out, it was memorable and we were able to explain how our original idea started in a more colourful way.

Meeting Richard.

In our fifth meeting, Caoimhe and I met at the Linen Hall Library once again (Monday 24th March) and met with Richard, our second and final vegetarian that will be appearing in our documentary. He was really laid back, was pleased with the questions and actually gave us another question we could add, regarding Christmas dinner. Both Richard and Lindsey had spoke briefly about not having enough choice in restaurants over Christmas, so that question will be a nice add on.

Then in our sixth meeting on Wednesday 26th March, we went over our possible shooting dates as well as our pitching process. We had the idea of making t-shirts for the occasions and bringing in vegetarian food and vegetarian beauty products to show our tutor that we were expanding outside the food region a little.

Pitching Ideas for our Pitch.

Tying in with our morning meeting; after lunch Caoimhe and I sat and discussed possible ideas for our pitch next Thursday (Thursday 27th March). We're working around the vegetarian ideas and because real food is fruit and vegetables, this displays lots of bright colours and we wanted our pitch to be creative as possible. We found it difficult at first trying to think of ideas, but we came up with some good suggestions as to what we could plan.

With the pitch being next Thursday, we don't want to spoil what we will be in our pitch because then the judging panel (two of our tutors) wouldn't be surprised because they may have read our blog. We plan to post photographs of what will be involved in the pitching process and how we intend to grab their audience, once we have actually completed it.

Our Fourth Meeting.

Myself and Caoimhe had another very successful meeting yesterday morning (Thursday 20th March). We first had a meeting with our tutor to discuss how we have progressed throughout the week; we spoke about meeting up with Lindsey and how she was excited to talk about all the various aspects of being a vegetarian, not just the food side of things. We also said how we were planning on meeting up with Richard (another person who said they would like to be involved) on Monday morning.

Our tutor gave us the idea of just concentrating on Lindsey and learning more about her life and her hobbies. While I think this is a great idea, this would change the whole dynamic of the documentary and possibly become unlinked to our 'dislocation' theme. My original plan was to interview people and get their views on why do they think they are being judged for choosing this lifestyle, what problems with people have they encountered, do they think being vegetarian gets easier, why did they start and how did they start. These would just be a few of the questions but I was stream lining it on the fact that we were learning about the vegetarian lifestyle and that anyone who had had reservations about vegetarians or didn't actually know about the lifestyle, would watch the documentary and find out that it's not just about eating vegetables. However, if we just concentrate on one person and their life outside vegetarianism, I start to question what our documentary would even be about. I'm really passionate about learning more about the lifestyle because it's something I have wanted to learn about for a few years and if I can help even a little on reducing the stigma on it, then I will be happy and feel like I have created a successful documentary.

Production Folder Links.

This post will be used for me to post links to research and articles that I find online to print out at a later date for our production folder:

1. [19/03] (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Meeting with Lindsey.

Today myself and Caoimhe met up with Lindsey to go over our plans for the documentary as well as discuss some of the questions that will come up in the interview. She seemed really happy about the questions and said she's looking forward to venting about them because she doesn't get the opportunity to talk about some of the things related to vegetarianism. It was a really good meeting and I'm excited to be moving forward!

My producing role.

I don't know whether I have actually said this yet but I am producing Andy's film, "Dislocation" as well as making my own. His blog can be found here and he is creating a fictional story, rather than a documentary. His short film is both comedy and horror based that sees two best friends 'geo-caching' (For anyone that doesn't know what geo-caching is, it is an international treasure community) for a rare mysterious cache. As the cache draws closer, find or did not find, re-establishes itself with live or die.

Tonight we wrote up advertisements for the three roles that need to be filled, and stuck them on the Studio NI Daily email newsletter, Studio NI Facebook page, Gum Tree and over the next few days we will be tweeting it with the appropriate hash tags so people and actors from Belfast will find it easily.

Our Third Meeting.

Our third meeting happened the very next day (Thursday 13th March) with our tutor. We updated up on the interest we had had so far, and that we had already planned to meet up with one of the subjects the following week.

We also discussed our idea of the opening of the documentary having us look online and typing in "vegetarian" onto various search engines, and all that comes up is vegetables. This is to lead in to what I wanted to know, is vegetarianism just about vegetables? Our tutor gave us an idea though; she said to use photographs or video that we take ourselves with markets and shops and to create a montage using my original "is it all about vegetables" idea.

Overall, I'm really pleased with our progress so far. We were a little worried we would come to class with no one interested but that quickly changed on Wednesday and I couldn't be happier.

Second Meeting.

In our second meeting (Wednesday 12th March) we looked over the research resources I had received the week before as well as reply to two responses we had received that morning. We also wrote up a short letter to politician Jim Wells because we found out that he is vegetarian himself. We haven't currently sent the letter yet because we have had quite a few responses so we were using that as a back up plan but we thought it was a good idea to write it up anyway.

Things people say when you tell them you're a vegetarian or vegan.

The Vegetarian Belfast Facebook page posted this article up this afternoon and it is something along the lines that I would like to ask my interviewee. It's an article about the questions both vegetarians and vegans both get asked when they tell people about being vegetarian or vegan.

One of my questions will be "How did people first react when you told them about your lifestyle change?" and although it's not the same question, it's very similar because I imagine some people's reactions were along the lines of the questions in the article.

Research Heaven!

The Vegetarian Society are a registered educational charity and have resources from little recipe cards right up to big posters for individuals, schools or parents to order for free. On the order form you have a huge number of options to choose from and there's no minimum or maximum limit to choose from, so you have as little or as much information as you wish. Everything I ordered arrived this Thursday (6th March) and I was shocked (The good shocked!) at how much resources there was, I don't remember everything I ordered, but I was blown away.

Below is a picture of everything I received then I do smaller group photographs of the leaflets/posters and books.

(Everything laid out together)

• Book One: Vegetarianism, a Project Book for Schools that contains nine recipes, a revision sheet, what a vegetarian is and why and information about nutrition.

• Book Two: Serving Vegetarians, this is geared towards restaurant, cafe and caters but if you have friends, family or even your children's friends coming over and they are vegetarian, this is a helpful tool. It contains six recipes, ingredients and meal suggestions and information about working with the society.
  
• Book Three: Veggie Kids' Kitchen, a book for children and young adults that they can read with their parents. It includes ten recipes, safety and hygiene tips for the kitchen and breakfast and lunch ideas for the lunchboxes. 

• Booklet One: Going Veggie... for the taste, that says "these recipes have been developed by chefs at the Cordon Vert Cookery School to inspire you to get cooking. Mouth-watering and satisfying, they each offer a balanced main meal with plenty of protein, iron and other essential nutrients". It contains seven recipes altogether.
  
• Booklet Two: Going Veggie..., is the essential guide for people starting to look into becoming a vegetarian. It includes what a vegetarian is, the first steps, what to buy on a big shop, misconceptions about some products, nutritional advice and information about their approved trademark.

• Three food comparison postcards comparing the nutritional values of certain foods that contain iron, protein and Vitamin B12. 

• Mini Book One: Veggie Guides for Teens (half of the book is for teenagers and when you flip it over and turn it around, the other half is for parents) is for both teenagers and parents. On the teenager side includes what a vegetarian is, tip for success in your new lifestyle, questions that people may ask you to challenge you about vegetarianism and a mini poster about nutrition. On the parent side it contains talking to your child, what you can cook and a helpful starting point for parents.
  
• Mini Book Two: Young Veggie Guide, is aimed at young children and children coming into their teenage ages. It includes a step by step guide into easing into vegetarianism, advice on how to eat when you're not at home, why people are vegetarians and three recipes.

• A pamphlet on the welfare of animals during the Christmas season.
  
• Four large bookmarks with a vegetarian nutritional food plate on the front and on the back of these, is a different recipe.

• A large sheet of pull out cards to give to restaurants and cafe with information on how to make their dessert menus more accessible to vegetarians (with many places not stating whether their desserts are vegetarian friendly or not).

(The front of one of the pull out cards)

(The back of one of the pull out cards.)

• Mini Book One: Meat-Free Made Easy, containing six recipes, a meal planner, ideas for sandwiches and more about the society.
  
• Mini Book Two: Why it's green to go vegetarian, includes information on how becoming vegetarian lowers your own environmental impact.

• A letter from the Vegetarian Society thanking me for contacting them and telling me more about their company.
  
• Mini Book: Healthy Eating for Vegetarians, gives you information on the benefits on a vegetarian diet as well as particular nutrients, a food plate guide, the special needs teenagers, children and pregnant women need and how to become a member of the society and the benefits.
  
• A Folded Poster: V-Healthy, a healthy eating plan with a meal plan and tips and advice on how to do shopping on a budget.
  
• A pamphlet: V-Healthy, this contain six recipes to go along with the eating plan in the bigger poster of the same name.

• An A1 poster of food comparisons with the nutritional values of food vitamins (Very like the food comparisons on the postcards).

• An A1 poster of food comparisons with the nutritional values of food (Very like the food comparisons on the postcards).

(A1 Poster: Enjoy Life, Enjoy Great Food)

• Three A2 posters (held down with other booklets because they were curled) with three different photographs used with the slogan "Your Future Matters")

In terms of research, I know this is just the starting point but I'm so happy with how much information I have that a charity was able to provide! If you want to find out any information about the Vegetarian Society, visit them at http://www.vegsoc.org 

The Vegetarian Society.

Last week I was doing some more research online and I thought the perfect resource for my subject would be The Vegetarian Society website.

According to their website they are "an educational charity working to support, represent and increase the number of vegetarians in the UK who "work constructively with businesses, government agencies, policy makers ad professionals, whilst always remaining independent." They also "rely on membership subscriptions and donations to carry out this vital work"

Below is a screenshot from their website and even on their front page, they offer a lot of information, not only about themselves but about recipes, advice on starting out as a vegetarian, being active and the online community within the website, to name a few.

So far, I have found this website extremely helpful and I haven't even looked through half of it yet. I'll be spending the weekend looking through it more thoroughly and finding out even more about my subject of choice.

The start of scheduling!

My producer Caoimhe and I sat down this Thursday (6th March) and started talking about a production schedule. We drew up a brief schedule (below) and later on that day Caoimhe made up a more professional looking schedule on Word. We made up this smaller schedules just so we could have the set tasks in front of us for each production meeting then we can update it later on that day on the more professional one (which will then go in the production folder).

Online Advertisements.

Tonight I wrote out a small advertisement for my documentary to post on both Gumtree and Facebook. My first option (after a lot of sitting down with myself and deciding what exactly I wanted to do) was to do a possible "Day in the Life" and an interview session with one person and find out about their journey with their lifestyle. Below are post the ads posted on both websites; I'm hoping that I'll hear something back because I'd love to explore and find out about some-one's views, experience and thoughts through the documentary.

(Facebook) 

(Gumtree)

I also tweeted it using the hashtags #vegetarians and #Belfast to make it easier to find if people were interested.

(Twitter)